207. Building 1000HP Evos, Engine Programs, Pushing the B58 and GR Corolla Platforms w/ SpeedLab INC
Minnoxide
207. Building 1000HP Evos, Engine Programs, Pushing the B58 and GR Corolla Platforms w/ SpeedLab INC
Minnoxide · Jul 3, 2026
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Concept
engine programs
An “engine program” is the car’s tune—basically the settings that control how the engine runs. When you change parts, you usually need a new tune so everything works together safely.
Term
torque monster
A “torque monster” means a car that pulls hard, especially at lower RPMs. It’s the kind of power that makes acceleration feel strong without needing to rev it a ton.
Term
turbo
A turbo is a device that uses the engine’s exhaust to force more air into the engine. That extra air helps the engine make more power.
Term
engine tools
“Engine tools” refers to specialized shop equipment used to measure, assemble, and service internal engine components. In a build context, the point is that accurate measurement and proper tooling can prevent mistakes during machining and reassembly.
Term
micrometers
A micrometer is a very precise measuring tool. Engine builders use it to verify that parts are machined to the correct size so the engine fits and works properly.
Term
measuring equipment
“Measuring equipment” is the set of tools used to check sizes and clearances. In engine builds, it helps make sure everything is within the right tolerances so the parts work together correctly.
Term
machine work
Machine work is precision metal shaping done with specialized tools. In engine builds, it’s usually what a machine shop does to make parts fit and measure correctly before the engine is assembled.
Term
cylinder head assembly
The cylinder head is the top section of the engine. It holds the valve system that controls airflow and exhaust, so it has a big impact on how the engine breathes.
Term
engine assembly
Engine assembly means building the engine by putting all the internal parts together into one complete unit. It’s more than just “putting parts in”—shops also check fitment and make sure everything is set up correctly.
Term
blueprint assembled
Blueprint assembling is when a shop builds an engine with extra precision. They measure and match parts to specific targets so the engine is more consistent and predictable.
Term
main line
A “main line” is the main lane in a garage where cars are lined up and moved through the shop. It’s the usual path the car follows before it gets tested or serviced.
Term
heat cycle
A “heat cycle” is when you run the engine through a controlled warm-up so everything gets up to temperature in a controlled way. The goal is to help the engine parts seat and get lubricated properly.
Concept
engine break-in
“Engine break-in” is the early running period after an engine is rebuilt. The idea is to manage how the engine wears in so it lasts longer, and the shop is trying to do that work before you take delivery.
Term
wastegate hits
A “wastegate hit” is a quick test where the turbo is pushed to see how well it controls boost. It helps the tuner check that the turbo responds correctly and doesn’t overshoot.
Term
synthetic oil
“Synthetic oil” is a higher-performance type of engine oil. It usually handles heat better and helps protect the engine, especially when the car is being driven hard.
Term
rings aren't going to seal
Inside the engine, piston rings help keep pressure where it should be. If they don’t seal well, the engine can lose compression and run poorly. It can also lead to smoke or other problems pretty quickly.
Term
spin a bearing
If an engine “spins a bearing,” it means the bearing isn’t getting proper lubrication and gets damaged. That can quickly ruin the crankshaft and lead to catastrophic engine failure. It’s usually a serious warning sign.
Term
flex fuel
Flex-fuel means the car can use different fuels, usually regular gas and ethanol blends. The car adjusts automatically so it can run safely and make power on either fuel. It’s common in high-power builds because ethanol can support more boost and timing.
Term
E 85
E85 is a fuel blend with a lot of ethanol mixed with gasoline. It tends to be more knock-resistant than regular gas, so tuned cars can often make more power on it. It also changes how much fuel the engine needs.
Term
sequential transmissions
A sequential transmission shifts one gear at a time in order, instead of using a traditional gate-style pattern. It’s designed for quicker, more consistent shifts—especially in racing. Drivers usually control it with a lever or paddles.
Brand
6xd
6xd is mentioned as a brand associated with heavy-duty sequential gearboxes. The speaker is saying it’s built to handle hard use and high power. It’s essentially a “who makes the transmission” reference.
Term
50 pounds of boost
Boost is the extra pressure a turbo adds to push more air into the engine. “50 pounds” is extremely high and usually requires careful tuning so the engine doesn’t run dangerously.
Concept
dyno
A dyno is a machine that tests a car’s engine under load. It’s useful because it can reveal problems during tuning or setup before you take the car out.
Term
standalone
A standalone ECU is a separate engine computer you install instead of relying on the stock one. It lets the tuner control how the engine runs much more precisely, which matters when you’re making big power.
Term
link ECU
Link ECU is an aftermarket computer for the engine. The host is saying it’s a good value and works well for tuning boosted cars.
Term
on board logging
On-board logging means the car records data while you drive or dyno. If something goes wrong, you can review the log to see what the engine was doing at the time.
Brand
MoTeC
MoTeC is a company that makes performance engine computers. Tuners use it to adjust how the engine runs (fuel and timing) more precisely than the stock computer, which helps when building a high-power car.
Brand
Max ECU
An ECU is the engine computer. “Max ECU” here means a particular aftermarket engine computer setup they’re using, and they’ll tune it so the car runs correctly with the modifications.
Brand
Haltech
Haltech makes performance engine computers. If a car is “on Haltech,” it means the stock computer is replaced with a tuner's ECU so they can adjust fuel and timing for the car’s modifications.
Term
out the door
“Out the door” means the final total price you pay, including the extra fees and taxes. So “five grand out the door” is the all-in number, not just the starting cost.
Term
oil pressure sensor
The oil pressure sensor tells the engine computer how much oil pressure the engine has. It helps the tuner (and the car) catch problems early if oil pressure isn’t where it should be.
Car
Lancia Lambda
The Lancia Lambda is an older car model from Lancia. The podcast talks about adding or working with sensors and tuning parts so the engine can run correctly. It’s being discussed because it’s a classic that people can still modify and manage with modern tools.
Term
fuel pressure sensor
The fuel pressure sensor measures how hard the fuel system is pushing fuel to the engine. That matters for tuning because the computer needs the right fuel pressure to deliver the correct fuel amount.
Term
can lambda
“Lambda” is the oxygen sensor signal that helps the computer know if the air-fuel mix is too rich or too lean. “CAN” means the data is sent over the car’s communication network so the ECU can use it for tuning.
Term
pump gas tuning
This is when a tuner adjusts the car’s computer for regular gas you can buy at a normal gas station. The tune is set up so the engine runs strong and safely with that fuel.
Term
EC
Here “EC” means the car’s engine computer. It controls things like fuel and spark, and on some setups it can adjust when you use different fuel blends.
Term
engine clearances
Clearances are the super-small spaces inside an engine between parts that move against each other. The right gap helps everything move freely and stay lubricated.
Term
rod bearings
Rod bearings are the small bearing surfaces that let the crankshaft move smoothly inside the engine. They need the right oil gap—too tight or too loose can cause serious wear.
Term
tight clearances
Tight clearances mean the engine parts are set up with very small gaps. That can help the engine seal and run efficiently, but it’s also less forgiving if things get hot.
Term
piston rings
Piston rings are small metal rings on the piston that help keep combustion gases from leaking past the piston. They also help control how much engine oil gets burned.
Term
piston pins
Piston pins are the small metal “hinge” parts that connect the piston to the connecting rod. They help the piston move smoothly, and they need to be strong for hard driving.
Term
SPL spec pistons
These are special pistons made to a particular performance setup (“spec”). For very high-power engines, the piston design has to be strong and correctly matched to the rest of the engine.
Term
bill of block
This sounds like a detailed list/spec for the engine block build—basically what gets machined and what parts are included. For big power builds, that kind of checklist matters a lot.
Term
wrist pins
The wrist pin is a tiny metal connector inside the engine. It links the piston to the connecting rod, and if it’s not strong enough, it can fail under high power and heat.
Term
tool steel
Tool steel is a very strong type of steel. Engine builders use it for parts that need to resist bending and wear under extreme stress.
Term
TP one
TP one is the name of a particular metal they use for a critical engine part. The main idea is that it’s chosen because it can handle more force without bending.
Term
H13
H13 is a particular steel grade. It’s selected because it stays strong even when things get very hot inside the engine.
Term
H11
H11 is a specific type of strong steel. Different steel grades can handle different amounts of heat and stress, which matters for parts like wrist pins.
Term
tensile strengths
Tensile strength is how much pulling force a metal can take before it gives up. Stronger tensile strength helps parts like wrist pins resist bending when the engine is under extreme load.
Term
abnormal combustion
Abnormal combustion means the fuel is burning in an uncontrolled way inside the cylinder. That can create extra heat and pressure, which can stress engine parts and cause failures.
Brand
Kali's rods
Kali’s is a company that makes performance engine parts. Here they’re talking about connecting rods, which are key pieces inside the engine that need to be strong for big horsepower builds.
Term
journal number four
The crankshaft has “journal” surfaces where bearings ride. “Journal number four” is one specific spot on the crank, and cracking there suggests that spot was getting too much stress or had a weak point.
Term
cracking issues
Cracking issues means the part developed cracks instead of staying intact. That can happen when the part isn’t strong enough (or has a weak spot) for the stresses inside a high-power engine.
Brand
Brian Crower ones
Brian Crower makes aftermarket performance engine parts. The host is saying they had cracking problems with other crankshafts, and the Brian Crower ones have been good.
Brand
BC
BC is another brand of crankshafts/engine internals. They used it because the first brand they wanted wasn’t available in time, so they used BC to meet customer orders.
Term
out of round
“Out of round” means the part isn’t perfectly circular. When that happens, it can wobble or not fit right, so shops may need to fix it before it can work properly.
Term
straight as an arrow
They’re saying the ideal is for the part to be perfectly straight. If it’s bent, it can cause problems when it’s installed or when it moves.
Term
94 millimeter crank
A “94 millimeter crank” means the crankshaft has a 94 mm stroke. Stroke is how far the piston travels, and it affects how big the engine is and how it makes power.
Concept
stock ECU stuff
The ECU is the computer that controls the engine. “Stock ECU” means you’re using the factory computer, not replacing it. The “stock ECU stuff” part is about changing how the factory computer runs the engine.
Term
tuning guide
A tuning guide is like a recipe for adjusting an engine’s settings. It helps you know what numbers to aim for and what to test next. That matters because wrong settings can hurt the engine.
Term
hex editing
Hex editing means changing a computer file by editing the raw “code” bytes directly. In car hacking/modding, it can be used to tweak the software inside an ECU or related files.
Term
open source
Open source means the software’s underlying code is available for anyone to look at and modify. Car modders often rely on it because it helps people build tools together.
Term
tuner
A tuner is someone who adjusts the car’s computer settings so it runs the way you want. If tuners won’t work with a shop, it can slow down getting the car properly set up.
Term
timing
Timing is when the spark plug fires in the engine cycle. Changing it can help power, but too much advance can cause knocking and damage.
Part
head studs
Head studs are stronger bolts that hold the engine’s cylinder head tightly to the block. They help prevent the head from lifting when you run high boost and high cylinder pressure.
Term
O rings
In performance engine builds, O-rings typically refer to sealing O-rings used in the cylinder head gasket area to improve combustion sealing. They’re often used when pushing high boost to reduce the chance of leaks under pressure.
Part
Aluminum rods
Connecting rods are the parts that link the pistons to the crankshaft. Using aluminum rods can help the engine handle high power and RPM more safely.
Term
transfer case
A transfer case is part of an all-wheel-drive system that sends power to the front and rear wheels. If you’re pushing big power, it has to handle that extra twisting force without breaking.
Term
rear differential
The rear differential is what lets the two rear wheels turn at slightly different speeds, especially when you’re cornering. With huge power, it can wear out or fail, so it’s often part of the upgrade conversation.
Term
PPG dog box
A PPG dog box is a stronger racing transmission. It shifts quickly and is built to survive the kind of torque you get when you’re making extreme horsepower.
Term
link plug in package
They’re describing a plug-and-play engine computer kit. It’s meant to be easier to install than a full custom wiring job, while still letting you tune and monitor the engine.
Term
oil cooler
An oil cooler is like a radiator for your engine oil. It helps keep the oil from getting too hot, which matters a lot when the engine is making extreme power.
Term
front mount intercooler
A front mount intercooler cools the air going into the engine after it’s compressed by a turbo. Cooler, denser air helps the engine make more power safely.
Term
intercooler piping
Intercooler piping is the hoses/tubes that move the turbo-charged air around the cooling system. Better piping can help the engine breathe more efficiently when you’re running higher boost.
Term
ignition coils
Ignition coils make the electrical spark that lights the fuel in the engine. When you push power higher, the engine needs a strong, reliable spark to avoid misfires.
Term
catch can
A catch can traps oily vapors that would otherwise get sucked into the intake. It helps keep the intake cleaner and can make tuning more consistent on turbo cars.
Term
battery relocation kit
A battery relocation kit moves the battery to a new location, usually to improve packaging or weight balance. It also helps when building a car for racing where space is tight.
Term
clutch
The clutch is what lets you smoothly connect and disconnect engine power to the transmission. With very high horsepower, the stock clutch may slip or fail, so it often needs an upgrade.
Concept
drag street
They mean doing drag-style runs on the street—lots of hard launches and repeated acceleration. That’s much tougher on the car than normal driving, so parts are more likely to break.
Term
single ignition event
An ignition event is when the engine’s spark lights the fuel in a cylinder. If that one “spark-and-burn” cycle goes wrong, it can make the engine run dangerously hot or burn incorrectly fast.
Term
injector gets stuck
A fuel injector is the part that sprays fuel into the engine. If it gets stuck, it can spray the wrong amount of fuel, and that can quickly damage the engine.
Term
air fuel ratio
Air-fuel ratio is how much fuel the engine is mixing with the air. Getting it wrong can make the engine run too hot or not burn properly.
Term
back pressure compensation
Back-pressure compensation means the tuning system accounts for how hard the exhaust is “pushing back.” That helps it adjust the fuel more correctly instead of guessing from sensor data that can be skewed.
Term
individual lambdas
Lambda is a way to describe whether the fuel mixture is “right” compared to the ideal balance. Individual lambdas means checking or controlling that balance separately for each cylinder.
Term
EGTs
EGTs are sensors that measure how hot the exhaust gases get. They can warn you something is wrong, but they don’t always react fast enough to tune the engine in real time.
Term
real time tuning
Real-time tuning means the car’s computer changes settings on the fly while you’re driving. If the sensors are slow to react, the computer can’t fix problems quickly enough.
Term
aluminum mod motor
They’re talking about a modified engine that uses aluminum parts. Their point is that at very high power, that kind of build can make the engine’s bearings wear out faster.
Term
cylinder pressure
Cylinder pressure is how hard the engine is “pushing” inside the combustion chamber when it burns fuel. More pressure means more stress on the engine parts, which is why extreme power can break things.
Term
properly tuned engine
A “properly tuned engine” means the fuel, ignition timing, boost control, and other calibration parameters are set to match the hardware and target power. In this context, tuning is tied to keeping cylinder pressure and lubrication conditions within what the engine can survive.
Term
oil clearances
Oil clearances are the small spacing inside the engine that lets oil flow between moving parts. If those gaps aren’t right, the oil can’t protect the parts well and bearings can wear out.
Term
steel rod
A steel rod is a connecting rod made from steel. Builders often compare steel vs aluminum rods because the material can affect how tough the engine is when you’re pushing it hard.
Term
titanium rods
Titanium rods are a high-end, lightweight version of the connecting rod. The idea is that they change how the engine feels under load, and the host is saying people consider them a bad tradeoff—plus they cost a lot.
Term
service intervals
Service intervals are how often you’re supposed to do maintenance. The host is saying that if you build an engine for very high power, you may need to check and service it more often.
Term
10,000 plus miles
They’re using “10,000 plus miles” to say the engine setup can last a long time. It’s basically a real-world durability example, not a performance number.
Term
new rods
“Rods” are the connecting rods inside the engine. They take a lot of force every time the engine fires, so if you’re running huge power and beating on it, you may need to replace them to avoid a catastrophic failure.
Term
crankshaft
The crankshaft is the engine’s main spinning shaft. It’s what turns the engine’s motion into power to move the car, and at very high power it can get damaged if the engine is pushed too hard.
Term
scatter shields
Scatter shields are safety covers that help keep broken engine parts from flying out if something fails. They’re especially important when an engine is making extreme power and is run hard repeatedly.
Concept
three maps
“Three maps” means the car’s computer has multiple performance settings. You can switch between them depending on how aggressive you want the tune to be.
Term
wastegate map
A wastegate is part of the turbo system that helps control boost (how hard the turbo pushes). A “wastegate map” is the computer’s settings for how the wastegate should act to hit a certain boost level.
Term
40 PSI map
“40 PSI” is how much boost pressure the turbo is making. A “map” is the computer setting for that boost level, and higher boost usually means more power but also more strain.
LIVE
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And now I'm happy.
Let's talk a little bit about EVOs, man.
Tell me a little bit about how you came to this.
What's your story?
Sure.
Well, thanks for coming by.
I'm glad you enjoyed Armenian food.
Dude, it's good.
It's fire.
Yeah.
That was really good.
I didn't get to make it, but next time I will.
Yeah, next.
I promise.
Yeah, I'll be back.
I promised him I will, but this time we didn't really have time.
We didn't want to get thrown off.
But my name's Ronnie.
I've been working on these since I was 18 years old, 31 now.
So quite a long time.
Started working out of my garage.
Put a stroker engine together.
I used to go to school.
And I used to go to automotive school, actually, UTI.
And I would just sit there on the forums.
EVOM was big back then.
So just trying to figure out what the best street
combo is, what I wanted to do.
I wanted a torque monster.
How do I make this thing make torque?
What turbo is reliable?
Which comes as like an EVO8?
It's an EVO8.
OK.
And just got some money together, bought a cheap one.
At that time, you could buy a fairly decent condition EVO.
And you did not have to sell your soul for it.
So which is kind of the case with every car now,
I suppose it's getting old.
But I did that.
Actually built it out of my garage, bought engine tools,
believe it or not.
And everybody told me I'm crazy because it's expensive.
You buy mid-toyle, dollabourgages, micrometers,
and all this jazz.
I spent $3,000 or whatever on measuring equipment.
And you can just pay a machinist, probably half,
for a good machinist to do it.
So anyway, got all that stuff, built an engine out of my garage.
The engine was good.
Melted a piston.
The tuner was not.
So that just kind of put a bug in me, I guess,
to kind of try to do my own thing.
And I started kind of doing it on the side.
I was a Mercedes tech out of all things.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I was a Mercedes tech for about two years.
And on the side, I would just do this out of my garage.
And I was super passionate about it.
I was decently good at it.
I was learning, obviously, that you
don't have a lift to do much at my house.
And on these, you want to pull a transmission.
It's not like a Honda.
It's a little bit more difficult.
There's more steps involved.
Transfer case has to come out.
Axles come out.
It's kind of pain in the ass.
I have the luxury of lifts now.
And I have for a very long time.
So it's just easier to kind of drop the subframe a little bit.
Yeah, so learned the hard way out of the garage.
And long story short, ended up working for another European
company.
I was assembling AMG engines for a while,
just blue printing engines for this company.
And then ended up 56 years later,
I was still tinkering with EVOs the whole time
that I was doing everything else.
This is like on the side like you were doing it.
This was on the side, yeah.
And then officially was working for an EVO shop for about a year.
And one thing that really made Speed Lab kind of what it is
today was actually the result of me leaving the shop that I
was working at, because I was getting paid decent.
But what was bothering me is I would show up
at eight o'clock and I would drive an hour and a half
from LA to wherever the shop was.
So two miles basically in LA traffic.
Yeah, basically.
And I would get there and I would have to wait two hours
for people to show up and open the door so I can do my damn job.
So I'm like, dude, if I ever open up a shop,
the first thing I'm going to do is make sure I have proper hours
for my employees so they don't drive and sit there and wait
for me to get there at my own leisure.
We're going to have set hours because that to me
wasn't professional.
And so what ended up happening is someone reached out to me
at somebody that I used to follow each other on Instagram
and he's like, why don't you open your own shop?
I'm like, well, I would like to.
I don't really have funding.
It would be great, but it takes money.
And he's like, well, I'll help on that side.
And you just bring your skill set and let's start a shop.
So we did.
And it actually ended up growing pretty big.
It got pretty big.
And that was what time frame was this?
Like this is like 56 years ago.
This is about seven years, seven or eight years ago,
pretty much seven years ago.
OK.
And so after that, things didn't work out.
Partnerships are very finicky.
Everyone likes to do things their own way.
And given that I was doing all the ranching,
I wanted things done a certain way.
And long story short, it just didn't work out.
You know, it happens.
And I ended up working out of my garage for about a year.
My previous business partner, he did his own thing.
He actually had funds.
So he started a shop that didn't work out.
But I was doing things out of my garage.
I was porting heads, building engines.
I was porting so many heads out of my garage.
I don't know why.
I went through a crazy porting phase
that when I would get out of the garage to wipe,
I would just blow black dust out of my nose
from the actual cart ridges and stuff.
So I ended up saving some money, borrowing a little bit
of money, saving some money.
Camera crossed the shop that was 1,500 square feet
and started back up again over there.
The one thing that I did very differently
was I under promised and over delivered.
And that's kind of what we do still to this day.
And you can ask any of my customers.
They'll tell you that's how it is.
And great communication.
So you make sure you tell the customer what's going on.
You don't, you know, obviously not every two seconds
you give an update.
But you know, at the end of the day,
if someone's waiting for a project to be completed,
it's nice when they get a picture or two of their project
being worked on and it's not just collecting dust.
And so that was about five years,
that was six years ago.
So we've been in this new location for about a year
and 23 months now.
It's been, yeah.
Yeah, so this is a 5,000 square foot shop.
That's right around like when you reached out to me,
you were moving in over here probably.
Yes, I was.
Yeah, that's exactly when me and you actually started talking.
Yeah, but you got to kind of give some people
a background there too.
Like you basically heard my episode with Greg Bannish.
Yes.
And that's how you discovered me and then now we're best friends
and you're feeding me.
So.
Big fan, Greg.
Big fan of you two actually.
You're awesome.
Yeah, so.
So you get this shop then and this is like what?
3,500 square feet?
This is 5,000 square feet.
5,000 square feet.
OK, damn man.
I didn't mean to offend you like that.
It's all right.
So then, OK, so you kind of do a little bit of everything
kind of like you do the Evo stuff,
but you got a super over here.
You had a GTR at one point as well.
I did.
So yeah, that went a little bit of everything.
Let me start by saying the biggest thing that I also want,
aside from proper hours, good communication
with the customers and under promising and over delivering.
Now, obviously, I'm human being.
I have made mistakes.
It's a good excuse to be once or twice.
But for the most part, I try to be on top of that.
But the other biggest thing was I wanted to keep everything
in-house.
OK, so what does that look like?
What's everything you're doing in-house here?
So everything in-house is an aside from machine work,
everything is done in-house.
The only thing that I outsource is the actual machine work.
Cylinder head assembly is not done in-house,
but engine assembly is fully done in-house.
Engines come from the machine shop.
We double check everything.
We clean it.
Obviously, it's been cleaned, but we clean it two or three
times before it gets assembled.
Everything gets blueprint assembled.
We have all the tool.
I do every single engine that has ever left here.
And we've probably three or 400 engines by now,
if not more at this point.
It's actually last month I had my best month.
I sold six engines last month.
And that's that's quite a bit for me.
Yeah, I'm still a small shop for a small shop.
That's a lot like even like we were talking to NRE.
Yes.
And I think he said he did like 150 in a year.
Yeah.
And that's like a big name shop.
But like it's just like, I mean, he's not like 150 is still a lot.
We think it's a lot.
Yeah. Yeah.
But again, it's like to be talking about six, that's quite a bit.
Yeah.
And that's that that was in one month.
So, you know, I was super I had a super proud moment, you know, from time to time.
We were talking about it.
You know, you have these up and downs as a business owner, as an entrepreneur.
You know, we wanted to, you know, not work in nine to five.
So we're working 24 hours a day, you know, and it was a proud moment.
And I was super happy.
I told Lexi, I'm very happy.
It was like six engines, you know, she just like get back to work.
Yeah.
She's like, OK, nice.
Yeah, I did not put them together.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So but yeah, so engines come here.
Everything gets measured.
I do all the assembly in-house.
I have some very competent guys that I trust with the rest of the assembly.
So most of the time what I'll do is I'll put the bottom end together.
They will turn it into a long block and they'll dress up the engine
and they will put it in the car.
And behind me is a main line.
I will drive Hubdino, which is probably the best purchase I've ever made.
Yeah.
And it's if I ever, you know, break my back and I need to sell something.
That's the first thing that's going to sell it because everyone wants one
and it takes like six months to get from Australia.
So we have a in-house Hubdino.
So breaking oil goes in.
We, you know, do a startup.
We do a heat cycle on the engine, you know, at like 2,000, 2500 RPM
just to get the oil, you know, flowing and stuff, just making sure the walls
are covered and all that.
Do an oil change again.
I'm crazy with oil changes.
I do like six oil changes before the car leaves here, but it's better safe than
sorry, you know, oil is a lot cheaper than an engine.
And then, yeah, it goes on the dyno, gets low, gets put on it.
We'll do that for about 20, 30 minutes.
We'll drain the oil, break in oil again.
What do you know?
And then we'll do some wastegate hits.
Then by the time the car is off the dyno, it's already on synthetic oil
ready for the customer to rip.
So there's no, you know, customer doesn't have to, you know, drive it
soft for, you know, this many miles and bring it back.
So try to keep everything in the house.
Like I said, it's very important to me.
And if anything happens.
During that process, the aftermarket has no warranty, but I've had a handful.
Thank God, only a handful of times, maybe two or three times that something
has happened on the dyno, I have covered it on my dime.
Because if it does not leave here and something happens, if it happens here,
I was the one that touched it.
I will cover it.
There's very, very few people that actually do that as well.
And there's some, some of the craziest shops that I've had on the show.
That's how they do it.
It's like, if it's going to break, I'd rather a break on my dyno.
100%.
That's respectful.
100%.
The other thing is, you know what they say, for every good experience
you have, you're going to tell 10 people or one people or whatever the saying is.
But for every bad, you tell 100.
So I would much rather, you know, be like, Hey, sorry, something happened.
I'm going to take care of it.
Then, you know, have somebody post a story of a blown up engine on the
side of the freeway.
Facebook groups are brutal too, right?
Amazing.
It's just insane.
It's no one really understands the, the how things function, right?
So I'll tell you this, for the most part, if something's going to happen,
it's going to happen on the dyno.
If you started up, if you've done something wrong with assembly, it's
going to show itself pretty much instantly.
Either the rings aren't going to seal.
It's going to spin a bearing.
You know, something's going to happen.
It's going to be mechanical.
You're going to know it right away.
If you're making a mistake on the tuning side, usually most of these
cars that you see here, fortunately and unfortunately, my customers have
high standards for me.
So most of these cars, you know, they, they're flex fuel cars that are, you
know, making 500 to 480, 500 horsepower on pump gas and they're making over a
thousand on, on E 85 and they can still put their kids in the car and, you know,
go to school, you know, take them to school, go to Costco, do whatever they
want and at nights they can smoke whatever they want on the freeway.
When you get to a certain level in a build, whether it be drag racing or
drifting, road course or just the badass streetcar, 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 3000 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 and when
contacting them to place an order, use code monoxide five or reach out via
socials to figure out how one of the baddest transmissions on the planet
could fit in your build.
Let's get back to the show.
Yeah.
So if something's going to happen also when you're throwing 50 pounds of boost
out on the dyno, it's going to show itself.
So if it's bad assembly, bad tuning, most of the time it's going to show
itself before it leaves.
But if something happens outside of here, you know, it's, it's up in the air.
You kind of don't know.
It's out of your control.
Yeah.
It is, which is, which kind of brings me to my next point.
Every single car that we put together now, I pretty much require a standalone
for the EVO stuff.
Last year and a half, it's all been link ECU stuff to plug in.
Great ECUs for the money.
Very capable and full time on board logging, you know, as long as you're on
the throttle.
So if something happens, I can just pull the log and be like, Oh, this is what
happened.
This is something I did.
This is something.
This is what happened.
You know, you were at 13,000 RPM somehow, you know, maybe you money shifted, you
know, so, you know, that helps a lot.
That allows me to then be able to service my customer.
If something happens, I can take care of it if it's here.
And, you know, if something happens out of outside of here, at least we can
know what happened and prevent it from happening again.
So link is your main one for when it comes to evos.
And I know you've been dabbling a little bit with MoTeC as well then.
Yes.
Uh, pretty much a little bit of everything with the exception of Max ECU and a
couple of other ones that I really haven't had to tune.
I actually have a car outside, uh, crazy EVO eight build.
That's on a Max ECU that we're going to be tuning.
But, uh, yes.
So the EVO eights and nines are mostly on Haltech.
I can offer a package that's very, very well priced, I would say, uh, with the
tuning package and everything.
Um, and, uh, it's right.
It's, it's around five grand out the door, including flex fuel tuning.
Okay.
That's all the sensors, oil pressure sensor, fuel pressure sensor, um, can lambda
and, uh, flex fuel sensor and, uh, tuning the car on flex fuel.
So pump gas tuning, E85 tuning, and then the EC obviously will pick up a blend.
We'll see you do Haltech and link pretty much for those.
Correct.
So I do Haltech link.
I do believe it or not, I do some Cyvex tuning for the GR Corolla's cause that's
another ramming platform that, yeah, that thing is stupid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We have the highest horsepower of GR Corolla in the shop actually in the world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We'll get to that.
Uh, I've done, uh, I do some MoTeC.
Uh, my GTR was on a MoTeC.
It's 1700 horse, 1702.
If you want to be precise.
Yeah.
Um, well 1702 miles will round it up to 1800.
Right.
We round it down.
Yeah.
We round down here.
Around here.
I don't know.
Yeah.
The second has passed that one.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Uh, but, uh, yeah, a lot of Haltech cars as well.
Um, so what came first for you then?
Were you doing more tuning early on or are you doing more assembling?
Like where, what was the, what was the favorite at the beginning?
I have always been a huge engine guy.
Okay.
I was obsessed with engines, clearances.
For some reason it just made me very excited.
So clearances, you know, uh, when you put an engine together, usually when you're
running about, you know, say two and a half thousands of clearance for
rod bearings on these engines around, um, healthy human hair.
I want to say healthy cause I'm starting to bald.
So I don't know.
I listen to me.
I use Rogaine.
That's fine.
So healthy human hair is about 3000 stick.
Okay.
So when you're working with clearances, you know, two and a half
thousands, you're working with less than a human hair worth of tolerances.
It's always been fascinating that you can put something together with your
own bare hands, obviously with guidance of measuring tools, right?
Cause you don't, if you're not measuring or guessing, uh, and you put it together
and the thing makes, you know, a thousand horsepower out of four banger.
That's 250 horsepower per cylinder.
Those are very tight clearances.
So it had always fascinated me.
And then, you know, just learning about like different material, piston rings,
different pins, different, I mean, dude, I went through a crazy
experimental phase with my pistons.
I'm on like V seven, but like, I just, I just called the SPL spec pistons
cause we're not changing anything anymore.
We're kind of at, you know, if you want anything crazier than this, you just go
to like rave or something, you know, and you just, you just get his like bill of
block with rave.
By the way, he's awesome.
I want to show it to him.
He's an awesome guy.
He's an awesome.
Yeah, we've got, you know, we've talked a little bit.
He's, he's helped, helped me with the drag racing side a little bit.
I liked that dude.
That dude was awesome.
Yeah.
He's very passionate.
He's another passionate guy.
Uh, yeah.
A lot of respect for him.
But, uh, yeah.
So, um, you know, experiment thing with like wrist pins, uh, we used to run the,
you know, 93 10 pins that come off the shelf from CP and then CP had an upgraded
version that was a 250 wall.
It was just a super thick 93 10 alloy or 93 10, uh, pin and, uh, you know,
that thing was heavy, but it was a lot stronger.
And then, uh, you know, somehow we would still bend those in some applications,
which you would think is impossible because it's such a thick pin.
And then, you know, I learned about all the other, you know, materials, you know,
tool steel, H 11, H 13, TP one, which is what we use now in our EVO engines.
And they're actually the same material that top field dragsters that make 12,000
horsepower run.
It's just a lot thinner than theirs.
What's TP one stand for?
Like what?
Can you explain it to them?
It's just, it's just a, I don't know if it's a proprietary like material.
It's just the type of metal it's from.
Like tool steel, there's a 11 H 13, like different grades of tool steel.
It's just different tensile strengths.
So how much force it'll take to bend that thing.
Uh, and you know, you can still bend them.
You know, you have abnormal combustion, you know, you can, you can
start everything has a slimming.
Yeah.
But for the most part now, the pin is over engineered over everything else.
So you'll hurt, you'll pull the pin out before you hurt the pin.
You know what I mean?
But I didn't just focus on the pin.
Everything else is strong as well.
Yeah.
So we use like the Kali's rods with the seven sixteenths rod bolts,
which are the big block Chevy rod bolts and you know, these, all of these cars,
literally every single one of these, aside from my red one over there that has
aluminum rods, they have the Kali's rods, uh, cranks.
We experimented with a bunch of cranks.
We had, uh, cracking issues on journal number four with a lot of manufacturers.
And now with the Brian Crower ones, uh, they're good.
Kali's also, that's a name I heard again today from NRE, Brian Crower.
Amazing products.
Okay.
Amazing products.
The crankshafts, uh, we primarily use Kali's and BC now.
The only reason I changed from Kali's to BC at the time was because Kali's, uh,
was out of stock and they were waiting to get their, uh, shipment and essentially,
and I couldn't wait because again, I got orders and I got to fulfill them.
I can't just wait months for cranks to come in.
Um, so, uh, we use some of the BC ones.
They're pretty badass man.
Like the Kali stuff we would get and most of the time, uh, when we get them,
we have to send it out to get straightened because out of the box, they're like a
down half out man.
They're like, it's bent at that one half.
It's out of round.
The BC ones are like two tents, maybe.
Well, acceptable.
Ideally you would have it straight as an arrow, but nothing's perfect.
So, uh, yeah, the BC stuff has been super awesome.
Um, uh, we do a lot of two twos.
So 94 millimeter crank stuff.
Uh, yeah.
So it was the engines at first and then, um, tuning became another necessity.
So everything kind of came from necessity.
Um, for some reason, people that haven't met me think I'm an asshole.
I'm the most everybody in the car.
It's crazy though.
I'm like literally the most down to earth.
Pete, like we met and we were just literally talking for like, yeah.
Lexus, like stop.
So you guys have something to talk about on the podcast and we're like,
we're, we're gonna talk about.
Yeah.
But, um, for some reason, some of these tuners that were like around at the time,
they didn't really want to work with me.
Um, or they were just like, I could not rely on them because I'm promising the
customer a certain timeline and then I have to rely on this guy that.
You know, it was like three weeks out for a simple stock ECU tune.
So I took matters into my own hands, uh, at the old shop, actually, the one that
I had a partner, uh, I had a partner at the time.
And, uh, you know, I just did a bunch of research at the time.
We didn't even have HB Academy or anything that I could, you know, actually
learn something from.
So it was just forums and, you know, getting definition files and, um, open
source was big.
I mean, still is.
I still do maybe one or two a week.
Oh, okay.
You do.
Stock ECU, EVO stuff.
Yeah.
But, uh, yeah, I just kind of figured it out and, um, I'm, I, I don't think I'm a
very talented person, but if I am interested in something, I become obsessed with it.
Like literally dude, like I put a gaming PC together just because I wanted to have
a VR gaming PC.
I spent four grand.
I put the whole computer together.
I'd never bolted anything computer related in my life.
I put it together and I put it on my head and I got dizzy and I'm like, yeah,
I don't like this.
I sold it, but I became like obsessed with the thing dude.
I'm like, I have to do this.
Like, I'm, and I'm going to do it.
Like I'm going to do it right.
Then I'm going to become really good at it.
And, um, it's kind of, it's crazy, but it's, it's literally been the same thing
with the engine stuff.
It's like, I keep everything in the house because I have the QC on it.
Yeah.
Uh, the tuning stuff was just that, you know, just a lot of mistakes in the beginning.
I didn't blow up cars.
Uh, well, let's go back real quick.
So what does that experimenting look like?
Are you, would you, we were like trying to mess with your own car at this point?
What, where did you, I guess, again, if we go back to the banished thing, like,
who are your resources for learning this?
If you weren't using HP Academy.
Sure.
So in the beginning, when I was doing the stock ECU stuff, um, it was all forms.
And there was a Merlin, this guy named Merlin, he was from Australia, I think.
And the guy that's still out there and you had a tuning guide for the Evo stuff.
So it was like, I remember I was geeking over it because it was like a hundred
pay 120 page like thing that he had online that I printed and put it in like a folder.
And I kept it clean.
Like every page was like laminated.
So I could like just go over it and like learn everything.
You still have that?
I don't know.
At one point it just, yeah, unfortunately, but, uh, you know, I, I would read it all.
But I'm one of those people that until you do it, like, I, until I do it, I'm not
going to like grasp it fully.
Right.
Um, but, uh, that was my main, uh, learning guide, essentially was that in the EVOM
the forms of Lucian M.
Uh, there was a lot of knowledge there.
There was a lot of people, you know, doing hex editing and stuff with open source.
And, uh, my, my hats off to those people.
I still don't know how to do, you know, hex editing or anything like that.
I'm literally using what they have paved the way for us.
You know, I'm still using that stuff.
So shout out to you guys because I owe you guys a lot.
You know, so these guys literally did it as a hobby and, you know, we, we all got to use it.
But that's what it was, uh, initially.
And then the first, first card that I did was actually, uh, I think we were like
having trouble reaching out, getting a tuner to work with us because we were a
growing shop, um, either they didn't like me or they didn't like my partner at the
time.
So like tuners would like refuse to work with us.
And I'm like, dude, fuck this.
I'm just, I'm going to, I feel like I can do it.
So we told the customer, Hey, like we can attempt to do this.
We're not going to charge you.
We're going to charge you very little.
I can't remember.
Um, it actually was not my car the first time.
And usually it is all my car.
You know, that's how you want to do it.
But I'm not going to bullshit you man.
It wasn't my car and I'm only, I'm going to, you know, you want me to do it.
And he trusted us.
And, uh, I appreciate that because that basically got my tuning career kickstarted.
I don't know how many cars off tune since then, dude.
That was over seven years ago.
Yeah.
Hundreds at this point, probably.
It, it, yeah, dude, like high.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, I don't know.
Anyway.
You're doing all right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, uh, yeah, it was that.
And then obviously, you know, along the way, I had some guidance from other tuners
that, you know, we're working with, uh, there was one guy at one point that he,
he taught me some stock issue stuff that he was doing.
And I taught him some engine building stuff that I knew.
Um, and, uh, yeah, that's how it was.
But the first standalone car that I did, ironically enough, I circled back all
these years later, it was on the link G four on my personal car.
Yeah.
That thing made a thousand.
That thing made 980 on our Mustang dyno at 54 pounds of boost.
I know it was my first standalone car.
And I, I literally tuned in myself and people were like, oh, there's no
way this guy tuned in himself.
No, I tuned it myself.
I just don't know how it didn't blow up.
I mean, I knew the basics.
I knew what I was supposed to do.
And I kept, honestly, it could have made more power knowing how much timing I
could throw at it now and the mechanical capability experience.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we overbuilt the crap out of that engine and it had like half inch L 19
head studs, you know, O rings that we use now as well.
Aluminum rods, like I was just super tame on it.
I just didn't want it to blow up.
And it was like the best thing after it made.
Take it with a grain of sand, but 12% correction, you know, over the
1080 horsepower on a dyno jet.
Yeah.
So that was the first link car I did.
It's first standalone.
I did was link.
And then I circled back all these years later and they still have a great
system that works for these cars.
And yeah, I can, I can make them drive better than stock, I would say.
So, all right.
What does it cost to do a thousand horsepower?
You say I got to evo eight, bro.
It's a mint one.
I got it off.
Bring a trailer stock, Evo.
What does it take to get a thousand horsepower out of it?
So if we're not factoring in drive train as far as like a transmission,
transfer case or rear differential, what would you recommend?
I got a blank check.
Oh, probably around like 60, 65.
OK.
Yeah.
And, you know, that's going to include a PPG dog box.
The standard, the standard now, you know, like literally 55 of seven
have a PPG one over SBL to two, the SPL nine hundredths.
OK.
We've made over 50 on one of those.
It's a steel rod and it's a heavy steel rod.
So I don't like to surpass a thousand.
And I like to go aluminum at that point, but the service
intervals become a lot shorter.
But that includes a full standalone issue, which will be a link plug in package.
It'll be, you know, of all the full logging that I mentioned.
That's a Vodka with a pan engine, oil cooler, front mount intercooler,
intercooler piping, IJ1A ignition coils, catch
can battery relocation kit.
I mean, clutch, the whole nine.
You're 65 to 70, probably just drive train as well.
And yeah, it's one of those things.
If you actually want to make a thousand horsepower, you can do it for that amount of money.
OK. Yeah.
But if you want to make a thousand horsepower and go to the drag street every weekend,
you're probably going to spend more money on it because that's going to break.
That's just how it is. OK.
Yeah.
So you're talking about if I was a little less casual and more serious about racing.
Is that what you mean? OK. Yes.
Yes. Because you are going to break stuff.
Yeah. Especially if you're not an experienced racer launching the car
the first time, you know, there's just a lot can go wrong.
You know what I mean? And.
Dude, things happen, you know, 1,000, 1,100 horse,
a single ignition event gone wrong.
It gets away from you pretty quickly.
Yeah. Like, you know, you you can have O-rings,
you can have half inch head studs, you can still melt ahead if something happens.
Injector gets stuck, you know what I mean?
It's always better to have no fuel than have some fuel.
It will hurt shit.
And I've seen it happen, you know, it's like it's it's not tuner.
It's just sometimes it happens, you know, injector gets clogged, whatever.
One thing that's actually it's kind of funny.
You know, everyone's like, oh, yeah, like.
This thing is running 118 air fuel on 85.
It's fine. It's like that number that you got is from the sum of all four cylinders.
You don't know what each cylinder is running.
You know what I mean? And to do you're talking with Tony Pailin mentioned this
the podcast, but if you're trying to do individual lambdas,
like individual air fuels ratio sensors per cylinder,
you need some back pressure compensation stuff to happen.
So you need like a controller specifically for that and it doesn't work well.
So nobody does it with that.
And if you do EGT's, well, these are kind of slow.
You can't do real time real time tuning on EGT's, you know.
So yeah, it can go wrong when you're pushing these.
But most of the cars, you know, if they're
roll racing and they're just weekend cars, you can make it thousand horsepower.
And they're pretty reliable.
Yeah. But I would say for an EVO 8, 850 is like
I can like almost guarantee it's not going to break.
That's some people will still break it.
But yeah, some people can still break it.
Is there a big jump from like an 850 package to a thousand?
It is with me because I'll put an aluminum mod motor in it.
OK. Yeah. It beats up the bearings.
That's the problem.
So when you get into that 250 horse per cylinder territory,
that is a kind of cylinder pressure, man.
It beats up the bearings and you can see it because you'll have a properly tuned engine.
You'll have proper oil clearances.
You'll have the best oil in there.
Everything will be controlled.
And we've done it like we've put an engine through dyno testing.
10024 different turbo combinations.
And you take it apart and if it's over a thousand horse, usually what you'll see
is the top bearing will start that little hydrodynamic wedge that's in between
the crank and the bearing. OK. It'll, you know, it's it's hammering it.
And it's not even though the combustion is controlled when everything's working properly.
It the pressure becomes so great that that the
it just hits the top of the bearing like a hammer slowly,
not like a sledgehammer, like a rubber mallet.
You know what I mean? But yeah, you're slowly chipping away at the fucking thing.
So when you go to an aluminum rod, the aluminum rods are literally a shock absorber.
Like, yeah.
It so much so that you might need to run a little bit more boost
to like make the same power you would on a steel rod.
It's crazy, but it actually takes away from the impact
or like the transfer of interest or from, you know, the combustion chamber
to the actual that makes sense. Yeah.
Yeah. If you think about it, that's what it is.
It's, you know, absorbing the shock.
Well, it's kind of like the opposite, like titanium rods,
like they put all that extra shock in there, right?
I would assume so. I'm not. Yeah.
I heard that's like the worst you could possibly do.
Like, I know, know some people are selling them at one point.
They're stupid expensive.
But the aluminum is the way to go.
It's just very bulky and you have to clearance a lot of shit to make it work.
And their service intervals become shorter because if you if you actually
make enough power to be on an aluminum rod,
you have to service the engine fairly regularly.
Now I say this and we've had engines that have, you know, had 10,000 plus miles
on aluminum rods, but it's been like a
thousand horse engine that the guy would just drive it around and do it here and there.
You know, so that's not a real thousand horsepower engine, in my opinion.
You know, I'm talking like thrashing on it every single time.
Yeah, like 50 passes or actually how often you have to refresh an aluminum?
Who knows? Yeah, because it's not like you check the, you know, length every 10 passes.
So say you go and you do 50 hits, nine second hits, whatever, 10 second,
nine second hits, eight second hits.
You might as well just put some new rods in there because if you don't, then it,
you know, windows will block.
Now you're not just putting a set of thousand dollar rods in there.
You're putting a crankshaft in there.
You're putting a block in there.
Probably hurt your head because, yeah, you know what I mean?
So it's hard to say.
You saw, I've also had Ben Hockman on the show as well.
Yeah, I think his interval, I want to say was 25.
I think he said 15. I think I remember 15.
I think it was a low number, though, because, like, again,
he's also trying to chase the record.
So yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's a different ball game.
He's up there. Yeah.
We get some stuff from him, scatter shields and stuff.
Oh yeah. Yeah, that's his guy.
People as well. Yeah, he does some amazing fab work.
But yeah, that's it's very hard to say because, yeah, I would say after a thousand,
I would ideally like to put them on an aluminum rod.
But most of the guys that want the street, street thousand,
they usually don't thrash on it as often as you would think.
Yeah.
And, you know, I give these people at least three maps.
So you have a little bit above a wastegate map usually.
You have like a 40 PSI map and then you have a fuck around and find out map.
That's the one that will make like a thousand, like my customer Vic.
I love the guy.
He drives his car like he stole it.
And that's what he wanted to build it for, right?
He has three maps.
He has a map that makes eight 40 ish.
Still spank everybody.
He's on the dog box now.
He has a nine 40 map and he has a 15 map.
I told him in the 15 map, this is the no warranty map.
Like just don't don't use this unless you actually want to make a point.
But yeah, that's I would say after a thousand is where it becomes
kind of unreliable for the most part.
Yeah. And at that point, let's say your boy, Vic, is out, you know,
using the no the no warranty map and something goes down.
He's going to have that.
That's all logged, I'm guessing.
Everything's locked.
Yeah. So it shows what map he's in, how much boost it was on.
It did, you know, what the close-up was doing, what the air fuel was doing,
you know, how much correction there was. Everything's locked.
Literally, everything's locked.
OK, so then I mean, this all happened very quickly, you know, 56 years or whatever.
You've learned a lot here.
And you again, you do have a sizable shop here with quite a few fast cars.
What do you attribute all this success to?
Is it a lot of 18 hour days or like, what does it come down to?
Because you're kind of an anomaly, man.
Like I talked to a lot of people on this show and like when we talk to him off
camera, like it takes a lot to get to this.
So I'm just trying to figure out like, how do we get here?
A couple of things that I.
I will give credit to you and I have to.
It's my due diligence to do this.
My mom was an immigrant.
She came here with zero dollars.
Literally zero.
She had like 500 bucks in her account because my grandpa sent it in case of
emergency. She didn't want to touch it.
Was working at a bakery, started selling cars, became very successful.
And I always learned how like I would.
She would literally work like 14 hour days as a woman.
Like she would just go to a dealership and she would come home beat sleep.
That's all she did.
And.
You know, I always applauded her for that.
Then I told myself, I'm like, if I'm 10% of the man that my mom was,
I will become very successful.
I always said that even when she was like, she passed away two years,
three years ago from cancer, very young to 53.
I love her.
So I have to give her credit for the way I was brought up and the hard
working aspect of, you know, me putting in 14 hour days and not being like,
oh, fuck this shit is not working.
Secondly, your spouse is very important.
Lexi has been literally my backbone for the last five years now.
And she's a big part.
I mean, she's a huge part of my life, obviously, but she's pretty much always
out the shop, helping out whether she's actually wrenching on a car or like
sending invoices or like following up with a customer, whatever the case is.
And she's always supported me.
There hasn't been a single time that I've been like, because we ventured out
a couple of times.
I bought a G80 literally because I woke up and I'm like, we're going to buy
a G80 and we're going to like, you know, just go crazy with this market.
And she's like, okay, she had some connections.
She used to sell cars.
So literally like 30 minutes later, we have a G80 in the driveway, like not
literally 30 minutes later, but the paperwork got started and I had to put
a down payment.
But so having a supportive spouse is another thing to, you know, obviously I
have to give her credit.
It's very important.
But the biggest thing is I did not come from money.
I did not.
Um, actually we were never well off back in the day.
So I promised myself, I'm like, one day if I ever do have kids, not that we're
planning on it, but I'm like, I want my kid to be well off and I don't want to
go through the same shit that I went through when I grew up.
And so it's a lot of hours.
Uh, I have to give credit to my employees count being able to count on them.
Uh, and dude, the biggest thing is just being obsessed with whatever the fuck you
do.
That's, that's all it is.
I've been obsessed.
I'm still obsessed with these evos.
Like literally I, it still gets me excited to drive this car.
Like I can just go drive around and just not even race, just, you know, drive
it around that just I'm obsessed with the car.
I'm obsessed with the platform.
And I'm just hungry to learn, man.
Like every single day I learn, I start to watch HB Academy videos.
Every, every webinar they drop, I'm probably on there just watching, you know,
they got to go for them too.
I was kind of digging through those recently.
They're pretty active on there.
They respond, they've been on there obviously, but uh, yeah, you, you
can't ever stop learning and I'm hungry to learn, dude.
Like I want to know what the next like the new thing is, you know, like,
what is the new thing?
Is it the Supra?
I know that's the Supra.
Um, this car is actually going to be on a Motec and I'm 142.
Paratoon Australia makes the kit for it.
And then our buddy, uh, Norris P tuned.
He does his auxiliary harness and stuff to make it work with everything else
that we add on top.
Um, so I'm super excited about that, but, um, it's just a M 142.
It's just a M one series Motec.
It's not like anything crazy, but obviously it's going to be a learning curve.
And I'm not letting anybody touch this thing.
So I'm going to learn it again.
Uh, so it's one of those things.
If it blows up, it's on me, you know, I don't mind if it, it's obviously
not going to happen, but it's not like, I promise.
But, uh, that's, that's, that's the next thing that I'm excited about.
Um, so how do you end up in a Supra anyway?
Cause you said he had a G80 for 30 minutes or you, you got, like, uh,
why'd you get rid of G80 and then now you're in a Supra?
What's the story there?
So, um, the G80, the, the thing with the G80 was I was going to go ham in the platform.
I actually bought a bunch of aftermarket parts for it.
I got the tuning suite.
I became a, uh, dealer for, um, what is it?
Pro, pro tuning freaks.
Oh yeah.
Mod.
Um, and well, I just as a crazy way of working itself, dude, like I got so busy
here that I did not have time to drive.
I wouldn't drive the car.
She would drive at the school.
Like I just, I did, I never saw the car.
I got a PPF and we were going to work on it.
And then that was, that was it.
I just never got to work on the car.
It never came inside the shop.
I just got very busy.
I just, I've been blessed man.
I mean, uh, it's, I like to say the reason why that happened was because of my work
ethics and how I've been with the customers and, you know, bullshitting people and just
taking money, raw Peter to pay Paul situation.
I've grown at a very steady, uh, steady, slow, but steady pace.
Like manageable.
Yes.
Because if you don't look, I've been doing this now for six years in California, dude.
It's very hard to do race car shit in California.
The evil stuff, the communities, like the shops are for the most, I mean, I'm cool
with everybody, but for the most part, a couple of years ago, no one was supporting
one another.
So it was just a rivalry, which I guess it's kind of like that with like every platform.
But it's very hard to grow fast.
Like you need to do it slowly because if you don't, you're going to make mistakes.
Like you can't take, you know, how people brag.
They're like, Oh, you get, you know, we're working on like, you know, we have 30 cars
at the shop.
Like you, you, dude, you cannot work on 30 cars at once.
Like if you have 30 cars, it's probably because you promise people you're going
to do something and now you're not doing it.
It's kind of like when people win the power ball and then they blow it all in
two years.
Exactly.
Yeah.
The curse of powerball or whatever.
The powerball curse is very.
Yeah, dude, I know I've been reading.
I always say if I win the powerball, I don't need the billion.
It'd be nice, but like, I'll take a few million, like the five numbers and the powerball.
You know how they say like, Oh, stupid guy, he took the, you know, 20,000 or like
10,000 per week for life.
It's like, dude, that's the best thing.
Imagine not like you just got to check every, every week or every month or whatever.
And it's just like, it's never ending.
Bro, the second I get that you just got paid early notification from Wells Fargo.
I'm like, we blow in this this month.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think that's been the biggest thing that I did not rush into anything, but also,
I don't know, dude, I just again, like if we go in it, we go all in.
Yeah.
We wanted to powder coat a valve cover.
We bought a full powder coating station.
Oh, for real?
Literally, dude, we got the hot coat station, like $15,000 worth of equipment.
We got like everything plumbed to powder coat a valve cover, dude.
I didn't want to outsource it.
And then that was kind of stupid.
Like that was one of the ones that that one I wish we didn't do because we really
weren't like into it like that.
But are you still doing powder coating?
Somewhat.
Yeah.
If we need to, we'll all this stuff's powder coated by me on the race.
Oh, for real?
Me and Lux, basically.
Did you do that?
I don't remember.
I remember she was mad at me because I didn't do it right.
I just.
Well, that's not right.
What's up?
Well, it was not right.
Uh, the cure times and stuff.
I don't know, dude.
Like it just says like spray it on for 10 minutes and then wait and like read a book
for five minutes.
This is weird.
The instructions are so weird, dude.
It's like, I just, I just want to be able to like just spray the thing and then
just put it there and just let it like cure.
That's, that's it.
But, um, that's, it's a whole, obviously it's a big industry on its own, but now
we have some good people that are doing it for us.
So I think I'm just going to sell this stuff and I don't know, get into something else.
Maybe start wiring harnesses and now there's something, I don't know, something,
something cool that you do all your own wiring in house.
Um, we don't do full harnesses, but all the ECU wiring that we do, like pigtails
and like, uh, you know, and DTM connectors and stuff.
Yeah.
We do it all in house.
Um, I have all the right tools to be able to do harnesses if I want to, but I,
that it's not something that I'm,
there's just those things like, and I've had various, it's so funny cause I've
talked to like every type of car enthusiast at this point where it's like
some guys love wiring.
That's all they do.
And there's other people are like, I don't want to see another wire in my life again.
The problem with wiring for me is, oh, I'll watch a video from like race grade.
Um,
Motec, like the wiring side of Motec.
Yeah.
Um, and our mill spec wiring, I think also, I'm not sure, don't quote me on this,
but you know, they have like benches that they're like laying out like these
flying leads and like, you know, getting everything like crimped with a machine
and like terminating the wire ends and stuff like that.
And it's like, I want to be able to do that, but that's another big investment
that I'm going to have to make.
And it's a big time set too.
It is.
And it's a, it's going to be a learning curve right now.
I don't exactly have, um, right now, I don't exactly have all that time.
You know, my customers are keeping me busy, which I'm super thankful for.
You got a nice super engine to rebuild over there too.
I do.
Yeah.
Lex's engine.
She's actually going to be putting it together.
I'm going to, I'm going to teach her how to measure stuff and.
Well, actually real quick.
So cause like you guys, you're pretty good on the content side.
We talked about this last year, like you're pretty decent.
I didn't even, I didn't follow you until today.
Uh, talking to Lexi over here, but like I just started seeing your stuff, but, uh,
dude, Lexi's famous, bro.
You're famous.
Yeah.
But, uh, I'm with a celebrity.
Um, it's like being with the Kardashians here, but, uh, it's Armenian too.
Wait, is Kardashian?
Of course.
Is she?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I had no clue.
This is, I got famous for all the wrong reasons, but she is a Kardashian.
Yeah.
But, uh, that's crazy.
I learned something new today.
Anyways, um, are you guys just, going to be like videoing that?
Like that whole process?
Cause like, again, like I learned a lot about like six cylinders.
Watching Jay when he was on real street, like I loved watching those tear down
videos.
Like I learned a lot about cars.
Yeah.
All my life.
So are you going to do something kind of similar to that?
Sort of.
That's what I want to do.
So our channels are very, um, different as far as the content that we deliver.
Uh-huh.
Mine's very, if I'm explaining a piston, it's going to take 10 minutes because I'm
literally going to tell you everything I know about it.
Yeah.
And that's quite a bit, you know?
Yeah.
Um, not everything, you know, I'm not Jay, you know, I'm not, but, you know,
whatever I know, I would like to get it across as long as I'm not giving false
information.
I'm very careful about that too.
If I'm not sure of something, I just, I'll just shut up.
Yeah.
Like for example, me saying the dumb thing about titanium rods.
I don't know.
You might be right though.
You know what I mean?
I don't know.
Well, I've been wrong more than I've been right.
But, uh, hers is more, um, of just like vlogging the journey of everything.
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Let's get back to the show.
Before I cut it, how do we decide to get you on here?
You guys were talking about my Supra and why, how we ended up with the Supra
when we sold the G80.
Oh, okay.
Gotcha.
All right.
So we have a surprise guest.
I felt left out.
You're just like, I just pulled up a chair.
Um, okay.
So we were talking about how we ended up at the G80.
And selling that now we're out of Supra.
Okay.
I think I'm caught up.
Right.
Yeah.
How do we get there?
When did you get rid of G80?
How do we decide on that again?
Well, that, that was different.
So her Supra, she bought the Supra when she was working at a brokerage.
I just came home with it.
Yeah.
That was a very different deal from the G80.
Okay.
Gotcha.
See, okay.
So you just got the Supra.
Was the G80 gone at that point?
No, we got the Supra first and then the G80.
So we got the Supra, what, two years ago?
I've had the Supra since 2023.
Yeah.
Okay.
So the G80 came later and it went.
So we, she had the Supra at the time.
It's just, this did not, so this was not meant to be what it's going to be.
Okay.
We were, the plan was to put a hybrid turbo on it.
Okay.
That's what she initially wanted.
And then last minute I was like, if we're going to take this apart, then I want to go all out.
Okay.
What was the funniest thing with the Supra?
She told me she wanted wheels for her birthday.
She didn't specify what she told me I can choose whatever.
Some reps.
Dude, I bought her a drag pack.
Okay.
With skinnies and, you know, the bellix that are on there right now.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
And she's like, well, babe, I can't, I can't, you know, put this on the car.
The car's stalker.
I think it had a flash.
Like people are going to laugh at me.
So I can't run skinnies.
Yeah.
It was like a downpap in a tune.
So I got a T for the front and then it just, it's just spiral dude.
She's like my anniversary.
That's how I've gifted her like this whole time.
Anniversary birthdays.
Just car parts.
Literally.
Okay.
What was the first car part that was a gift to her?
Something for my Subaru.
Cawbacks.
Yes.
Yeah.
I was a Subaru.
I actually tuned her fucking car.
Okay.
A Subaru.
A Subaru.
Okay.
I'm an Evo guy.
It's like, but I actually tuned it and it was, it was pretty, that was a pretty
fun car and we ended up taking it to the dealer because the fourth
synchro had a problem and I'm like, I'm not going to touch it.
It's under warranty.
And the two ever put it together.
They forgot there.
So the Subaru's have like the shift fork that the evos have, they have it too.
And then there's like a cap that goes on it.
They didn't put that on and then the rod had backed out and it broken the tab
inside the trans.
Oh my God, it was a shit show.
Wait, what year's super?
What was it?
It was a, what year of my super was it?
It was a 2020 or 2021.
It was the newest one.
Was it an STI?
Yeah.
Okay.
It was an STI.
And yeah.
And then you want to say what we did underwhelming dude, like we didn't put like,
we didn't do anything crazy.
Like I got our front mount, but we didn't put it on.
But I remember like tuning it on the dyno and I like, I think I was up to like
22 pounds of boost and it was like, I had these were climbing like, oh my God.
Oh my God.
It's so underwhelming, bro.
I was getting so pissed off.
It's like 40 and then like control Z just pulled the don't command 40 PSI.
Now it was like, it made like 20, 24 PSI of peak boost and we had like three or
53 10, something like that.
Yeah.
It was fun, but.
It's a good daily driver.
Yeah.
Right.
We, we would have eventually gone crazier with that platform, but we just,
this, this was a better, you know, the super market is very saturated too.
And actually the one of the biggest reasons that we're going so heavily into
this market, the supermarket supermarket.
Cause no one knows of us in the BMW world, literally, like maybe a couple of
people are friends that we've worked with.
Uh, this is going to be the first manual mark five.
I keep saying it on a M 142 Motec.
We're going to go basically balls deep with this platform.
Um, and we're going to do it like that.
We're not going to do like a stock issue, you deal with our reflex box
controlling it.
It's going to be crazy.
That's how you put your name out there and then show people what we can do.
You know, if we can put a car together, that, you know, motor together,
that stays together, 12, 1300 horse, 50 plus pounds of boost tuning is
done at the same shop, built, built is done at the same shop.
Again, it goes back to, you know, keep everything in house.
Right.
She knows I'm obsessed with that.
I just, I have to do everything myself.
If I could do machine work, I would, but I have, I have a couple of good
machinists that I work with.
Shout out Aaron Arlington machine.
This is somebody locally here, like an hour or two away.
Sort of the way.
Yeah.
It does all my EVO stuff.
Okay.
My GTR stuff.
He did the V 58.
He's a, he's another busy one.
He's always backed up.
So, you know, it takes a while to get stuff back from him, but he's busy.
It doesn't have a lot of helping hands, but we have worked engine
program together with the EVO stuff.
Cause remember, you remember how I was talking to you about the pistons and
all that stuff?
So with these pistons, we use a total seal ring pack that's very different
from the off the shelf stuff.
Yeah.
So we had to change.
Okay.
Let me back up here.
So, okay.
That's your SPL thing.
Okay.
So that's, what's that saying for speed?
Okay.
So how do you get there?
Right?
Cause like, for example, like I, you know, I do an airty episode.
Unfortunately, I did have a boost in on Devin.
Like, you know, he has his package and Hockman's kind of working on his
thing with, uh, with Rafe, right?
What's different in yours?
Like what made you want to go and make, get your own package?
What's that consist of?
Um, people were.
Contact me showing up with their own parts and, which is the worst.
The problem with that is some of them work, don't.
And you as a builder, if you have enough experience, you know, what's
going to be a pitfall and what's going to work.
I got tired of it.
I said, I'm either going to build it my way or I'm not going to build it at all.
And I've stuck with that for the last five years.
Yeah.
Five years, not six.
The first year was kind of still, you know, I'm not going to build it at all.
No, no, no, no.
I had my pistons.
I just had diamonds at the time.
Um, so what I decided to do is offer a package that essentially uses the same
components, but cater the same package in a way that if a guy wants to make 400
horsepower, I'll set it a little bit differently than the guy that wants to
make a thousand horsepower.
Yeah.
So the SPL 900, um, I use the same pistons and rods.
I set the ring gaps a little bit differently.
If somebody I know is going to run like a stock frame turbo versus somebody that
I know is going to run forward facing and once I make all the boost, you can make
400 horsepower with it and it's going to live for the longest time.
It will live.
You can make a thousand horsepower with the same engine.
I don't do stages.
Okay.
That's another thing that I'm very biased on.
Oh, no.
Yes.
I'll tell you why.
What do you think the biggest difference is going from a I beam to from an H
beam to an I beam?
Oh, yeah.
I'm sure you'll tell me right now.
An I beams a little bit heavier, but it's not going to bend.
You know, you can still break it, but it's a lot harder to break than an H beam.
Okay.
How much do you think the cost difference is?
300 bucks.
Okay.
So my SPL two twos are 8,500 bucks.
I'm not putting an H beam in that thing.
You're just not getting it.
That's it.
If you want to go to somebody else, they'll put it together for you gladly.
They'll take your money and put together something subpar.
Now you want to make 600 horsepower.
That's fine.
It'll live, but no one wants to make 600 horsepower.
If you ever want to turn it up, you they always turn it up.
They always turn it up.
Well, nowadays, nobody 600 horsepower is not enough for anybody anymore.
People.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, literally.
So I just, I kind of cut that and it kind of helped me in a bit.
And we kind of get a reoccurring customer with that too.
Like, cause like the same guy that you took care of this year that comes back
next year and he's already happy and ready to go.
Yeah.
Have you seen that happen?
Yes.
Okay.
Many times, dude, we've had customers that have literally like came here like on a
dyno day and just watched cars go on the dyno.
They've, you know, maybe they weren't sure that, you know, how good the work is.
You know, they come here on a dyno day because we do that sometimes.
Bob a dyno, they will feed everybody, you know, we're just like you did today.
Yeah.
Dude, same place.
It's the Armenian in us.
I swear to God, like literally like 50 people will be here.
I'll order like 50 pizzas.
Yeah.
We had, we had a meet like here not too long ago where we had like a dyno day and
people were putting their car on the dyno.
And after that, a lot of people were disappointed in how much power their cars were making.
How big?
Austin, you have a dyno day.
That's how big the guy that he mentioned was.
It's not, it's not that often, but we would like to do it more often.
Is it like once a year, twice a year?
No, we want to do it more frequently.
Right now it's like once a year it happens.
Let me know.
I might fly out for the next one.
I got, I'm going to play my California trips around your dyno days.
Dude, a hundred percent.
Just for that.
I would love to have you out here.
But yeah, like people come and they watch and they're like, OK, well, this is,
oh, this is SPL 22.
This is the SPL 900.
So the SPL 900, like I kind of made that a thing.
I made that like a brand specific.
It is.
It's a stage.
It is, it is a stage.
It's the end stage.
You know, and no, but honestly, it's the SPL 900 and the SPL 1000.
The difference between the two is one is a aluminum on motor.
OK, one gets half filled or full filled, depending on the level of the car.
And the 1000 also has the L 19 mainstays from boost and performance.
That's that's literally the difference.
Gotcha. OK. Yeah.
And I haven't had any issues.
I get the same pistons from Weisko.
Weisko custom makes the pistons.
I order them in a batch of 12 usually.
Same rods, same crankshafts until, like I said, we switched from Cali's to BC.
So it's a very vetted package.
I know where the clearance is going to end up.
Obviously, I still double check everything when I assemble it.
And I know how it's going to break in.
That's also very important.
I know the machine work that it's going to take.
And I like I said, I work closely with Aaron on that.
And then just work, dude, they don't blow up.
They really don't blow up real quick.
Can we cut that bug is going to drive me crazy in the editing?
Can you just close the door? Yeah, the door. Yeah.
Unless it's inside.
If it's inside, then we'll deal with it.
If it's inside, I'll take the torch.
That bug was driving me crazy.
All right. So OK.
So why did you develop that kit the way you did?
So break it down.
What does it all consist of within the package?
The SPL 900 is a combination of Weisko pistons that they make for us.
It's hard anodized.
The forging is a little bit different than the Weisko 1400 HDs
that are available for the EVOs.
The top that's like the off the shelf option.
Yeah, that's the OTS option.
Works great. Fantastic pistons.
But for what we're doing, I customize this and I wanted to go a step further.
And I'll tell you why it uses custom total seal rings.
The top ring is a 1.2 millimeter ring instead of a 1.0.
And it is a AP grade steel ring that has a PVD coating to mouthful.
It's a hardening coating hardening coating that they put on there.
So the ring becomes harder. OK.
And the ring is also gas boarded.
Before I used to before anyone did it in the EVO game,
I literally would get custom gas ports.
At first, we would do horizontal gas ports and then we started doing laterals.
So, you know, because you got to think about it this way, the combustion pressures.
The flame front's coming down and the combustion pressure is increasing.
And it's trying to push down on the piston.
When you have gas ports, what happens is it goes through lateral, horizontal, whatever.
It goes to the top ring behind and it pushes against the wall.
So your dynamic compression increases with boost, not the other way around.
You still have blow by, obviously, right?
Every engine has blow by some of the combustion pressure is going to get through it
and make it into the crankcase. That's why you need catch cans.
But the problem was that eventually the bore is wear unevenly because you just have
you just have, you know, gas ports on top of the piston and nothing.
It's not moving, right?
So uneven wear a little bit of an issue.
But the biggest issue was just carbon buildup, dude.
The carbon buildup would just clog up the gas ports and eventually wouldn't be gas ported
with ungas ported itself.
So we started doing it on the ring.
So Total Seal was offering a ring that they could gas port and you could put
twice the amount of gas ports on the ring that you could on the piston.
And if you're not milling the crown of the piston for gas ports,
or you're not taking strength away from it.
Think about it, you know, somebody has to go in and real quick down the down for a second.
So what do you mean gas ports?
Like what exactly gas ports are literal ports like drill?
Imagine somebody taking a drill to the top of the piston.
OK. And drilling the site like where their ring is, right?
Yeah. The ring is here.
This is the top of the piston around where the ring is.
They will drill it.
OK. So whenever the flame front propagates
and the combustion pressure is coming down, it will go behind the ring.
That's where it's I'll show you later.
Hey, you want to show me real quick?
Yeah, OK, let's pause for a second.
OK, so we're talking about the ports.
I want to understand the gas ports because, again, I haven't really fully gone down that.
So real quick, just kind of show me again what we were looking at
in the engine room over there.
So if we look at the side of the piston
right above the top ring land, top ring groove, yeah, there is ports.
There are half moon ports, essentially.
But these are horizontal gas ports, horizontal, because they're horizontal.
Again, so when you have the flame front propagating,
it goes behind so the pressure feeds behind the ring groove.
Yeah, pushes the ring against the cylinder wall.
Increases your dynamic compression, increases seal on their boost.
The problem with these was uneven wear.
And whenever you mill the crown of the piston
or actually any part of the piston, you're making it weaker.
OK, so that's why whenever we went to.
Yes, this is what exactly you're doing now, then.
This is SPL 900.
These are the last batch we got.
So these are two months old, maybe.
So there is no gas ports on the piston itself.
OK, we're not compromising the strength of the piston
or the crown of the piston or the ring.
Now, the top of the ring itself is gas ported.
OK, yeah, shall I see? Yep.
So like these grooves are in here, basically.
Correct. OK.
Two things, two benefits that you get with this benefit.
Number one is.
You're not getting you're not weakening the piston
because you're not drilling it anymore.
And you can put more of them on the ring itself
because the ring really, you know, it's already a strong ring.
It's coated.
The material is a lot stronger than the off the shelf stuff that you get.
And two, a ring is always rotating.
Think about it this way, the cross hatch pattern that the machine is puts.
The ring is always rotating in the bore.
In the cylinder.
In the cylinder.
So as it's doing that, it's self cleaning.
So it has self cleaning.
OK, I see.
Yeah, it's not fixed.
Whereas opposed to before, it'll basically like kind of clog those.
It would clog. OK, gotcha.
OK, you can only put what, 810 gas ports versus 20 or whatever on this.
So just small development stuff that we kind of learned by doing.
And the reason why I actually went to these
compared to like off the shelf rings, like one point over ring, let's say.
The reason we actually decided to go with total seal
and get the AP rings was because we're annealing the rings.
annealing is whenever the material itself gets like
it the ring like caves on itself, like it just becomes weak
and it like kind of like closes on itself like it closes a gap on its own.
So you've heard of like Chevy guys, you know, taking, you know, like
the pistons taking everything apart, gapping the rings wider, right?
Bigger gaps, putting them back in so it can handle more heat, right?
Because otherwise it butts ends.
What I ran into with some EVO engines that we were we were actually really pushing them.
But they were just off the shelf rings.
They were annealing so the ring was like closing in on itself, not just to get.
But like the ring would change shape.
And then I would like take it out of the cylinder and I would like
compare it to like another one like out of the box and it would like cave in.
And I remember Daniel Fonz at the time, super helpful guy.
He's the one that actually got me started on these custom pistons.
He used to work for Diamond Pistons at the time, super knowledgeable guy.
He's the one that told me about he's like, dude, you're annealing it.
He's like, you're you're throwing a lot of heat at the ring.
OK, you really need an AP profile.
Like you need an AP ring.
And that's when we switched to the AP.
And then we went from the 11 oh to the 12
And then the PVD coatings came, which is a hardening.
Coating wanting to keep in mind is machine work nowadays is as come so far
from like 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
If you buy an off the shelf manly Weisko piston and you're getting just
like some regular MPR ring packs, which work great for 90 percent of the people.
If you have a good cylinder finish, which is a plateau hone that people do.
OK.
You can just as long as your air fuel and everything is in check
and you're not washing down cylinders, the thing will like break itself in.
If you just, you know, just hold it up in the RPM, just let let the oil kind of fling
all over and how I like to do this, just put power to it.
It'll just seal very quickly with the PVD stuff that we use
because the ring is so hard, you actually have to put some load on it
on the dyno and then like kind of slowly.
OK.
Slowly kind of put power to it.
It takes 23 times longer than a normal ring pack to seal.
So that's another reason that I ship my engines everywhere.
Like I just sold an engine to a guy in South Africa last month.
OK.
Random.
But it's like he's like, OK, you tune in.
I'm like, I can't, but you're probably better off just flying me out
that the first time.
So I'm there and I get everything dialed.
So you guys aren't just starting the car.
And it's washing itself down South Africa soon.
Then I don't know if it's going to or I can do it remotely.
But, you know, if you want my 100 percent
undivided attention that I can be there and be like, oh, look, like this is wrong.
But yeah, it makes breaking a little bit harder.
But that's that's a part of the SPL 900.
It's just a part of the development thing that's happened with with our engines.
And I'm not saying it's the best engine out in the world, but it's it's
it's one of the best ones out there, man.
I mean, I have a lot of you're in the conversation into it.
Yeah, I'm definitely in the conversation.
OK, definitely in the conversation. OK.
Oh, and.
The TP one pins that I was telling you about.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh, that's the material of the pin.
It is extremely hard and it's extremely expensive.
Trend makes the wrist pins.
And we DLC code those.
So DLC is diamond like carbon.
It's an actual coating that you put the coating is as expensive as a freaking pin.
But a lot of times what we'll find with these evil engines,
when we take them apart, is when you push the pin out of the pin boss of the
piston, it it goes the actual pin boss of the piston and the pin has this weird wear on it.
OK.
And the reason for it is you can have the proper clearance.
But again, it goes back to how hard that cylinder pressure is beating up on these parts.
Right.
Eventually, it's going to displace that thousands of oil clearance that the pin has
with the pin boss or pin bore rather, sorry, on the piston.
And when that happens, it can it can seize itself in there and that could be pretty bad.
Right.
So when you have a DLC coating, it's it.
It can run basically without oil for a couple of seconds.
OK. So it's it's it's a very expensive coating, but it's very justified, in my opinion.
And that's also included in the SPL 900 coatings are freaking crazy outside.
Jarrah Cross paths with Jeremy Hunt, buying chance from Outfront.
He's a little he's down here as well.
Yeah, they're they're local.
Yeah, Subaru stuff, whatever.
Well, he sent me a video of some local whatever coating place.
And they like it's like super like high tech shit for like F1 cars or whatever.
And they did like a before and after like this weird coating thing.
And it's just like completely frictionless.
Is that basically kind of like the goal of that is to minimize friction or?
Yes, the DLC coating is basically to take
take care of lack of lubricant where it may apply.
Yeah, OK. Now, let's say you're doing a wide open throttle
pull from first gear to fourth gear, quarter mile pass.
At some point, it might happen that you're like just beating that.
Again, hydrodynamic wedge, right?
You have this wedge of a hydrodynamic wedge is the film of oil that's in between two parts.
A positive thing, I think this one may have filled up on me.
You were talking before I cut you off.
Yeah, I was. I'm always talking.
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, the DLC is essentially there to.
Take over whenever there is an instance of lack of lubrication.
Yeah, the wedge and all that. Yeah, OK.
It's hydrodynamic wedge.
The hydrodynamic wedge is the wedge of oil or the layer of the boundary of oil
that you have between two parts on a piston that we're talking about.
It's between the pin bore and the actual wrist pin.
There is a clearance there and there's supposed to be oil there
between the crankshaft and the rod bearing, right?
The crankshaft journal and the rod bearing where the crankshaft main journal
and the main bearing, there is a hydrodynamic wedge.
So the parts are never touching.
It's always it's essentially a hydraulic layer of oil
that is just preventing these parts.
Again, it's so crazy, dude, you're talking about three thousands of an inch
less than human, less than human hair, healthy.
Maybe it's Maybelline. Yeah, it's non-Armenian.
But yeah, that's what.
And we actually do the same thing with the rod bearings and the main bearings.
So we send them to North Carolina.
Calico coatings does their CT one coating on our main and rod bearings.
And that's a dry lubricant coating.
And I don't want to admit this, but I actually.
Tested this accidentally one time.
We drained the oil on the customer's car and it was at the old shop
and we had to move cars because our neighbor was bitching at us
because the car with the we had a car that was parked.
Anyway, so we pushed the car out and then I started the car.
Accidents or accident? No, I didn't know.
And heard the knocking noise, actually.
It was like 40 or 50 seconds of dry run.
OK. And.
There's two takes on this.
People are like, oh, that's fine.
And it's really not fine.
It's a metal to metal contact, basically.
Took the whole engine apart.
It was spotless. Wow.
So I literally literally heard the dreaded noise and it was spotless.
We still change the bearings.
We might them.
They were still fine.
But yeah, so I'm big on coatings.
There's also line to line that I've used them once.
Line to line, they do a lot of like skirt coatings,
business skirt coatings and you can actually it's a wearable coating.
So you will put that piston in the bore and I'll have like zero clearance.
And once you started, it'll self clearance itself and I'll always stay at that clearance.
So. Really interesting stuff.
I haven't experimented with that stuff too much.
This is all really cheap stuff, too.
Very cheap. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, but when you pay for an SPL 900, this is stuff that you get.
OK, so it's not that's all within.
OK, it's nothing.
Pretty much nothing's off the shelf, aside from the crankshaft and the connecting rod.
So OK, so let's go down this path again.
So with the SPL 900 kit, for example, what's all in there?
Like is it some first of all, is this something that's on your website?
Like if I was OK, so break down like what this kit is exactly,
that's all included within it. Sure.
Our SPL 900 pistons, which are these guys.
Yep, that pistons, pins, DLC coated,
TP1 pins are custom ring pack.
Kali's ultra enforcer I beams, very strong rods with the 716 L 19 rod bolts.
And those are steel steel.
They're steel rods. Correct.
SPL 900. Yeah, yep.
Arap 2000 main studs.
B.C. Brand Crower, 94 millimeter crankshaft.
OK, or 88 millimeter if you're doing a two long rod.
And the block machine work and assembly.
So our machine work includes.
Align honing of the main tunnels.
So every time you put Arap main studs, you're putting more clamp on the mains.
So it's going to change shape and usually it turns into an egg shape.
And you don't want that whenever you're running bearings in there
because you're going to wear it like an egg, right?
So it's going to be uneven.
So an aligned, aligned hone.
Sometimes you have to align bore it and then hone it.
But basically we get it to the point that
whenever you torque up the main studs, it's a perfect bore, a perfect ground.
And it's a perfect alignment of all five main studs on an EVO.
463. And then.
We obviously boring of the block, torque plate honing of the block.
That's another thing that's very important.
I've always talked about torque plating of like post-tech talks and stuff
like on Instagram like years ago.
Basically a torque plate simulates the head being
torqued down on the block, right?
So I don't know something you want to talk about.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I think we sell those for like Subaru's at three company 23
Yeah, absolutely.
Some engines suffer from this more than others.
For instance, like Mercedes engines, they could give less of a shit
if you had a torque plate on it.
They would measure fine top to bottom because it wouldn't have too much
similar distortion. That's just German engineering.
That's how it was.
Yeah. The super block that we just got sleeved, that thing needs a torque plate.
Like right now when I measure it without a torque plate,
that's a thousandth and half difference from the top of the board.
Yes. So.
Why are engines specifically EVO engines, but why are engines so much more
reliable nowadays, built engines than before?
Before a machinist will take your piston, measure it and then set the piston
to all like five to six thousandths of an inch.
So huge piston to all, dude, the rings are going to be loose.
The piston is going to be clittering.
The clittering.
Oh my God.
The pistons are going to be doing one.
The piston is going to be clattering around.
Making noise on cold starts and all that stuff.
You don't have to do that now.
All of our SPL 900s are at three and a half the thalpis into wall, sometimes four.
OK.
The reason we can do that is we use a torque plate during the final honing process.
So whenever you put the torque plate on there,
it simulates the cylinder head being bolted on top of the block.
So you use the same studs, same torque for the head studs,
same head gasket that you'd be using, simulating basically the head being bolted on.
And then when the machinist goes to final home, the cylinder,
it's being honed with the torque plate being bolted on.
Yeah. So whenever you actually put the engine in use,
you actually have a true round cylinder as round as we can get it.
It's, you know, one or two tenths is not much.
But, you know, before I've had four G blocks
that literally would measure like two thou difference from the top to the bottom.
That's a huge variance, dude.
So that's why they would have to run insanely loose piston to walk.
There is a.
You don't have to do that now.
It doesn't matter if it's making a thousand horsepower.
I don't have to gap the ring super, super loose,
especially my rings, because they don't a meal.
They're not my rings or total seals.
But, you know, yeah, I guess you're saying, yeah,
well, my dad didn't make them.
But and yeah, just having the torque plate just allows us to get a lot longer
of a seal with the rings in the cylinder.
The engine just lives that much longer and you don't have to run super loose
clearance is they're not clattering in the mornings.
They don't smoke.
They don't do anything weird.
Just it's just it's changed a lot from before.
Torque plate is very important.
I still see a lot of engines that come through here that have been built before
and we check them and they're not torque plated.
So very important, very important.
And so, yeah, that's that's where you're going to get main studs.
You're getting pistons, rods, the ring pack, the wrist pins, crank,
and of course, our bearings and assembly.
OK. And then they can pair it up with a cylinder head if they wish.
We work with head games now.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've become very familiar with him recently.
I met him in Texas.
We went up to him in Texas and super, super cool guy.
And he's like, he's like, dude, how many heads do you?
He's like, you sent me like 23 heads a month.
I did not expect you to send that many heads.
It is really funny, dude.
He's like, you made my CNC program worth it for the four to six.
It was really funny.
Super cool guy.
But we do that.
The only thing I do here in house with the cylinder heads is I do o-ringing.
So I have a fixture.
I cut o-ring grooves on the cylinder head and then I put stainless steel o-rings in
there and I have a certain spec that I use and I use a multi layer steel MLS OEM
E-19 head gasket on all the four G63 stuff.
And the O-ring basically clamps down around the combustion chamber and it makes
a perfect seal so we can run 50, 60 pounds of boost on the M11 OEM.
OEM thickness studs, obviously on the ARP625 is what we use.
That car right there, my red car.
Yeah, that's your car.
Yeah, that's 67 pounds of boost on the 625 off the shelf ARP head studs.
Just has our o-rings.
What is 67 pounds of boost equate to?
What power wise are you doing in that car?
Power wise, not much.
That turbo had a lot of back pressure that made like a thousand horse.
But at 52 pounds on a 72, 75 and made a 1078.
Wow.
That's SPL 1000.
So that has an aluminum rod motor.
Is that the only?
OK, so what's the difference between a 900 and a 1000?
Aluminum rods, L 19 main studs from boost and performance, half field engine.
So half of the engine coolant.
So half of the block is filled with concrete.
OK.
And we do that and we have to again, use the torque plate when we do
that because it is literal concrete that we buy from Moroso.
That's engine grade concrete.
Yeah, I was going to say it's not from Home Depot.
I mean, you can literally use that.
You can use that.
If you really want to.
Yeah, that's the deal.
So for a half fill and the theory behind concrete filling, the block flexes a lot.
Combustion is not forgiving, dude.
Like it is fucking chaotic, right?
So when you're making again, 250 horse per whole, shit's moving around.
The mains are moving around.
If you ever use the reason we went to L 19s on the SPL 1000 versus the 2000s.
The Evo has a 10 like specifically the 4G63, the main girl as a tendency to
fucking lift off and come back, like frets itself.
It's you can pull it off and it can be freshly machined and you'll pull it off
and you'll see fretting from the actual girl to the actual block.
Like it just moves around, dude.
It's not forgiving.
So around the 1000 plus horse mark, like if somebody actually wants to make
over a thousand horsepower, they're serious about it.
I'll have half filled the engine.
And so we'll fill the coolant ports with concrete up to half of the block.
So the water pump still is used like normal, has no cooling problems.
You can run it with half right on the street.
You will not overheat the engine.
That's not how it works.
You got to think about it.
All the combustion and all the heat is happening at the top of the cylinder.
So if you're half filled or even three quarter filled, you stop coolant
where coolant needs to be.
Gotcha.
Okay, that makes sense.
So and when we do that, we have to let it dry for about one or two days,
depending on how you pour the concrete.
I like to make it super watery because it, uh, it cures very well.
If you make it super watery, like super viscous, I guess.
Uh, and when we do that, we'll put the torque plate on and we'll torque the
torque plate on with the head studs to whatever spec we go to.
And we just let it sit for two days.
And then after that, when we take it to the machine shop, the vegan,
vegan on that page without a torque plate, if he wants to, that thing
does not move around much.
So, but you have to do the curing with it because it's concrete.
It will not move afterwards.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you got to be careful with that.
That's a lot of people don't do that.
They'll talk, played it afterwards and the block doesn't like that.
So you can crack a block afterwards.
How do you do that?
Ask me.
I know.
Okay.
Yeah.
So does that cover everything that's in the 1000?
I think, yeah.
That's it.
And then they can do full fill if they want to, but if you do full fill, then
you have to weld the surface of the, uh, deck of the head.
And then you have to weld this dash 16 port to the side of that.
It becomes a drag car or a deal.
Yeah.
That's a full on race car.
Yeah.
Correct.
Uh, I've made 1100 plus on a wet block.
Okay.
So can it crack?
Yes.
But we've, we've done it before.
So we'd like to do the enforcing of the, you know, half filling if, if they're
going to make over 1100, I would say.
So now let's talk super again.
So you got that program.
That's how we got onto this.
Is there an intention to do this sort of thing with the Supra at some point to
have a program?
We already have.
I'm pushing it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She's, we both have a very competitive nature when it comes to, dude, we don't
like average, average fucking boring bro.
Everyone's average, you know, everyone's like, I think the biggest thing we have
in common is both of us are either zero or a hundred.
Yeah.
So you guys, let's back the bus up here.
How long have you guys been together for?
Five years.
Five years.
How did you even meet?
Like, because you're both into cars, you're both like, again,
could I say why?
Yeah.
Sure.
That's a funny one.
I posted my Subaru on my Instagram story and he slid up and he was like, you need
a tune.
You need a tune?
That was a funny thing.
I did not tune Supras.
That's the crazy part too.
Yeah.
So you're saying is if I want to make it in life, if I want a woman in my life
again, I gotta be a tuner and swipe up on story.
Well, actually I didn't reply and he unfollowed me.
Wait, there's two parts of the story.
But hold on.
Part two is coming.
I didn't reply to that.
He unfollowed me.
Okay.
And then.
I don't know.
I followed her again at one point, I guess.
Yeah.
He followed me again.
He messaged me again.
Her Instagram got hacked.
My Instagram got hacked.
And what they did is they called everybody in my like following.
I was just the lucky one.
No, I thought he was cute.
So I decided to apologize to him.
Oh, okay.
I'm so sorry.
Somebody.
So somebody messaged everybody.
Call called.
Okay.
Okay.
Everybody on my like Instagram messages, I like two in the morning.
Okay.
So I'm like, my phone's blowing up and everybody's like, hello, why are you calling
me?
Yeah.
And then I saw that they called him and I was like, thank you.
Like I'll apologize to him.
They like so sorry.
I saw the phone call and I'm like, dude, why are you apologizing?
I was drunk myself.
I don't remember what happened yesterday, but I'm seeing this miss call.
Yeah.
I was literally have never stopped talking since that day.
We have, I don't think we've had like any days apart.
No, it's like traveling for work.
Yeah.
That and like literally, I think one day, like when my mom passed like one day,
like she just had to, it was a crazy time for both of us.
Yeah.
So the five years, yeah, we've been through some traumatic shit.
Yeah.
We've also like skilled and like grown this business too.
She's like, she has been by my side the whole time in the beginning.
When obviously when we first met, she wasn't as involved.
I didn't kind of let her, yeah.
And I didn't let her get involved just because she was doing her own stuff too.
But the last like year and a half, two years, I've encouraged her to like get
involved and she's actually very smart.
Like she again, she's actually very smart.
Thank you so much.
It's like, I think he just found out recently.
It's like, after I found that out, I told her you can come to the numbs.
No, the thing was she's also like me, like she's all in if she's into something.
But I like it.
I that's why I support her.
It's like, yeah, you want car parts?
No problem.
Like it's what we have the same problem.
We have the same mental.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I just I love supporting what she is doing now because she literally wants
to be involved.
She is involved.
She's like, she actually knows like, well, not many people know like out of
stage of car, not many people know how to like pre-stage, like stage, pre-stage.
They don't know.
Like just she knows this shit now.
Many people don't know how to take shit apart.
She's taking apart.
She's taking off her own transmission.
She's probably taking out everything.
You're being really nice to me right now because whenever I like take things
apart off camera, he tells me I would have to not be able to do it.
Well, I do that.
So she built sticks.
She's in a shop environment.
You know what I mean?
Like you got to give her a reality check.
You got to check on her.
I'm never nice to her when she's working on shit.
I'll literally walk by and just say something very rude and walk.
I'll be like fighting for my life and he'll walk past me and pat me on the back
and be like, good job.
I want to go and like do it.
I'm dying.
Dude, cause it's like, I know you can do it.
And it's like, obviously I'm here if something happens.
But yeah.
All right.
Give me a most recent example because I today you posted a video about what
were you pulling like a clutch or something or no, the motor from the Supra.
Yeah.
Pulled that today way easier than I expected it to be.
Yeah, they're very easy because you look at it compared to the EVO and it's
like super intimidating because there's all these like sensors and shit.
Okay.
And you're like, what is going on?
The fucking cams on the wrong side of the engine.
The engine's like, you know that?
The crank pulley is in the front.
Yeah.
The cams are on this side.
Oh, the timing side is on the flywheel side.
Yeah.
Okay.
Second Lamborghini like a Huracan.
Is that an Audi thing too?
I think so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're going to have a hell of a time doing a timing on your car.
By the way.
Oh, I thought it was fine.
I don't know what it's.
Oh, that's not your problem.
Okay.
Yeah.
Um, okay.
I was going to ask like why is it easier, but that makes sense.
Okay.
So you're like looking at it and you're like, what the hell is going on?
And then you just unplug all this.
So it's like, oh, okay.
I can see now.
Sure.
But that's just for me because all I'm ever touched is the evos, which is in my
opinion, a lot less complex than these BMWs.
Yeah.
They're very rudimentary compared to these cars, but then these cars are
surprisingly a lot more serviceable.
So to pull the motor, I mean, take the drive shaft out to click.
Two minutes.
Yeah.
You take the engine out.
Engine takes like, I'm sorry, take the transmission out.
It takes like 20 minutes to do it.
Somebody that's like not.
Sorry.
Definitely.
I cut that one.
Don't say that.
Someone that's somewhat mechanically competent and inclined.
20, 30 minutes.
You can knock this transmission out.
I'm on Supra.
I'm on Supra.
And then after that, yeah, after that, it's just like I'm just draining your
coolant and like all the air to water stuff and just like tugging everything away
and just pulling the water out with a cherry picker.
It takes two seconds to get the hood off.
Super easy.
Okay.
And then putting it together is just like any other engine, dude.
Like it does not.
It's like one of those things.
It's like tuners always say the stock ECU tuners like EVO stock ECU tuners.
I'm going to get a lot of backlash for this, but I really don't give a shit.
I only tune on the stock ECU.
Well, you only tune on the stock ECU because you don't know how to tune.
I'm sorry, but you just learn how to move tables around and you just have a bunch
of base maps that work trial and error.
I don't know.
Maybe you paid for them.
But if you know how to tune, you can tune any standalone.
It's just there's a learning curve.
Obviously, where's this table?
Okay, this is allocated here.
Like I'm multi.
There's different pages.
You know, you get a, uh, GPRP or GPR package and you know, there's just the
layouts there.
You can find everything from there's all calibrate area that you can just type
in whatever you want to know, bring up the table, uh, or whatever you're looking for.
A link gives you four pages.
You have to set your own up if you want to do it properly.
It has to be something that you're obsessed with.
We're home.
And all that plays on our TV is things that have to do with tuning, drag racing,
work, literally, I'm, that's all we don't watch.
We rarely watch anything at home for pleasure.
So yeah, I mean, it is.
It is.
TV show, but last TV show you guys watch like a normal TV show.
Is apex a TV show?
No, apex was a movie, really good movie on Netflix.
Last TV show we watched, we binge watched the TV show.
No, no, no, no.
No, that was a show.
No, no, no, the girl with the mansion.
She was getting married.
The you.
Oh, I don't remember.
Bridgerton.
You are my destiny.
No, she's just really pretty girl song, but I forgot.
OK, I don't think she's attractive.
She's obsessed with the girl.
I don't know.
I think she's really pretty.
I'm obsessed with her.
She's like Leonard the Caprio was with.
It's like she was whatever she dated.
But no, before that, it was stranger things, stranger things.
Oh yeah.
I don't want down that rabble.
I never could get into it.
You should.
The reason I asked this is because I can remember we were talking about off
camera before the episode, you guys were telling us like a trend,
like look at your whatever boyfriends like explore page.
I'd love to see what your like explore page on YouTube is like.
Like what are what are like the go to channels like what are you watching
20, 30, 20 person piece, Kyle?
That was very sad.
That was actually one that I was actually sad.
Yeah, like during the day, like when it happened.
Do you ever meet him?
No, I never did.
I never met him.
I met Fred one time.
He didn't meet.
I mean, I saw him.
I didn't like me.
I was like next to him.
But like, yeah, I told I told him happy birthday, but never he was filming.
You know what I mean?
Did he at least hear when he said happy birthday?
I don't know.
I I did my dude.
I paid my respects.
I don't know.
Steve Morris, Steve Morris engines.
Oh yeah.
Yep.
He's I just watched one of his videos for the first time to a viper that got
set on fire.
Fire.
Yeah.
Watch that.
I reshared that video and everybody's like, bro, are you OK?
I'm like, dude, it says Steve Morris engines underneath the video.
Like I'm fine.
Yeah, I'm sharing this from my fucking toilet.
Everyone was like concerned.
People are calling me.
I'm like, dude, literally it's a Steve.
More Steve Morris is a very knowledgeable guy.
Yeah, that's a bucket list.
Yes, as well.
Jaffer is mobile.
Who Jaffer is more Jaffer Jaffer is mobile.
I used to watch him like before I started working on these cars.
He was a very DIY like 4G63 guy.
OK, like Hyundai 4G63.
He would bolt stuff together, like make his own very, very, very knowledgeable guy.
And I had this like awakening moment one time.
I was watching his video and he gave me a shout out.
That's cool.
Because I was talking about torque plates.
And he was like, I'm not going to get into it.
Go watch Ronnie Bilt's channel, Menti Little Fella.
And I was like, dude, what the fuck?
Like I was watching this guy's channel 10 years ago and I was like,
I hope one day I can do what he's doing.
That's so cool.
12 years ago or whatever.
And it was so crazy, dude.
And that was like a reality check.
It's like, dude, like I.
I I'm I'm I'm doing it right.
You know what I mean?
We're here more than we're home.
Yeah, we're obsessed with the shit, bro.
Like, yeah, if we want to and it's not like a
over better than everybody.
No, it's not that it's just like if we want to do something, we're going to do it.
But no, nothing's going to stop us.
You know what I mean?
Like if I.
If I'm obsessed with something, I'm going to learn it and I'm going to do it.
If she is the same way.
Same thing and I'll support her.
She'll support me.
And that's the biggest thing in the relationship and like the dynamic that works.
Because.
Yeah, you both have to be on the same page.
Sure.
When it comes to like running a shop, bro, I'm here 14 hours a day sometimes.
Most most times, especially this year, we're getting married in two months.
Bro, I'm here more than I've ever been here.
She's obviously here a lot of the times too, but she understands, excuse me,
if I'm here, there's a reason I'm here.
I need to finish the cars.
I need to deliver stuff.
Yeah, you're not hiding from her because there's some guys that do that too.
Yeah.
Well, I just come here all the time.
They just show up.
Yeah.
I mean, there's always something to do, but yeah, how involved are you with the
business?
Like because like you were talking about that off camera earlier as well, like you
help a little bit here or what exactly does that look like?
I mean, it's us two.
We have two techs and we just hired a media guy that we're trying to kind of get
more into the media stuff.
Was that one of the guys I met earlier?
Yeah.
Okay.
Derek.
Derek.
Yeah.
Yep.
So I've been kind of lately have been kind of trying to train him as much as I
can with my social media stuff at least like it kind of took off more naturally.
I didn't really have to put the effort into like editing and stuff.
I guess that has to do with being a woman, but I'm just going to be like
completely honest.
Like it's a, it's a lot easier to blow up on social media as a woman in this niche.
Yeah, but we're, we're a smaller team.
So we wear many hats.
So I'll do, that's kind of like the dynamic of working together as a couple.
It, I, someone always has to take the backseat and let someone else guide.
I think that was the biggest thing of like getting into working together is like,
how is that going to work?
Cause we both have really strong personalities.
I'm getting that.
You know, we're both really like, I don't know.
How would you describe it?
We're both like alpha personalities in our own role, I would say.
But the biggest thing was, dude, I built this shit from the ground up.
Like no one can come here and like do any, like, so it took a while for me to
like even let her like get involved with the business because this is my baby.
Bro.
And I didn't want it to like affect our relationship either.
But now I just kind of like, she's, she's, she's my other half.
So she's going to be a part of, she is a part of this.
She's, she's my other.
Literally everything that I'm going to do from here on out, she's going to be
involved with, but yeah, in the beginning, it, it, it took a little while for me to
be like, okay, just come to the shop whenever you want.
And then after you followed her back.
A lot after.
Yeah.
This was like literally like two years ago.
Like we were already living together.
And I was working as a, as a car broker.
Okay.
And I had like insane hours and I hated my life.
I'm not even going to lie.
And I would come home every single day and I'd be like, I can't do this anymore.
I can't, I was making really good money.
I was really good at it, but I would come home and I was like, I can't do this anymore.
Right.
And then once we got the bigger shop, he was the shop here.
Yeah.
This shop.
He was like, all right, come show up every day.
And so what did I look like then?
What did like what does showing up look like?
So many things.
Like were you just learning?
Drop animals first.
We have a lot of animals, but we don't have kids, but we have
fucked on them.
Really?
But he has animals.
No, we have three.
But we have two cats and a dog.
Okay.
The Weiner dogs.
Yeah.
Well, one Weiner dog and two cats.
Weiner cats.
Um, yeah.
Why has nobody made it yet?
Anyways, over here, I mean, sometimes it's cleaning, sometimes it's office work.
Sometimes it's freaking wrenching, which.
Ranging is mostly on her own cars.
Yeah.
But but like office, media, that kind of stuff.
He sends and voices and stuff.
She's very, I use shop monkey for all my invoicing.
Okay.
Yeah.
We're trying to get more organized.
That's something that I cannot recommend enough to someone that's trying to
get into the business or is in the business and is trying to scale a little bit.
I'm not saying I'm anywhere insane.
You know, I have so much to do.
I have so much growth to do.
Uh, I am barely like even with like the shop space that you see, I'm comfortable,
but I am not where I want to be.
I am barely making enough money to be able to fuck around with cars still.
You know what I mean?
And still like pay my bills.
And, um, the one thing I'm proud of is, you know, three families basically got fed by me.
So they rely on, not fed by me, but like they rely on me and I, that's cool.
I paid three people's paychecks.
And that is insane for me.
A lot of people will look at what we do on social media, like with the supra,
we're like full send everything and they're like, must be nice to be able to do this.
Like I'll get comments like that all the time.
But what people don't see is that we're here.
The amount of hours that go into, yeah, the amount of tunes I have to do,
the amount of engines I have to put together, the amount of people I have to
tolerate, talk to, schedule things.
My life is my least favorite thing on the planet, by the way.
I fucking shop on.
You need shop on for the podcast.
Yeah, I wish me luck.
But I wish they would sponsor me.
I pay like $30 a month with their CRM.
Oh, they have hands on training for everything.
Dude, but they have like training for everything too.
They're like remote and and like teacher everything.
Yeah, I we, but we can schedule.
We can we can schedule appointments week.
I have vetted services like can services.
They call it SPL 900.
I've sent like 20 of those out last month.
Seven of them got bites.
But the point is I don't have to sit there and type every single time.
It's already vetted.
It's a full.
This is how much it is.
This is how much the deposit is.
You're getting this, the whole nine, dude.
Engine R&R tuning like everything.
It just makes it so much easier.
I feel like that's one thing that has given me a little bit of an edge
over some other people that do the same thing.
Like on the business side of things.
Yeah, because I don't have to waste three hours on them.
She sees how it is some mornings.
I wear a lot of hats here.
Like she said, we both do, but I wear a lot of hats here.
I have two texts, one media guy.
But sometimes I did I get here at like eight o'clock in the morning.
Usually 88 30, I'm here by the time I start ranching or tuning
or whatever I'm doing assembling, it's like 11 or 12.
Like I am just sending out quotes.
I'm reaching out to customers.
I love doing it, but like it's hard, bro.
That's one thing that another thing that set a speed lab aside.
It's like you have to be connected with your customers.
You have to respond.
Yeah, even if it's people that have already called it 23 in the morning
and he will pick up the phone.
If I if I see it, I'll pick it up.
Unless I'm like, I'm like literally like knocked out.
I'm the same way.
Like if I get a text that one and I'm up, I'll respond.
Yeah.
Or then the biggest thing is like customers that have left
and they've already paid the balance is clear.
The taps closed.
Invoices already archived.
Person hits you up to have an issue or they're asking a question.
You can't just ignore them, bro.
These people will help you be who you are.
Every single one of them break by break the algorithm.
And it's a lot.
Sometimes like people will get upset if you don't see their text messages and stuff.
But if you literally pull up his phone and look at it, it's literally like
1700 messages.
1700 messages.
I'll show you.
It's more than that.
Yeah, it's literally.
Insane and he provides all of the customer service.
I don't really deal with the customer side.
Nobody does besides him.
And that's like that in itself on top of everything else is like a 247 thing.
Yeah, especially if you get a yapper.
Oh my God, you can kill it.
I don't mind it, though.
No, it's like me and you when we first
saw each other, we were just talking, right?
Yeah, it's the same thing.
It's like if I'm explaining the whole piston rod SPL 900 thing to somebody.
Yes, nice.
I'm going to get the cell, even if I don't get the cell, at least I get the information across.
It's just I like to share my knowledge, whatever knowledge I have, I like to share.
He likes to.
And he likes to.
Yeah, I love it.
Yeah, no, it's just that's the car guys, bro.
We can talk all day.
Why do you think I started the show?
Yeah, that's exactly why I started.
Why not, though?
It's like you have the same passion.
Like that's why and that's why you're successful.
What you do, dude, like you obviously tell me more.
No, seriously, though, like we were talking about it before and I'm like,
what kind of how do you know what kind of questions to ask?
Like, does it become difficult at some points?
Like it's like you're natural on it, though.
Like, you know exactly how to flow it.
Like sometimes I'm like, OK, I'm done.
I just explained it and you ask another question.
I'm like, that's a great book.
You just made like I was not thinking you would ask that.
But listen to my last two.
They were a little rough.
But no, it's just yeah, we're car people.
No, we hold a stand up to ourselves.
That's definitely. Yeah. Yeah.
OK, so then you kind of get involved with this.
First of all, do you guys have beds?
Do you sleep here?
If you're here 14 hours a day, there's got to be a like a couch or something here.
We have something in the car before.
Which car like just in a super.
Yeah, oh, she's.
Yeah, I have videos of her knocked out in the back seat, probably.
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Cross applesauce midwiring of.
She was just going to be wiring her primary and I'm like, where's Lex?
And I'm like, Lex, and she's like.
Just not have any of it.
That's locked out.
But no, we thankfully live very close to here.
Five minutes.
Yeah, we were talking about this earlier, like getting a location
was very hard and so Cal, you went to the old shop.
So did you see like how that we're able to like pull into the parking lot?
That was a rough. Yeah.
Yeah.
So he thought it was a marketplace like scam.
Like I told him, okay, if all in there's going to be a bunch of people.
It was like, yeah, he says wood design here, bro.
Like, dude, you're at the old shop.
That was another reason why I wouldn't.
I wouldn't go to the old shop because it was small and there was no room to do anything.
My little brother actually used to work for him when he, when they were at the.
Other shop and he kind of followed in Ronnie's footsteps and went to the
I know he's the Mercedes tech.
Okay.
I was a Mercedes tech.
So be working on evos in five years.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Go back to where you started.
Yeah.
I pulled in twice into that parking lot.
I went halfway.
I went like a few cars and I'm like, I don't know, backed out.
Did a couple labs, went to the golf course, came back and I'm like, okay,
this has to be the address I pulled back here all the way and this lady is like,
what the fuck is this came back here again?
Like, yeah.
So thanks for that Google.
They're crazy.
Okay.
So the crazy thing with that was when I was at that again,
a lot of people will and I want to make this clear because she said this and it's
very true.
A lot of people will like look at what we post and they'll look at not like we
have like an extremely lavish lifestyle.
Like we live in a social media highlight room.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Don't judge me off of what I post.
We again, like I said, I'm making ends meet and I'm able to fuck with cars and
I'm happy, you know, if I can keep doing this and slowly scale it at the
level that I have been, I will be successful for a long time.
That's all I need.
I don't need to be a fucking multi-millionaire.
I don't, that's not what I, but people will watch this and they'll be like,
oh, it's, it's must be nice to have money.
It must be nice to, bitch, you didn't see when I was at the old location that
this guy, literally the neighbor across the street would come and shut my
dino session down at three o'clock because his employees would have issues
with hearing or whatever.
I would have to stop.
And he would be like, go home.
This is, this is the landlord on the other side.
You're talking about the guys next door.
We had issues with everybody.
We, I didn't, they had issues with me.
And then if somebody has an issue with me, I take it very personal and it becomes
a problem.
But the thing was like, dude, it was 20 people and I liked his employees.
They're all nice.
The business owner himself was not a very nice person, but I had to respect
the bounds and just do what I, given what I had, I had to work around it.
So 1500 square foot shop.
The rent that I was paying was not a crazy amount and I had a dino and I was
going to run it, dude.
So I would wait until like six o'clock.
Everybody would leave and I would start my dino session.
Even though it would be there from eight o'clock working, my six o'clock, I would
start my dino session.
I would get home at like 12 in the morning, dude.
I did that for almost five years, bro.
So when somebody watches and they're like, Oh, must be nice.
It is nice.
If you work hard, it is nice.
That it's nothing gets handed to you, bro.
Like you have to go through it.
Like no one comes and just hands you business.
You earn it from trust of customers.
You earn it from word of mouth.
Um, I watched a recent chain T podcast.
I kind of thought about Kules Kias.
Yeah.
I, he's, he's an awesome, awesome.
I've talked to him a couple of times online.
Uh, I look up to him as a tuner.
I think everybody does.
He holds a very high respect.
Amazing guy.
And like just the, the values he has is just awesome.
I, I hope to meet him one day.
Um, and you were saying word of mouth was the, you know, it is the best advertisement.
Imagine you trust somebody and that somebody that you trust tells you, this is the guy to call.
That's how speed lab has become speed lab.
And if you fuck people over and you brought Peter to pay Paul and you lag on the projects
and you just, you just do things wrong, which most of these shops do most, most of them,
they have the potential to be great, but they just make the small mistakes.
They make the first 20, $30,000 and they just let's party.
You know what I mean?
Dude, it's, it's, you gotta look at the big picture, man.
This is a long term thing.
Every penny we make gets reinvested back every single penny.
What's the biggest investment you guys had?
Dino.
Dino.
When'd you get the main line?
2020.
2020.
Two.
Sorry.
20.
So you've had it for a while then.
No, not 2022.
Oh, 21.
21.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Right before, right before 67 months before I met the first shop in 2021.
Yeah.
He got the first shop like six months before we met.
I got the main line.
No, no, no.
That's not right.
Yeah.
Like six months before we met the shop.
Yeah.
Oh, then I got the dino like 23 months after that.
Yeah, I'd already put the order in for the dino when I got the shop.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've had it for a while.
Yeah.
Okay.
So customer cars, that's one thing that some shops kind of put like a hard stop on.
Like, you know, they either do customer cars or they don't.
Where do you draw a line in the sand?
Do you do it?
Um, or I mean, sorry, not customer cars.
Yeah.
Okay.
So somebody wants to come in for a tune.
Yeah.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Um, at the scale that we're at and the cars that we're working on, the, the,
the dollar amount just isn't there to not do non-customer cars.
Like you have to.
However, what I implemented is a non-refundable pre-dino inspection.
Uh, now the non-refundable part does your appointment and it goes back to the whole
invoicing system that I have.
I'll send them and, you know, they'll request the day and I'll send the
appointment details and they'll authorize it and I'll take the one hour charge.
That we take for their pre-dino inspection.
And that is a non-refundable deposit.
If you let me know 24 hours prior that you're not going to make it, we can
move it to another day or whatever.
That's all fine.
But what that hour allows me to do is do a compression check, leak down, uh, test,
boost leak test.
And most importantly, just putting the car on the dyno, on the lift, sorry.
Uh, taking it up, just making sure that the car's not going to fall apart on the
first pull or the drive.
Such a pain in the ass.
Cause like I talked about this with the cannonball garage guys.
It's like they, they work on McLaren's right.
And it's like, these are high ticket builds that they're doing.
And it's like, if you're just having some guy with his, you know, piece of
shit Mustang on the dyno, it's like, Oh, I can't do anything for two days.
It's stuck on the dyno.
Like it's taking up your shop time.
So it is.
It is.
Yeah.
Um, so to answer your question, if I understood it right, you're asking me if I
tune other builds, correct.
Yeah.
Not, not renting the dyno out.
I do rent the dyno out.
That's the separate.
As well.
I do that as well.
If, if I have time.
Okay.
Not, it's very, operated.
Yeah.
I usually have to operate it or I'd like to operate it.
I don't want to just, you know, but anyway, it's a big investment to let
some stranger.
It is.
Yeah.
And it's not, you can't really mess it up.
Um, I'll find a way.
I've done it before, but there is a very viral video of me actually.
Wade.
Yes.
Hold on.
Which video?
Wait, that one.
There was, there was a, okay.
So there was a two J swap.
There's a two J is 300 here.
He'd rented the dyno from me for four hours.
Dino the car made like 1200 horsepower and then told me to take it off the dyno.
No problem.
It was just a dyno rental.
Uh, I came and take the, took the arms off and then my bladder gave me issues again.
So I went to the bathroom and I came back and he's like, Hey, can you launch the car
on the dyno?
I'm like, of course I can.
It's a midnight.
No, no, no.
This was in the day.
This was like noon when I texted you.
Yeah, it was during the video.
Yeah, I just sent you the video late, but no, it was like during the day and he's
like, can you launch it on the dyno?
And this is a th 400 car on an 80 85 and he's sprained to 200 truck to spool this
fucking thing up.
Is it?
Can you launch it on the, of course I can.
He's like, can we do it?
I'm like, yeah, I totally forgot the arms.
Sound the fucking thing launched it on a th 400 200 shot of nitrous.
Like God knows the 30 pounds of booster or whatever.
And as soon as I let go of the fucking button, the, the hubs just did a 360, like
six times in one second.
Oh, luckily nobody got hurt, but I forgot the arms, but I didn't forget the arms.
Whenever we started the dino session, it was afterwards.
Like the dino session ended and then he asked me after when I forgot to put
on backing cause I just, I'm just pinned on your page or something.
I know.
No, no, no, it's not.
It was New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.
This is like six or seven months after this happened.
I'm like scrolling on Instagram reels and I see this guy post this and he's like
2025 the year almost died.
Yeah.
And dude, I was glad, I was obviously glad that he didn't get hurt.
Then nothing happened and I didn't care that he posted it.
Like I wasn't, I was going to post it eventually myself.
Yeah.
It was crazy.
Like it was a crazy, obviously he didn't get hurt.
He was filming from in front and we don't, we don't let people do that, bro.
And actually it's crazy because my employees were filming a car about two
months ago, right before I left for a race and the intercooler pipe let go.
And it, it almost grazed my tech here and my media guy.
It was like a final destination fucking.
I have a video of it from over there and it like just missed both.
And I could do 50 psi.
That's not a lot of boost.
It was like, it was and it happened so fast.
Like you can't see it in the, you have to slow the camera down.
Like you have to slow the video down to see it.
It looks faster when you slow it down for some reason.
Dude, it was so insane.
And after that, I'm like, no one is no one ever.
Not because before it was no customers.
After that incident, it was no cut.
And now it's like no one, like no one.
I don't care if like she, no one is going to be in front of the dyno.
Shit happens, dude.
I have no control over that.
Things happen.
Yeah.
You know, I'm a human being.
I make mistakes, but even if I don't make mistakes, you know, engine parts,
this, that can happen.
So yeah, it's, it's very important to also be very, very of what can happen on
the dyno, dude, it is a lot of horsepower moving things around.
Even if it's not a lot of horsepower, things that are moving have things are moving.
You know what I mean?
If it comes to a sudden stop, something probably gave and that something can
hit somebody.
Like it's just, it's very scary.
I've seen some scary videos.
Like it's like, why chance it?
Right?
Like, no, no, you, you, you really can't, you really can't.
But yeah, we do the pre dyno inspection and that allows me to make sure everything
is okay to go on the dyno for both myself, my employees.
And the customer, like you don't want to, you know, sometimes these guys get like
a car done from a shop and it'll come in and stuff will be loose.
Man, we've had like drive shaft bolts loose.
We've had like control arms loose.
We've had, dude, we've had every, a lot of stuff loose.
Like just you have to go through it.
Just check the oil, do a compression check, do a leak down.
The customer will thank you.
Like it's just, it's a pre dyno inspection, but the compression leak
then usually people charge like an hour or two for those.
We just do it in there.
It's just very easy.
What do you charge again for the inspection?
It's one 90 is an hour.
I think that's fair.
I mean, so many people come to the dyno unprepared to like it's just, I hear so
many shops complain about it.
It's yeah, I get it.
You have to do it.
It's, it's one of those things that saves your ass.
It just, it's saving grace for the customer too.
Because and it, and it kind of like filters the customer out too.
It is very rare though that a car will come in for just a tune and it will be
ready.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's why the pre dyno inspection is very important.
Like I'm sorry, but you actually have to be like a little ignorant to like let a
car just come on your dyno and.
Like you just, you don't know, bro.
Like some people put this, they put it together with hopes and dreams, bro.
Like you don't want to be the guy like, listen, if I, if I were to go build a
car in the next year myself, I fucking hope you do an inspection on me.
I need to verify my stuff with somebody else.
Like, yeah.
Bro, I, so I have had a lot of builds that I've done myself that it's been
ready for the dyno and I've left it overnight because I've been tired.
Oh yeah.
And then the next day you come in and you're like, Holy shit.
You're like, Oh shit.
That's not even bolted in.
You know what I mean?
It's like people make mistakes.
We're human beings, bro.
We have.
Cognitive abilities, but it gets limited when you're tired, sleep deprived,
under caffeinated, over caffeinated.
Why do you think I'm still chugging these diet coax to keep up with you?
But no, it's just pre dyno inspections are a must.
Yeah.
If you, if you're a shop owner and you, you, you care about your
customer and your business, you need to do a pre dyno inspection.
You're doing your customer favor by charging, charging them a
pre dyno inspection and doing it because again, like I said, compression,
leak down, boost leak, visual inspection, at least two people see that.
I see it.
My worker sees it.
I always glance over the cars and 190 bucks an hour, you know, one hour.
That's not bad, man.
And then after that, it goes on the dyno and the customer gets a report of everything.
Hey, your ball joints are shot.
Hey, your shocks leaking the rear, right?
Whatever the case is.
You know, and if there's a mechanical problem, we don't dyno it.
Don't do it.
I mean, so it's not going to blow your shit up on the dyno because again,
if I'm not successful, they're not successful.
It doesn't matter if I built the car or not.
Most, most people, I did a lot.
It's very expensive to build a car.
Right.
Like say an evil, an evil is an expensive example because they are getting pretty pricey.
You buy an evil for $30,000.
Let's say a clean one and you put money into a build, ECU, this, that another.
Say nothing crazy, like you asked the thousand dollars for nothing like that.
Like say you put another 35, 40 in there.
Yeah.
OK.
And then let's say you take it to somebody else to tune it and they don't do an inspection on it.
And then there's things that are not right.
You hurt the engine.
So something happens on the dyno.
That person might never do it again.
Yeah.
No, that's a wrap.
Like it hurts everybody.
It's like, I'm not going to modify a car ever again.
Say that person has a spouse that's already given them a hard time.
Hey, why'd you spend this much money?
Or say this person like is like on on on the verge.
Did I make the right decision doing this?
Could I have like spent my money elsewhere, like invested it or whatever?
No, OK, whatever.
I did this because I wanted to do it and then they actually end up hurting it.
They're not going to do it again.
Yeah.
That lesson learned.
Don't do it again.
Yeah.
It's it's it kills the hobby for a lot of people.
100 percent.
That 190 dollars or whatever you charge for that pre dyno
inspection is well worth it.
Yeah.
It 99 percent of the time it avoids that happen.
I have a burning question.
I'm going fucking insane.
So what made you get rid of the Subaru?
Like how do we get to the case?
So we're around evos.
Why did you get rid of it?
How did that conversation go?
That's for.
Well, something outside.
I'm going to leave.
Um, well, first of all, it broke.
OK, what's wrong?
Transmission thing I told you about.
Yeah.
So one day I left work.
I clutched in clutch pedal just stuck to the floor.
Never clutched out.
I clutched in.
I clocked in.
I clutched in and never clutched out again.
But anyways, I don't remember what happened.
No, it was I told it was a fork thing.
It was the whole.
Oh, that's what happened.
He it wasn't you.
Somebody welded it welded it back together and we drove it straight to
CarMax and sold it.
I mean, we sold it as it.
So it's straight to CarMax.
Yeah, there's a there's a waiver for it.
So I go to work the next day.
This Supra is parked up front and we were supposed to sell this to
I told you we were at that car broker.
Car broker.
OK, hold on.
She sends me a picture of the Supra.
She's like, I would never drive a yellow car.
I'm like, over text.
I'm like, what the fuck is that color?
I'm like, I'll never drive a yellow car.
The next day she had it in our driveway.
I called him and I'm like, Hey, I bought the car.
Do you just like test drive it or something?
No, no, bother.
You just bought it.
Yes, I just bought it and grew on me.
I was it was my desk in 24 hours.
It was my desk and it was parked outside and I kept looking at it.
And I was like, I need the down payment.
No, I don't need it.
Look, I don't remember what it was.
I whatever it was, you use like half of it or whatever.
And she just she just bought and then I'm like, you told me you're not.
And then I look at the car and I'm like, it's actually kind of nice.
It looks like it's like a banana, bro.
Like I don't know how to explain it, but this has potential.
Yeah.
Once we put the fucking beat locks on it.
Game changer.
Yeah.
So I so I didn't go from a Subaru to Eva.
I went from the Subaru to the Supra.
Okay.
And then that I was just like, I'm just going to not touch it.
I'm just going to leave it how it is.
I'm sorry about that.
It is.
What do you mean?
What do you have?
She has an RS.
I have an Avanibo 8 RS.
You have the RS.
Just not here, but it's one of the cleanest RS's you'll ever see.
So you bought an EVO then?
I didn't buy an EVO.
So this fast forward, this car, we, it was a Sunday night and him and I were
hanging out here.
We had a little bit too much drink and we got a little bit greedy on the dino.
So that's how, that's how that happened.
Yeah.
So I did it in my car.
And I was like a year ago, correct?
One year anniversary of the blown up.
Yeah.
That was a year ago.
So we had a spare engine here.
We send that one to the machine shop and it took like.
Eight months?
Well, it wasn't eight months.
No, it was probably two months of him working on it.
By the time we got the sleeves to him, there was a bunch of stuff we had to figure
out because we were novices in the platform.
We still are.
Yeah.
Sorry.
They still are.
Um, but our friend Norris from P-Tune helped us a lot.
Very helpful guy.
Um, we consider him family at this point, but, uh, yeah, this guy helped us out a lot.
But anyway, we, there's just a bunch of stuff that we had to get figured out to do it.
Right.
And I was like, I need a car to mess around with because I don't have anything.
Because this was down.
Okay.
This was down.
It was another birthday gift.
Birthday gift.
So I always told him I want a white Evo.
Okay.
And then he found 11 day and we went and we bought it.
It's a really clean eight RS like mint.
Okay.
And it's out of Virginia.
No, no, no.
Right now it's in Virginia.
Oh, you said it was in Virginia.
This was a Cali car.
A Cali car?
This is a Cali car.
No joke.
I think it's the cleanest Evo.
I told her I was going to buy her an RS, an Evo, not an RS.
Yeah.
And then she said I want to buy the Evo.
And then it was May.
Herbert, I'm sorry.
It was March, her birthday's in May.
Yeah.
And I told her I'm like, we have to go.
One day I told her I'm like, we have to go to, oh yeah, she's a quarter century
years old.
One day I told her I'm like, we have to go to Anaheim.
And she's like, well, I'm like, which he already knew.
So I got her the RS.
Okay.
63,000 miles when I got it for her.
Super clean.
Yeah.
It is probably making like 750 wheel right now.
Let's talk about it.
So, okay.
So why is it in Virginia again?
So we basically shipped it out there to so I could index.
Now you can see why we don't have a lot of money saved up.
No, yeah, I listen, I travel to do this.
I know where the money goes.
I get it.
Did everything backwards?
Yeah.
Basically.
So I wanted this car to just be a stock bottom and deal on a dog box.
It was just, I told, she enjoyed it and it was just.
The dog box is just a game changer on these Evo's in general.
And I will tell you guys why in a second.
But the whole stock bottom end thing with her car, it just, if you control the torque
properly on a stock bottom end, you can make it live somewhat.
You don't know when, because that rod does not owe you anything, man.
At that point on an Evo, it's a four cylinder engine.
The 4063 was developed what 30 something years ago now.
It is a very old engine, bro.
It does not owe you anything after 400 foot tons of torque.
This car on the Donald was making like 470.
At a higher RPM, right?
Because you have to ramp and the boost properly.
You can't just give it all the beans and expect it to live.
You have to do it very carefully.
The graph has to look a certain way.
Like the torque has to ramp a certain way and stay a certain way.
When we took it to the track, well, when we were on the Donald, that was a 38 pounds.
When we were at the track, it was at 45.
Okay.
So it's probably making like 750 ish.
It's a 6466.
So it's kind of out of steam.
75760 maybe, but it's on the stock bottom end.
Like it's kind of crazy.
But there's a saving grace to it.
It's the fact that it's on a dog box.
The biggest thing with a dog box is.
It's.
He.
Do you know where you hurt an engine the most?
Usually.
I know the answer to a bomb.
Yeah, at peak torque.
OK, the most amount of stress you have on a connecting rod, on a piston, on everything
is at peak torque past peak torque.
You're less likely to hurt it.
The engine cycles are happening faster.
Like everything's just it's less strenuous on the engine.
We're revving that thing to 8600 RPM on the stock rod bolts.
Again, the rod does not owe us anything.
The bolts do.
I don't even know why it's together.
But the saving grace there is she has a dog box.
So she has a lightning fast shifts and she can keep the car out of the peak
torque range and when she does that, the engines happier.
So well, same thing with one of my clients.
We were just we just did a swap on his car.
We went to the dog box.
He drove mine and decided he wanted the dog box.
Yeah, and he broke his fourth gear.
Yeah, big.
But he broke his fourth gear and we went to the dog box and I was pulling.
I pulled logs again, the link full time logging.
So I pulled logs and I was showing him logs of whenever he was on the built
synchro box or I think it was a built synchro box.
Doesn't matter.
It's just shift the same.
You can't make it shift faster on a syncro.
I mean, you can do some stuff, but it's really not going to shift faster.
It still needs to synchronize into the next gear.
Hence sync.
Right.
And he was shifting fast.
So he was going from 43 pounds to ten pounds on the next one.
So he would shift from one to two and it would drop from 43 to ten
and then had to climb back up and then he would shift again and would go from
to like fifteen pounds and climb back up.
Dude, if you're making a thousand horsepower, if you're racing an automatic car,
you're going to you might not lose, but like you're losing a lot of horsepower
during that transition of the shift.
When you put a dog box in it, how much just take a guess
at how much boost drop it had from shift to shift.
Was it initially had a 28
PSI drop every shift?
Uh huh.
And then we went to the dog box.
Two and a half PSI.
Oh, holy shit.
OK. 28 PSI to two and a half PSI.
So he went from basically dropping from 43 to fifteen and back up
and fifteen and back up or whatever to 4341
So that just makes everything happier, then.
Yeah, because the dude, you would think it's more strain on the car
because it's so much faster.
It's not. It's actually past the peak torque.
It is the engines happier there.
Gotcha. OK, I've heard that for that.
Yeah, that's not to explain.
It doesn't make much sense.
It's asked backwards if you think about it, because you're always at a high RPM.
But RPM doesn't mean shit.
If you have the proper valve chain and if you have the proper rod bolts,
rod bolts is something people overlook.
Dude, you cannot RPM with.
Insufficient rod bolts.
You will hurt stuff like things will come apart.
The rod bolts will come apart.
And yeah, that's one of those things.
And every time we so there's torquing of rod bolts and stretching of rod bolts,
the proper method of doing is this stretch.
You have a stretch gauge on there.
A or P makes it.
Yeah, we said I talked about this for an hour and a half with J yesterday.
So I'm very fresh on this right now.
So we stretch rod bolts.
That's another thing that comes with a SPL 900 stretch bolts.
Not. It's the same thing, right?
You torque it. But if you stretch it, if you go with the stretch method,
you might end up at different torque levels, both the bolt,
but you're getting very consistent clamp on both bolts.
And that's what you want.
And that's what sets an average builder
apart from a professional builder, in my opinion.
You're him. I am him.
No, dude, it's just like it's like the right way to do it.
And the way everybody else does it.
Yeah, that's it.
That's literally what can it work?
I have done it before I have.
But the proper way to do it is stretch it and we do it on every single engine
that we do.
That's just how it is.
Yeah, there's no exceptions.
You just and.
Yeah. Yeah.
One last topic that I want to touch on before I pop the usual three.
I want to talk about that year and I year us, motherfucker.
The G.R. Corolla.
Oh, what's the story behind that?
Because that is a very big outlier here.
I mean, it's the coolest car here.
These evils suck.
What's the story with the G.R. Corolla?
He called me one day and he told me to find him one.
So I found him one just randomly when they first first came out in the industry
and she was working.
They first came out and you literally could not find one to save your life
for sticker price, literally.
So I think we paid like one or two grand over sticker.
That's not too bad.
Or wasn't that bad.
Yeah, for our original G.R. Corolla that was a broker deal to do it.
Like we actually got a deal on it.
Then I had to hunt it down like nobody had it at the time.
So we got that car.
I think the first one of the first things he started doing is he wanted to like
make a custom exhaust for it.
No, no, no.
They could take to me.
Yeah, but you remember you wanted to make the after.
OK, after whatever.
Anyways, sound like absolute crap.
I'm daily driving this car.
I'm not joking.
This has nothing to do with getting it's a G.R. Corolla platform, but I just have
to share I would literally drive that car every day and people would pull up
next to me at a red light and like laugh at me and take videos because it sounds
so bad.
So she found the G.R. Corolla.
I picked it up.
It was a gun metal gray, super crazy color, I guess, like super in demand.
And I brought it in the.
Goal with this car was to just do development on the car.
That's it. Go crazy with this platform.
But before I got the car, I had already talked to
Dave Gammon from PPG about a dog box stock car.
That's actually how that car ended up with a dog box.
So we're talking about.
Talked to a couple of clutch companies that were offering clutches for the car.
Ecutech was the only one offering the tuning solution at the time, but you had
to get this harness that you would like jump the actual.
OBD was it OBD?
No, it was you would have to jump the ECU header and then plug it into this.
There was like a harness that you had to buy from Ecutech at the time to be
able to flash it.
And so every time I would flash the car, I would have to come out, unplug the ECU,
hook up this harness and flash it.
It was my first direct injected car.
So it was the first DI car that I was doing.
This is DI and PI.
So uses port and direct injection.
And I helped them a little bit with the development, not a crazy amount.
I mean, I was whatever help I could be at the time.
You know, I was still novice with the DI stuff.
But I ended up doing a bunch of like head cam packages on the stock ECU.
I had cars that were making like 420, 4x420 horse on like E40 mixes.
That's where like it would still be happy with the DI side of things.
And the stock fuel system and not like freak out.
And you'd still have had enough octane to be able to, you know, run 30, 32 pounds
of boost through it.
The biggest downfall was if you ran like 30 pounds of boost and you actually
kept it through the RPM range at the higher RPMs, it would actually start valve
floating. So they had valve float issues.
Head gasket wasn't up to par.
So we started using the Vulcan head gaskets that, you know, use the essentially
the hoops that go on top of the cylinder and, you know, bolt the head down and
bites into the head.
So we did a bunch of those and we did some, you know, DW injector upgrades
and stuff. And then we were starting to get limited with ecutex stuff.
And parts are really expensive.
Yeah. Parts were very expensive.
And then I ended up selling my car.
But at the time I had already tuned maybe 20, 30 of these and that customer
that was pretty interested Armando and he came in and he got a Cyvex at the time.
It was my first Cyvex GR.
I'd done probably one or two Cyvex cars before I was kind of involved with.
But the GR was actually fairly easy to get into with the Cyvex stuff.
And ECU is only as daunting as you make it to be, you know, like once you learn
how to actually work through it, if you actually know how tuning works,
it doesn't matter if you're tuning a Cyvex or a mega square.
Dude, it's the same thing.
Like it's just different approaches to how you achieve the same results.
Sure. And so the Cyvex was great because on ecutex, I couldn't even move
the cam timing. And on these, you know, I could put a huge cam in there
and actually move the cams and get the results I wanted.
And these G 16 GTEs are actually they love cam timing.
Like you can move around the cam timing and make it down a power, dude.
Like it's crazy, like how they respond to actual cam timing.
Like on the evil 10 stuff, we do my back delete on the exhaust side.
We do it because the exhaust cam gear is weak.
When you put a stiff valve spring, it could just be a beehive valve spring.
Let alone a conical.
If you put a conical, you might as well just do a, you know, delete.
And my friend Marco Magnus motor sports, he offers the delete.
Just completely block out the lock out the cam.
You set it at zero and you don't have to worry about it.
On the evil 10, the exhaust cam gear does not make power on a GR Corolla.
Somehow, if you can actually retard the cam and like you, you can.
You can pick up some power with cam timing on the exhaust side on a GR Corolla.
I'm not scientifically inclined enough to be able to tell you why, but somehow
you're increasing overlap at the top end is picking up power and it works.
So, yeah, we tuned that one on Cybex and made 470 on the 85 at the time.
Or yeah, at the time.
And then we did a built motor a couple of months ago.
Okay, which consists of what?
A built motor or what I like to call for the.
A Jira Corolla is the SPL 800.
It is nothing proprietary to me.
I actually get the pistons and rods from Nitto.
Yeah, they're in Australia too, right?
Yes, they are.
The bearings, however, I still sent the calico.
They're ACL bearings.
I sent the calico.
They get the same coating, CT1 coating.
We assemble the engines and house.
They get main stud upgrade from lamp speed.
Charles Lampe.
They're ARP studs, essentially that he puts together.
Same thing with the head studs.
And yeah, the block just gets torque plated, light hone if it needs it.
But those engines actually do not really need a torque plate.
One of those engines that does not need it.
Like you put a torque plate on it, it does not move much.
That's German engineering.
It's crazy.
Toyota.
No, no, no, no.
It's crazy.
I don't know.
I'm just being stupid.
We're getting to the end of this.
But seriously, no, it does not move.
So it's actually pretty crazy.
Yeah.
So.
That particular engine consists of Calford B camps.
OK.
The regular piston rods, Nitto, I-beams are bearings, you know,
main studs, fuel system.
ID 1700 CC ports.
Yeah, 33 of them.
Yeah, we have a custom search tank to Walbur 450 is working staged.
So you tell me this is the craziest G.R.
Corolla in the world right now.
It is the highest horsepower G.R.
Corolla to date.
OK.
The one under this one was one that.
When POTS, I think was involved with the tuning of it.
And I.
The Wayne is one of those guys that I look up to as well.
Amazing, Cyphex and Multicunner.
But I think somebody else was tuning it.
Wayne was like kind of guiding him through the thing.
And I think it was 627 on a dyno jet.
The Skarmade 680 at 51 or 52 pounds of boost on a 5862.
On the main line.
On the main line.
He didn't realize that.
I didn't even know until.
No, until he posted it.
622 or something like that.
And I'm like, oh, the record 627, I'm going to break this.
So I just just panked it up like another 56 pounds and made it.
And I turned it down like to 40 or 42.
Wow.
Yeah. So it's a it's a pretty, pretty awesome deal.
It's got the PPG one through six straight cut, reverse the straight cut to
like it's just a full PPG gear set.
It's pretty crazy.
So you got a G.R.
Corolla guy now, huh?
I don't know if I'll call myself that.
I'm very nitpicky of my customers when it comes to the G.R.
Corolla stuff.
If I take more builds, it's only going to be standalone stuff.
Yeah, of course.
You guys have to standard.
Yeah. Yes.
If they're on a side of extra or multi, I'll do it.
If they're on stock ECU, they can go somewhere else.
No, whatever.
Yeah, look at those.
Yaris is making 800 in freaking Australia.
Yeah. Yeah.
Multi course.
Yeah.
You know, that checks out.
Yeah, that that that's how the G.R.
Corolla stuff came about.
And we have one.
We have one outside that the other one's going like a five and zero
or a spark or anything crazy.
Hopefully we'll get into the super stuff soon.
Yeah. No, I'm excited to see that.
I like I said, we're gonna I'm excited.
I always get a feeling when I visit certain shops that the next time
I'm there, there's going to be a lot of updates.
So I'm excited to see what the updates are the next time.
But I think we are.
We'll see what the final cut's going to be.
But I think we are closing on three hours.
So let's pop the usual three.
You know how this goes.
You've listened to the show.
At the end of every episode, I like to ask my guests or guests to pick three cars.
You have an unlimited budget and you have to pick a daily driver, a show car,
a track car, build whatever you want, whatever you want to do.
Who wants to go first?
So daily driver, show car and a track car.
Correct. Any kind of track.
OK, daily driver.
I'll get an Audi RS6 hatch.
OK, OK. Show car.
God.
I don't know what I want for my show car.
I don't know what I want.
Is it going to be German?
Is it going to be American?
Is it going to be Japanese?
I might go American for my show car.
OK. I'll get like a like a 68 Corvette.
68 Corvette. Yes. OK. OK.
Yes. And then for my track car, I'm going to have to stick with my Evo 8.
OK, fair enough. Yeah.
The RS, right? My RS.
Yeah, OK. Yeah, I'll stick with my.
There's so many evos and things so confused here.
Just being double checking and making sure I'm talking about the right one.
OK. Yeah.
All right.
What are you cooking over here?
Daily driver, I would have to stick to my Ram 2500, dude.
What year? 25. 25.
Nice. OK. It just hauls.
And after my own heart.
Effortlessly, bro.
And I was not a diesel person.
Got this and it's just so awesome.
OK.
Daily driver.
What was it? Show car and what?
Track and show car.
So a track would be.
Man, I have always wanted a Huracan.
Just with like a twin turbo, just like a basic twin turbo kit on the motorcycle.
Nothing crazy.
Like just like a.
Just the light.
200 Yeah, yeah.
Just like a pump gas like a thousand hours power or whatever.
Just that would be my track car, I would say.
Yeah. And then a show car.
Show car.
And I don't think about the show car that much.
Show car, I would probably.
I would probably have to choose an evil.
As a show car.
Yeah, as a show car and what generation?
Eight, it would have to be an evil eight.
OK, that would have to be an evil eight.
Well, I'm my back.
I don't like you don't want to know.
Well, no, that's just no, it would have to be an eight.
Just such a rudimentary engine.
It's just so like raw and.
Basic, simple to the point.
There is no variable.
Camp timing.
There's no like there's just.
Yeah, I would pick that as a show car and maybe lower a little bit.
That's OK.
Just put a simple hundred.
That's I like it.
That's it.
That's going to be it.
Well, that note, what can everybody find you guys?
Instagram speed lab underscore Inc.
YouTube speed lab underscore Inc.
I'm at boosted Lexi L.E.X.
I.E. on everything on everything.
OK, OK.
And I want to at Ronnie after hours on only.
Only.
Yeah.
Only fans link is going to be after.
Yes, do only fans.
This is for the coupon code.
Yeah, we got to get you that twin turbo
Huracan somehow right?
That coupon code is going to include him an oxide code.
So.
Well, sweet.
Thank you so much for making this happen, guys.
I'm glad we got to finally me in person.
This is all we've been playing this for a while.
So thanks, guys.
Thank you for coming out.
Yeah, I'll be back.
And thank you everybody else for listening and SD card
just still recording, I think.
And see you all next time.
Thank you guys.
Appreciate it.
About this episode
Ronnie from SpeedLab INC walks through how he built his EVO obsession from garage projects into a full shop operation, including the lessons learned from a bad piston melt caused by a tuner. He explains why he values proper employee hours, tight customer communication, and under-promising/over-delivering. SpeedLab keeps most work in-house—blueprinted engine assembly, repeated cleaning, and dyno break-in with multiple oil changes—so issues surface before delivery. The conversation also touches on pushing big power goals (1000hp Evos) and expanding beyond the EVO platform into B58 and GR Corolla territory.
Original notes
The California trip continues with a visit to Speed Lab Inc in California to sit down with Ronnie, and his fiancée Lexi ended up joining too. We get into building one of the most respected Evo shops in the country, engine assembly, the SPL 900/1000 programs, coatings, torque plating, and what actually separates a professional builder from everyone else. Also: the highest horsepower GR Corolla on the planet lives in their shop. And of course we talk about the Mk5 Supra.
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0:00 - Intro to Speedlab INC
7:52 - Running the Shop: In-House Philosophy & the Dyno Process
16:44 - Engine Building Fundamentals: Clearances, Pins, Rods & Cranks 28:42 - Reliability at High Horsepower: Cost, Rod Materials & Tune Maps 45:22 - Lexi's Supra Build
52:12 - Developing the SPL Engine Program
1:04:56 - Coatings & Materials: Rings, Pins & Bearings
1:12:24 - Inside the SPL 900 & SPL 1000 Builds
1:22:19 - The Supra Program & How Ronnie and Lexi Met
1:28:40 - Tuning, Influences & Life at the Shop
1:37:10 - Scaling the Business with Shop Monkey & Customer Grind 1:42:06 - Reputation and the viral dyno video
1:47:35 - Customer Cars, Pre-Dyno Inspections & Dyno Safety
1:58:28 - The Car Collection Story: Subaru to Supra to Evo
2:07:51 - Rod Bolts & the World's Fastest GR Corolla
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