The Chevrolet Corvair is an older American car with a design that puts the engine in the back. In the podcast, it’s mentioned because someone raced one in SCCA events. That’s a big reason it comes up—people used it for real driving and competition.
A “top loader” is a type of manual transmission used in some older muscle cars. It’s being mentioned because Harris’s dad’s Mustang had that specific gearbox setup.
Twin turbocharged means the engine uses two turbochargers. Turbos cram more air into the engine, which can make it produce a lot more power.
Car
Pantera
The Lamborghini Pantera is a classic supercar with the engine in the middle. In this story, Harris’s dad turbocharged it twice (twin-turbo) as a home project.
Term
drawing through
“Drawing through” is describing how the turbo pulls mixture/air through the intake system. It’s a way of setting up forced induction that’s different from more modern turbo plumbing.
“Rods” here are the connecting rods inside an engine. They connect the piston to the crankshaft, and if they’re not made right, the engine can run poorly or wear out faster.
Honing is a careful grinding/finishing step that smooths and shapes a metal surface to the right specs. Here, it’s being used to make the rod’s surfaces come out looking right and staying straight.
Rod bolts are the bolts that hold the connecting rod’s bearing cap in place. If the parts are forced to fit in a way that bends the bolts, the alignment can be wrong and the engine can wear out or fail sooner.
“True the shoes” means getting the honing tool’s contact pieces perfectly aligned. If they’re crooked, the grinding step won’t make the surface straight, even if it looks finished.
Line honing is a precision machining step where a shop re-machines the engine’s bearing holes so they line up correctly. It helps the crankshaft fit the way it’s supposed to, which affects smoothness and oiling.
“Mains” are the main bearings that support the crankshaft in the engine block. If those bearing areas aren’t straight and correctly sized, the crank can bind or wear faster.
A mandrel is a straight, precision tool that helps the machine cut the engine parts accurately. If it’s not aligned, the shop can end up with bearing holes that aren’t the right shape.
Pro touring is a style of build focused on modern handling and braking performance in classic cars. It typically means upgrading suspension, steering, and drivetrain components so the car drives like a contemporary performance machine rather than just looking fast.
The Corvette is Chevrolet’s famous performance car. Here, the guest is talking about a Corvette build with a twin-turbo 427 engine, meaning it’s heavily modified for much more power.
Term
427
“427” is the engine size—427 cubic inches—which is a big V8. A twin-turbo 427 is a way of making that already-large engine produce even more power.
Pump gas is the regular gasoline you can buy at a gas station. When a turbo engine makes huge power on it, that’s impressive because the engine has to avoid “knock” (bad combustion).
David Freiberger is referenced as the person the host worked with on multiple major turbo projects. The episode frames him as a key relationship that helped the builder get notoriety through media coverage and TV.
A “70 Camaro” is a 1970 Chevrolet Camaro muscle car. People like it for big power builds because there are lots of parts and it’s a strong base for modifications.
“1500 horsepower” means the engine makes an enormous amount of power. Cars that can do that usually need a lot more than just a stock engine—they need strong parts and careful tuning.
An engine shop is a place that works on engines—building them, repairing them, or modifying them for more power. Here, it means they’re mainly doing engine-related work day to day.
A super car shop is a shop that works on expensive, high-performance cars. In this episode, the host is saying they used to do that kind of work but now they do more engine-focused work.
Fuel injection is how a car feeds fuel into the engine using electronically controlled valves. It helps the engine get the right amount of fuel for smooth running and better efficiency.
Sizing turbos is choosing the right turbo for the engine. A bigger turbo can make more power at high RPM, while a smaller one usually spools faster for better low-end response.
A sequential transmission is a racing-style gearbox where you shift to the next gear in order. Instead of choosing any gear like a normal manual, it steps through them one-by-one.
6xd is a company that makes racing transmissions. The point they’re making is that their sequential gearboxes are built to survive hard launches and big power.
“87” and “91” are different grades of gasoline. Higher octane generally helps prevent the engine from detonating/knocking, which can damage the engine if you use too-low fuel for a high-performance tune.
“Torched” here means the engine got so hot or burned so badly that the cylinder head was damaged. It’s the kind of damage you can see after severe knocking or overheating.
A trophy truck is an off-road race truck built for desert racing. The “application” part means the engine is being used in that kind of rough, demanding off-road environment.
Pistons are the parts that move up and down inside the engine cylinders. After a tough run, builders inspect them to see how much wear happened and whether the engine is healthy.
A data log is like a recorded report from the car’s sensors while it’s running. It helps the builder see what the engine was doing during the run—like how hard it was being pushed and how hot things got.
Wide open throttle means the driver is asking for full power—throttle pedal all the way down. It’s one of the harshest ways to run an engine, so it’s great for finding weak spots.
Jet boat racing is boat racing where the boat is pushed by a jet system rather than a propeller. It can be very hard on the engine because it often runs at high power for long periods.
A dyno is a machine that tests an engine on a stand. It lets you measure power and see how the engine behaves under load without needing to drive it on the road.
A wire harness is the bundle of electrical wiring that connects sensors, actuators, and the engine control unit (ECU). In an engine package, the harness work is crucial because it ensures the ECU can communicate correctly with everything the build adds or changes.
The camshaft profile is the “timing and shape” of the cam that controls when the engine’s valves open. Changing it can make the engine feel stronger at different RPMs.
An engineered package means the parts are chosen as a coordinated set, not picked one by one. That helps the engine work correctly because everything is meant to fit and function together.
A crate engine is a ready-to-install engine you buy as a complete package. It’s usually faster and more predictable than building everything from scratch.
Priming the motor means making sure oil is flowing before the engine starts. It helps prevent metal parts from rubbing without lubrication for the first few seconds.
On a pushrod engine, lifters are components that transfer motion from the camshaft to the rocker arms. Pumping the lifters means filling them with oil so they can operate correctly and maintain proper valve timing and lubrication.
A pushrod motor is an engine design where a rod system moves motion from the cam to the valve mechanism. It relies on good oiling so the valve train works correctly.
Exhaust temp is how hot the exhaust gets. If one cylinder’s exhaust is hotter or cooler than expected, it can signal something wrong with that cylinder’s combustion or airflow.
Loading the rings is a break-in step for the piston rings. They run the engine in controlled bursts so the rings properly seat and seal inside the cylinders.
Static timing is checking the ignition timing baseline when the engine isn’t running. If it’s wrong, the engine can start off with the wrong spark timing and get damaged quickly.
A Hall effect sensor is a sensor that tells the computer where the engine is in its cycle. If it’s mounted or aligned wrong, the computer can fire the spark at the wrong time.
The fuel curve is the tune that decides how much fuel the engine gets at different speeds and loads. Changing it helps the engine run right and make the power you want.
Oil pressure tells you whether the engine is getting enough oil to lubricate everything. If oil pressure is too low, the engine can wear out or get damaged fast.
Injectors are the parts that spray fuel into the engine. If they aren’t firing correctly, the engine won’t run right or make the expected power.
Term
wiring is certified
“Certified” wiring means the electrical connections have been checked so the engine’s sensors and ignition parts are getting the right signals. Bad wiring can make the engine run wrong or not run safely.
A “safety package” is extra monitoring added to the car/engine so problems get noticed early. The host says they add lots of sensors to help prevent failures.
Fuel duty is a way to measure how long the fuel injectors are being told to spray fuel. If something goes wrong—like the fuel pump can’t keep up—the computer can notice it and take protective action.
A duty spike is when the computer suddenly commands the injectors to spray much more fuel than normal. If that happens because the fuel system can’t deliver it, the system can recognize trouble quickly.
“Grenade it” just means the engine gets destroyed suddenly. The point of the safety cut is to prevent the car from driving in a way that could cause that kind of damage.
Over boost is when the turbo/supercharger makes too much pressure. Too much boost can stress the engine, so the computer may shut it down to keep it safe.
Holley is a company that makes performance parts for engines, including engine control systems. The host is saying it’s a common choice, so it’s easier to find someone who knows how to tune and support it.
Life racing is a brand of race engine computer/tuning system. The host is saying it’s their preferred option for certain high-end builds and that it’s related to Cyvex.
MoTeC is a brand of race-grade engine computers. It’s designed for tuning and monitoring, and the host is saying it’s generally easier to use than the alternative they mentioned.
Brand
Cyvex
Cyvex is another engine computer/tuning system brand. The host is basically saying it’s connected to the “life racing” system they were talking about.
Nitrous is a system that injects a special gas into the engine to make more power. It can dramatically increase output, so you have to manage it carefully during testing.
Engine Masters is a competition where engine builders bring engines to be tested on a dyno. They’re judged using a consistent power/torque test range so results are comparable.
Dynamic Test Systems (DTS) is the name of the dyno equipment used to measure engine power. Nelson says it works great, but it has trouble when engines make extremely high horsepower.
The Cadillac DTS is a luxury sedan, meaning it’s designed to be comfortable and upscale. In the podcast, the “DTS” term also appears in a testing context, so it may be discussed as part of equipment or measurement. Either way, the car name refers to Cadillac’s larger, comfort-focused model.
Here, “steam” means the dyno’s water gets heated so much it turns into vapor. That’s a sign the system is being pushed beyond what it was designed to handle.
Term
KOD
KOD is a shorthand term people use in racing/engine talk. In this clip, it’s mentioned as a possible explanation for what’s going on with the extreme horsepower setup, but the full meaning isn’t spelled out here.
Mopar is a nickname people use for Chrysler’s performance cars and engines (often Dodge). Here it’s part of a common comparison between American brands for making power.
It means “how much power you get for the engine size.” Two engines can have different total sizes, so this lets you compare them on a more even basis.
Car
coyote
“Coyote” is a nickname for a Ford V8 engine. People like it because it’s a strong, upgrade-friendly engine that can make a lot of power without needing a huge displacement.
Term
10 three
This sounds like they’re talking about an engine that’s about 10.3 liters in size. Bigger displacement usually means the engine can make more torque and power, especially in drag/street builds.
“Deck” is an engine-building measurement that affects how much room the engine has internally. Changing it can help you build a bigger-displacement engine.
It means being respectful of how the car’s mechanical parts work. Instead of beating on it, you try to avoid stressing components in ways that cause premature wear.
This sounds like a specific turbo design/patent by the builder being interviewed. He’s saying he created it so the turbo setup could be arranged more symmetrically instead of looking “off.”
A “V8” is an engine with eight cylinders arranged in a V shape. It’s a popular engine layout for making strong power, especially in performance builds.
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Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Minoxide Podcast.
I'm your host, Harris, aka Minoxide, man of many automotive aspirations.
Today we're continuing the California trip, the first ever California trip of the podcast,
which has been a lot of fun so far.
And today we are on Nelson Racing Engines.
I want to hear your story.
How do we get here today?
Because there's a lot of cool stuff in here that's different.
You got LS stuff, you got Ford Hemmy stuff.
But what does 20 years ago look like?
How do we get to where we're at today?
So my dad was always kind of racing cars or tinkering with cars.
So he had, as a kid, he had like a Corvair that he was SCCA road racing.
And then that went into a 70 Boss Mustang.
And he had, you know, it's got 410, top loader, all that stuff.
And he was road racing that.
And then he got a Andretti Series Lotus.
And then from there, he actually twin turbocharged a Pantera in the garage.
So that was kind of cool because he did a, like back then, obviously they didn't have
the tech that they do now.
So he had like Delaroto's drawing through a pair of Rage's on like a manifold.
And it was pretty cool as a kid.
Like he would take me on, you know, this one back stretch where we lived where there was
really no cars or anything.
And that thing would like, you know, come on boost and one turbo is behind my ear.
One turbo is kind of like it's going on right now.
Or exactly.
Exactly.
That's who we're talking about, you know.
And you know, he kind of put the bug in me.
And then, you know, as we were kids, we started street racing and doing stuff like that.
And we were, you know, constantly, you know, I mean, almost, we're not going to say making
a living, but it was our life basically twice a week.
We were street racing and stuff like that.
And then it got, you know, it got sketchy.
Like gang started getting involved in the races because the bets were getting bigger
and you had to lock the money and, you know, different things like that.
And you know, there were some unpleasant outcomes where I actually saw a guy get shot over the
race and then I actually saw another guy get run over and actually ran the guy over.
And at that point I was like, I'm out of this thing, you know, I'm not doing this anymore.
And so I was like, well, maybe I could do this professionally.
And at the time I had like a construction business, my mom owned property management
company and I was doing like fences and house painting and, you know, general construction
and actually like making real money, you know.
And but I decided I was going to try to do it professionally.
So I started up in my grandmother's garage, my grandmother gave me her garage.
And you know, so I wired it.
I bought, I went to West Tech, which is a machinery show.
I bought my first machine on the floor there as a display and that's an Enco mill that
I actually still have that we use for balancing today.
And I started accumulating.
We ended up getting, I made my own flow bench, you know, I had a head servicer at a steel
liberator, you know, and I was starting to build all my friends motors.
Okay.
So real quick then.
So what timeframe is this roughly?
So did you stop doing everything in the construction side of things?
Well, to keep things moving, I had like for a long time, even, even after I opened professionally,
I still had to take construction jobs here and there because for the first 10 years of
business, I worked seven days a week and I lost money every year.
So like I had a nice little nest egg and after that 10 years, like I had nothing, you
know, but I didn't really care because like, I just remember there's a freeway that's 118
freeway or goes from the 23 to the 118.
There's a bridge that goes across into, into Seamy Valley and like I did a lot of work
in Seamy Valley and I used to cross that bridge and my stomach used to just be like upset
because I'm like, I do not want to be doing this shit.
Like I don't want to be doing construction.
I love cars, you know.
And so at any rate, I was building my grandmother's garage out and buying all these things.
And my friend Cole Ballster, his dad used to do these body and white cars.
So he used to give out like cars to good pro stock drivers.
And so there were these guys there called the Scribner brothers.
And so they had approached Cole's dad saying, do you know anybody who wants to buy a
machine shop because a guy named Bill Hyatt had passed away and they were selling his
machine shop.
And like for me, this was the opportunity because it had been a couple of years that
I'd been moving towards this goal.
And, you know, I went and checked this shop out and like it had a go pot go power dyno
at the time has a flow bench that I still use today.
Like it was a full machine shop.
It was like a dream come true, you know.
And so I couldn't afford it for the price.
But my grandmother let me my mom and grandmother let me some money and I landed
this like 100 fence contract in like the middle of it was like 116 degrees in summer.
I swear to God, I mean, we just worked like I worked so hard and there was like a deadline
to come up with the money.
And we literally came in with the cashier's check like an hour before another person was
coming in with the cashier's check for the shop.
And that's how professionally Nelson Racing started out of an actual shop.
And that was 31 years ago is 1995.
And I bought this shop and I didn't know how to use shit, you know.
Yeah.
Where does this knowledge come from?
Right.
Because you went from being a kid that was street racing to now you're teaching yourself
out of machine or what exactly was happening?
Yeah, I mean, basically, yeah, I mean.
I think drive is nine tenths of the law.
I mean, that's really what I like to say, you know, like if you have a passion for
something and you have drive for it, drive is nine tenths of the law.
Like there's a picture somebody gave me a while ago.
This little baby like pushing this super heavy car, which looks impossible, but like
with enough vision enough goal towards it, you're going to get there.
So I bought this machine shop.
I've obviously was in the like I had awareness.
We were street racing.
I was building my own motors.
I was building my friends' motors, but I didn't have the machine knowledge of everything.
So I just went to work and just fuck things up for a long time.
And, you know, when you're starting a business like that, at least for me,
like other people have different stories.
But for me, like it's hard to keep the lights on, you know, I mean,
it was a struggle.
I was there, you know, 16, 18 hours a day, seven days a week.
And I would take in anything to pay the bills because that's what I wanted to do.
And it's funny because like you look around the shop right now and you see
like engines, crazy engines everywhere, crazy cars everywhere.
But I'm back in the day, like if I had a set of aluminum heads that came in
that I got to work on, like I would put it like as a display, like, you know,
we're working on a motor with aluminum heads, man, we're badass, you know.
So it was, you know, that's that's kind of how Nelson Racing got started
professionally as we opened up a shop on recede in Parthena in 1995.
Had all these machines and then, you know, just started learning how to use them.
I had one guy come in, used to trade me.
He would use my machines and show me how to use them.
OK. And he pretty much showed me all the wrong ways to do everything.
So for a while, you know, we were doing, I was doing stuff, you know,
you just have to learn, you know, you have to get your feet wet and do it.
And then I was selling a machine one time because we had a what's called a wet grinder,
which is a it's a stone surfacer.
So it's really pretty bitching machine because if you have valve seats that are close to the deck,
if you're cutting that with a carbide, it usually takes the seat and drags it across the deck.
But a stone will give you a really nice finish when the seat is up there.
But the it was old and it smelled really bad.
And I didn't want to deal with rebuilding it.
So I put it up for sale and there's a guy named Gene Oli who turns out was like the man when my dad
was doing his stuff.
And he came by and very humbly was like looking at everything that I was doing.
But for some reason, he took a liking to me and like could see that like, you know, I had the hunger.
So he's like started showing me some things on how to machine stuff.
And that, you know, kind of spawned into a relationship, not like a lot of time,
but on the weekends, he might come over and show me different things and really,
like in that little time period, leveled me up like, you know, because he at the time,
I think was like 70 maybe or something, and I've been doing it all his life.
So he showed me things that probably leveled me up 10 years in a jump, you know, and that was
super grateful to him for doing some of those things for me.
Were you on learning a lot of stuff at that point too then?
Oh, yeah.
What were some like slap on the wrist like things that you learned?
I mean, none of this is done anymore because everything is like, you know, you're getting
brand new rods or whatever.
Back in the day, we were rebuilding rods.
What people would do when they rebuilt a rod is they would cut an angle into the rod.
That way, when they clamped it, the sides would bend in.
So when you honed it, there wouldn't be a shadow there.
So we were doing that.
So when you gave the product to the person, like the whole rod looked like it was honed and bitching,
but essentially it was bending the rod bolts and everybody at that time was doing it, you know,
and he was like, dude, like you're fucking bending the rod bolts right now, you know,
and, you know, just because the customer thinks that it's better, that it looks all honed,
you can't be doing this.
And he showed me how to, like one of the biggest things he showed me is how to true the shoes
and the stones in.
So like the stones and the shoes, they've got to be totally straight for you to be able to
hone something and have it be straight.
Whereas, you know, I would just be honing on the thing and one end would have like
eight tenths of taper different than the other or the middle would be bowed.
And I didn't understand how to make it all right.
So he showed me how to, like, you know, without honing oil, true in the shoes and the stone.
And to this day, this is like something that I don't see many shops doing is,
like when we line hone, I'll true the stones and the shoes in and you'll put dike them on it.
What I usually do is I'll take, like the grit out of the hone and I'll pack the stones to where
you, you get the stones where they're clogged and then you take an old block and then you just
true the line hone in bringing the shoes in dead straight.
And when we line hone, like what I will never do and that you see shops do all the time and
probably anybody watching this will just be like, I use a fucking idiot or whatever, but
I will never loosen the cap when we line hone because people will line hone and they can't,
they're not getting the measurement that they want.
And then they'll loosen a cap. So that part of the cap doesn't cut.
And then the rest of the block cuts so they can get their dimensions right vertically.
But to me, you got mains that are all like this when they do that.
So you just, you want to get the, you want to get the mandrel as straight and true as possible
before you put it in there. So those are a couple of things. I mean, there was many,
many things that he showed me, but those two are probably the biggest, you know.
Okay. So, so you get the machine shop then. How does, how do things expand from there?
So for me, like I was always into like
pro touring style cars, cars that handled,
braked and accelerated. Whereas I was, wasn't just a drag racer. Like I always liked the whole thing,
you know, so I was always, you know, pushing those kind of things, engine builds
and, you know, I actually, it's funny. I found, I'll have to show you later, but we were just
cleaning up an area of the shop and I found these like handwritten letters that I had written to
every magazine there was at the time, like there was GM high tech and Corvette and Kit Car magazine,
a street rotter. And so I used to write hand, handwritten letters saying like,
let's do something. Like let's do some stuff so I can expose my shop, what we do, you know.
And some of the big breakthroughs were,
one, we did an engine for Boyd Cottington. I don't know if that name rings a bell for you or not.
Maybe. So he was a big car builder at the time and he had a show on Discovery called American Hot Rod.
Oh, yep. Okay. So we did a twin turbocharged 427 in this Corvette. You know, back then when I was
doing turbocharged stuff, like let's say 1999, right, when it was like we were popping off and
we're making like a thousand horse of pump gas and everybody's like, no way, no way you're making
that reliably. And you know, we were, but at that time, like right now it's like you probably how old
are you? 26. 26. Like a thousand horsepower to you is like what 400 horsepower was to me back in the
day. So a thousand horsepower to you is like, what's the big deal? Bulltons. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But
it wasn't back then, you know. So anyway, we did that, we did the thing on American Hot Rod and it
kind of showcased like, oh my God, man, they made 1500 horsepower on this thing. And it had a little
build and that was kind of nice. Gave us some notoriety. And then this guy, David Freiberger,
I don't know if you're familiar with him or not. So I would always go to SEMA and I would see him
and just badger the shit out of him. You know, like he'd see me coming down and I'd be like,
oh, David, dude, we gotta do something. We And I had done it enough to where
he was finally like, okay, you know, you can take this anvil motor that we had. And
and you can modify it. So we went ahead and started building a twin turbo for him. And at the same
time we started building, he had a 70 Camaro in his backyard. I'm like, well, we should probably,
you know, throw this in something so you could take it to the track. And he was like, I don't know.
And I ended up sending my tow truck driver over there, you know, getting the car. And we built
this really nice 1500 horsepower engine and the car ended up being called the F-bomb. And David
really took care of me like, like we did the work for free. But like he paid me back like 10 fold
because he had like, I think we ended up getting like the cover twice from that on Hot Rod, which
back then print meant something. Yeah, print was like the thing is like you blew up a million views
on the internet or something, you know. So we got that and then it turned into an ESPN TV show.
And, you know, just having a relationship with Freiburger was good because he was,
you know, he was the guy, you know, so that was good for us. But at that point, we were kind of
just off to the races because we were doing all these crazy twin turbo projects for everybody.
And it was unusual at that time what we were doing, you know. So that really, you know,
kicked off, you know, where we are now is we're basically just an engine shop. We have had a
full blown super car shop for 15 odd years, which I don't do anymore because it took too much time
away from my family. But yeah, that's what that's got us here, you know.
Okay, so you get to, you become a shop, you're building for folks at that point,
you scale it back then. So what's a normal day look like to you now? Are you in here doing
some machining or are you doing the quick books? I mean, this was a normal day look like now.
So now I'm actually in here working every day. For a while there, I was like, the guy getting beat
up on the phone, you know, ordering all the parts, I still do order a lot of the parts. But now I've
like, I really enjoy coming to work. Like I feel like so grateful that I get to do this every single
day. And like, I absolutely love what I do. Like I love coming in here, putting motors together. I
love figuring out like fuel injection stuff. I love sizing turbos. So I'm in here working every day
now. I mean, what I call it is ping pong. Like for me, we've got 10 guys in here and all day
long getting ping ponged. So like, to actually be able to concentrate fully is pretty hard. But
my guys are starting to get better at, you know, doing their own thing and like letting me alone
and letting me work. And I don't know, I swear this last like, couple months when I walk in,
there's a piece that I'm like, I'm looking forward to going to work. And there's a piece that I've
get in when I'm working that I'm just like, it's becoming like, like as exciting as it was when
I started. Do you it's kind of like you're entering into like a new season? Yeah, the business 100%.
100%. I think, and you know, I don't want to hex myself, but I think, you know, the days of like
survival, you know, like those first 10 years of where, you know, I'd come home and the lights
were off and, you know, I got my power shut off or, you know, you're like robbing this and robbing
Peter to pay Paul and stuff. Those days are going away. And now it's kind of like, you know, whoa,
like, look around, look, look what you're doing, look what you built, you know, and go enjoy it.
So that's what that's what I've been doing lately is just coming in here and kind of like,
I'm either doing the rebuilds because I want my guys to stay productive. So they're like doing
the constant crate engines and let's say if we heard something or, you know, like we want to
learn that I'm doing the teardown. So I'm like, my new like title is engine like rebuilder, which is
like, fucking hate cleaning stuff and like doing all that stuff. But, you know, I'm also handpicking
like selective projects for myself, you know, that, that I can enjoy and kind of learn from, you know,
when you get to a certain level in a build, whether it be drag racing or drifting,
road course, or just the badass three car, you'll have to upgrade your transmission.
And when we're talking sequential transmissions, there's no one on the planet would have stronger
in a 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. Okay, let's take that
and run with it. Then when it comes to rebuilding engines or inspecting, is there anything in
particular that sticks out? Like, for example, is it a customer putting 87 on accident or what
exactly does a rebuild come from? Well, we definitely have like, we have a customer that put 87 in
on purpose because he was actually like, too lazy or not too lazy, he just didn't want to
spend the money on 91. And this is like a 1400 horse twin turbo LS. And, you know, I mean,
the head was torched, the block was torched. And it happened twice. So the first time we rebuilt it
for free. And then the second time it came in, and I was like, you know, bring the car in and we
sent the gas out and had it analyzed and the dude was running 87. Hey, the price is out here, I do
the same thing, man. I was so irritated, man. So, but yeah, so that's something. But I mean,
for example, we just got a, we have a Kong supercharged LS packages that we do makes like
1100 horsepower. This one we tuned down slightly, but we have it in a trophy truck application. And so
they had 1300 miles of just like something that we would never ever do to a car. And we have a tear
down on that. And that is like an autopsy, like I am so excited to take that apart because I could
take the pistons out, send them to engineering, look at the barrels, see how the barrels are
wearing. I mean, it literally you don't get that opportunity to do that often where you have some
really hardcore beating going on. Like, for example, they sent me a data log. And on that data log,
I'm like, man, how long were you wide open? And he was like 80 miles. I was like, you're
fucking wide open for 80 miles. He's like, yeah, man, I'm like, oh my God. So like being able to
take data from an engine like that, you know, that's priceless. So next week, we're going to figure
out some things on that engine. Wow. Okay. How do you even build for something like that? Was that,
did you build with that intention in mind? Yeah, we knew it was going to get thrashed, you know,
we did this boat motor for like, have you ever heard of jet boat racing? Yeah. So that's like
45 minutes wide open throttle, eight heats. So for eight times that motor is wide open throttle for
45 minutes straight, you know, it's making 1200 horse for 45 minutes straight, you know. And so
that thing, we did all sorts of things like piss and squirters and big block rod, you know,
bigger mains and I mean, everything that you can possibly do to an engine to try to make it live.
And ultimately that actually, it ended up being successful. And then he got banned.
But first, actually, when he back up first, he put it in the water and ended up
routing water the way I didn't want him to route the water and he cooked the exhaust valves, which
we did like four times on the dyno. And there was already a pre warning on that. So we put it back
together and then he ended up going racing and he told me he had like 10 miles an hour on the field,
which was awesome. They even gave him like some kind of like, I don't know, I'm just, I don't know
the exact, but they gave him some kind of like one minute penalty or something and he still was,
you know, ahead. Got a lead trophy. Yeah. That's a fun term I recently learned. It's like, oh,
you're too fast to get a lead trophy. Yeah, exactly. One of the things I was looking through when I
was going through your Instagram page or your Facebook page is you're doing dinos on the engine
themselves. So you don't have a chassis dyno here, do you? Yeah, no chassis dyno. Okay. Has that always
been the case? It's always been the case. Yeah, it was always like, you know, if you were to take it
on the street, you do the drivability on the street in the car. But nowadays, like these packages,
let's say you buy a twin turbo LS or a supercharged LS for me, I mean, we've done now.
I don't know. We've done so many, like right this year is going to be our best year ever. And this
sounds like a small number, but it's huge for like, we're going to do 150 engines this year. And that
is top to bottom. That's making headers, making the wire harness, doing the line work, completely
assembling it and dynoing it. So these packages, I mean, we've probably built four or 500 of each
of these. So you can get these things, you can put them in the car, and they're going to like,
you're going to literally better have oil pressure because when you click that key, it's going to
light, you know. Okay, so at this point, you're doing all these engines. When do you start selling
energy? Will we sell engines? Yeah, well, we started that with rebuilds, you know, and
the rebuild, like the guy starting off doing a rebuilds, that's a tough game, because you got a guy
that, you know, has an engine, you're going to rebuild this thing, he's got a very limited budget,
and you've got to do it. There's no way to do a bad job, like you could do a bad job, but you're
not going to do a bad job. So you're going to do basically the same amount of work as you would
putting one of these together on a rebuild, but you're going to get paid, you know, a tenth of
what it would be, you know. So I did that for a long time, and I remember I had an employee that
worked for me, this guy Ron Thall, always remember this guy, and he was the most dedicated employee,
and I was paying them like, like minimum wage, it was terrible, you know, he was older than me too,
you know, but he absolutely always wanted to work in an engine job, and he came in there, and I remember
like going to my office thinking, I don't know how I'm going to pay this guy, and like I've been
where I worked like a hundred hours this week, this guy's working for minimum wage, and I don't
even know how I'm going to pay this guy, you know, and, and it wasn't that we weren't busy, we're
always busy, but just we weren't getting paid your value. So I remember I was like, you know what,
I don't care, at this point, it had been multiple years, I'm like, I'm going to double my price,
and if we go out of business, then then we're going to go out of business, you know, and so I
double my price, and we got double the work, you know, really? Okay. And then I was like, well,
you know, what makes sense is actually creating a package. So you're not taking somebody's stuff in,
having to figure out what's wrong with it, fix all those things, custom order individual parts,
those parts usually have some kind of roadblock into it, so you can't really finish that job. So
now you got like, you know, at that time, we'd had like 50 custom different weird projects going on,
there's always like one ball in the air onto the next. And I was just like, let's take some of that
out of the equation and make, you know, actual standard packages that are badass. And that's
what we've done. We've just continually refined these packages, and literally you can buy these
packages. And they're way better than the one off, because the chance that you get the one off totally
right is slim compared to the guy that's done 400 of the same thing. And it's not, oh, you know,
this Campshaft profile is a little better. And I actually like the exhaust valve seat width on
this head a little better. And this head gasket works better, this piston, you know, and over the
course of all these years, you come up with being able to have like an engineered package.
And then for us, it's like, we'll have, okay, let's order 50 blocks, cranks,
let's order, you know, whatever, 20, 30 sets of pistons. So you're not like, you're still chasing
your tail around manufactured parts, but you're not chasing your tail around a hundred different
version of that manufactured part, you know, that makes sense. So that that was probably the biggest
and best decision from a money making standpoint for the shop was to go into the crate engines.
And I'm just curious, I like to ask this question whenever I travel the country,
what's the shop rate here? Do you have a standard shop rate?
We really don't. I mean, it's a bi-project. Like the car shop was like 125 an hour. Oh,
and really, I was like 90 an hour. And then for the cars, this is the reason why I actually stopped
doing the cars is I would, I would go off on a bracket and we might have like 15 hours in a
bracket. The guy just wanted a bracket, but like I wanted to make it art, you know, and then I'm
like, I don't know how long I'm going to charge him 15 hours for this bracket, you know. And so
then I ended up charging him like four or five hours or something for the bracket, you know. And
that's like, I don't know, it's hard to charge by the hour, even though you should get paid for
every hour. So the crate packages makes it really easy for me because it's like, this is a set price.
If you want an option, it's this. If you want to dyno, it's this. And that's what it is, you know.
Yeah. I noticed that when I was going through like your packages on the website, like you can
Yeah. That was the question I wanted to ask earlier about the engine dyno. So do you,
when you're dynoing these again, 1500 plus horsepower engines,
what's your process to make sure that it's going to live? How long are the sweeps and all that?
We beat it up pretty good. I mean, what we do first is we will prime the motor. So we'll fill a can up,
pressurize the can. And before we're even cranking the motor over, we get oil and everything. We got
the lifters pumped. We got oil. We make sure that the valve cover is off and oil is dripping off
every single rocker arm. We won't even, won't even turn the motor over until every single
rocker arm is dripping of oil. This is on a pushrod motor, of course. Right. And then
with the plugs out, then we'll spin the motor because there'll be an air pocket in it, most
likely. We'll spin the motor until pressure is everywhere, put the plugs in it, and then we'll
fire up immediately upon fire up. We'll check every cylinder for temp. So like you might have
an ejector that's not connected or clogged or something. So immediately we're on exhaust temp
on every cylinder to make sure that, you know, all holes are hot. And then we bring it up to 2500
RPM and then, then we'll load the rings. So you'll vary the load. These days, it could be one or two
cycles of 10 to 15 minutes of getting the rings put in the cylinder wall. So you just have tension
on the ring constantly, you know, on and off, pushing it in the cylinder wall. Then we'll,
we will cut the filter. So we'll make sure that there's actually, depending on sometimes we cut
the filter before or after. But cut the filter, like if you walked in that room, you saw like,
looks like toilet paper, but there's all these filter elements hanging. So
at any rate, you want to make sure that the health of the motor is good
before the motor ever leaves the door. So you'll cut the filter, spread it. Actually, what we do is
we put it in a vise and we squeeze all the oil out of it. So that way, if there's a particle,
you're going to see it. And then we extend it all the way out and double check that there's no
particles in it anywhere. And then we start hitting it, you know, then we start, we'll come in like a
maybe 5500 RPM pull, you know, data log it, dual pull, check for knock. I'm pretty good about
checking for knock on the LS stuff. It's, you know, really good indicator if you've got something
weird going on. If everything looks good, the fuel looks good, you know, obviously, on a lot of
these, you have to check a static timing when you fire it up. So you want to verify that your
hall effect is in the right spot and that your timing actually is what it is. Because if that's
off, like the motor's done almost immediately, almost the first pull of the timing is off. You
just you'll see the pistons come right out of the exhaust pipe. And then then then we'll start
running it up, you know, at max power, my dyno sweeps pretty long. So each pulls like 15, 16
seconds of power, you know, different dinos you see sweep really quick. I don't really care. I like
it to be under load and I like it to sweep for a while, I get better data that way. And then we'll
go in and adjust the fuel curve to that particular engine and, you know, go in there, listen to
everything, look for leaks, you know, if it's a solid roller at some point, like maybe, you know,
five minutes into the run, once you got engine temperature, you're going to go in and adjust
the valves, make sure everything's good. And then, you know, after the dyno, then then you know that
you have something that you're when you give the customer, it's not going to leak, it makes exactly
the power that you want it to do. It's got good oil pressure. Before it leaves the door, you know
that like the whole oiling system, there's no debris in the oil because you've cut the filter.
All the injectors are firing, the wiring is, you know, certified, it works. You actually ran
his harness on his computer with his coils. So there's a lot of things that, you know, when a
guy gets it, it's like Russian roulette, like there's so many. We've actually developed this thing,
it's called a safety package where we put these zero to 100 sensors on everything. And then we
even have in the program like measuring fuel duty. So let's say the guy steps on it and, you know,
it's low on gas or the pump fails, it'll measure a duty spike. And that duty spike,
then we can go in and we can, you know, cut the motor so he's not going to just grenade it, you
know, or oil pressure drops below a specific cut the motor, you know, over boost, cut the motor,
all these little things, we do it in a safety package, you charge like $550 for this, for the
sensors and the wiring and the programming. And that's kind of like a nice little insurance policy
for the guy buying the motor. What are all these, do you have like a standard,
are these all Holley, all the engines that you sell here? Most are Holley. So most are Holley,
but we do a lot of life racing on the super high end stuff. We do MoTeC on some of the high end stuff.
We just did a Hall Tech. So we've done, we've done, I mean, we used to do electromotive all the time.
So we've done a lot of stuff, but I like to stay with one thing. I found that the Holley is
like so recognized by everybody that if it needs something, somebody competent will know how to
competent will know how to use it, you know, but, you know, capability wise for the money,
I would say it's really hard to beat Holley, you know, as far as like, if you want to get
into something super high end, we usually go into a life racing unit, or usually the customer
might not know enough about life, and they'll like demand a MoTeC and we'll use a MoTeC.
Yeah, this is actually my first time hearing about it before it was. So it's called life racing.
Okay. How's that differ from like a MoTeC? Are you able to get into nuances there at all?
I mean, the MoTeC is way more user friendly, I think. But I think the life, life is
just, I think it's better than the MoTeC. It's harder to, have you ever heard of Cyvex?
Yes. So Cyvex is an off of life racing. Gotcha. Okay, that makes sense then.
So life is like their Cyvex. I don't know, I don't really want to say it's like life is the parent
company Cyvex. I'm assuming is, I don't know, they would have to chime in on what Cyvex is, but
I think the program is basically the same. Gotcha. Understood. Okay. Was that always your process?
For example, when you look at something on a chassis down, they just whack it for a quick
23 seconds and that's it. Your tune's done basically just a few of those hits and whatever.
Did you evolve to what you're currently doing, the 15, 16 second sweeps? Or I guess,
when did that become standard for you? Well, we started with a manual Go Power. So I don't know
if you've ever run a manual dyno, but it's fucking gnarly. So you have a water valve and you have a
throttle, right? So you come in on the throttle and it's literally, it's like a garden valve.
I ended up welding like a pole to mine and then you would basically try to match load
to horsepower. So you'd come in on horsepower and then you'd grab water until you could
stall the motor and then you would slowly sweep the motor with your hand. And while you're doing
this, you need to be looking at this gauge that's swinging around as raw torque noting in your mind
that every 500 RPM, you're going to write down what kind of torque it made. So that's how we
started. I mean, try imagine hitting nitrous. I used to hit nitrous all the time. And then like,
you'd hit it and then like try to, you know, automatically adjust how much water you're going
to grab on the thing, you know? And then in 04, we were doing this thing called the engine masters
contests where like 50 of the best engine builders get together and then we basically race the engines
on dinos. So you have like an average horsepower and torque from 2500 to 6500. That average number
gets you a final number and places you in like a race. So I started in 02 with this and in 04,
I'm like, I got to get a fricking computerized dyno to get some really good numbers. And so we
bought this dynamic test systems, which is DTS, which was bought by a company called Superflow
now. Okay. But DTS is where the best I still I still run my DTS right now. It's fucking awesome.
It has trouble now with the big horsepower. Like I got I need to add another break to it.
Anytime we're over 2500, that thing is just pissed. It starts literally taking the water,
turning it into steam. And so if you don't have the rev limiter set, sometimes it could just
that's since what are you doing 2500 horsepower engines on? Is that KOD? Is it just about any
package we sell? If it's turbo and you want to get crazy, it'll make 2500 horse, you know.
Okay. Who does the best like power wise? Yeah, Ford Chevy or Mopar?
I mean, again, we're doing a lot of street stuff. We're not doing like, you know, solid block
race engine stuff. But like horsepower per cube, probably a coyote, but big blocks are,
you know, they're the winner, you know,
Yeah, what's the biggest block you got in here? That truck had it was a 10 three.
Is that as big as it gets? We've got an 800 cube in here right now, which is like 13. I don't even
know how many liters that is. I could work it out on my calculator, but it's big. It's a, it's a,
like I'll show you guys it's it's a 12 and a half inch deck. So it makes that motor look like a
baby, you know, this thing is ridiculous. Yeah. What did you say? That's a 565 with 288s.
That'll probably make 2500 and do, you know, Finnegan's drag and drive stuff, you know,
you call this stuff art in your interviews that I was, you know, checking out beforehand here.
When did you start seeing it as art? Did you always have mechanical sympathy and how things
look and interact or 100% it was always for me, like one of my things is functional mechanical
art. You know, like I, I guess I've been less on that lately as far as like we say that, but
like when I build a motor, it definitely needs to function, but it needs to look sexy. You know,
I mean, we patented the Miramid's turbos because I, I couldn't handle looking at conventional one
rotation turbos, you know, and like I used to build these header sets and intake tubings and
everything was lopsided all the time. And I was like, what the fuck is this lopsided? Man, I can,
you know, I can never make the motor look right. You were saying like, did I always, you know,
have the art version or the mechanical sympathy? I've never heard it that way. That's pretty good.
Yeah. But yeah, no, I mean, like I, where I left off was, you know, we, I patented the Miramid's
turbos for that simple reason. We were doing so many turbo combinations and it could never make
the motor look symmetrical. So we, you know, made a reverse rotator and, you know, made it in sizes
that were, you know, actually pertinent to the V8. And that just for me changed so much as far as
the way the engine bays look, but I always like to, you know, have, have it look like if you see
an engine with like an engine cover on it, I like, what are they doing with that? You know,
like you'll see the late models, they got the, you know, stupid ass plastic cover on there trying
to make it look good. It's like you should have made it look good as an engine because the engine
to me is sexy. It's this mechanical piece of art, you know, and I want it to look like it's supposed
to. Well, like for example, like, I think it was like the Kong that you had over there. It was just,
you know, silver chrome or whatever. I'm like, man, if you open an engine bay, it looks awesome.
Like one of my favorite cars that I've ever seen, I think it was, I want to say it was a Nova back
home sort of same, similar setup to what you got here, you know, black powder, Cody open a symmetrical
turret with the guys of fabricator. So he made it perfect. And I'm like, that's awesome. And you
share a photo, like you don't want to be embarrassed to share your engine bay. Yeah. So that, that's
freaking cool. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. I think it's a big part of our, you know, if you look at an
Elson racing engine, you pretty much know, I used to not put our logo on things on purpose.
Really? And just so like, I would make it to where you knew that was an Elson racing engine
without our logo. And now putting our logo on all over. Yeah, I mean, you got a lot of real estate
on there. So yeah. Talk about the turbo. So these are your turbos then? Yeah. So we patented the Miramidch
turbo in, I don't know. I don't even know the year anymore. 2000. Well, I think I filed the
early patent in 05. But yeah, so, you know, we made the first ones out of all billet, like,
literally, I don't know if you've ever cut Incanel from a solid chunk, but I would make the turbine
wheels from all billet. It would take 14 hours to make one turbine. So it was insane. And this is
back in 05. You're messing around with that? Yeah, like by the time we had a working model, it was
probably, I don't even know the year, but it was early, you know. Well, this sounds incredibly cheap
to do back then as well, right? Oh, yeah, it was really cheap. Yeah, it would take two tools and
14 hours to make one exhaust turbine. It would be like $20,000 for a pair of turbos. Wow. That's
insanity. So how's the, how's that developed in the last, again, 20 years? Has anything changed?
I hooked up with a guy named Brad Lewis, who owned a company called Turbonetics. And me and him,
like, we get along like amazing, we're good friends. And so he basically,
we, they, they manufactured our turbochargers. So I came up with, we came up with a tooling,
our own tooling. So we have divided exhaust housing and all this other stuff. And with the,
with the reverse rotator, you need to, the thrust bearing needs to be different, which,
you know, there's just things that you learn going the other direction. But they, that actually
brought it kind of mainstream because, you know, I was able to sell the turbos then at like,
at that time, not anymore, but at that time that we were selling them for like 2000 a pair.
And that was, and you know, that was really good. Like I actually, I broke my back in 2016
and was in a full body cast and was like, I'm going to lose my company. Cause I literally
was stuck on my back for, you know, four months, not being able to move. And,
and I decided, well, I'm going to actually release these turbos to the public. Cause I used to be like,
oh, if you need to buy my motor to have a Miriam inch turbo, you know, so I put these
turbos out there and we sold like that year. I don't know the exact number, but let's just say
like three or $400,000 were the turbos, which allowed the company, it allowed me to get through,
you know, with being stuck on my back. So I literally all day long would like
answer calls and do PayPal orders with like my fabricators here built me this TV screen that
was flat and I could rotate and stuff. And I could just answer the call and it take the sales and
sell turbo as well. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I didn't go into the details of that
story when you were on a camera, butch pocket was a hot rod. Some podcasts you were on. I didn't
get that far into it, but that is, that is kind of like every car guy's worst nightmare. If you're
making money off of working on cars and it's like, now you can't do anything. Yeah. How did you get
through that time? Was there anything like, were you just trying to look at that light at the end
of the tunnel? Like, I guess, what kind of kept you going through that? I don't know. I mean,
life just kind of happens if you kind of go through it. You know, I don't know. I think,
obviously having a great family, you know, having an incredible wife who was, you know,
taking the load, you know, I had these little, little babies running around and it was even
crazy because they would be like running on the couch over my head and I'm like, you know, you
can't get near me, you know, because if at the time my back hadn't solidified, so if like,
if I was hit wrong, I'd be paralyzed, you know? That's why they got you in the freaking, you know,
suit. Yeah. You know, like even walking to the toilet was like step by step. It was crazy. It was
fucking crazy time, you know? But like I said, like it allows me to come in here and be so grateful
to be able to be in this position, like relatively pain free and do what I love every single day.
I mean, it really like for a guy who broke his back, like I really don't have any issues.
Yeah, you were throwing these ends around no problem here. Yeah, setting up.
Yeah, no. I mean, if I strain it too bad, I'll like pull, I've pulled a couple of ligaments
because now I'm kind of hunched a little bit, but blessed, you know?
When did you start getting back into it then? Was it a pretty quick like recovery and go back
into it or did you have to ease into what you were doing? As soon as I was able to get back in
here, I was in here. Okay. So yeah, I was actually doing, I was doing all the tuning on the dyno
remote, you know? So I'd team viewer in, they'd have the motor ready on the dyno and I would tune
it, you know, in my little friggin' back suit on the couch, you know?
How does that, when you're doing an engine dyno, like compared to, again, I'm going to use a
chassis dyno as an example here, but like you kind of have to feel the car. You have to know
what you're looking for. Is there anything like remote tuning, right? Like you, you're not with
the car, for example. Does the same thing apply to the engine yet has somebody competent running
everything or? Yeah, well, on our dyno, it's like we already know these combinations. So
it wasn't too, but you know what? That's actually an interesting story because at the time when that
happened, we had a twin 100 millimeter, 700 inch semi-hemi that I don't know if you ever seen a
sunny Leonard Hemi. I don't know if I have. It's fucking huge. It's huge. Okay. You know,
we had 200 millimeter turbos on this thing, dual injection, you know, all this stuff. And I had a
guy that never had ran the dyno before and I was trying to like walk them through and we ended
up having like a belt drive issue and any rate, he ended up, you know, he ended up doing all these
pulls on this motor with me checking the tune and adjusting it and it worked out, you know.
So why turbos? Why is that your favorite? Why is that your go to?
There's, I don't know. I mean, these days it's like, I like everything, but turbos, there's nothing
that makes power like turbos. Like you can put a blower motor on, like for example, and I'm not
hating because I don't want people to get pissed at me, but you can put like a big ass 1471 on
something and the thing will have like a crazy camshaft and you know, it's doing this awesome,
like surge idle, but that is the most unreliable nightmare for an everyday car because like you
can never get the fuel right in that thing. That blower is totally inefficient. Like, and then I
used to call them two for ones. So we used to do these blown marine packages. So you'd have two,
572, 1471s and you make like, you know, whatever, let's say they make 1,100 horse each, like from
the marine world, or you could have one twin turbo that makes, you know, 2,200 horse, you know, and
the sad thing is, is that one turbo motor is more reliable than the two blown ones because
you got this belt that's whipping around wreak and havoc on the main bearings. The fuel distribution
through the blower is crazy at best. And like the efficiency of the blower to get that thing to make
the power that you want, it's driving, you're making like, I don't even know, but let's call it
like 400 horse to drive the thing. I'm sure that's incorrect, but insane amount of parasitic loss. So
turbos, there's like barely any parasitic, it's really easy on the bearings. Like you'll know
when you build blower motors versus turbo motors, turbo motors are way easier on the bearings.
In racing these days, now they're kind of going away a little bit from the turbos and they're doing
like, you know, screws and pro chargers or whatever. But for me, it's still, it's still a turbo thing,
you know, but a screw blower on the street, like a Whipple or a Kong or, you know, one of those
things they are, it's hard to not like them. They are fucking amazing, you know. Yeah, like give me
an example of one of your blower engines here, like, because especially if you're doing like a big
block and you throw a Kong on top of it, you're making stupid horsepower there as well, I imagine.
Yeah, the Kong, like the screw blower stuff, we usually stick to like the, you know, Coyote,
the newer Hemi and the LS kind of lower cubic inch stuff. Okay. They don't necessarily have a good,
like they have a 3.8 Whipple has a 3.8 that can kind of keep up with the big block a little bit,
but they're supposedly coming out with a 5.0 liter that would be probably suited for a big block.
But if you've ever driven one of these combinations, like our blown combination,
it feels, have you ever driven a Tesla Plaid? I've been in one, yeah. Okay, it feels like a Tesla
Plaid, but it actually has soul, you know, like, so when you accelerate, it has that kind of torque
immediately, but then it revs to like 7,500 RPM. So it's, they're glorious. Like, I, these days,
my buddy, my buddy, Enzo, I was talking to him, I'm like, man, it would be pretty nice to get like a
third, like a, I love Irox, right? So I get a third gen Irox. Okay. Maybe, maybe put one of my
blown packages in this with the roaster stop chassis. He's like, what the fuck? Like, if you
don't have a twin turbo in that thing, I'll cut your legs off, you know, and I'll probably have a
turbo in it, but that's how good our little blower packages are. They're just like, you drive around
any gear, any RPM, and you get in it, and it's just your pinned, you know, it's because it's making
like our, you know, 1200 horse, three liter, Webll package, it's making 1000 foot pounds by like
3000 RPM. You know, I mean, where do you need 1000 foot pounds? You know, that's, yeah, it's crazy.
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Let's get back to the show. Roaster shop stuff. Is that your go to then roaster shop? Yeah, yeah,
definitely. Jeremy Gerber and Phil Gerber. Those guys, those guys are awesome, man. Super awesome,
guys. And like, they're humble, but they push and kick ass. Like, I mean, I don't know if you've
ever seen their shop. I actually haven't even been there personally, but like, I mean, I'm actually
like super impressed with those guys and the products that they give are just amazing. Our
Morrison also is awesome. We used to use our Morrison and their products are incredible also.
But I just tend to go with Jeremy's stuff just because, you know, got a lot of respect for the
guy and he's just badass. I think they're like 56 hours away from where I'm at. I think
they're like not too far from Chicago, if I remember correctly. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, be cool to check
that out eventually. But what do you do all in house, right? So if you're getting a roaster
shop chassis, then what else is done in house seems like you do a lot of stuff. We're looking some
stuff at everything off camera. Yeah, there's nothing you can't do here, I guess. I mean,
we at one point, like this as a car that's not here right now, but it would be it's too bad,
it's not here for you to see, but we basically we're building a mid-engine all wheel drive
1967 JTO. And we built the chassis from scratch. We built the all wheel drive system from scratch,
the front differential, rear differential from scratch. This is obviously there's a guy named
Wiseman who's building that portion of it. But there really isn't when we had the supercar stuff,
we were doing interiors from scratch, wiring the cars, painting the cars, you know, absolutely
everything we were doing out of this shop. It's like I told you before, it's literally like for a
guy coming up right now, it's like the Wild West. Like you literally, if you've got some talent and
you've got some customers that believe in you, you can build just about anything. I mean, you can
build your own engine from scratch, no problem. And with AI coming in right now, I can only even
imagine what that's going to do. Like we have AI help us with some of the structure of, you know,
suspension components or this and that, and it comes out looking like a spider web or something.
But it's like super light, super strong. I make like I said, like I'm coming into work so grateful
and so happy and realizing like, this is just the beginning, you know, I'm 52 years old and like
there's so much more to do in this industry right now. It almost gives goosebumps right now,
just talking about it. You got a lot of runway, right? Like 52, I always mess with Jay, right?
Because he's always talking like he's on the back now. And I'm like, dude, you are young, man.
You got so much runway. One of the things we were looking at is like the 3D printed,
those headers we were looking at. It's like, I like guys that are looking to the future
of the industry because if you're stuck in the old ways, like you're just going to get left behind.
But when you're looking at stuff like that, what made you want to pursue the 3D printing stuff,
for example? All right, so the 4DSD card filled up, you're talking about the 2-atara?
Oh, yeah. So the 2-atara like years and years ago, we were 3D printing collectors at Incanel,
you know, and everybody was like, that'll never work, but it was working great. You know,
we did all sorts of air intakes at a 3D printed aluminum. We've done carb hats at a 3D printed
aluminum. And just recently, what I was showing you earlier is we actually did a full 3D printed
header from, you know, like not parts of a header where you got a weld that is all one piece, except
for I just welded the flanges on because I didn't want to deal with them machining it. But,
you know, it's really like there's a company out there as a singer or zinger.
Yeah, singer, the Porsche company?
Not the Porsche company, they have this. It's a super car. It's CZ INGR, I think, or something.
Oh, interesting. Okay.
But the whole car is additive manufacturing, everything. Like the, everything about that car
is 3D printed, you know? And it's pretty crazy. So if you got a good designer, like,
and I'm not a designer, like obviously, I don't know how to do all the computer design. So
I have people hired to do that, but I have a vision of it. And, you know, you can do like what I'm
looking at lately is like, like the casting process where you can 3D print molds for like
limited runs of ideas. We've had a four valve 500 cubic inch engine on the back burner for a long
time. And with, you know, additive manufacturing, I feel like I could cast a block in the heads,
at an affordable price, and then, you know, pop out a few just to see how they run, you know,
because I feel like, like, everybody loves a Coyote, right? I mean, Coyotes are, well, not
everybody, if you're GM guy, you don't. Yeah, yeah. But like they have a, like you can drive around a
Harley, and then you can drive around like a Ducati, right? And there's a difference between
the Harley and the Ducati. Like they're like, you've got the rice rocket and the Harley, the Harley
sounds bitching, like, you know, it has its own aura, but it is not like, you know, a 15,000 RPM
bike motor, you know, and four valves are really like, everybody in my shop is going to want to
kill me, but four valves or it's at, dude, like, if you want to make air, if you want to make horsepower,
an engine is an air pump, the more air you put in, and the more fuel you put in, the more horsepower
you're going to make. It's all it is, it's an air pump. And so two valves versus four valves,
unless you get into like a fuel car or some kind of crazy boosted thing, for me, like, I would
definitely love to do, like, an 11,000 RPM, 500 inch big block that you could drive on a daily basis.
So we've had this project in the works for like, in a while, but it's just, it's a money thing,
like being able to do it all, you know, on my own dime or whatever. What's the hardest part about
doing it? I mean, to dedicate the time to it and the cost, obviously, you know, so a project like
that. But now, like, I look at, you know, what you can do with, you know, printing molds and
stuff like that, and it's starting to starting to think, I don't know, might have to do this soon,
you know, because like crankshafts and rods, pistons, cams, all that stuff, you just go to a
professional and have them make you one, you know, but it's always been like water jacketing the block
and all that other stuff that, you know, you can do it in a billet, like we've got, we've done a ton,
I've got a, I've got a four cam, a small block that we did at all billet, like 15 years ago,
sitting there in the corner. But, you know, you got to cut the water jackets in the thing,
and then you got to plate it and, you know, being able to actually do a casting on a head
versus doing all sorts of weird drill and this and that, you know, you know, it's pretty cool.
Are you capable of doing any of that stuff in-house or is that something you'd have to outsource?
You mean like printing something like that? Well, no, if you like, again, if you had to like
machine jackets and all that stuff. Well, we used to have like literally right next door was D&K
machine. Okay. And like, he unfortunately ended up passing away, but he was our CNC machinist forever.
And that was like, we literally, you know, walk, walk across the way and, you know, hey, Dave,
let's try this, let's try that. So that's why you see like almost all these different things,
like the alien intake and all these different billet parts that we do was like a relationship with
our neighbor, you know, so it was pretty cool. What has been the most fascinating thing that
you've learned in the last, let's call it 235 years with any of these projects?
I don't know. What's the, what's the most interesting thing that I learned in the last five years?
Like the two Atara, that was a hell of a challenge, I imagine.
Yeah, that, I'll tell you what was nice about the two Atara and what I learned with that is one,
I worked with this guy, Chris Muzio, who owns Dan Zio Performance. Okay. This guy,
it's like, like I consider myself like a tuner, but I'm not like a real tuner. Like Chris Muzio is
like maybe like a, like a Shane T or, or as Jay, that guy was his name, Job Spetter, maybe or something.
Yeah. Yeah. Like, but they are Ryan Witt from Holly or whatever. These guys, like,
can look at the oscilloscope graph on the crank and be like, Oh, yeah, what missed right there,
you know, and, or they just have such an ability to be able to look at data and decipher like
everything, like it's like a blood test. They're looking at the data like a blood test, you know.
So I was able to work with him and being able to see that individually trimming every cylinder,
when you're wide open at 2,200 horsepower for, you know, 50 seconds, that every cylinder needs to run
as its own cylinder. It's not just a V8 and every injector gets its own fuel and every
injector gets its own, like when we ran that engine, every cylinder had its own timing,
every cylinder had its own fueling and they were off by like 8.5% between cylinders.
And when we got that right, the reliability of that engine went through the roof. So that was
like a, you know, a big eye opener was like, you know, wow, we, you know, you could control these
things so high level and have like, if you get outside of a parameter, have a safety pull it
back so you don't just grenade it, you know, we did grenade that engine though, we, we
grenade it on the runway once, you know, but that's, that's what happens. And when you're
pushing, you're gonna, you're gonna hurt things from time to time, but that thing has a two way
record of 281 miles an hour and we went 295 miles an hour one way in that car. And I'm hoping that
pretty soon we're probably gonna go, you know, well beyond 300 miles an hour.
Yeah, that was, is that correct me if I'm wrong here? Looking back at, I think it was what,
four or five years ago, whatever it was whenever they did that record was that where the controversy
was the only the 295 one way, is that what it was? No, that was a whole different controversy.
That thing was like, I mean, and I can't say one way or another what happened there. I, you know,
I'm not even gonna get into, get into what they had going on right there. But that was,
that was like, they didn't go anywhere near as fast as what they claimed on the first runs,
because the radar wasn't set up correctly. So, but the, the time that we went out there, actually,
they hired race logic to come out and instrument the whole car. And they hired some YouTube
influencers that actually like, called them out on their stuff to be there to make sure it was all
legit. And it went to 79 one way and it went to 86 the other way. And with a 281 mile per hour
average. And I mean, it, and the thing is, is we added some power into it in the second path in
the second run, only in seventh gear above a certain RPM. And it picked up like six or seven
miles an hour so fast that we were like, we were at a time, but like, could have turned it around
and gone 300. Then we went out there a second time and went 295 one way. But the thing is,
you got to do everything for FIA, you got to do everything within an hour. So you got to do
a run one way, have everything ready, car cooled down, ready to go, go in the opposite direction
within an hour. Okay. Were you out there for those runs then? I was, yeah. Okay.
What does that look like? Are you, are you turning around car? I mean, like, for example,
you go to like the racetrack and people have like these, you know, leaf blowers trying to cool
off the car. Like, was this like a crazy science experiment? What does that day look like?
Well, it's, that day looks like it's sketchy because like the driver of the car, you know,
and if there's a problem at 300, he's probably dead, you know, so that's one thing. So you're
like trying to make sure everything is, you know, good, you know, and on that particular day that
I was at Cape, it had went 295 on the first pass. And then we went to go turn it around and it was on,
it was on a rip. It was actually 40 miles an hour faster at the mile than it was on the previous
run at 295. But you're going so quick, there's two flags, and you only have two and a half miles.
And then you have like a mile shutdown. If you miss the flag, you're gonna, you're gonna fly into
the swamp. So the guy saw the flag and thought it was the other flag. So he hit the brakes on the
second one, you know, and so we turned it around again. And then we had like a O2 failure. And I
was like, go and say, we can't run it. The O2s aren't even on. And they were like, we got limited
time and they went without the O2s, you know, and that wasn't great. So it didn't run as good on that
pass. But I don't know, I got off topic. What was the actual question? Oh, what does the day look
like? Yeah, so it's the day look like, like, we're making sure that before the run starts, you know,
everything in the engine is cooled down. So like, you know, the water and the intercoolers is cooled
down, you got to do all sorts of checks on the tires, because the tires are that's the most
important part. Yeah, right. And they have like, at first, we had, they had sensors in the tires
where they were like, the sensors were breaking from centrifugal force and getting launched
inside of the other deal. But so they had like, at first, they had reps out there from Michelin
doing that. And then I think Michelin was like, yeah, I don't even know if we want to be, you know,
like have that liability. But, you know, everybody is just, you know, trying to do the best that
they can because a guy's life is on the line. Like for this is like, for sure, like guys that are
getting in the cars nowadays, their life is on the line every day, because people are so fast,
that guys are going in threes and fucking, you know, to whatever in the eighth, it's crazy how
fast they're going, you know, but you're in a production car without a roll cage, going 300
miles an hour, you know, and you got like, maybe two bottles of fire system, like,
you're going to be lucky if you walk away from that, you know, so I even the guy who was driving
that, like I made him sign like a death waiver and stuff. I was like, dude, like I'm down for
doing this, but I'm not going to lose a business over something bad happening, you know.
How did the relationship start, by the way? Were you just approached one day like, hey, we got a
idea, we need the engine? Yeah. Yeah. So like, we started off with their cars. They had a car
called an Aero TT, which was the earlier version of the Tuttara. And so we built some of those and
had, you know, good success with that. And then, you know, started on the Tuttara stuff, which was
like a clean, clean state design. What timeframe would this be roughly? Well, the Aero TTs were
early. And then, you know, they spent a lot of time on the Tuttara. So, you know, they, I don't
know how many years, but there was a big year gap between the Aero TT and the Tuttara. So we had
multiple years where we didn't do anything with SSC. And then we came back and spent a good amount
of time developing what's currently in the car right now. Okay. Are you able to speak to what
makes this special? Like, how is it different than any of the big three that you have in here?
I guess, what is it? Is the engine based off of anything that exists? Yeah, it's based off of an
LS. Okay. But it's totally like, you know, like we use, you know, a Timkin crank made by Bryant,
like that has been science out, like this crank is not your normal 180. It's actually extra heavy
to deal with like longevity. And then the rods currently are designed by a company called Pankel,
which are titanium. I mean, the total rod weight in this engine is like 470 some grams for the total
rod. And the bob weight of the entire rotating is like 1500 of the tire rotating. So you have this
super light rotating so you don't feel all the buzz of like if you've ever been in a four cylinder
car, you know, when you're sitting there at idle, you kind of feel a thing kind of buzzes versus
like a V8 car, because that usually four cylinders are like a 180. So they have like high vibration.
So we want to have the rotating be as light as possible. So you could, you know, have long
engine life. Matter of fact, we just got one in here that had 6000 miles and like the bearings look
like, like I could still see the dial war mark when I, when I measured it in the bearing.
6000 miles on a SSE. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Yeah. When did those start came delivered?
A few years ago? Yeah, further than that. Yeah. 6000 miles is crazy on a car like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Respect to whoever that is. Yeah. Yeah. They drive it everywhere. Yeah. They drive it to all
the shows and everything. So that was cool to actually get it back, look at everything. And
like I said earlier before, to like do like an autopsy. Okay, what's working? What could we
improve upon? And that's what we're doing, you know, so I'm excited to see what these next four do.
So, okay, they approach you, you're looking to this project, you're like, all right,
LS is the move. Are you doing everything like from custom heads? Are you doing like,
how crazy are you getting? You mentioned the rods and the pistons. Well, giving idea, that car has
1002 sensors. It's got a pressure sensor in the exhaust turbine. It's got a pressure sensor on the
intake turbine, both sides. It's got two map sensors. Like that thing is like, electronic to the moon.
So it can be monitored and adjusted. So it like it has a really good safety system in the car where
OEs are not even going anywhere near as crazy as what we're doing on that car, you know. And then
as far as hard parts, it's got the best that money can buy. I mean, the connecting rods alone are $13,000
for the connecting rod in that motor. And the crankshaft is $12,000, you know, just the mallory
in the crankshaft is about like $2,600 for Mallory, just the heavy metal for balancing it.
I mean, the pins are DLC, the rockers on those have DLC coating. I mean, everything about that
engine is nice, you know. So, and it just keeps getting nicer. So when you're buying one of those,
you know, you're getting a nice piece. Have you gone to go for a drive in London all?
Oh, yeah, we were at Willow driving around in one of those things at Willow. And it's
Scoots, man. You get in a car like that where it only weighs 3,000 pounds, you know, and it's
got some power. It's all engines. And it's not like what we're driving. Like, the nose is like,
it like falls off. It's like you're sitting in a lawn chair, you know, with, you know, I mean,
that's a bad example. No, I get what you're saying, though. It's like you're right there looking over
the hood. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's badass. What's your, when do you think about the stuff you've
driven over the years? What's been the best experience?
I don't know. I mean, to be honest, like, it maybe not, there's a couple cars that stick out that are
like really, that were like eye opening is like back in the day, we built this Pontiac Tempest.
It was a twin turbo Pontiac Tempest. And that was kind of the first like chassis car twin turbo
that I was, that I drove on the street and that car was that car on pump gas was going fives in the
eighth. And it probably would do fives on the street. But this was 2004 maybe. That is insane.
Yeah, especially for 2004. And that car, when you're driving on the street going fives in the
eighth, like it is so stupid, you know, I mean, it was, and the car felt really safe, because
the guy set up the chassis, right? It had tire on it, like it wasn't sketchy, you know. So that car
was an eye opener to me as to what, how fast the street car could be. I mean, you really don't need
any faster than that for the street, to be honest. But I mean, obviously, everybody's, you know, on
the street, it's just very hard to do something like that, you know. These days, it's again, you
know, not so big a deal, but that's insane what you could do on the street. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
all wheel drive stuff is fucking crazy too. But then, you know, speaking of sketchy, we did like
a twin turbo RX seven, which you actually saw today. And that car did not feel super safe,
but it had an insane amount of power, you know, fun. But, you know, like some of the cars that I
really, really loved, there was an Impala that we did that's on our YouTube channel that was just a
572 big block NA. But the way the car felt like the steering was good, the suspension was good,
it sounded good, you know, like, you don't have to have all this power to still have a totally
bad ass car, you know,
that's the lowest power build or engine package you put out of here. 650. 650. Is that like a LSNA
sort of deal? Yeah, any LS. Yeah.
Are you upgrading like the like the, for example, I've always heard like the 427s are a little
problematic. Are you doing some crazy upgrades to those to make them live longer? Yeah, they're not
even, there's really nothing. I mean, there's not much in that motor that's original GM anymore.
You know, we use a Dart LS next block. It's got a billet crank. It's got these boost line rods.
It's got a custom CP piston of work with comp and doing spin ton tests on all these. Like,
we have some really nice lobes. Like, we can do a hydraulic roller with like under 400 pounds of
spring pressure and rev that thing 7500 with under 400 pounds of spring pressure. You never
have to adjust the valves. That's something like you asked me earlier about like, what is some of
the things that you've done recently that have been big? And some of the big things is the valve
train, because we can have this in back in the day, you'd say, oh, you're running a juicer,
because like the cam has oil in it. So it's like, it's just juicer, you know.
Yeah, too, too, too young. You're too young to remember that. Right over my head. Yeah. But
anyway, we're running a hydraulic cam and the thing, you know, it acts like it's like a solid
roller, you know, the thing is making a ton of power, you rev it like a solid roller, you never
have to adjust it. This is something that, you know, like, have your cake and eat it too. We always
used to claim that. But now it's like, I mean, you literally can, you know, and the power that the
the motor, you know, these motors, the power that they're making, it's it's actually, I got a lot of
guys, for example, the other day, the guy was upset that we didn't make the 2000 on the horse
on the dyno. So we had to put it back on to make the 2000 horsepower, totally unnecessary on the
street. You're never going to use that, you know, but so like, for the longest time, we thought, oh,
you know, more power, power. And then at a certain point, we shifted to more
reliability, easier for the customer to install, what can we do more to get the package, you know,
more things done on the package, because you're at a power level that's totally insane, you know.
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of on the things that I noticed here is like a lot of these cars, you're
like pointing out, they're like on street tires, pretty much like it's not like they're on bead
locks or anything besides the RX seven back there. But yeah, I mean, what does your typical customer
look like just cruising a to B? Is it they're going to the track, they're doing everything?
We, we've got a variety of different customers, you got guys that take it to the track, but
you know, probably our biggest customer, if you would say in a percentage, is a guy who wanted
a hot rod his whole life. He started to build a hot rod, and he wants something that's, you know,
going to scare him a little bit, but still have like manners to where he can drive it anywhere.
And that's probably our biggest business. We've got guys, you know, some guys go to the track,
some guys are doing, you know, got a pro drifter, whatever. But most of our guys are just a normal
guy that can afford one of these things. And he's building his dream car, you know,
have you done any drift cars? Yeah, we've got Andy Hadley's drift car. He's a, he's a pro driver
right now. He's racing today right now. Okay. Yeah. There's some event, some, there's a number of
track events this weekend or something. So what's the most insane project you've been a part of?
Like, wow, I can't believe I did that.
I don't know. Honestly, it seems like the next one. The next one? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, every project
lately, it's like, Scott, who I can hear is coming in here right now. Scott is always like, that's
the most insane thing I've ever seen, you know, and, and I'm like, I know, it's crazy, right? And
then the next one comes in, and they're like, fuck, this is insane, you know? So it just seems like
every single time it gets a little crazier, you know, because you're putting something
better into it, you know? And the mangins that I'm building, I'm kind of hand selecting that I'm
doing when I'm working on it's because I actually want to do something different, you know? So
you're probably going to need to ship your car soon or know somebody that will. And as someone who
used to work in freight logistics, I understand the difficulties of finding reliable transport,
especially when trying to make it to rallies, race tracks, or to warehouse to hide your Corvette,
because you're going through a messy divorce and when she says everything, she means everything.
Anywho, next year is the proud owner of Sure Thing Logistics. Having traveled much of the
country with every type of vehicle you can imagine, he's got the experience and reliability that you
want to ensure a safe journey for your pride and joy. If you want to find out what it takes to ship
your vehicle, go to Sure Thing Logistics.net, fill out the intake form, and be sure to let
him know I sent you. Let's get back to the show. Okay, so where were we? Yeah, so the project that
I really can't tell you a lot about it could be a total failure. That's what makes it exciting.
You know, there's high stakes on it, so if it doesn't do well, you know, there's a lot of
responsibility on me. But if it does well, it's pretty amazing that, you know, there's something,
I don't know, when you do something with that kind of like maybe stakes, pressure, whatever,
if you're successful, there's a type of piece that I get that you can't describe or buy, you know,
because there's just something that happens where I feel something inside where I'm just like,
I want that feeling again, you know. Again, you don't have to say what the idea is, but what
inspired the idea? Were you just kind of thinking one day, or were you working on something?
Yeah, I just, you know, it's just evolving the engine to the next step. Can we make big power
reliably for a long time? And that's what that project is, you know.
You do a lot of manufacturing of your own parts here as well then at that point.
Yeah, we do, you know, I think, was talking to, you know, Joe from FFRE?
I'm familiar, I know of him. So he, we originally did an engine called the Code Red, which was for
Shelby, which was this Twin Turbo 2008 Mustang. And that was like the last car that Shelby did
before Carol died. And then Joe has taken over that program. And he does like the Twin Turbo
Code Reds, which that guy is fucking awesome. I love that guy. I'm like blowing up his phone all
the time. Hey, man, what do you think about this? But we developed 200 new parts for that car when
we did that project. It's insane. Yeah, 200 parts, you know, and that's from like intake
bannufold to coolant crossovers to a special power steering reservoir that didn't foam. I mean,
we develop a lot of different things here. Okay, so what did that look like then? Did you have
like a bunch of engineers on payroll at that point or? No, they're just like, you know, I've
been lucky. Like a lot of my best friends turned into engineers. And like, you know, funny story
is one of my best friends, Chris Emhoff, like back when we were young, we used to go party.
And then afterwards, like, when we came back, I'd be like, let's fucking design some shit, man.
We'd be all kind of half delir designing stuff together on the computer, you know. So a lot of
the designs in that original early part of Nelson Racing were me and Chris designing stuff, coming
back drunk, you know, or, you know, a good friend of mine, Cole Ballster, still to this day, he is
an engineer and, you know, we'll design stuff together. And this is something, somebody that I
street raced with when I was 18, you know, but a guy that doesn't work here anymore, that used to
be our designer was a guy named Xander Guerra. And he has like a wild imaginative mind. And he's
really good with like solid modeling. So we would do all sorts of weird shit. You know, those headers
right there that you saw that are 3d printed, he ended up modeling those, you know. So but he has his
own thing, you know, in Florida or wherever he is right now. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Like how
some people can kind of go on and do their own thing, like grow within the industry in their
own way. Yeah. Yeah, so many guys that have come to this shop all had shops like Sean at Empire,
this guy, Dregos, like so many guys that have come through here. It's like seems like it's a
stepping stone. They're here for like three or four years and you're like, fuck yeah. And then
they're like, I'm starting my own business. You're like, yeah, man, you cultivated it too good.
What's it like having a business in California? Again, this is my first time here. I have this
outside vision of what California was. I spent some time, this is not my first time here, but
first time experiencing it and talking to shop owners. Is it difficult to run a business out
of here or not that bad? I mean, yeah, I'd be California's super, I mean, it's expensive. You
know, that's the biggest thing is the expense, right? So like, you know, overhead on this place,
you know, I don't know, I think I'd have to go look, but it's like roughly like 125,000 a month.
Yeah. So it's like, there's a decent amount of overhead and
just the electric is 3000 a month in this place. So it's very different than, you know,
maybe owning your own land and owning your shop and not having to deal with that. So California is,
and they're definitely, they're not necessarily on your side. Like when we had to go get this
place up to speed and get all the permits, like it was like a year and a half process
and then it cost them like $600,000 to get this place permanent, you know, because if you did over
10% of an improvement on the building, the entire building had to be brought up to code. So that meant
like we had to put sprinkler system in here, all the California green had to be changed,
like every single light had to have a fire enclosure, you know, 80, 80 a for handicap,
like it was fucking insane. So that's, you know, even the air conditioning condition,
air conditioning system had to be flowed. They have to do like a smoke test
where you, you know, you get permitted and stuff. So, but that said, I love California and I love
being here. It seems like it's worth it for a lot of people. It's totally worth it for me. My
family's here, my wife's family's here. We're not going anywhere, you know, all over this place.
The weather's freaking amazing, you know, but, you know, the cost of living out here, you know,
it's like $7 for a gallon of gas and, you know, tomorrow our awesome governor will probably
put another dollar tax on it for no reason at all. You guys have a couple of different types of taxes,
don't you, on the gas? It's insane. Yeah, I can't even remember, like the receipts,
interesting. Although we didn't have to paste our tax on our Starbucks today. So that was kind of a
plus compared to Minnesota, save $0.97 on my coffee. I was looking at my receipt, so I was like,
that's hilarious. Yeah. Okay, where did the alien thing come from? By the way, I keep looking at that.
The alien thing came from exactly what I was telling you is like coming home after
hanging out with my buddy and then just, you know, drawing it up. Because I always have a,
like I can envision what I want something to look at. Like, I, you know, I'm lucky in that way that I
do have a ability to see some things before, you know, and know if I like it or not.
An alien was one of those things where you see an alien, you almost think Nelson racing,
because it like, it's kind of iconic to us, you know. It's just, it's just a very unique look. Like,
this is an alien right here, isn't it? Yeah, that's an alien. Yeah. I mean, that just,
it looks different, man. It's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, we have a new, so there's a guy named,
I don't know if you're familiar with Sean's custom alloy. I don't know, maybe. So Sean
made this intake right here, but Sean, Sean's toolpaths are like the best. His toolpaths are so
badass, you know, like you can look at his toolpaths and there's no like smudge from where the,
you know, the cutter went sideways and smudged it and they all make sense. Like the lines come
and meet each other, right? So anyway, he's doing our new alien right now. And our new alien,
like our old alien was all about hiding things. So you can't see the throttle linkage on that,
even though there's two throttle blades right, right in the front, right there. You can't see
the injector because they're all hidden on the inside. There's a whole fuel rail and fuel
regulation built into the bottom of it and it's all hidden. Whereas my new alien, it'll be more
exposed. And I'm doing that just because when you got to work on that, if there's a problem,
my ears burn across the country because it's really hard to work on. So our new aliens are
going to be more like you need to check if the injector is good or wiring. You can just go and
get to it. But that's how the alien kind of came about is that we were doing sheet metal manifolds,
then we'd mount two fuel pressure regulators on it, then we'd have to hard line the fuel pressure
regulators for the boost reference. And then you had this terrible looking throttle linkage.
Now everything's DBW, but on the side, but even still you have this DBW motor hanging off to the
side that looks totally out of place. So we, we wanted everything symmetrical and we wanted it
hidden. And so that's how the alien came to life, you know, that's cool. One of the things you're
showing us off camera was like, I never understood how you balance a crank, what goes into balance
in a crank. Yeah. So balancing a crank, you basically, you weigh the pistons and you make sure
they're all the same. You weigh the rods, you make sure they're all the same. And then you weigh
bearings, rings, rods, small end and big end piston pin, and you take all of those weights and that
becomes what's called a bob weight. So, you know, typical bob weights in a big block are like 24,
2500 grams. You take that 2400 gram bob weight and you put that and you clamp it onto the rod pin
on each journal. So you have an individual bob weight, which is the exact weight of your pistons,
rods, rings, bearings, et cetera, including oil allowance. And then, then we spin it dynamically.
So then we take a crank, just like a tire, you put a tire on a tire balancer and I think
this kind of jacked in, you got to add weights to the tire until it smooths out. Well, you do the
same thing with a crankshaft. So our balancer, it looks like prehistoric because it's a floater
where all new balancers, they just, it spins it once and then a computer tells you, you know,
drill this one inch here, drill this one inch here, and then you can spin it again and it tells
you if it's in balance. But our balancer, you can actually see it when you're spinning it. So if
it's out of balance, it shakes. Like if it's really out of balance, I've had it move the machine
before it shakes so bad. And I don't want to ever get away from that balancer because
you can always see if the thing is balanced correctly. Like I get cranks in here. I mean,
all the time, all the time from the best manufacturers that I have nothing bad to say,
but they just, they're never balanced, right? You know, I mean, you have to things off like 30
grams. If you take 30 grams, you put that in a drill and you try to hold on to a drill that's
out of balance 30 grams, you can't hold on to it, you know, and think about what that's doing to
your motor at 7000 RPM, you know, so it, you know, we can get into different theories about
overbalancing and everything else, but you want to get the, you want to think, you want the crank
to be as tight as you possibly can when you're building an engine. So it's as good as it possibly
can. Yeah, where did you learn all this theory? Were you a bookworm at some point? Is this from
mentors? Like where, like all the, all these various things, whether it's tuning or engine,
machining, whatever. Yeah. I mean, I honestly, it's, for me, the way I learn is I got to put
my hands on it, you know, so I'll read about it. And that's like step one, but until I put my hands
on it and I actually do it, then it doesn't really sink in. Like I get read about it. And if I don't
put it into action like a week later, I forget what the hell I wrote, wrote about, you know, so
like for balancing, we just, you know, again, you learn the hard way. We still, it's still like,
we're still kind of prehistoric in the way we do it. It's just each guy that uses a balancer
myself, BJ, a guy, Rudy, that used to be here after a while, you get used to it. Like you can
see the strobe, the strobe tells you where you need to take it out. And then you can pretty much,
it's a little bit of a game. Like you're like, Oh, I could take a one inch hole,
you know, drill it. There's a little chart and tells you, you know, what, you know, how deep and
how wide will take off certain amount of grams. But you're always playing a game because you don't
want to, you don't want the crank to flip light or, you know, like, so let's say you put the crank on
and it's light and you have to add Mallory or if to add weight somehow, then you need to figure
out where you want to put that weight, what we have like bolt on weights that you put on there.
And then you can spin it to simulate it. But if you take too much out of the crank and it goes
light as a balancer, this is, this is like the thing that you don't want to happen because
then you got to take everything apart, put it in the mill, drill, ream and press weight into it,
which makes the process way longer. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I was wondering. So you see your,
so are you basically just like drilling into like the lobes then? Yeah, you're drilling into the
counterweights. Okay. So you take the counterweight, you take out the original material, and then you
fill it with material called tungsten or Mallory. And that, that is like one of the most dense,
heavy metals that you can do that's not radioactive, right? As a matter of fact, I put a post out on
my Instagram the other day, and like due to, you know, being used for ammunition for the war or
whatever is going on right now, the cost of Mallory is just insane. Yeah, you had like a handful,
I think you said it was like 1100 bucks or something. It's like $100 a stick. Yeah. You know,
like for a piece this big, 11 inch piece is $100, you know. So you got six sticks, $600
just in Mallory to balance it, you know, so it's crazy. Have you ever done anything out in Detroit
or worked with any of the OEs on anything or any fun projects like that? Well, we did Shelby,
we did that Code Red with Shelby. So that was kind of like an OE thing. And then the other Shelby,
which is SSC, which is, you know, limited production hypercar, we do that. And, you know,
we've gotten, we've done some like NDA stuff with stuff that I really can't talk about. Okay, fair
enough. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you can tell me what you'd have to shoot me sort of deal. Yeah, I get it.
What are you most proud of? Most proud of is my family, you know, I mean, the company that
that's something that I learned, you know, is that you can, I've had like, I guess this is,
so I went through some really rough times, maybe four years ago, you know, my brother passed away,
and I was in a position to where I like, I thought maybe I would never walk again, you know, and
and in those times, like the shop, it does not matter. Like what matters is, you know, the people
that you love. So like what I'm most proud about is like, I have an amazing wife, like my mom and
dad are like the most incredible mom and dad. I've got amazing kids. I've got an amazing niece
that that lives with me. So like, I'm out of here every day at six o'clock, no matter what,
right now, because I know that I'm going to be having dinner with them at seven o'clock. And
that's like the most important thing. So I mean, I love this place, like, don't get me wrong, like,
it's on my mind constantly. And like, I like when I'm driving to work, I am pumped to get here. I'm
pumped when I'm here. But by far, my family is is where it's after me. Okay. What's the next frontier
for you? What's the next big thing you want to learn, especially when we were talking about AI and
all this stuff earlier? I think for me, like, I think we really have been holding off on our
manufacturing of parts. And we've got like 20 different parts that like, I've said this for so
many years, and we just haven't done it. But we have a turbo, we have like stainless cast turbo
headers and turbocharger packages, you know, accompanying camshafts, intake manifolds, like so
I think we really, I think where we'll go in the future is parts production, where we sell a lot
of parts that if you can't afford one of our engines, you'll be able to piece together something
from us like that. That and surprisingly, which I say again, all the time is we've shot like,
now like over 30 YouTube videos, which I've never released. And I don't even know why. But I think
maybe maybe this by the end of this year, we'll actually start releasing all the videos that we
shot. All right, because like one of the things I was looking at is like your YouTube channel has
been dormant for like six years. Is that kind of what you're referring to? It's been dormant for
like, well, it was dormant for six years where we did two videos, but it's been dormant for like
10 years. So that was really like kind of what our YouTube channel is like, what made us, you know,
my dad used to cut all the videos and put them up for me. And we would just shoot like we call it the
85% rule because we just had like a little shit camcorder. And we'd just shoot anything and then
he would turn it into something, you know, and it was good because people who liked us would check
in. So I think, I think we're going to start doing that. But I just didn't want to like, I wanted
to production level of each video to be, you know, high quality. So I think these next these next 20
or 30 that we released are going to be like, they were all shot with like on a red lit, like,
you know, doing moves, explaining things. And I think, I don't know, I want it to do that. So
that's probably why I've been holding off. And I don't know, you got to light that candle, you
got to iterate. The editing is like, you know, to get the time away to edit it, it's like,
it's a lot you should know, you know, yeah, no, I did 400 videos almost last year. So I get it.
Yeah. So maybe we'll do that by the end of the year. I think that it'll be, you know, maybe not
by the end of year on the parts, but you know, pushing towards the parts. And maybe by the end
of the year, we'll start releasing videos again. Okay. Well, towards the end of every episode,
I like to ask, I guess, to pick three cars or this is why I call the final question.
You get to pick three cars and I'm a little sloppy on this today, but you have to pick a
daily driver, a show car and a race car. You have an unlimited budget, build whatever you want,
do whatever you want. What are you picking? A daily driver. My daily driver is going to be a third
gen Iraq with the roaster shop chassis. It's going to have one of my twin turbo 427s in it,
probably with either most likely a stick, but it could be an HP eight. And so that'll be my daily
driver. And then unlimited budget. I don't know, might be a Lambo. I've always been a Lambo guy.
I have a Lambo. I've got a Diablo, but probably be a Lambo. Okay. Yeah. What kind of which Lambo?
New or one older one? Would you stay with the Diablo? Maybe an Aventador. I don't know.
Yeah, definitely. I don't think it's like the Diablo, like I do like that. And it's
this motor that we built, that we built for it is fucking awesome. We did, you know, life racing,
you know, we built our own intercoolers into it. It's got a pair of 64s on it. That's going to be
pretty cool because it's just a, that's an actual regular manual all wheel drive twin turbo 12
cylinder. So that's cool. But you know, I don't know, we went up to the factory this summer,
I took, took my family to Europe and we went up to the factory and we're checking it all out. I
was like, you know, I don't know, I do like Lamborghinis. And then a commuter. I don't know.
I've got a, I've got a 240,000 mile beater, uh, infinity that I freaking love, man. I freaking
love this car. That's, oh wait, was the, the, what was the Iraq track? The Iraq would be a daily.
So I rocks daily, daily. So, so unlimited. And what was the other choice?
So track and show cars. I actually get a little bit closer. Yeah.
Show car. Um, show car is probably the Maximus that we built. Yeah. Which I actually, I,
I want to talk about that car. I can completely spaced on that, but I do want to talk about it.
So the Max. Yeah. So the Maximus is like,
will that or, or the GTO, but I guess it's not a show car, the GTO that we're building. I could
talk about both of them if you want to. So the Max, the Maximus is like, um,
that was a car that was to showcase our abilities in the shop. Right. So we took a 68 charger and
like we literally have like 10,000 hours and hammer and dolly work on that body. That body,
basically it's six inches wider. Like all the wheel wells have been changed all like,
I mean, there is so many things about that body and there's, there's no filler on that body
anywhere. So if you look at this car, it's an all metal body that we literally put clear code on.
And if you've ever done body work, like, and you've done any welding on it, it doesn't,
it's not straight. But if you look at this car, like you saw it today, right? It looks like it's
paint, you know, but it's just clear over steel. So I mean, it took three years to get the body
that way. We built the, all the rear suspension and the front suspension from scratch, like inside
the dash, we've got, we, we like made these electronics where when you click the boost
controller, the boost controller literally speaks to you and says like warning, you know, you've just
increased the horsepower to 2500 RPM, 2500 horsepower and, um, it'll automatically switch
the fueling for you. And then you can, like it has a all original AM billet dash. So it looks
like it's, you know, like it looks like the dash is all period. And then you click a button and the
dash moves in, flips 180 degrees, moves forward and you have all iOS control of the AC, everything
inside of there. It's in the same car. Like, so that would be my, so what inspired that? Like,
where does that idea come from? Um, just being nuts, right? So the cuss, you get a customer
who's as crazy as you are and you just start going off, you know, a car took a seven year, well,
now like, it's still not finished because we're doing some electronics upgrades to it,
but it was like seven years just to build the car. When did it start?
Early, like, I don't know. Um,
um, damn, I don't know. Let's say 2008 maybe or something. It was like a long, I don't know,
a long time ago. So how did that car, because that car ended up in the Fast and the Furious as
well, right? Yeah. Yeah. So how did that come to fruition? So Dennis McCarthy, who like handles all
the cars for Fast and Furious, he originally reached out to me for the F bomb because
was in Fast Four or whatever that was. It's Fast Four, right? Yeah. That's what I saw. Yeah.
Doing wheelies in the dirt, killing the dude. So Dennis, we had brought the car in all metal,
the SEMA, and Dennis is like, man, we got to have that car. So, um, Scott, the owner was,
you know, okay with it. So, you know, we went to Universal and Solvendiesel, you know, and then
actually we went to the beach, which is absolutely the stupidest idea ever, because we took an all
metal car that didn't have clear on it at the time to the beach. Just sandblasted it? Yeah. No,
we just took it there. It is the salt from the beach. So they were having this scene where,
you know, Paul says goodbye to, or whatever I think it was. Well, Paul said goodbye in the car,
but he was also on the beach like holding his kid or whatever. And, you know, the car is just
sitting there rusting in front of my eyes, you know. It took us a month to get the rust out of
the pores and that thing, you know. It was the stupidest idea ever. But yeah, they did that. And
then we had this, um, what's funny about that whole scene and the whole fast movie or whatever is
the car had never even run, um, like three hours before that scene was cut. So we were building
that car and then it wasn't finished at SEMA. It wasn't even running at SEMA. And, uh, Dennis is
like, we got to have it for the movie and it's got to say, can you make it happen for the movie?
And I'm like, well, I really don't want to build the car for a movie because like we're going to have
to kind of make some shortcuts to get it finished. And, uh, they had like their grips waiting for us
in the shop. And like one of my guys almost beat up one of their grips because they were like
sweating us to get the car done. We're like, well, we're working as fast as we can to get this car
done. And we basically put it in a trailer because we ran out of time. And when you see me turn the
key, like when, when we pulled it out of the trailer for the scene where they both say goodbye
to each other, I'm firing it up for the very first time. I don't know if you've ever like fired your,
your build up for the very first time. It usually doesn't go well, right? You know. And, uh, but we
pulled that off. It was, it was pretty good. What did, uh, I'm curious, right? Like what, what did the,
what did the actors think of the car? Did they even think of anything of the car?
Yeah. I mean, they loved it. Okay. I guess Ludacris came up and was like, oh man, it's badass, you
know? Sure. And then I, I think Vin Diesel, I don't know, because I didn't actually,
you know, I don't even care really, but I guess Vin Diesel wanted it for his collection,
but then they tried to do some stupid shit to where it was like, oh, give us a discount. We'll
promote this or whatever. Like, yeah. But the Scott, the owner turned out $1.8 million for that car
in Saudi. Well, yeah. That's insane. Holy shit. Yeah. That's insane. Yeah. Oh yeah. Cause I,
yeah, I guess it's not your car. It's technically the owner's car. That's, that's a hell of a car.
Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So you said you're doing some stuff with it. So
well, it was basically done at one point and now it's like going back for like some more
upgrades, basically. He's got all sorts of crazy things in it right now. He's got like this radar
where it's from multiple locations and then, you know, the rear view mirror has cameras on it and
then all the like Bluetooth in the car where you can, you know, like the AC is controlled through
iOS and all of these, all these little like electronic gizmos like we're, we're tidying all
that up and finishing it up for our final there. Is it still tuned on an AEM? It's on an
Electromotive of all things, which is pretty old. But it works, you know. So, I mean,
we're not rewiring it right now. So it's what it is, you know. Yeah. What's in there for an engine?
It's a all aluminum 572 inch Hemi and it's got a pair of my 88 millimeter turbo chargers on it.
It's got an alien, you know, it's got all the, you know, billet crank rods, pistons, it's all, it's
fucking nuts, you know. Yeah. So that's the show car? Yeah, because that car, unfortunately, that
car, like if I were to take that car in a parking lot and somebody scratched that car, you can't
blend the clear on a bare metal car. So for me, that car really, even though we do drive it around
and stuff, that car is really, it's like that car truly is mechanical art, you know. We actually
ran it, they ran it downtown LA and we drove it around there and we were filming, we were doing
all these burnouts underneath this big famous bridge back there and it was, it was super fun. But
as a daily driver or something like that, I would, it would be so, it'd be so nerve wracking
that I wouldn't, it wouldn't be my choice, you know. I want something that, you know,
somebody comes in and dents it, it'd be like, whatever, you know.
Okay. So that's that. And then track cars, the Lambo?
Yeah, maybe a track car. Yeah. I'll tell you what, one car that we had,
that was super bitchin', that would be an awesome track car as we did a twin turbo Muszler. I don't
know if you know that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did a twin turbo 427 LS and a Muszler and that
thing was insane, man. That thing was insane. That's the video game car, right? The one that's
like, this stupid, like, and I think it's in Forza. It's like, yeah, I know it in Muszler. Yeah, yeah.
It's coming back. Yeah. It's like, I think it was like the top car in Forza or whatever,
like a decade ago. But yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe an SSC, honestly, like,
might have to, it's Jared to get me in on one of those things, you know. Yeah.
Yeah. So you said you're doing a, what is it, a production run of those right now?
Well, I'm not doing it. They are. Yeah. You know, there's a company, they're based in Washington,
and so they're building this hypercar and it's really like, it keeps evolving, right? So it keeps
getting better and better. So like, it's a pretty nice car, you know, pretty nice car.
Well, it's kind of like when you look at like, even like their competitors like Connick Seng or
even the Bugatti, it's like they iterate, oh, they're not Bugatti, but they're like iterating
every two years, like really quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it's just, it's being that they're
not like, you know, Volkswagen or Ford or something, and they can make changes and they can evolve
quickly. So they're, they're, they really are getting, every year that car is getting better
and better. That's awesome. I will say, I love a Bugatti. Those things are like, yeah, they're not,
maybe they're not the fastest anymore. Maybe they're not this, but just they,
that car is just legit too, you know. Yeah. I mean, it's bespoke. Yeah. That's probably a good way
to put it in. Well, on that note then, where can everybody find you? You can see me at,
my Instagram is just at Nelson Racing Engines, my Facebook at Nelson Racing Engines. I actually
have a TikTok, which is crazy. I just started that same thing, Nelson Racing Engines. And then
maybe we still have videos that you on YouTube, which probably I think 250 videos up on YouTube,
right now, Nelson Racing Engines on YouTube. And probably by the end of the year, you're going to
see a bunch more. I'm excited to see where that goes. Yeah. Well, on that note, thank you very
much for making this happen. This was awesome. A lot of, a lot of cool stuff in here. This is kind
of like a candy shop. So this is really sweet. Thank you everybody for tuning in and listening,
and we'll see you all next time.
About this episode
Nelson Racing Engines traces its roots from SCCA road racing and street-racing escalation to a professional shop built around machining, dyno work, and forced-induction. The conversation covers how they make power reliably—through careful line honing, lubrication priming, sensor-heavy safety packages, and per-cylinder tuning—plus the business shift toward standardized crate-style packages. Big highlights include pump-gas turbo numbers, a twin-turbo 427 Corvette, and the SSC Tuatara’s LS-based, custom rotating assembly. The episode also dives into Fast & Furious build logistics and extreme speed-record verification.
Tom Nelson of Nelson Racing Engines has been building twin turbo engines for over 30 years. He shares stories about the SSC Tuatara's 281 MPH record run, 2,000HP streetcars, and the 68 Charger that ended up in Fast & Furious.
