Street Alpha Podcast Apr 10, 2026

Andrew Hawkins on Why RB26 Builds Fail in America, RB vs 2JZ Debate, GTR Festival

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Concept

GTR Festival

GTR Festival is a car event focused on Nissan GT-Rs. It’s known for lots of modified cars and fans who build and race these platforms.

Car

Nissan Gtrs

The Nissan GT-R is a very fast sports car built for performance. The podcast mentions how many of them you can see around, especially in the U.S.

Concept

SEMA is a big car show in the U.S. that’s mostly about modified cars and aftermarket parts. If you see a lot of a certain type of car there, it usually means that platform is getting popular in America.

Car

Nissan Skyline Gtrs

The Nissan Skyline is a performance car model that’s known for being popular with car enthusiasts. The podcast mentions seeing lots of them at a major car show.

Term

700 horsepower

Horsepower is how much power the engine makes. More horsepower usually means faster acceleration, but you still need roads where you can actually use it.

Concept

1200 to 2000 horsepower

They’re talking about very high power numbers—on the order of 1,200 to 2,000 horsepower. Builds at that level usually need a lot more than just a simple tune, and the car has to be set up to handle the stress.

Term

RB 26

RB26 is a well-known Nissan engine (the 2.6-liter twin-turbo inline-six). People often debate how other RB builds compare to it in how they sound and how they feel when revved.

Term

dyno graphs

A dyno graph is a chart from a test machine that measures how much power and torque an engine makes at different RPMs. It helps show whether a build is strong across the rev range, not just at one point.

Company

HKS

HKS is a Japanese performance parts company known for turbo kits, exhausts, and engine components like camshafts. In this segment, HKS is mentioned as an example of a “drop-in” cam option for an RB head.

Part

oversized Vows

Oversized valves are bigger engine valves than stock. They can help the engine breathe better at higher RPM, but the head has to be set up correctly to make it work.

Term

cylinder head

The cylinder head is the top part of the engine where the fuel/air burns. If it’s damaged or not set up correctly, the engine can run poorly or fail, so people often rebuild or machine it for performance builds.

Term

valve seats

Valve seats are the contact surfaces where the valves seal shut. If they wear out, the engine can lose compression and efficiency, so builders sometimes rework or replace them.

Concept

lap time

Lap time is how long it takes to go around the track once. Faster lap times usually mean the car is working better in corners and braking too, not just on the straight.

Concept

drag strip

A drag strip is a track where cars race in a straight line. Instead of turning corners, you focus on how fast the car accelerates and how consistent it is.

Concept

ABCD

“ABCD” appears to be a shorthand for a specific failure chain or set of tuning/engine-management factors the speaker believes causes the build to fail. Because the acronym isn’t expanded in this excerpt, it likely refers to known RB high-power pitfalls (e.g., fueling/ignition/boost/heat management) rather than a generic term.

Term

High volume oil pump

A high-volume oil pump pushes more oil than stock. That can sound good, but if the engine can’t drain oil back properly, it can cause oil to build up and vent out where it shouldn’t.

Term

catch can

A catch can is a small container that collects oily vapors from the engine. Instead of letting that oily mist go into the intake, it gets trapped in the can.

Part

dry sump

Dry sump is an oil system that uses pumps and an external tank instead of relying on oil sitting in the engine. It helps keep the engine supplied with oil during hard driving and reduces oil-related problems.

Term

boost

Boost is extra air pressure from a turbo/supercharger. That extra air helps the engine make more power, but it can also make parts work harder, so the tune has to be right.

Term

water temp

Water temp means how hot the engine coolant is. Waiting until it warms up before you rev helps the engine parts expand evenly so things stay in the right range.

Term

methanol

Methanol is a racing fuel. It helps keep the engine cooler because it absorbs heat as it turns into vapor, which is why it’s common in drag setups.

Term

300 horsepower

Horsepower is how strong the engine is. More horsepower usually means the car can accelerate harder and feel faster.

Concept

wear and tear

“Wear and tear” means parts get used up over time. Driving a high-power car a lot can make it need more maintenance and repairs.

Term

RPM

RPM is how fast the engine is spinning. The computer changes its strategy depending on RPM.

Term

electronic throttle

Electronic throttle means the gas pedal talks to the computer, and the computer controls the throttle. That makes it easier to do automatic throttle blips.

Term

paddle shift

Paddle shifters are the little levers behind the steering wheel that let you change gears yourself. You don’t have to use a clutch pedal to do it.

Term

Gear ratios

Gear ratios are the “multipliers” between the engine and the wheels. Different ratios can make the car feel quicker or smoother depending on how you drive.

Term

wheel spin

Wheel spin is when the tires spin but the car doesn’t accelerate as much as it should. It happens when there isn’t enough grip for the power being made.

Term

torque

Torque is the “twisting push” that makes the car move. On turbo cars, torque can show up suddenly when boost hits, which can spin the tires.

Concept

drag racing

Drag racing is all about getting down the track as fast as possible in a straight line. The car setup usually focuses on traction and acceleration more than cornering feel.

Company

Shipbox Garage

Shipbox Garage is a car channel/community that people in the scene recognize. Here, they’re just being mentioned as someone who’s coming by for the event.

Company

Mighty Car Mods

Mighty Car Mods is a well-known car YouTube/auto media group. They’re being referenced because their fans should show up to the event.

Term

butchered your car

“Butchered” is enthusiast slang for making irreversible or overly destructive modifications that reduce originality or value. The speaker describes a common internet/club argument: purists vs. modders.

Car

Nissan Navara

A Nissan Navara is a pickup truck. It’s the kind of vehicle you’d use for work or everyday hauling, not a performance car.

Term

speed cameras

Speed cameras are automated systems that detect vehicle speed and record violations for later fines. The speaker is saying the area is strict about enforcement, which explains why they’re dealing with tickets.

Term

tolls

Tolls are fees paid to use certain roads, bridges, or tunnels. In the transcript, the speaker mentions they also got “a couple of tolls,” implying the same trip generated multiple charges beyond the speeding ticket.

LIVE

Welcome back to another episode of the Street Alpha podcast.

I'm your host, Tuques.

And today we are in sunny Florida.

We have the pleasure of sitting with Andrew Hawkins.

He's back again for another podcast.

You guys saw him about two, three years ago?

Yeah, three years.

Yeah, when I first started doing this podcast,

him and Herman came on with his Wild Shorts.

And we had a great episode.

It was the first Australian episode I think I did.

Well, in the States.

So we're back.

And we will be going to GTR Festival again this year.

So this episode is brought to you by GTR Festival.

Thank you guys for sponsoring.

I'm going to be excited to go this year again.

I had such a blast last year.

I've seen bills that I will never probably see in the States.

Obviously, there's a ton of GTRs behind us.

However, the way they do things in Australia

is way, way different, like on another level.

So thank you for bringing me out there.

Hopefully we can go back out there and kill it again this year.

So you're back here for what event?

I came over to Tuques 2K and then I kind of figured,

well, I'm already here.

I should be doing some networking and meetings.

So I basically had meetings here in Orlando.

So I kind of went, well, I'll go to Fuelfest while I'm here.

I've been down to Austin for some filming with Boost Logic

and some other meetings.

There's a lot going on over here

that I'm trying to take care of behind the scenes.

I think my long-term goal is to essentially

have another base here of operations in the US.

I've had a lot of people ask me to say,

hey, can you do events beyond GTR Festival?

And I said, yeah, of course I can.

So some people want to partner with me and back that.

So essentially this trip has been a bunch of meetings

and networking.

And you know what I mean, one meeting usually turns

into like six other workshop visits

and we're having a car meet tonight here at Monster.

Yeah, yeah.

So like I can't help myself.

I can't just have the one meeting and then go relax.

I've got to keep doing stuff and hustling and making things happen.

And just that's me, man.

I love making cool stuff happen.

I gave up on like a couple of days off at the beach.

I've even taken Easter.

I was meant to have a holiday at Easter.

And then someone goes, can you work in my car in Dallas?

I'm like, I kind of want a holiday.

He goes, I'll pay you enough to make it worth your while.

I'm like, you sure?

And he goes, name your price.

I went, I guess I'm working on a car over Easter.

Oh, wow.

So you're working on a car?

Yeah.

And I've got to get an LA.

Then I go back home.

So like it's just cramming so much stuff in,

having a good time while I'm at it.

I love what I do.

So, you know, adding more work isn't exactly making a worse trip.

It's just it's always fun and just making more things happen.

So I've got secrets to tell you later in the podcast.

Well, it's always good to see you.

Obviously, when you come out here, it's always a blast.

So it was a good time.

Last time I think I saw you was at SEMA.

Yeah.

So definitely party a little too hard at SEMA.

Cut the camera.

But SEMA was a blast.

Did you see anything interesting that you, you know,

that you liked that you haven't seen in Australia?

From a GTR perspective, what I did enjoy was seeing

there was a lot more skyline GTRs at SEMA this year

than probably ever before or last week.

And the build quality had stepped up.

So for me, that was a good sign for the USA.

I really enjoyed meeting some of the owners

who had built some pretty wild cars.

And and look forward to seeing that our event and stuff like that.

But it's good to meet with those guys and and give them the encouragement too.

It's not just about like people going, oh, you know,

Andrew, sorry, it hasn't got fit down at all.

So I'm like, you do realize I like all GTRs.

Yeah.

You know, it's not just these Aussie ones.

I like everything.

But seeing, I guess, a bit of inspiration from Australia

and Japan and America rolled into one.

Some of those builds was a really good sign.

Yeah.

Like you guys do things different over there.

A lot of former I saw was like high horsepower stuff.

Yeah.

We don't really have that here.

Like we do have obviously we're at monster performance, of course,

lead build some high horsepower stuff, but not 1700, 1800 horsepower things.

You kind of see that very often over there.

So it's kind of hard to kind of, I guess,

compare or compete with what you guys do over there,

because a lot of the builds are only making like, I don't know, 700 horsepower here.

Look, I think a sweet spot for a GTR street car is still that 6800 horsepower range.

I openly admit it to people.

Don't get me wrong, I love a 2000 horsepower GTR,

but if you want to have a GTR that you can drive and enjoy on the street

reliably, regularly and is a nice car, you should be owning for that 6800.

You can make a thousand reliable,

but you've got to build it to make 1500 and turn it down.

Like my car is a perfect example of overbuilding it, going a smaller turbo

and being able to enjoy it, right?

But have you ever driven like a 1200 horsepower GTR on a normal road?

It's terrifying, right?

Like it's totally you want the all-wheel drive?

Yeah, man, like it's fast.

Like it's but mine's great.

Mine almost feels slow at the track now and 1200, which I know it sounds pretty crazy.

No, that sounds wild.

But it hooks up and puts covers ground so quickly now as a well set up all round car

that on the street, I'm like, man, I can't use this to its full potential.

Maybe a Florida freeway, a Texas freeway.

I could Australia on a normal road.

I miss having a 700 horsepower Getrag H pattern car

that I can take on a twisty mountain road and go to cars and coffee on a Sunday.

I kind of miss that.

Yeah. But yeah, the builds are different,

but that's got a lot to do with the melting pot of the environment.

Right? If you go to Connecticut, I understand now why they only want 700 horsepower

and go to cars and coffee, but their cars and coffee is via a mountain run.

They've got sick roads, can't use a thousand different lifestyle.

You go to LA, it's all car park because well, what are you going to do?

You go to Texas, like I haven't got 2000 horsepower.

Like Texas and Florida, both horsepower states because you get the chance to use them.

So it's the and then same deal with our scene in Sydney, the role racing scene,

the Kudamundra events I ran, GTR Fest will combine all of those.

You now have a fiercely competitive environment that fosters that development.

And I'm not going to lie that the the big GTR streetcars

have all fallen off the back of the fast race cars.

That whole race on Sunday sell on Monday.

Yeah. So like when June 2 and King 32 were going into the sixes,

like seven years ago, six years ago, the streetcars weren't.

But what do you think happened as they went into the middle and bottom sixes?

The streetcars just kind of got dragged up down with them in the fact

that now we're building streetcars that legit full interior can drive on the street,

not even on a pro-radial sized tile, like a 255 or whatever have now gone 690.

So those cars were like in the eights when Jun and then were starting to crack sixes

and now a seven second street GTR is relatively cool, man.

Like, cool, like pretty normal.

But it's not normal like every day you see one.

But I mean, you go to GTR Fest,

if you saw how many 12, 1500 horsepower GTRs were there, like it was a lot.

Like it was almost like pick the one that doesn't make it.

Yeah, it was wild.

But it's that competition that fueled it.

Let's face it, we don't race for prize money.

We race for our ego.

And that's not a bad thing.

And I don't mean that in a bad way.

I mean that in a good way, fiercely competitive.

Everybody wants to win.

So that environment in Sydney, you've met Sydney people, bro.

They don't want to lose, right?

No, very passionate.

Very passionate about it.

And they want to win.

And there's still someone every month that just walks into a shop and goes,

how much to build a car that wins GTR Fest?

How much to build a car that wins GDR Challenge at Kudamundra?

How much to build a car that wins Roll Racing?

And it's like some of those shops will turn and go, bro,

you better have 300 grand to spend.

And they're like, no problem, here you go.

So like that environment fosters those builds which forces every shop to step up as well.

So that's why there's so many big shops in Sydney

that can build you a 1200 to 2000 horsepower Skyline GTR.

Well, here you need enough customers who want to do it.

If you had 10 customers in one shop that want to make a thousand,

all of a sudden making a thousand is easy.

And this is what every shop's told me.

We just need enough customers that want to do it.

If there's a support for it, we'll do it.

But at the moment, you're not there yet.

And I think what happened is a lot of US people kind of got scared off

like the big sequential or big auto GTR 1200.

And they all just have told themselves they want 6 to 800

and just kind of got stuck there.

And then only a few people here have kind of gone,

oh, no, I want to go beyond that.

I want to race my car.

A lot of people here see a Skyline GTR as a collector's item or like a rare car.

To me, a 32 GTR, I bought mine for 10 grand.

Like it's it's a nasty old Datsun in my head at some times.

I love them. It's my favorite car on the planet.

But I can still look at it and just go in my head.

That's like, I didn't pay much for that.

I could just going to race crap out of it.

So so you're kind of because you're later to the party.

There's more people paying a lot more for them who don't want to cut them up, I guess,

even though you're not cutting them up.

They don't want to go that far.

And there are just people kind of scared of that whole like sequential big turbo set up.

Once enough cars, he get reliable at a thousand.

You'll just you'll start seeing more of them.

That's just the that's just the nature of competition and and business, really.

How do you feel about like the RB 30 swap into GTRs?

Because that seems like the more I don't want to say affordable,

but the more common option because RB 26 stuff is kind of hard to find right now.

So it seems like all the high horsepower stuff is doing

like I have a 30 Lee runs 30.

See, it doesn't even bother with 26 is because of the cast limitations.

So how do you feel about swapping those into like R 34, R 33?

I mean, it's pretty common in Australia, but some people in the states

don't believe in doing that.

They want to keep everything pure to like the 26 and so on.

Pure, dude, go get a standard car and go home.

Like if you want to modify car make power capacity,

look, capacity is king. Yeah.

And I have been through my stage of a purist.

I thought a nine and a half thousand RPM 2.8 is the way to go.

And they do sound amazing.

And they're awesome.

Once I drove an RB 30 with 3.2 in it,

I just like want to go back and slap old me and go, why?

Capacity is king.

And then those guys that go, RB 30s don't sound as good.

I go, what are you doing? That's another thing too.

Yeah, I always hear that. Yeah.

And then they go, oh, I don't rev.

I'm like, actually, my 3.2 when I first did it,

we'll rev it to nine and a half thousand.

Jun two revs to 11,000 with a 3.2 in it.

Don't tell me it doesn't rev this because you can't build it to rev.

Don't tell me it can't like.

But I will admit, like if you don't rev an RB 30,

it doesn't sound as good as 2.8.

I'm not going to lie.

But once you get the RPM back into an RP 30, they sound amazing.

So you think a RB 30 can sound just as good as a 26?

The weirdest way to explain it is this, until 8000 RPM,

the 30 doesn't sound as good.

But once you get into that, like eight and a half to nine and a half,

I'm like, tell me goat 32 when you watch

or RHM at nine and a half thousand going past you doesn't sound as good.

And he's RHM is rev into 10,000.

Yeah, 10,000.

But that's the thing.

If you only rev it and RB 30, like seven and a half, eight, I agree.

Twenty eight sounds better.

OK. But like right now, I've got a three six and I only need to rev it to eight.

I remember it a bit harder because I can. Right.

And it doesn't sound as good.

But you're talking about like, oh, I don't

think it's a nine out of 10 instead of a nine and a half.

It's not like one sounds terrible or one sounds good.

Right. You heard mine.

Like, yeah, no, it sounds good and still sounds sick.

I watched I watched your video when you installed the vibrant exhaust.

Yeah. To see if what RB 30 would sound like with a titanium.

How is it?

It sounds I have the same.

I don't have a vibrant.

I have to tie con.

But which I don't see by the way.

No, but it sounds like now you do.

Yeah, dude, it sounds like there's no RB that I've heard in person.

That sounds like that with the titanium set up.

We're splitting hairs here on sound.

It's like, yeah, no, a hundred percent.

Yeah. Yeah, it's just I don't know how to explain it to people.

It's like, don't don't argue over something dumb

because you can't work it out.

Right. Like, don't tell me this is your reason.

Capacity is king in a skyline GDR.

And if you have a three to like Nido Stoker and an RB 30 and you have a big

head on it to match, you've got the now you've got the talk, the midrange

and the top end. Right. You've got everything.

And I've got videos that prove just how responsive they can be.

I've got a G 45 1500 makes 1200 the hubs on 35 pound on a three two or a three six.

Both combos.

You've seen how responsive that thing is.

It's wild, right?

No, it is.

Anyone that says that tries to argue with that set up.

I just go exhibit.

Hey, you like to just it's all you can't get that combo.

Right. That's not my fault.

It's all on video.

It's on video.

I'm not I'm not sitting here on a podcast trying to tell you how good

something is and not proving it.

Like I've I've got all the videos, the racing, the dyno graphs,

got all the evidence to go.

This is how good you can make it.

Yeah. If you don't want to copy that to be different,

then don't get upset when it doesn't work.

That's what I tell people 100 percent.

And you guys don't really have two days over there.

Like as as big as we have here, right?

We actually have we have two JZ power pro mods in the in the fives.

Like, it's not like we don't know how to make power the two J.

Right. I think the biggest difference between a two J

and an RB in Australia is not the engine.

It's the chassis.

So the Skyline GDR is more popular because after the 32 to 34 can make

you can almost have standard suspension and make a thousand times almost.

I'm not going to say you can.

I'm just going to say, like, yeah, very close to standard suspension.

For a long time, I just had rear camber arms,

coil overs, because the factory ones are duds and old and like cast the rods.

That's it.

Well, I guess like because you were making over a thousand.

Dude, twelve hundred.

I ran eight sixty on that.

Wow. So the chassis can handle the power.

Now, go for now.

I'm going to get heaps of people arguing.

Yes, I'm going to look at every camera when I say this.

Your guys race tracks are so sticky that I've done a one, three, sixty on a falcon.

Azina tile.

So when you guys go, yeah, but I ran an eight on a super with a manual on this.

And now I'm like, yeah, here, not in Australia.

Sorry, man.

Like, no, like there's no super in Australia

with like a Getrag six speed and an RS rear end that makes twelve

three hundred horsepower that even comes close to a skull on GDR.

Now go on to roll racing on asphalt like real no prep,

not this fake no prep with spraying everywhere you have on a, you know, I mean,

like, and don't get me wrong, I still enjoy all that.

But go do Kudamundra, for example.

You've got an eight second GDR and a super that makes the same power runs in 11.

And that's just the reality of two will drive.

So with the RB versus 2J thing in Australia, yes,

RB is one more prominent, I think, but I think the chassis is what led to that.

It wasn't just the engine itself.

We're not we're not some people waving some false flag believing that 2Js aren't great.

They're right. They're awesome engines.

I'm never going to argue that.

But go show me a super six speed and an R34, the six speed

with both with a thousand horsepower.

And we'll take them out on the fair right now as street cars, not drag cars.

And tell me which ones are better car to use overall.

We can't argue that.

One's all drive ones, not.

You can't the drive and the GDR chassis is also a great

chassis for handling for anything like you can do anything with it.

Tell me a super can do that.

You can't. Yeah.

You can pretend and someone's going to argue in the comments, go, go, go.

But like, and, you know, yes, it's true.

There's some super time attack cars out there.

I get it. And they're awesome cars.

I'm not trying to say that they're bad.

I'm just trying to say that the R34 or R32 to R34 chassis

is why we're probably part of the reason we came obsessed with the RB.

Plus, you know, we started with Group A racing in Australia.

So we kind of had that benchmark.

So it's not that we don't have two J's in Australia.

We can't build them. There's plenty of fast two J's over there.

It's just the RB is more popular.

Now, where do you think that most people fail building RBs in the states?

Because there's very few shops that actually know.

And I'm just being honest.

There's very few shops that actually know what they're doing with the RB

because they work with a lot of two J's.

And since they're pretty, they're fairly similar.

They kind of, I guess, machine them or build them the same way.

So I don't know if there's any other science to it

or if there's any other things that they can do to, you know, not have failures.

But where do you feel like the differences are in how we build the RBs here?

We've been through the trial and error.

Even my own cars, I've been through the trial and error of what works

and what doesn't and play with a lot of things.

You guys just haven't been through enough of it yet.

And I think there are some shops over here who just go,

dude, just ask an Australian workshop and let them tell you.

And some of those cars have worked really well, right?

But there are some people over here and hats off to them as well,

who go, no, I want to do my own development.

And some of them have started off going, oh, I've made this work

when you said it wouldn't.

And then like, I go, I kind of secretly go, give it, give it two months or something.

You know, I mean, then like two months later, it's broken, right?

And then they call me and I'm like, oh, yeah, you're right.

Like, so I think there's a bit of that trial and error to go through.

And I think the RB, I've had someone say to me,

and I'm not going to say who it is, a very, very big YouTuber

somewhere overseas said to me, it's just an engine and my guys can do it.

I'm like, cool, man, wherever you say, broken.

Like RB has a lot of little things that make sense once you know them,

but don't make sense before you know them.

Things to do is like how you settle the thrust when you put a crank in

that you wouldn't do that in a procedure.

You see us with a giant block of wood and a hammer settling the thrusts.

And you might go, why are you doing that?

You don't need to deal with it to Jay.

But like, I'm like, little trick we've learned with on them

to get them to settle the thrust, right?

How much movement you how much like end float in the crank you have

might be different.

Like you've got to go off what we've learned with these RBs rather

than go, I bought off a 2J.

Things to do with like, you've got to know what they can handle.

What can I know, 5U or an N1 block handle?

And then I think tuning is probably worse than the engine

building here, to be honest.

That's always, yeah, that's always a problem.

And I will come back to that.

But actually, before we probably even get to the topic of your head,

I saw a video, I think the head is gets done wrong here a lot too.

Like two days are pretty basic head and they most people just go,

oh, yeah, set a two seven twos instead of our springs and you're good.

Yeah.

RB heads are not, not the same at all by any means.

In fact, the RBs head is its secret.

That's, that's the secret to what it does.

Really?

It's head is way more efficient than a 2J.

Well, I think everybody knows that.

We've had this, this has been done to us, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I've had people prove to me that the same turbo on the same sort of

like parts in the bottom end and the head on a 2J and an RB.

If you take into consideration the capacity in theory,

the RBs making more power per pound boost and all that sort of stuff and more

efficient, but the heads in those people get wrong here.

And the biggest thing I kind of try to tell everyone and people will argue,

that's cool.

Like I've done it, so I don't need you to argue with me until I'm wrong.

I'll stick to what I know with an RB.

I always say to people either go drop in or all in and they go, what does that

mean? I go, if you've got an RB 26 head, they respond really well to like a

drop in camshaft, like a HKS or a Tomei drop in or a Kelford drop in.

Just a drop in.

So no head machining, no nothing.

And a set of Vow springs and a set of adjustable cam gears.

They work fantastic.

Great. I've seen 50 horsepower from like 350 to 400 or I've even seen the cargo

from 600 with stock cams to closer to 700 with that.

Then the other end of the spectrum is ported head, like full race,

ported head, like as far as you can go, pull all the way to the gaskets,

take as much as you can, go oversized vows, double Vow springs, titanium

retainers and put like a minimum of like a 280 degree camshaft on a 26 or a

290 degree camshaft on a, on an RB 30 of any type.

And I'm talking like as much lift as you can physically jam in the thing.

And people go to me, oh, that's too big. It'll drive crap.

And I'm like, eh, no. And they go, no, that's, that'll be crap.

I'm like, no, it's actually not.

And they keep trying to convince me that that won't drive well.

The first time I put a race ported head on a 26 with only like a G35 on it,

I thought, oh, this will be laggy.

I will look, I lost no bottom end.

I gained mid range.

It came on better.

Arby's love it.

Stop trying to make them work down low.

They don't ever.

They don't. I don't care what.

And if you do get it to work down low,

you'll just crush bearings and labour the motor and break it anyway.

So the head on them, if you're not losing any bottom end

and you're not losing any mid range by having a big head,

but you're gaining like a thousand, one and a half thousand RPM worth of

like power band up top and making the thing work up top.

They want to work up top.

All of their efficiency is up top.

OK, they don't they, no matter what you do to an RB,

they're not happy when they're trying to make peak torque at 3000 RPM.

They always break.

They labour. They don't like it.

So if you can put a big head on it and you don't lose any bottom end,

what's what's the downside?

None. You gained mid range.

In fact, my 2.6 with a race ported head on it and two 80 degree

cams with like 11.25 lift came on boost quicker than just like dropping cams.

I didn't believe it at first.

But when I started like doing this, I was like,

and then I did the only person's ever done like a direct comparison to six

to three to say everything in the engine changes was the same.

The head was the same.

Everything when I put a 3.2 under it, I'm like, the cams are too small.

I put two nineties in it with 11.85 lift. Wow.

And it didn't lose any bottom end or three that it picked up bottom end.

It was wild. Now I'm three six.

And I'm like, I need bigger cams. I need three hundreds in it.

Like it's that's they just eat up head big time.

When I like any good person out there, they love head.

Yeah.

So I say good one drop in or all in all this, like, I did a light port

and I cleaned up the valves area and I put two seven to shut up.

Yeah. Drop in or all in the in the middle.

Like you might sit there and tell me, oh, Andrew, but I did this and it kind of

like I'm not saying that like a two seven two and I like cleanup doesn't do anything.

I'm just saying it's like it's if you're going to spend the money

on porting ahead and doing new vows and that sort of stuff, go all in.

And trust me, you'll have the lumpiest, sick idol like an Aussie GDR.

The thing will rev to no, I'll send you a video to play in a second.

A stock 2.6 crank, 2.6 crank, rods and pistons, big head on it,

like big, like a seven second head on it, but only a G35 1050 on it made 840

at the hubs rev to ninety seven hundred and the sound is epic.

Tell me you don't want that.

Like and then I put a three two on the bottom, but instead of revving

to ninety seven hundred rev to eighty seven hundred.

OK, but but now I made that power on like twenty five pound of boosts.

Like it was so efficient.

So you're saying, OK, so I think I reached out to you right before SEMA.

Yeah, I had a turbo problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think I was running into back pressure issues.

I had a nine six hot side.

Yeah, I think I watched one of your videos where you were explaining

that you went with a larger hot side on one of your turbos and you said minimum

one ten one one one ten or one one five, depending on the brand.

I think I won one twenty.

Yeah, yeah, they make a V-band precision makes a V-band one ten and one twenty

and one to eight now.

Oh, you're once. Yeah, right.

Now, now you're three six with a garrison and we actually ended up

installing that and running it before SEMA.

And I picked up I think I want to say my my my terrible school

five hundred RPM sooner with that.

So it's straight and when I drove the car, it was driving

like it was picking up like sooner because it was coming in earlier.

I'm not really sure it's the same turbo to just the next gen.

But I'm not really sure if it was the back pressure or if what it was,

but it definitely drove better and it felt like it was like breathing.

I love to breathe and it's just I keep telling everyone make the thing

efficient. Yeah, trying to choke it up.

Don't don't put a G 30 on it and try and make full boost at three grand.

They drive junk, put a G 35 on it, get a bigger, bigger rear housing,

bigger rear wheel, get some flow through the thing, let it eat.

And they just they don't lose a heap of bottom end when they do it.

Because like I said, they were designed for group A racing in the late 80s,

really, with the design happened.

They were never designed to make bottom end.

There are two six, man.

Like they were designed to make all their power five and above.

Stop trying to change it.

Stop trying to make an RB stop.

You know, I'm going to say something to fence if I go down this path,

but just stop trying to make it do what it's not. OK.

All right, that's that's like just stop fighting it.

And you think high lift cams are you said 11 to five?

That's kind of that's a small I go 1185 now.

I want bigger if I can.

What I'm in the UK has done a new base

second on 12 and a half mil lift.

I want to do that next.

I'm 1185 mil lift on a three two or three six.

You guys are running that much lift.

Yeah, man. And more.

Wow. It's wild, bro. It's so good.

It's crazy because like I had a 11 11 millimetre

lift on my current setup, which is not going to be in there anymore.

And then it was like a big deal.

It was like, that's too much lift.

You know, you should run 10 10 to five, 10 85.

It's only makes and I'm like, well, all the guys in Australia

are running high lift. Why can't I run high lift?

What's the issue?

You know, so I don't really know.

Again, the difference in here, you know, it's that traditional

understanding of the bigger the camshaft, the worse it drives,

the more midrange. Right.

And don't get me wrong.

Like if you go to a trade school

and learn about generically, learn about camshaft,

like everything from, you know, like the ramp profile,

the lift and the duration and the overlap, etc.

Right.

Logic tells you that the bigger the camshaft, the worse it drives.

And there are engines that do that.

And from what I'm told, and 2J does that,

like like a monster camshaft with a G35 would actually drive crap.

On a 2J. Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, Arby's are different.

And that's the thing is everyone's trying to implement traditional

engine building or engine tuning to an RB over here.

And it's not working.

And then they kind of look at like, oh, why isn't that working with like,

how come you're doing that?

I get I've been told multiple times I must be lying about what my car has

because like you were showing me a video and go, and they go, no way.

Like just no way it does that.

I'm like, yeah, that's normal. I can build you that.

Like, yeah. And I've built cars for other people

and people have copied my combos and everyone I ask.

I'm like, I saw this guy, he's an ex-navy seal at a car meet in California.

He goes, man, I copied your car exactly.

Jetrag for 11 GTW 384, Nismo Plenum, 2.8.

Like just yeah.

And I go, how is it?

He goes, it's incredible.

And he goes, actually, my tuner told me that my combo was wrong and it will be terrible.

He told me that. And I said, no, man, I'm going to copy motive.

And when I find it was awesome, like I can't.

I can't have more evidence than just constant builds that keep working.

Right. Like that's that's what I try to do.

But I've had people say, give me the formula.

You give them the formula and they change two things and they ruin it.

So OK, so I say to people that a GTR set up,

not just the engine, but the whole car over a thousand.

Even 700, OK, you get 10 out of 10, right?

It's the best car on the planet to me.

Like I can like amazing nine out of 10.

Pretty good car. Yeah. Eight out of 10.

It's all right. Seven junk.

So you've only got to get three things wrong out of 10.

And the car goes from being incredible to terrible.

So when other YouTube is gone, I'm finally going to drive a Skyline GTR.

They drive a seven out of 10 parts list car that's not complete package done well.

And they'll go, oh, it's a bit disappointing.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

But I've taken people for a ride in mind where I could just flood out arrogantly.

I'll say this with total arrogance.

Come for a driver.

Mine's the best you don't have ever been in.

And I go, yeah, right.

And I agree. I would, too.

If you someone right now said to me, come for a drive in this super

to the best trip you've ever been, I'd be like, yeah, right.

I mean, like he's taken for a drive and they come back and they're like,

yeah, like it's.

It is like, yeah.

But that's that's a long time developing minute adjustments to get that right.

I didn't just wake up and build a car.

I've been developing the one car since 2011.

Right. And made sure that at every point, my mentality is I come at 400 horsepower.

I'm not going above 400 till it's perfect, like perfect.

Yeah. Cool. Perfect.

450. Keep it perfect.

OK, and I've done that every step of the way from 280 horsepower to 1200.

So if you say to me, Andrew, build me the perfect GDR at a power level

from 400 to 1200, OK, do this.

And that's I've done that not just to try and, I don't know, it's not ego based.

I genuinely want to help viewers.

I want to help GDR owners.

A lot of our followers are very much thanks for your help.

And that's actually what I want to do is educate GDR owners and RB owners.

Help them help them build a good car rather than gas.

And that development is why I did that.

I could have skipped so many steps and just built that, right?

Yeah. Like normal people just build a car.

I didn't. I've been developing and tinkering away for so long.

I almost need a reset.

I almost want to get back and start from another stock one again.

So imagine starting from stock again now, 15 years later.

I know.

You know, let's do that. There we go.

I'm going to do it.

So you mentioned that video I posted about the cylinder.

Yeah, your cylinder. What happened? Come on.

Well, before that, the biggest, the biggest thing in the comments

is it wouldn't happen if you had a 2J, right?

For some reason, if you build a 2J terrible, that'll break too.

Like what happened to your head?

He's not an RB thing.

What happened to your head was a terrible, like just bad assembly, bad build.

Like that. Yeah, that could have been an LS.

That could have been a Coyote.

That could have been a 4G 63, a K 24, S 58. You name it.

Any engine built wrong, he's going to break an RB is probably slightly more.

I don't want to use the word delicate because it's not more delicate.

It's just it likes to have things done just right.

It has it has less margin of error in it.

It's probably the way I like to put an RB build that once built right.

Oh, yeah, bro, I'll take anyone's challenge on with how good they are.

But if you don't build it right, they tend to not be as happy

probably sooner than another engine.

But what yours had, bro, that's just.

That's the problem, though, every like how you're speaking right now.

They all think like, oh, that's what every RB owner sounds like.

They're all delusional. They say like, oh, it's delicate.

You don't have to do that with 2J, so it's more reliable.

Why would anybody want to deal with the nonsense you have to deal with with an RB?

No, but not with assembly.

Like if you're that's what they're saying.

If your cam tunnel was not straight, 2J is going to break too.

If your buckets are wrong, like in the we're over the valves, like everything will break.

I think what I won't say the word more delicate.

There is no say I probably a little bit more susceptible to like that becoming an issue

sooner is guess what?

We rev to 9000, not to 7000, like a loser.

That's what I say to them.

I go, that's cute, bro.

You revs to 7, that's cute.

Like, it's just relax.

It's fun, but when someone says that, that's what my reply usually is.

Just hey, just because you can't rev to 9000, but what happened to your engine

is I don't even care.

It's an I be like it could have happened to any engine.

That was just I actually had to stop watching at one point like like a horror movie.

Like, I can't watch that was that.

I'm like, how many more things are going to be wrong with this head?

So with that cylinder head, just to kind of clarify what not the long story.

I was obviously my first project.

So I picked up a cylinder head and it was brand new from Colby.

Actually, he sold me a cylinder head to pay 3500 bucks for it.

Brand new in the plastic from Nissan, which now you regret not getting not caping.

Yep. So I was lucky enough to have him send me one.

I paid for it and I was in a rush.

It was an amateur thing.

I wanted the car done right away.

I kept saying three months for about two years, right?

So I brought the head to the machine shop and I said, hey, man, I have this.

I have this fresh core.

Do you have something that is already done that we don't have to, you know,

we can speed up the process.

So he put me in contact with somebody else who had one,

which is one of his friends, and I took that cylinder head in exchange for this one

for the which if you did the mathematics, the cost of building a cylinder head

and buying a secondhand core even would be triple what you paid for that new one.

Yeah. If done right.

If done right, 100 percent.

Like a head right now in Australia is probably about 12 grand US

to get a fully race-ported head with everything.

It's about 12 grand.

What about just a core?

Well, you got to buy a core.

So like if you rang me up and said, hey, bro,

find me a head and send me a Croydon spec like it can go sixes,

like an all in head with everything.

Right now, they've got some cores that are floating through rotation.

You're probably going to spend about 14,000 US.

But that's OK.

Well, none of the cylinder heads cost that much over here.

OK. Yeah.

They're not 14,000.

And I would never pay that over here, knowing I just sent it to Australia.

I wouldn't be 14 grand.

I would. Yeah, I wouldn't even bother having anybody in the states

to build my RV. But now you know, you get a head that's like,

oh, we could just put this on a car over here that runs sixes straight away.

Oh, 100 percent. And you know what you know.

Oh, like what can I rev to more than your turbo?

So you know what I mean?

Like that's our answer.

Like it'll make more power and go quicker and rev harder

than everything else in your car is capable of.

So relax, it's good.

So I'll give you.

Actually, I will say this to everyone watching who gave you crap about that.

That cylinder head I told you on my car that I put on that two point six.

It is the same cylinder head that I did.

The built two point six in 2017 was on my built three point two.

And now my billet three six has not changed.

Only thing that has changed on that head is the camshaft

when I went to a bigger camshaft with an RB 30 block.

It is the same port, the same valves, everything.

It's had a quick refresh only because when I went to billet block, I'd be stupid.

Not yet. And he'd done a lot of work by then.

And I think I think a couple of valves just got a like like valve seats.

I think two valve seats are like it's just worn like let's just freshen it.

There was nothing wrong with it, though.

After what's that?

I did it last year or the year before, wasn't it?

It started last year, so twenty five, seventeen to twenty five.

So like eight years of the same cylinder head across at least three different engine combos.

So that's how it should be.

That's how it should be.

You break stuff, never popped a shim on that set up either.

It's not shimless, never popped a shim.

Oh, and it's not shimless.

OK, yeah, shimless buckets and all that stuff.

Well, you know why I don't go shimless?

So I can adjust it.

It's easier, right?

So you're not cutting the valves and all that stuff.

Yeah. But if you're using the right retainer and the right shim

and the right setup and the right tune and you don't bash off rim level,

you know, there's no reason to drop shims.

Yeah, Curtin said that.

They said they run shims and I was like, really?

You're like, yeah, we don't have any problems.

But they were like, if you're having problems and it's probably something else.

Yeah, it's probably something else.

I said a lot of you, just because you have problems.

Yeah, no, it's almost like, you know, that's just what it is.

And in this machine shop in particular, like when all this happened,

I had another machine shop inspect it.

I sent it over to him.

I said, hey, this is what happened.

Take a look at it, see what you can do.

He said, all right, if it's my fault, I'll take care of it.

Long story short, I was, I didn't agree with the findings.

You guys can check out the video.

I'm not going to explain.

And then it just, I got an invoice for $1,200.

Not that it's a lot of money for a cylinder head, but I didn't agree with a lot

of the stuff that was on there, labor, polishing, cams, 65.

Like, I'm like, dude, like that's not, I didn't do anything to the cylinder head

that caused any of this.

Maybe the bent valves.

I'll take accountability for it.

I'll buy new valves.

But how'd you bend the valves?

Exactly, you don't even know, right?

So I said, you know what, I can't blame that on you because there's no way that

you physically could have bent the valves in the head unless it was set like that.

So, you know, I'll pay for the valves.

No problem.

And if the labor, for it to fix them, no problem.

Everything else on there was like labor for, you know, inspecting and washing

the cylinder head.

So I was like, dude, like, what about the other stuff?

And I kept asking if the cams on the board is off, if the valve guides are

beat up and all this other stuff, couldn't get that information, couldn't get

specs, nothing, right?

So I'm like, all right, that's a red flag.

I said, honestly, man, like you're telling me it's rod bearings.

I cut the filter open, I dropped the pan.

I didn't see any type of material in there.

So I don't believe that.

So you see what bearing material on an RB usually looks like?

Not small.

It's not going to get up into your head and cause like a tiny slow issue like that.

If your bearing was gone enough to like damage your cams, I think your

bearing is probably about to let go too.

That's what I'm saying.

Like you can't say bearing damaged caused you to not have a straight tunnel

in your cam, like the cam bore.

Right, right.

Now that's, that was wrong.

The way the buckets were, they don't wear like that on the head, bro.

Like, yeah, that was wrong.

Clearances to begin with.

Well, it's just damaged itself and ate itself over time to really clear it up.

Is like, I'm not a machine shop.

I'm not a machine.

And neither am I, but I'm pretty sure there's ways to check and have

numbers to check tolerances for the bore being off.

I couldn't get that from him.

So I'm like, that's a red flag to me because you're not, you're not giving

me enough information.

I could, I could pay $1,200 and then I ended up in the same situation again

because you didn't really tell me what the problem was.

The thing is to me, as soon as someone says, I've got irregular wear on a

cam shelf, I'm like, go check the bore straightness of it.

Like that's, that's not even a, you don't polish cams though, to make sure

that the cam spins freely.

That's not the right way to do things.

No, it's just that you should have already tunnel.

You should have already bored that cam, like the cam tunnel.

If it's off, make sure it's good.

You don't pass the journals and be like, oh, okay, it spins freely now.

Like that's not the way you do it.

So I didn't agree.

We got into a big argument about it because he was upset about it and said,

Oh, you think I should pay for your stuff and whatever.

And then it was almost like an ego thing where I was like, you know what,

man, just send me the stuff back.

No problem.

I won't even say anything about it.

I'm not out here to ruin anybody's business.

Just leave it at that.

He got offended about, about that.

He's like, oh, well you're saying that because you need validation.

And I'm like, for what?

I'm telling you, I'm not out here trying to start no problems.

Yeah.

Just send me this stuff back and I'll deal with it myself.

That's YouTuber life too.

I've been in that situation before.

I've tested product that hasn't worked flat out, hasn't worked.

And I'm like, have you said anything publicly?

No, but I've tried to tell them.

And instead of being like, thanks for that feedback.

Let's try and fix the product.

It's F you.

Who do you think you are?

I'm like, what I haven't like, I did it in engineering.

Like I don't do tech videos of just throw it on and go around the block.

But I had like 36 channels of logging just about what we're testing, man.

Like just, but you're not going to say, but again, you know,

if you're working with a company, you're not going to air them out.

I prefer that if I have a problem with a part, the reason why you don't go

public is you try and deal with it so that they can get a better practice

and a better service out.

You're working together for a better car scene as a whole.

Think of it that way.

That's what I do.

But sometimes some companies just think they're right and they don't want to

hear it. And I've had, believe it or not, having issues with heads over here

has been an issue for me before.

I built a car for Mickey from Throttle, which is, you know, roundcat garage.

Shout to Mickey.

Sorry, Mickey.

Believe it or not, this is how I met Mickey was a SEMA 22.

He just actually came up to me and goes, Hey, man, like I had met you longer than

that. No, no, no.

And he just came up and produced and, you know, man, I'm pretty friendly.

Yeah.

What up?

Just start hanging out.

Can you help with the GTR?

Yeah, of course.

No problem.

Whatever you need.

And then he actually built his personal 32 off, off camera, not on throttle,

but they built the engine on throttle.

And that was November at SEMA.

And then we found out about this TV show, Bang and Gears.

Maybe about that.

Everyone did.

I think pallets still coming out.

Yeah, and I helped him.

I helped him find a drive shaft in the middle of Vegas when he broke.

Yeah, of all people.

It was the red card back there.

It wasn't a random Australian finding parts for a car from America.

So you were pitted together.

And then so Mickey was wanting to build his 32.

And then I got invited to that show and I'm like, I don't want to drive

some borrowed GDR if I can.

I'd prefer I can't get mine there in time.

And Mickey goes and I looked at Mickey and go, let's build yours.

And he's like, dude, the show's in like eight weeks.

I'm like, and he looked at me like, you guys, you guys, I can't even say

the words offensive over here, but you guys got problems mentally.

So we actually machined a block ready to go, got all the parts

sort of everything out, shipped what we could there.

Rob Arbalino flew in, built the engine off camera with, you know, with the guys.

I mean, they built it, but he was there to kind of help and supervise

so that we could get built our way.

But they built it on camera.

So it wasn't fake.

They actually did build it.

He was just there to supervise a little bit and help out, right?

But then put that it was a completely dead stock running 32.

We put a 20, built 26 and it with big head rods and pistons.

Pump all the usual inlet manifold, G35 sequential gearbox,

brake kit, suspension, fuel system, everything all in the car in.

Man, eight days.

And then I flew in when it was like had turned key.

So I had to run it in, work with con, get it road tuned to begin with.

I had to go test the car, whatever, etc.

Yeah, I was going to go and then they disappeared at the show

and I had to go dyno it and tune it and everything.

And I remember Mickey just gone, dude, this thing's going to roll

in like completely untested.

I'm like, yeah, man, it's fine.

It goes, how fast will it be?

And I'm like, um, that's 675 horsepower on 24 pound ethanol.

Tracks a bit crappy because it's a non prep and it's winter.

It's cold. We're on a circuit tire.

Oh, I'll go between 10, 7 and 10, 9 at 135 on that shitty track.

Because what about circuit?

I go, I'll beat a GT3 RS and I'll.

So I jumped in a GT3 RS at Dream Racing at Las Vegas

and I've driven there enough times to go.

I'm handy enough to put down a lap that's not, you know,

completely off.

Did a 56, four freezing cold first lap in the 32, 54, four.

So two seconds quicker than a GT3 RS on a sub 60 racetrack.

So everyone's like going, whoa.

And then I go, Mickey goes, I didn't believe you.

Like, I'm like, why not?

Like I put my alarm in it.

It does what it does.

Like the combo works.

I don't know how people can build a car

and it's not just work off a baseline like that.

When in theory, if you know your package, you know what you're doing,

it should just go together.

I'm not 2,000 horsepower, I get it.

But like a 700 horsepower GTR, I already know where it's going to run.

Yeah.

Circuit the track.

So then we went to the drag strip and I did exactly what I said.

I went 10, 8 at 135 straight away.

And like building a car like that, it's just.

It's so easy for us over there now, at least for some of us, just to do that.

I just but over here, you guys just haven't got to that point.

But on Mickey's car, back to come back to the heads.

I told him what I wanted with the head.

Like I said before, I wanted it all in.

I wanted an all in head.

I wanted a 280 degree camshaft, 11 and a half mil lift.

I wanted the recess in the head machine, 11 and a half.

Yeah, 11 and a half.

I wanted the head.

I wanted it like the relief for the camshaft.

I wanted serious porting, oversized valves, double valve springs.

And the head shop got told this and said, oh, no, I'm doing that.

I'm like, and Mickey rings me goes and so did Gretty.

They're like, he doesn't want to do it.

I'm like, tell him to fucking do it.

Excuse the French, like do it.

Yeah, but why would you even want if somebody says no,

why would you even want them to do in the first place?

No, no, I could do it at the time.

And like, it was just not like, who else are you going to call?

There's only like three head shops I know of in all of America.

And most of them want to argue.

And he's exact words were on a 2J that would drive terrible.

It's not a fuck.

It's not.

Yeah, it's not a 2J.

It's not a 2J.

So this back and forward went for like a whole day

where I'd go and tell them something to tell him.

And then he would argue again and get back.

And I just reached a point.

I said, just tell him to do it, just do it.

He could take no responsibility for it.

Just do it.

And the thing made like 700 wheel horsepower, like 24 pound of boost

revved to 9200 RPM.

And when Mickey drove it the first time, I go, feel any lag in a stock one.

He goes, dude, this is more responsive than a stock GDR.

I'm like, I don't know.

Like, I don't know what else I have to keep telling people to believe it.

It's just some people are just stuck in their ways.

And, you know, they probably have a good amount of business coming in

and they don't want to shift.

Yeah.

And there's some shops all that here too.

But that can be good at times as well, though.

I mean, if you're if, but I think it depends on who you're affiliated with

also, yeah, like who's who's cars are you working on?

Yeah, that you can say you can back and be like, yo, this is I did this car.

I did this car.

I worked on if you're not working on these people's cars.

And it's like, where's this data information coming from?

If all you're doing is building 600 horsepower cars and you do them well,

that's fine.

Like that's good.

Yeah, that's cool.

But don't argue with me about how 1000 horsepower works.

You don't know.

And I know some people have tried to argue about that and guess what happens

when they build their first 1000 horsepower one.

It blows up.

Yeah.

And what did I tell them before they blew it up?

You're going to blow that up because of ABCD.

And they're like, nah, all right.

So it's tuning breaks more of them than parts.

OK, so it's tuning.

You mentioned the cylinder heads are probably like a secret to the RB cylinder heads.

It's a secret.

Sooning cylinder head.

Is there anything else on the RB that, you know, if you want to build

over a thousand that you should be engine wise or engine wise?

Oiling, getting all right.

And they all know that.

But no, but I mean, like from that's the same deal.

Like if you have a stock pump and you have stock oil flow,

yeah, you can get away with baffles and a catch can.

So those people that go to me, oh, I've got a little cat.

Yeah, because you've got a stock pump.

Think about what it says.

High volume oil pump.

It's not just pressure.

It's flowing more volume.

So if it's flows more volume, more than the factory designed it for.

And it's already got terrible oiling factory proven by Group A, what they had to do.

So if you have more volume, where's it all go in the head?

Get stuck in the head.

It can't flow back fast enough from the head.

So if you're a part throttle on a circuit at 4000 RPM

and it's pumped on all into the head and it's draining back slowly,

what happens when you put the gas on and you get some, you get some crankcase pressure

out the rock covers, out the cam covers.

Now you've got it blowing out the cam covers into a catch can.

But you've also got even your drain back to some, which you have to have.

Shut up if you don't agree.

It's now pushing crankcase pressure out.

So now the oil can't go anywhere.

But where? Out the breather of the catch can.

Right. So if you have a 10 litre sump, how big should your catch can be?

Like six litres, man.

10 litres.

You need to have enough sump that if you do a run from stationery to top of six gear

and your oil, your oil system is so bad that it can't all drain back to the sump in time.

You need to sump big enough to survive that amount of run.

OK. Does that make sense? Yeah.

And that's dry, dry sump say the same thing.

The dry sump has to hold enough to be able to survive what you're doing with it.

Right. True.

So once you've finished that run of top speed run,

guess where the oil goes now that you're back at idle?

It all drains back again.

Right. You're good again.

But the catch can needs to be big enough to also hold all of the oil

that got spat out of it during that run.

So these little one litre catch cans that piss everywhere.

I'm like, you retired at all.

Put a six litre catch can on an RB 30

with a high volume oil pump on it and a 10 litre sump.

If you do that, I drove around with a factory like Stahl sump set up.

Yeah. Just an enlarged sump.

It held 10 litres.

I had a six litre catch can.

Guess how much oil dripped out of that car in two years, three years?

Zero.

Because I did it right.

It seems like overkill, but there's no such thing as overkill with a GTR.

Get it right and it works.

So everyone tries to argue me.

Oh, yeah, but I had a 10 litre sump and a six litre catch can.

I never left one drop of oil on the ground.

I did a lot of work.

That 3.2 comes back.

The videos prove it, right?

Like it. Yeah, yeah, because it could hold enough oil in the catch can

that when I finished my run, it could drain back to the sump.

So now I had 10 litres in the sump again.

Right. That's the that's the big.

Or forget all this.

Just dry sump it.

I know it's expensive, though.

It's like 10, that's like 10,000.

Dude, if you say what these cars cost now, it's like, well, I mean,

if you have a car like that, yeah, of course.

But like, you know, everybody, if you're going to block my advice is

over a thousand, put dry sump on it and just be done with it if you can.

Really? Yeah.

Look, some might say 1500, 1200.

But if you go billet block, you pretty much have to go

external oil pump or dry sump anyway.

You have to because they don't have a spot for an oil pump on a billet block.

Or if you make it or you could do a lot of effort to make it work.

But you have to go dry sump.

OK. Billet blocks need stupid oil pressure.

Well, if you have a billet block, you're trying to make a big power.

Exactly. So why would you bother?

Like it's by the time you do all those oil mods to the custom sump

and the custom catch can, stuff, you're probably spending 10 grand on your system.

Anyway, that's true. Australian dollars, mind you, I'm talking.

So so, yeah, cylinder heads, it's secret.

OK. And when it comes to making power and making a good setup,

the the the oiling system right is the key to keeping it alive.

There are other little tricks with assembly that really aren't tricks.

You just like machine shop assembly or machine shop tricks,

but they're not major that is they're small like for a bottom and or top both.

OK. But it's not major.

It's not enough for me to sit here and go, oh, my God, it's some totally secret.

Just bring a shop in Australia and say, can you give me a hand?

And most of them will tell you what you need.

And then tuning is the last one with an R.B. to keep it alive.

And a lot of people tune them wrong here, like really wrong.

And the key to it all is.

It's what I call chopping off the torque curve, right?

So engines break at peak torque, all of them, right?

R.B.s are just a little bit more don't like it.

Every time you see him crush a bearing, lift the head,

spin a bearing, whatever, it's all at peak torque. OK.

So if you know, peak torque is where it's going to lift the head

and where it's going to cause damage, then get rid of that peak torque point.

And what I mean by that is let's just say your torque comes up,

right? And it sort of hits a peak and rolls over before it sort of goes like that.

Cut that bit off.

I look at whatever peak, whatever torque it makes at, say, 8000 RPM.

I work backwards to make that torque curve flat.

So if you have, say, 800 foot pounds at eight grand,

but you have a thousand foot pounds at five and a half.

Man, that's thousand foot pound at five and a half grand break everything.

Break gear boxes, break drive. Get rid of it.

Now, it doesn't feel aggressive as much on the hit now.

But by getting rid of that huge torque spike,

it doesn't lift the head, doesn't break drivetrain,

doesn't talk steer as much, doesn't crush bearings.

It's where all the damage happens.

So it's almost and the thing is the thing wants to make peak torque

at five and a half to six, but you can rev it to nine. True.

When you've got a good gearbox and you shift at nine, where do the revs go to?

Seven. Yeah.

Doesn't matter what it makes it six anymore, does it?

Once you're moving.

So the only time what it does at six matters is that first hit

that makes you feel good.

How do you want to feel good and break your car?

Or do you want to actually go from A to B and beat people?

What do you want to do?

You're right. You go in mind the way the torque curve is set up on its street,

like street tune.

I can do a roll on an 809 Yokohama on 1100 horsepower.

I can do a roll on and put the power down

because the initial hit is like it's got 700.

Right.

But then once you keep the foot in and you get past sort of like

seven and a half thousand half them and get into like eight, eight and a half.

That's where it makes 1100.

OK.

When I pull the gear lever at eight and a half and it drops to like seventy

three hundred still makes a thousand.

Yeah. OK.

But if I drive it between five and seven,

it like it drives like a car that makes eight hundred or seven hundred,

which hooks up.

So if you get that strategy of tuning right with these,

instead of it being stupidly aggressive when it comes on boost.

And I've had this conversation with Lee here, too, with these cars,

like I had one time he tried it once and he goes, damn,

like the car actually went down the street and drove in a straight line

and went fast instead of trying to like go left and right.

Right. Right. Yeah, aggressive.

So tuning is a big issue.

And to me, it's all tuning that midrange.

It's it's for the multiple reasons.

Now, I'm going to be a little bit controversial here, right?

So I went to Australia and did a podcast with B2R.

Yeah. Then mentioned that he ramps the boost in soon.

It's worked early and that's just how they tune over there.

Ah, but see billet block. OK.

That problem starts to go away.

But have they broken a lot of drivetrain components

and the cars get out of shape when they come on boost?

Yeah. Oh, you would know better than me.

I do. But the drivers don't mind.

So when I tell you my strategy for tuning the midrange,

half of it is, OK, legitimately, it makes the car safer.

Billet block is a bit different.

You can you can let them eat.

Like, let a billet. Really?

Oh, yeah. So why don't we just go billet?

But we're exactly.

Exactly, baby. Billet.

Why don't we just come? Stop mucking around.

Cast comes last, baby.

But if you firing a billet block, yeah.

And so it can't lift the head. Right.

It's got a billet crank in it.

It's got good rosin pistons in it.

And you're going to dry something most likely.

And you dry something.

So you're not going to crush bearings

because you've got good oil pressure

and you've got a better bearing.

You're not going to crush bearings.

You're not going to lift the head.

Yeah. The engine can take it.

I've got it. I've got a tune that is the all in tune,

which is like make all of it all the time.

Right. It's just like it's pretty much almost might as well be no wastegate.

Like it's just just make all of it all the time.

But the drivability, go drive one that ramps the way I told you

and go drive one that makes it all in and like it's totally different car.

Now, that one feels slower because it didn't hit as hard.

Yeah.

But I can tell you right now, he hooked up and it went.

And it just, whoa, I'm going to, we should replay a video like now.

One of my setups, right?

Like, and I will never say someone else has set up his wrong,

but I can tell you that I know my setup works with the data,

the evidence, etc.

But I will never say that I have some other guy said he did that.

I don't like saying, oh, he's wrong.

Cool, man. Do it your way.

Whatever you want to do.

And B2, I have so many runs on the board to show them what they're doing.

I would never argue with what they want to say.

And if they say they do it this way, I'm like, yeah, cool.

But I just found it interesting because I was like, oh, wow, like that's

they have a different strategy than most people.

I can only go off my own.

My cast block, when I have that like more sedate mid range in it

and it made like a thousand and fifty, it went forever.

Like it just was so easy.

Soon as I went, let it eat broke two of them in a row.

I'm not going to lie, though, the Mr. 33.

Yeah. I got in that car, did it ride along in there?

I could not breathe like the first five seconds.

And that's just because how good looking at the Milanese.

That's not even the car.

He knows that joke, by the way.

Yo, I swear, I could not.

That was the fastest car I've ever been in my life.

And it was on the track, too.

So literally, I could not breathe for five seconds.

I have it on video and I was just quiet.

Yeah. But the way that card.

And I've never been on the GTR before that, like a 33 or 34, not even a 32.

But it was just like wild, aggressive.

They're so good when they're done, right?

Yeah. No, the way they, I mean, I'm sure if that car was done that way,

that was like 17 under horsepower.

Yeah. I'm never going to get an R7.

There's no tuning out that mid-range torque pivot.

When I talk about what I said to you, I'm talking like you're 700 to 1200.

Like, no, I want it to actually be dry.

The Pro wasn't a pro. They're going to get them on.

So they're being competitive.

It's a different track.

Like it's a different world when you're talking that.

I'm talking like you're six to 700, even 500.

So the 1200, 1300 in the realm of like having a responsive turbo that can go around a corner

and driven on the street a lot and all that sort of stuff and probably still a cast block.

In that world, that mid-range torque curve is everything.

Let them eat up top, bro. They love it.

For IBS.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I ramp boost back in up top like that.

So the billet block, right?

I actually spoke to, I forgot his name.

Who owns a billet block on the bullet racing?

Yeah. Yeah.

We had a long conversation about like RBs, direction they're going and the billet block

and so on with Mac and what they're doing with it and so on.

But a lot of people don't really seem to want to run that in the States.

And obviously you said that if you're running that, you can't run a, you know,

stock oil pump on it.

You have to run a Chrysler.

I was cautious going into a bill block for the first time.

And my problem wasn't whether it could hold the power.

That was easy. It's been proven so many times.

Yeah.

I would just walk into any shop to Croydon, B2R, Biron, most once mechanical,

gem, whatever, just walk in and just be like, what are you doing?

I am mad.

Power is never the issue for me.

It was more what's serviceability like.

When is the block going to, it's expansion due to heat going to cause me an issue with

bearing clearance, causing wear, when am I going to have to freshen it up?

Like those were the questions I had going into billet block.

And I don't, I haven't answered them all yet.

I've done enough work in it to go, oh, okay.

Like it's, but the, the Achilles heel of a billet block will always be temperature control

and not in a, not in a way that is like, you can't keep temperature out of it.

It's probably keeping temperature in it.

So when I was at TX2K, I'd warm it up in my pit, but I have, mind you,

I have a 70 mil radiator and a 50 row oil cooler and like a 10 liter sump, right?

Dry sump tank.

It took 20 minutes to even be at a temperature that I could drive it

because a billet block expands vertically.

So the belt on certain setups, someone has an adjustable tensioner,

so I'm not going to say that that doesn't exist.

But some shops don't want to use that.

They just want to have a belt.

And when it's cold, the belt's pretty loose.

And then as the, as the, the block heats up, it just, it expands.

That's not talking shit.

That is just a fact and people have done it.

We put them in the sun for a day and they grow.

So when they grow, obviously you can imagine compression ratio changes,

bearing clearance has changed and the, how, how tight the belt is changes.

And we're not talking about like, you can sit with the naked eye,

but it's enough at an engine that level.

So Croydon will say to me, don't even blip the throttle till 50 degrees water temp

or over 50 degrees water temp.

You just let it idle.

Dude, I don't, I don't touch the throttle till it's hit the thermostat.

And my coolant has reached like 78 degrees.

And even then my oil is still at 30 degrees Celsius.

So how long is that?

As long as it takes.

Man, I can't drive that car at all for like 15 minutes.

15 minutes.

That's me being an engineer and that's me being in it.

15 minutes isn't enough to wipe the car down, take the bollards out.

Yeah, that's not that bad.

I mean, you know, have your coffee or whatever.

Like, you know, I mean, like we, when I had a cast block though and had a 10 liter sump,

it took 15 minutes to warm up.

The bill of blocks probably takes a little bit like a butt.

What it does do is I'd warm it up, drive down the pits at TX2K,

turn the car off, 75 all downs later, the car's cold again.

I got to warm it up again.

So sometimes you get caught out like, you're like, oh quick,

get in your car, you got to go.

I'm like, man, I can't run yet.

The car's too cold.

Now some people just ignore it and they get away with it for a while.

But I'm just one of those people that goes, I know that if I do that, there won't be an issue.

Right.

Like, I don't want there to be an issue with that engine.

I spent, that's a $80,000 Australian long motor, right?

I don't want to break it and I don't want to have to rebuild it every six months.

And I don't want to, like, I want it to last.

That's the Aussie way is like, build it so it works.

Now if I have to warm it up that long every time I drive it and take good care of it

and change it all every time, I have a clear view filter to monitor the bearing wear, everything.

If that allows for that engine to last four years instead of one,

think of it that way.

Dude, it's a race car engine, bro.

Like, we're putting race car engines in street cars here and then we're sitting there

wondering about complaining.

We have to warm it up.

Are you kidding?

The type of guy that complains he has to warm it up clearly has, like,

trying to get somewhere in too much of a hurry.

All right.

I just thought 15 minutes, I'm like, that's a long time, but no, it's really not.

Like, I think I wait for, that's about right.

Usually, yeah.

You wait till you've got some oil and water temp in your car.

I mean, and that, and that, well, it's in the back right now.

Don't worry about that.

But yeah, in that car, yeah, 100%.

Because I care enough.

I don't want to just be jumping in and out.

So when you think about it like that.

Yeah.

Now, then you have to keep the temperature in a window in a billet block to make sure

that you keep it within, like, I guess that sort of amount of expansion it has.

Because in theory, you're building the engine to suit that expansion of the block, right?

So you want to drive it in a window.

Let's say that window is between 75 and 85 degrees Celsius.

Now, my car has no problem doing that because I've got a huge radiator, a huge oil cooler.

So what was my bad thing at one end is my good thing at the other.

We've gone for drives in that car for two hours in traffic.

I took it to Perth to go racing.

And I drove from the track to the wheel, to a place we're doing a shoot,

to the wheel aligner and back in traffic, probably total hour, two hours of driving.

And then the next day at the track, I did some circuit laps in it, right?

So I'm not saying full-blown time attack laps,

but like I had some fun around the circuit show that it's drivable.

It can come off a corner.

It's nice.

It's actually responsive, good car to drive.

And I did like 300Ks and out on the back, probably 285 down the back straight into

six gear, like got a hard time for a drag engine, which it's not.

So the most important part is basically just the warm-up you're saying?

I think the warm-up.

But also, if you want to warm up quicker to go drag racing,

then you won't have the cooling system you need to go cruising.

Does that make sense?

Right, right, right.

So if you want to build your billet block to be able to drive on the street a lot,

then the cooling system is important in terms of being able to handle it,

but now it takes longer to warm up.

But if you're building a drag one on methanol, that's different.

You've got a tiny radiator, like, you know what I mean?

Like, and it's on methanol, and they'll actually build them with slightly

different clearances to suit being able to kind of run a bit colder anyway.

Okay.

So cooling is important, obviously.

So all it is with billet is temperature control.

Like if you sum it all up, it's that.

Now, obviously, billet block, we go dry sump also because they like stupid oil pressure in them.

So we go dry sump because just to make sure we don't have that problem.

Where is the oil pressure usually on though?

Cruising hot or idling?

Like at full noise, I've got 110 PSI at full noise.

Okay.

So are you waiting for your oil pressure to get to a certain level before you start driving it?

Idling?

I need to let it come down because I run 1060, which, you know,

everyone watched my video about why I should use it in your RB, which means like.

I don't know if we have that here.

I don't know if we have 1060.

You can get it.

You've got to order it.

It's a Castrol Edge 1060.

I used it in my car while I was here.

It worked really well.

Penright has 1060 as well, but it's a race oil.

So my problem is the oil pressure is so high at idle, cold.

I have to wait for some temperature to get out of as well to let the oil pressure come down.

So like, if you've just done three passes and you come back, typical nature of a dry sump,

it's only 40 PSI at idle.

As soon as you touch the throttle, it goes straight to like 90.

But when it's cold, I have like 100 PSI of oil pressure when I'm idling cold.

Really?

And it just takes it, just need to get time at a temperature drop down.

Yeah.

Because it's also thick.

Hey?

That's high?

At idle it is.

Yeah.

Usually it's like 120.

Yeah.

Full noise, not at idle.

I'm saying for my car.

Oh yeah, 120 is good at full noise.

That's what you want.

Okay.

You want 100 to 120 PSI on a big IV at full noise.

Okay.

I thought it was going to be something, wow, like 140 or something like that.

Some of the big, big ones are like over 150.

What?

Street ones, no.

But like some of the drag ones are over 150 PSI.

Yeah.

Keep the bearing alive here.

I know you mentioned in one of the videos you commented about the, because I was talking to,

I forgot who it was, but I was mentioning that like a lot of people in Australia who have billet blocks

don't daily drive them.

And you were like, well, these cars are like $400,000.

Like who's going to want to daily drive their billet block?

Go to downtown LA and tell me you want to daily drive your GTR.

No, you don't want to drive any GTR.

This whole, oh, shut up.

You don't build like a $300,000 bill with an immaculate engine bay with an $80,000 long motor,

$35,000, it's all Australian dollars, $35,000 gearbox.

That's still expensive.

You don't build that to go, you can daily drive it and wear it out.

No, you save it for an occasion, bro.

$35,000, yeah, daily drive it.

Hurricane daily driver.

But like if I had a twin turbo 2000 horsepower hurricane, I wouldn't daily drive that either.

I mean, you could, you could.

You could.

But could I drive my 1200 horsepower billet block as a daily?

My version of day-to-day use, yeah.

But do you want to sit in traffic with a sequential and a big clutch?

No.

Of course, no one does.

We're not stupid.

I don't even want to sit in traffic in a manual half the time because it's so bad.

It sucks.

I've got calls to make and things to do and like relax.

I'm trying to chill out if I've got to sit in stupid traffic.

I guess it's okay here because like there's, you see the roads here.

But have you said to me, would I drive my 32 around here to go to a car meet,

to go to the track?

Hell yeah, I would.

Yeah, shut up.

I mean, we, and that's what we do in Sydney.

It's just that the distance might not be as far.

And sometimes you go, yeah, I'm not going to drive my 32 in peak hour to go to roll racing,

but I'll leave a bit early and I've got good traffic.

I'm going to drive it.

So yeah, it's more like that.

It's, it's not that they can't drive on the street.

It's just most of the time we choose not to, if that makes sense.

Right.

But those people arguing about each other,

dude, they got 300 horsepower cars, man.

Just stay out of the argument.

Like unless you have a 1200 horsepower car that runs mid eights on the street,

maybe stay out of the argument until then.

Like just, yeah.

And everyone I know that has an eight second anything or seven second anything.

Look, they're probably going to sit there going,

there's someone right now is going to go, I daily drive myself.

You might drive from your house to your work.

That's 800 meters away.

I don't know how fight like, but let's face it.

No one's spending that sort of money on a big build.

Like I didn't daily drive my GDR when I had a stock bottom and I made 600 wheel horsepower.

Just the cars are valuable.

Like why would I want to put huge wear and tear on my pride and joy?

It's my baby.

I want to enjoy that when I enjoy it.

Right.

Like it's, if you do it every day, it takes some of the enjoyment and just the wear and tear

on a daily driver of an old nineties Japanese car.

Sorry, man.

I didn't think about that either.

Yeah.

It's, yeah, it's an older car.

Make sure the chassis is not, it's a 30 year old car.

And even though I've made it so it can do it, I just don't want to.

Well, why would I?

That's fair.

I have no desire to drive it every day.

It would take some of the novelty away.

I have been forced to drive a couple of times.

I probably don't want to, but I've driven home from Croydon in full peak hour.

And like a 30, like a hot, like hotter than today, like hot day, no air con and driven

up in Croydon in peak hour with the bad clutch in it.

I've changed for a good one now.

And I've done it.

A car didn't overheat or anything wrong.

I was just uncomfortable.

It was more that I was uncomfortable than the car was uncomfortable.

The car was fine.

The car's laughing at me going, you're an idiot.

Why did you take the air con out and drive me in this weather?

Is it really that bad to drive with a sequential low?

Just rolling out first this after that.

For me, the sequential and the engine aren't actually the problem to drive.

I had a clutch in it that had like a slider clutch style material in it,

as opposed to like a ceramitalic style material.

I'd sintered iron clutch.

That was just, man, it's bad.

Great for drag race, do 10 runs a day.

But the street clutch will hold the power,

but it won't do like a prep track one, three and the 60 multiple times in a day.

Now that I'm back on that clutch, the clutch is not an issue.

For me, the gearbox isn't even an issue.

I can drive a dog box like it's a normal gearbox in my brain.

I don't even have to think about it anymore because I've done them for so long.

Having fixed bucket seats with a roll cage is probably more annoying than the dog box.

Now, if I were to put recliners back in mine and put air con back in it,

oh man, drop on.

It's not the suspension.

It's not the brakes.

It's not the gearbox.

It's not even the clutch anymore.

It's actually the seats and the harness is pissing me off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, it makes sense.

So if I took, but if I took the seats and harnesses out of it, I'd probably die.

So I'd rather not die and enjoy the car.

No, because, you know, we got the PPG coming soon.

So, you know, I just, you know, want to make sure that's not going to be a smooth,

that's smooth, like Barry Watts voice.

Oh, there we go.

There we go, baby.

Like it's, now they drive great, but if you do need to understand how they work.

Yeah.

If you have never driven one, have no idea how they work, don't get me wrong.

You can just get in there and drive it with a clutch and just change gears and use the

clutch and be normal.

And you go, it's not too bad.

But as you get better at it, you start learning like exactly how to like nail a perfect shift,

upshift or downshift.

When you get your flat shift with closed loop done properly and you have a time-based

like power return.

So you don't just say closed loop, I hate open loop flat shift.

Open loop flat shift is if I pull the lever, once you feel how much strain there is on that

lever, it just tells it to cut it for however many milliseconds.

No gear change is the same.

So you can't have a fixed time.

You've got to over time it.

So the gear change is too long, right?

It's a really long gear change so that you can make sure that any gear change works.

When you have closed loop, the strain gauge tells the ECU how I want to shift.

So it does the ignition cut.

Then the shift happens, but the ECU doesn't try to give you any power back until the

rotary position sensor goes, I'm in gear now.

So once it's in gear and the rotary position says the ECU, I'm in second gear now, then

the EC goes, cool, here's the power back.

It's the rate that it brings that power back that changes how it drives.

If you know how to tune properly, you change the rate of return based on boost pressure and RPM.

So if you're at one pound of boost at 4,000 RPM, you clearly just...

So it knows return the power over almost like an exponential time chart to kind of

be a slow return.

So it's smooth and soft.

But when you're like 90, 200 RPM, pow, you want bangs and pops and then it's like,

you give all the power back right now.

As soon as it's in gears, bring the power back.

So it's a fast engagement.

Because you're driving flat out though, it needs to come back quick like that.

Otherwise, you see the head jolt if it's not a fast enough shift.

So that's what that does.

So closed loop flat shift just makes for a really nice car.

And you can do, if you've got electronic throttle, you can do blip on downshift,

you can do clutchless downshift, everything.

Is this universal though?

Can you like, is that something you can share across several different setups?

Because the sequentials are pretty much the same.

Not every sequential has like a blade sensor inside that has an actual position,

gear position sensor in it.

Some of them still use very rudimentary, like they'll just have a strain gauge and there's

nothing in the gearbox.

Okay.

Not all of them.

PPG has an actual position sensor.

So it's not guessing the gear based on RPM versus road speed.

Like an ECU can do that, right?

You can tell your ECU tell them what gear I'm in.

And it just measures RPM versus road speed.

With the sequential, it's like that rotor position in the PPG is the blade sensor that they have.

That just tells you it's in gear now.

I've seen people put a PPG in and do time-based gear shifts.

I'm just like, what do we do, man?

The technology is there.

Do it properly.

And then you drive a closed loop, like flat shift setup.

Once again, I can point back to mine.

But that's the point, right?

The point of building my car was so that I could show you this stuff.

That's the point.

It's not me keep saying, oh, look at my car, it's the best one.

That's what a normal car builder kind of can say that.

I built that car to show people how to make these things work and what works and what doesn't test things.

So if my car didn't do the best version of it,

I've failed it, my audience.

If anyone's watching me right now going, oh, that sounds arrogant to say,

keep looking at my car for how to do it.

That's only if you think of me as just a guy that built a car.

But if you'd now look at it the other way and go, no,

Modi video test products, showcases product, puts them through their paces

and shows you what you should do, then in theory,

if it wasn't the best version of it, I've done it wrong.

So anyone watching, I kind of understand that the reason I'm saying is,

check out a video of that is you'll see how the flat shift working properly can be really nice.

But then you can get in another car and it's like rough as guts.

And there are certain boxes that are rougher, but they're also a dedicated race box.

So the biggest thing I usually say to people if you want it for street or racing only is,

a street one needs to have helical cut gears.

So it's not stupidly loud.

The dog engagements are relevant.

You can't do that with a PPG, right?

PPG is helical cut.

So he's always garking.

But Samsonas.

Is it?

Yeah, yeah, it's helical cut gears.

I don't know why somebody told me it was just all street cut.

They're wrong.

You listen to me, man.

So you can have dog engagement.

So it's not it's not as loud as other transmissions.

Correct.

It has some noise enough to go.

Oh, I've got a gearbox.

But not like in, you know, that full bone like off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now I don't mind off its head straight cut in my time attack car,

because time attack car never goes on the road.

Is Albans or is a straight cut or you have the option to do both?

No, Albans is straight cut.

It's a race box.

They built it only for racing.

PPG actually said, let's make it so that a street car can use it.

I was guy can did the same thing.

But I was guy can's kind of like the older technology

while PPG is new, right?

But Albans, Hollinger and Samsonas are straight cut.

They're all great boxes.

They've all done.

But don't you just need more to get a Samsonas to work?

Like other like accessories to get it to run?

Yes.

Rather than just getting a PPG.

It depends what your ECU has.

But the other gearboxes like you have to get a bell housing adapter

or stuff like that.

But you can order from PPG the box it bolts in.

You can bolt your transfer case.

You can even say to them, can you find me a transfer case

and build it?

And they'll build you a transfer case.

So you can literally then have gearbox and everything.

And if you've already got the only thing that changes though

is the clutch is a different spline.

You have to have to go to the largest like the GM style spline.

So you can have a bigger input shaft.

But you can ring most clutch places and go,

I want the same clutch, but with the different spline in the plates.

Like direct clutch service is all I use.

Yeah.

I can just ring them and go, I need a box.

I need a clutch for a PPG.

Have you ever used the OS guy can clutch?

They're pretty popular over here.

I have.

But why would I use them when I can use direct?

Which I work with.

No, no, I'm saying obviously, I'm not saying.

I'm saying your experience.

Because that's what we run over here.

We weren't in America.

So OS guy can is a pretty popular option for RBs honestly.

I think everybody pretty much runs that over here.

I've had a mixed bag with them, believe it or not.

Like I've driven a couple that are epic

and I've driven a couple that are like,

damn, this thing bites hard.

Like it's not nice.

I kind of like neutral on them to be a little bit honest.

The great product, like in terms of working,

I was geeking to great brands.

That's not an issue.

If you go personally opinion for like drivability,

yeah, some have been good.

Some not so much.

It's been a bit of a hit and miss actually.

But overall, if someone said I'm putting an OS guy,

you can clutch and I'd be like, cool.

But we can't get direct over here, can we?

You can order it.

It's just tariffs and this and that.

And by the time it gets here.

Is it twin, triple, quad, twin?

But they can make it suit anything from 400 to 2000.

And have you noticed any drivability issues

between twin, quad, triple?

Look, the theory is there that like a quad plate

should drive the best because you can have the same

clamping force, have more plates and hold more.

But for some reason, every time I drive a quad plate,

it's so heavy and crazy.

I'm like, what the hell?

Okay.

So twin is probably a good balance between all of them.

Look, I've asked the other thing about a twin

is the packaging can keep into a size that allows you to use

like a factory bearing carrier, factory clutch fork.

So a lot of people don't think about things like that.

Like with a twin plate from direct clutch,

the reason I'm pretty always really happy with it is,

I just get it in the car easily.

And it's not an issue.

Also, like their plates are rebuildable by anybody

if you had to.

Like if I was in America and I had to just war one out,

I could go to a clutch place and say,

see this ceramic clutch plate?

Yeah, just punch those like rivets out of it

and put a new plate on that, that new center part

with the spline in it.

Or I could say, can you just put new

ceramic pucks on it?

Right?

Like you could rebuild it.

So it's simple, but it works.

But the drivability on the street version of it,

oh man, I hated my 32 for a while there

when it had the scented iron one in it.

It was gross.

Oh, it was still the drag one.

It was a drag one.

But they even, they said, it's going to drive like crap.

Yes, it's going to drive like crap.

But so does any clutch that has to do eight passes on a track

and do a one through in the 60, 10 times,

that makes $1,200 spare, right?

Right.

Sorry, that's what's going to happen.

The other one can do it, but it will just

be melted by the end of the day and be unusable, right?

But the other one is like, okay, cool, let's go again.

Yeah.

So I did that because I knew I was going

to be at TXDK and be racing.

But then when I kind of got back to Australia

after the diff exploded on the start line,

factory R200, I had replaced everything else in the drivetrain

except for the rear crown and pinion.

Like I hadn't gone billet diff yet.

And yeah, I left it on the start line.

Thanks, TJ.

So yeah, that's kind of that path I went down with that.

But when you get a good clutch in it, yeah, it's important.

But the direct clutch is like, it handles 1200,

handles a three, six, but at the same time,

it drives like having like one up from a factory one.

Like it's so good.

You can take off with no throttle and like just, yeah, it's great.

Now I love my, I love driving my car again.

Yeah, I've been having nothing but issues with my clutch,

but I think I kind of figured it out originally.

Well, not neat.

Well, I don't want to say that, but it's more of a pedal problem

than clutch problem.

That's the other thing, people don't get that right.

I actually tried seven different new clutch rods in it

and two different size clutch slaves in it.

Just to get it how I wanted it.

Even the pedal stopper, everything.

People just throw it in and go, I better work first go.

I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Nah, you gotta, yeah, you gotta figure it out.

You gotta like, you gotta a little plan around first.

You gotta get it right.

You gotta figure it out.

And then once it's right, it's perfect.

But I think what you're saying with all this is,

like that gearbox thing you're talking about

with straight cut dog box and whatnot.

You know, I love that argument.

This is a quenchile of manual.

And while I'm here, I'm going to say it again.

A sequential is a manual.

I know you spoke about it the last time.

I'm going to say every podcast for the rest of my life.

If you don't think it's a quenchile is a manual,

you might want to go get an IQ test or something.

So I get a H pattern is a H pattern.

I get it.

But a sequential H patterns is a shift pattern direction.

Can a sequential shift slightly quicker

due to the linkage inside?

Maybe can you miss a gear?

Kinda.

But if you have a H pattern dog box

with straight cut gears, right?

And this is a H, this is a straight cut with dog engagement.

So they can both clutchless shift agreed.

Yeah.

If they both have a strain gauge on them,

they can both do a full throttle shift.

Correct?

Yeah.

Okay.

If you have a lockout shifter,

if you have a lockout shifter on your four speed H pattern,

can't miss a gear, can you?

First bang second,

lockout means got to go third, fourth.

So you can't miss a gear.

You can flat shift and you can clutchless shift.

Oh my God.

They both do that.

What's the difference?

The shift pattern.

Yeah.

It's just a shift.

Correct. See, both manual shut up.

They're even both stick shift in my opinion.

I mean, it could just be as simple as if it has a clutch, no?

Well, they both have a clutch.

That's what I'm saying.

Exactly.

So it's still a manual.

Yeah.

And that's just how I look at it.

In my opinion, technically, it's a stick and you shift it.

It's a stick shift.

Okay.

All right.

Hold on.

We've already addressed that.

Now, I know.

The class is H pattern shifting.

I get it.

No, no, not even that.

Me and my friends had this debate.

How do you feel about, okay, you're not a super guy, right?

I like them.

Would you ever put a ZF transmission in a Supra?

Yep.

You would?

On a street car, an 8 HP style gearbox, ZF style gearbox.

If I had an eight speed one, so the ratios were sick.

I know.

Mark IV Supra.

And you could paddle shift it or you could do like one of those.

Wait, so you'd put that in a Supra and Mark IV Supra?

Probably before I put in the GDR, to be honest.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

So you don't think that that's like lame to put a ZF in a Mark IV?

What are you using the car for?

I know you can go that route too.

But like, as far as excitement.

You driven a really good 8 HP?

It's a Mark IV.

Well, my car came with one.

But exactly.

I loved it.

No, it's great.

I just, I got bored of it.

Like, I really got bored of it.

It was just too good.

If you said, would you take your sequential out of your GDR and put an 8 HP and I'm like,

hell no.

That was when I, that was when you had my next question.

No, I'm not putting a handbag on and cutting my balls off.

Oh, so it's okay then.

It's okay then, but you put it in a Supra.

You could wear a handbag when you drive through the city.

So you wouldn't, you wouldn't trade it for,

you wouldn't trade your sequential for a ZF,

but you put it in a.

Would I rather have an 8 HP than a five speed H pattern synchro box out of a Skyline GDR?

Yes.

I think you need to look at compared to what?

So I'm building a gold 33 GDR that a lot of our viewers say, hurry up.

I actually want to try as an 8 HP unit because I feel like as a genuine street car,

I want to enjoy in Sydney.

I want air con and a stereo and sound ending in it.

If I had an 8 HP, I have the, I now can go mode one.

Like, you know, bored, but I can also take a phone call and have a normal life and my

daughter can go to breakfast and it's like, you know what I mean?

Like even a normal girl that's not into cars can go, oh, wow, you're not a psycho.

And we can go to dinner.

But she goes on my 32 GDR and let me out of this thing.

But she says I'm staying.

Then maybe she's a keeper.

But if you said a five speed H pattern, which has terrible ratios,

drops off boost between gear changes is laggy and will break.

Would I rather that or an 8 HP?

I'd rather an 8 HP.

What about it?

Well, okay.

What about a T 56 and a 4 Supra compared to 8 HP?

Have you heard that sound when they do that and they change gear?

They drop off boost and they come back on.

I mean, you could flat foot shift too, right?

Yeah, with a synchro.

It's not the same.

I mean, it's not the same unless you do like a, like, what is it?

I think what I'm saying is I would take an 8 HP over a synchro H pattern.

Okay.

For a fast car that I want to work and enjoy.

Now in a drift car, no.

In a circuit car, no.

In a street car, yeah.

Even in a drag car, almost.

Like a one, an 8 HP is going to be easy to set up and get to launch

and go through those short gears and set that up.

It's going to be better to drive.

Won't drop off boost compared to a H pattern.

Synchro.

I watched some of the Supras at TX2K with H patterns.

Which ones? Mark V's?

Mark IV's.

With H patterns.

And just like no matter how fast he tried to shift, it just still like,

you could just see that drop in boost and come back on.

Like wasted time for trying to go fast.

H, 8 HP won't do that.

That's a track though.

What about for street use?

So it's just to slow up the street then.

Like it's probably worse.

And then it blows the tires off.

But at least on 8 HP, I can be like bang, bang, bang, bang,

like pluck 60's and like.

Yeah, no, it's fast.

It is fast.

It's really fast.

Gear ratios and diff ratios is the most underrated thing people look at

when it's changing their car.

And that's the same with the GTR.

That's true too.

In fact, I would dare say that the greatest thing you can do to a Skyline GDR

is a Getrax 6P with 411s in it.

411s.

If you have an R34 GDR right now,

we're going to look at every camera.

If you have an R34 GDR now and you're not putting 411s in it,

you are ripping yourself off in life.

You're actually making your life worse and you don't know.

Like it's that good.

It's that good.

That's all a drive, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

It's that.

And if you put a Getrax in a 32 or a 33, it just totally changes the car.

It's character, it's drivability, it's response.

All that response.

I want response in my GDR.

There's people going to argue with this.

Mostly bullshit.

No, I don't think.

So I have a 315, which is a stock model R5 super ratio.

And it just feels so lazy.

It's great for a highway, but it's not exciting.

Put 411s in it with a CD811 on one side of the drive.

I have a 385 now.

But watch how different the car is.

It will suddenly be responsive.

I've proven this multiple times.

Someone has a five speed.

They put a six speed with 411s in it.

And all of a sudden, wow, this thing's super responsive.

I'm like, yeah, because you change diff ratios.

The Mines GTR, the most famous video of an R34 GDR.

Everyone goes, it's an animal.

It's a weapon.

It's got a super response engine.

No, man, that engine's nothing different to everything else we've built.

It just had really short diff ratios in it.

I've heard rumors of up to 4.6, but I know it had 411s or 4.3s in it.

On the really small tracks.

Now, if you watch that Mines GTR video and put your hand over the speedo

and turn the sound off and tell me how fast you think it looks,

you'll go, OK, it's fast, but it's not.

They're carrying on like it's the craziest thing ever.

I've built cars that are more responsive than that on camera to drive.

I did that Mines replica in Sydney.

That had VCAM, low mounts and a 4.3s with a six speed.

Man, that thing was insane.

Like it felt like it had a thousand horsepower.

It had 650.

My 32, when I did the get-trag in it and did twins versus single,

everyone couldn't believe how wild it was.

I was like, you do realize a six speed with 411s.

Yeah.

Right.

Like the dyno graph is still the dyno graph because one to one is still one to one.

Like it's either fifth or fourth.

So on the dyno, the comparison is direct.

It's the same diff ratio.

It's just now fifth or fourth is one to one.

But on the street, different car.

If you haven't got 411s in your car.

Now, but you're talking about for all a driver, I'm assuming, right?

Yeah, for a real driver.

Won't you blow the tires off?

Exactly, right.

That's different.

But then it's a compromise.

But here's the other thing that happens when you have an 8HP.

You can short shift.

As you come on boost in first gear, rather than let it then blow the tires,

and have to try to pedal your way through that wheel spin before you pull second.

So it doesn't drop off boost.

You know the whole, you know that one.

We know that one.

We see it every time.

But if you have an 8HP, you can kind of like,

as you kind of come on boost, you feel that torque sort of right in,

you can short shift into second.

Now it doesn't drop off boost.

Now you've got, like still got boost in the next gear without dropping off,

but you've got less torque to blow the tires off.

So you can short shift your way through the first three gears

to try and get some road speed underneath you before you rev it out.

This driving style is like, people don't think of this stuff.

So it's like a sequential, same deal.

You can short shift into the next gear.

I can pretty much shift first to second at any time.

Doesn't really matter.

Like it just stays on boost, keeps going.

But if I had a 8HP in synchro box, which I don't know why people still argue with,

you know, the other type of manual, you change short shift

and it'll generally drop off boost.

No, I'm not talking about V8s and stuff.

They don't care, but like 2.6, 2.8, 3, etc.

So I got you.

So a lot of this setup with GDR is like I said, man,

it's just setup, getting these little things right.

Like I can write a list right now for the ultimate GTR at any power level you want.

It's just a weapon.

And you just tell me drag, street, circuit or which direction you want.

Because I kind of say it's like in the middle as a street car,

you can make it more focused towards handling

or you can make it more focused towards drag racing.

And they're always the opposite.

So what you do to your suspension setup,

do you want to make your street car slightly better at drag racing

or slightly better at circuit racing?

They're two different alignments.

Do you want to make it slightly better at drag racing

or circuit when it comes to every part of the car?

Kona has changes of direction just a little bit, if that makes sense.

So, okay.

So yeah, but I can, you can go either way.

I can build either one.

So, okay, let's change gears a little bit

and talk about GTR Festival, of course.

As I said before, I will be attending, which I'm excited.

What are we expecting to see in Australia at GTR Festival this year?

Well, this is our 10th anniversary.

So I'll have to obviously make a big impact.

Will you bring it in?

Well, right now, I can't say it's happening,

but it's in the process.

Unless something happens with things around the world,

I want to have an active carbon car at the event,

not just Sakamoto there.

Okay.

So we're going to bring a car.

Tomorrow we'll be back, obviously.

The godfather of modern GDR will be there.

You're coming over.

You're like the biggest guest.

I don't even know where to talk about anything else after you.

Why are you just gassing?

You just got to gassing it up.

Jordan from Shipbox Garage is coming over.

Yeah, my god, Jordan's coming out too.

I'm excited.

That's going to make for it.

That's going to make it pretty well.

Jordan is.

Guys from Mighty Car Mods will be there.

So everyone that watches them, go be there again.

Jay Duker from Low Standards.

What's up with Tommy?

Tommy, I don't know if he's going or not.

I haven't spoken to him, actually.

Oh, Tommy, all right.

So Tommy's, I just texted him the other day

about the cylinder head situation.

Oh, yeah.

He said send it to him and fix it, right?

No, I was looking for one.

I needed four.

I know he has one.

I know you got one, bro.

It's all right.

You're holding out.

But I feel like he's not into big power stuff.

He's not.

But I said to you earlier that if I lived in Connecticut,

I would grow up with a 400-wheel horsepower

silver would be perfect because of the type of driving

you do, where you live, how you use your car.

What Tommy's into is a lot.

I've heard, you can say whatever you want about him

with his style and this and that, right?

He builds some stylish cars.

He builds clean, half-dotto.

I've actually helped tune some of them with, like,

being there with Freddie while he's tuning them

and sort of, like, talked about some things to kind of change

and sort of, like, do these, try that and, like, oh, yeah, it works.

And then they're good cars to drive,

but they're just totally different to Australia.

We start with painted engine bays and custom wiring looms

and custom everything.

Like, we do heaps of fab work while Tommy's like,

I want it to bolt on from HKS.

But he does restoration clean air.

Yeah, but his restoration is like,

he'll take a part off and restore that part and put it back on.

Australia buys a whole new custom part.

Does that make sense?

Oh, I see, okay, I got you.

That's kind of like the way I put it.

And that leads to a different look and feel, which is fine.

Like, if he wants to keep driving slow cars, that's fine with me.

I've just, I've driven some of his cars and they're great.

And it's not that he has to like or not like what we do.

That's fine, man.

He can say, I don't like that. That's cool.

Look, I'm not saying that's what he said.

I just don't feel like he was impressed

because he mentioned a couple of times,

I don't know if it was on a different podcast,

but he's on it's like RB 30 swaps and things like that.

And like, you know, your 2000 horsepower RB, you know,

like he's not really into that.

Which is cool.

But I know guys that keep them dead stock that are purists too, right?

Yeah.

That's cool too.

One thing I've learned about doing GTR festival is

everyone seems to think, oh everyone,

but a lot of people originally kind of thought,

maybe that's all I'm into.

1000 horsepower GDR, 1000.

But do you want to watch 300 horsepower GDRs

go down an airport runway at Kudamundra

when I hold GDR challenge?

No.

How do you mean?

The competition led to the cost.

You don't want to see 300 horsepower.

But do you get what I'm saying?

So when you're creating content at an event

or you've got a YouTube channel,

you will know, you can't just feature

300 horsepower stock GDRs all the time.

Now if it's a super rare collector thing, different.

2002.

Yeah.

Now we're doing a Japanese run on Nines Bay Nights back then anyway.

All right, 97.

So I've learned now that as I've gone around the world more,

people have started to realize, I go,

oh sorry, Andrew, it doesn't make your usual thousand.

I'm like, dude, I don't care.

Like I like what I like.

I like all of it.

One minute, I'm in a dude's private collection

looking at like a one of something rare car.

And I'm like, this is amazing.

Next minute, I'm in Japan looking at a time capsule GTR

with like, you know, drag wing on the back

and drag radials and like a T88 from a garage active.

And it's like, was built in 2002.

I love that.

Is it good by modern standards

from a technological standpoint?

No, but it's gangster.

Like it's a cool car.

Like things can be cool if they don't work.

I get it.

Like most human things that are cool

are actually not the most functional way to do it.

Usually the functional way is the boring way, right?

I get that.

That's human nature.

But I fight between like the logic side of the brain,

which is the engineer side

and just the car enthusiast, passionate side.

Sometimes fight each other.

Yeah.

I've got things I like in a car go, man, that's cool.

But like my logic brain goes, actually, that's pretty stupid.

But that's, there's nothing wrong with that.

So like I went to the UK and they had a certain thing.

Like I went to Germany where they can't really do performance mods

and met a lot of GTR guys there.

But then the way they've done things differently, it's all good.

There's no, I don't sit there and try and go,

there's only one way to build a GTR.

But if you try and argue me about what actually physically works

as in from taking that car from point A to point B

as fast as you can objectively, not subjectively,

that's a different argument.

But if you just go to me, oh man, I put these parts on it

and this old HKS 51RX, I love the sound, cool.

Do it, man, go for it.

You don't have to build the best version of that car.

And it actually annoys me

when people build a really nice street car

and then they go to the drags and they go,

that power graph meant you should have run this mile.

And I go, do shut up because, right?

Let the guy enjoy his car.

Not every car needs to go to the track

and do exactly what that power level should say.

When I built my one car, it has to.

Like a time attack car has to do lap times, right?

But if I build a cool back street S14 Silver,

I just want to drive on the street

and it makes 254 horsepower,

I didn't care what the lap time is.

I just care it's fun.

So there's nothing wrong with wanting to build a car that's fun,

a car that's fast, or a car that's a collector's item, right?

Or like a resto-tile-style thing

where you're almost the curator of that car.

You're it's custodian.

There's nothing wrong with that.

People that try to get angry at each other

about what they do with it.

The custodian of a stock car tells me,

can tell you, are you butchered your car?

How dare you butcher it, right?

That's how it always is, yeah.

And then the guy with 700 horsepower goes,

oh, your car might be fast, but is it fun on a back road?

You're all right.

He cares.

Yeah, you're right.

And I like all of it.

I'm happy looking at an antique piece one minute

and driving a 2000 horsepower GDR the next.

I'm happy at TX2K.

I'm happy at some secret collection.

I'm happy at a cars and coffee.

I'm happy at all of it.

And as far as I'm concerned,

I just wish more people understood that GTR Festival,

which is obviously open to all Nissan's, is exactly that.

If you don't have a Nissan,

and you want to go to a GTR and Nissan Festival,

go to the rental car company and hire an Altima.

And you can park in the car meat part of it, right?

You might not get in the show and chime bit,

but just mind you, once you jump in that Altima,

be prepared.

You'll probably get chased by the police.

You'll do 97 mile an hour the whole way to the NS Motor,

to Texas Motor Plague.

So it has to be a Nissan.

Okay, maybe not an Altima.

Maybe get a Murano or something like a Pathfinder

or I don't know, like anything.

Or a Titan, right?

You guys got Titans over there?

Yeah, we don't have Titans.

No, we haven't got Titans.

Well, what was it?

What was it I drove last year?

The big truck.

Our biggest truck there is a Navara.

I think you drove that big patrol.

Patrol, that's the patrol.

Yeah, it's the VA, right?

See, if you drove a patrol,

you could get chased by a patrol car at the same time.

That's a terrible dad joke.

Damn, I gotta pay my ticket from out there still.

I'm not gonna let you back.

Yeah, I have to pay that ticket actually.

Damn, I forgot about that.

They're ruthless there with speed cameras, huh?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you told me that and I was like...

No, you got done twice, I think.

No?

I think you got done one or twice.

Oh, no, you got a couple of tolls as well.

I can't.

Tolls?

I thought it was just a speeding ticket.

Tolls there, speeding ticket?

No, you got a speeding ticket, though.

It was like literally when I first drove.

It would have been like,

it wasn't like seven Ks over or something stupid.

It was nothing as well, wasn't it, I think?

Yeah, it wasn't a lot.

But yeah, back to the whole GDR festival thing is,

I want people watching to understand.

It's like, if you've got a collector GDR, bring it.

If you've got a stock Nissan,

it's all about supporting...

Like, you might not have a GTR,

but you've got the little brother, right?

Like, it's all part of the Nissan family.

And we just want everyone to come together and have a good time.

Whether you...

And I want people to understand,

we have an open fun run session on the drag strip,

so you can run your...

I don't know a guy that ran his Hakusuka,

genuine, like, three-quarter million dollar Hakusuka for fun.

Wow.

Like, you know,

Andrew Evanson from Garage Zero runs his Zero R.

He runs his 400R.

Like, I don't care what it runs.

I just care that, like, someone's enjoying their car.

Yeah.

So people just...

I want people to understand that concept.

In Australia, people know that already.

I'm just...

In America, we're just trying to get that across to people.

That is, you can have a Pro-Mod,

or you can have a stock R32 Skollon GTR.

Yeah.

One of 550 Nismo's, or whatever.

Whatever you want.

You can park it and hang out,

or you can race it, or you can do whatever.

Like, it's...

Just enjoy the event

and just enjoy the fact we've got all these cars there.

That's the whole point of it, right?

It's just...

One greedy way to say it is,

I just wanted all the GTRs to come to me,

so I could see them all.

Yeah.

And that's at all the events, right?

Because you're doing...

You got...

I heard you got Japan, New Zealand.

You got Australia, of course.

You got America.

Am I missing a few?

UK.

UK as well, yeah.

So this year is Australia on May 22nd, 23rd.

New Zealand on June 6th.

Then we have the UK on August 15th, 16th.

And then we have USA 13th to 15th of November.

We are working on Japan.

I don't want to say that it's...

Oh, I thought you had Japan.

Not quite.

We're getting there.

I don't want to say it's 27.

I just want to say I'm working on it.

Does that mean it'll happen?

Do you think that'll be bigger than Australia?

No.

Australia.

No way.

There's so many GTRs over there that it doesn't mean they'll all go.

Okay.

I was curious about that.

Do you know how long it takes to drive across Japan?

Now, could Japan end up bigger?

I mean, based on how many cars could go, in theory, it could be bigger.

Okay.

Will it get bigger?

I don't think so.

No.

I just...

You think...

Yeah, but...

UK has the potential to be the biggest.

Really?

Yeah, man.

We'd be careful, USA.

UK are going to outdo you.

The problem with USA is it's just the RB thing, man.

Yeah, but there's R35s everywhere.

And we have a DCT class.

So R35 versus V10, that's already hundreds of race cars.

The Roll Racing's open to everybody in a street car.

Street car.

So Dodge Vipers can go, Mustangs can go.

That's why we've got Barris for the crowd, so Mustangs can go.

Okay.

And we've got drifting there.

And you can bring an S14 with an LS and it just hang out.

Like you don't...

You can have any Nissan.

If you count how many Nissans there are in Texas,

I bet there's 50,000 Nissans there,

minimum, if you just work out how many Nissans there are.

I'm sorry, Nissans.

But GTR, I get it, but it's a GTR and Nissan festival.

Speaking of festivals, I am looking at other locations in the US

to hold potentially, rather than a GTR festival,

is a Nissan festival that's probably a little bit more evenly

focused between cruising, drifting, time attack, or circuit,

and Roll Racing, where it's a bit more

generally enthusiast style festival.

I am looking at holding Nissan festivals in the US.

Well, my advice, if I can, is to do it in Florida,

because Florida has all of the style lines and everything.

You didn't look at the social media today?

What do you mean?

I posted up a picture of me at Orlando Speed World today.

Oh, I didn't see that.

I was not paying attention.

No, I didn't see that.

No, I just posted that.

I said nothing.

That's all I posted up.

Okay, that'd be the best option.

I'm not saying it's happening.

I'm just saying I went there.

Yeah, I think Florida is the hub for Nissans.

If you want me to blurt out some type of plan,

it would be to have GTR Festival in Texas,

have a Nissan Festival in Florida,

a Nissan Festival in Connecticut,

and a Nissan Festival in California.

Why wouldn't you do GTR Festival in Florida, though?

GTR Festival stays where it is.

It's there now.

I can go for half an hour on the reasons why,

and they'll all make sense.

And once I say them, everyone will go,

whatever reason you think I am or am not going there

or am or am not doing it in Florida,

trust me, if I laid them all out and listed them,

you would go, okay, you're right.

Go to Dallas.

Plus, let's just face it.

You've got T1, Jotec,

just those four shops have enough V10s and R35s

to put on a show, right?

It's close to a city center, right?

It's a central hub.

East Coast will go here.

West Coast will go there.

You know what I mean?

No one from the West Coast has come to Florida,

and definitely no one from Florida has gone to the West Coast.

It's like a midway point for the states.

Correct.

Seattle, everywhere, right?

So, and also, I already had people I knew there.

Now I'm established there.

It's just, it's a no-go now.

And the track are amazing.

Make sense.

Amazing.

Like just to deal with amazing.

And you've got to feel comfortable going

on your first overseas event somewhere with that track,

otherwise it can get pretty.

But my goal is, there's also talks of,

when does this come out?

I don't know if this will be announced by then.

What's today's, what's it, it's Tuesday?

I'll say it this way.

It'll be out either Thursday or Friday.

So pretty quick.

Yeah, I'm on it.

Oh, damn.

All right.

Well, someone, a couple of people have said to me.

I'd say Friday.

Could you hold an event where you remove the word GTR

off the front of it and put something else?

Like as in something festival?

Street Alpha Festival.

Guys, we're announcing Street Alpha Festival, 2027.

My man, yeah, you want to do it?

We can do it.

Let's do it.

Okay, let's just say that maybe.

And now let's be serious, huh?

Now maybe the potential for a festival where the letters

in front of it might be that engine owners that like,

commenting on all your RB videos.

Wait, what?

Jay-Z, maybe a Jay-Z festival.

Jay-Z?

Festival, yeah.

You know, you've got LS Fest.

Do you know Jay-Z festival?

Who wants a Jay-Z festival?

Beyonce wants it.

I mean, nobody wants a Jay-Z festival, man.

A couple of people have asked me, said,

could you help put that together?

No, I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

So yeah, it's a Jay.

Think about this, right?

LS Fest is huge.

Why?

Because the engines are in everything.

So Jay-Z Festival, the engines are in everything,

from drag to drift to everything, like street cars.

You can find a Jay-Z in a post-event, right?

Like, think about how many Jay-Zs come together and party,

like that.

But not a drag event, not a super event, a Jay-Z event.

So the person, the people have approached me and basically said,

can you take that formula of GDR festival and turn it into that?

So yeah.

It'd be huge.

Yeah.

That'd be pretty cool.

You think you'd get the support though?

Yep.

Because you're a, you're a, you know, you're a GTR guy.

If you do good events, you do good events.

People know I'm a car enthusiast through and through regardless.

If you've got the structure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But if the person I'm partnering with is a massive person in the Jay-Z scene.

True.

Makes sense, right?

You're going to partner with someone, partner with someone that's big in that industry.

Right.

And the people I'm talking to are big in that industry.

So I don't think it'll be a problem.

Well, I will be bringing my Supra over there.

We're going to show out, you know, we're going to put some times down.

We're going to show these Jay-Z guys what it's really about.

I'm really well-drive, not all-drive, but it's okay.

It's a good matchup.

If I do a Jay-Z festival, I'm bringing my own GDR there, trust me.

I'll be lined up on the staging lines with a queue of people.

I'm just talking crazy right now.

No, bring it.

I mean, it's a Toyota.

It's going to be parked up.

Yeah, I can't.

Those guys like to talk a lot, man.

I'm putting it on my booth then.

How does that sound?

I'm cool. We could park it there.

Put on the motive booth.

That way we get yelled at.

But yeah, look, the plan is I think the style of event that I run over here has proved that

people kind of like it over here.

I mean, it's so what you want about crowd.

Say what you want.

The event's two years in.

Find me another event that's two years in that didn't have $10 million.

And at that track also.

Correct.

Find me another event where someone from another country come over with no financial backing,

no investment, no partner, and put on an event with that many people at it in their first two

years, and I'll go shake their hand and ask them what to do.

So we're new.

We're growing organically.

We're not throwing stupid money at it so that it goes broke if it goes wrong.

I don't have a partner investor in it.

So for me, it's just I just hustle and make it work.

So we'll keep growing it.

We'll keep trying to make it better.

That's all I can say, really.

It's just that's all I want to do.

It's want everyone to have a good time, come together, have a party and just have fun.

And if that's what we can do, that's that's job done.

I think I think the event will get bigger once Herman comes up with these damn blocks.

What are you waiting for, man?

We're waiting for that.

And a cylinder head.

I need a cylinder head, bro.

Bro, we've been waiting longer for shorts than we've been waiting for those cylinder heads,

though.

It's been a couple of years.

But Herman's been saying, oh, a few months, few months.

It's like my car build.

I've been saying three months and it's been two years.

Like, come on, man.

Get it.

What are we doing here?

Blocks are starting to go out.

That's that's all we need to know.

We've been hearing that since 2023.

Keep hammering him.

Come on.

Hurry up, Herman.

Herman, hurry up, bro.

What are you doing?

Hurry up.

I mean, honestly, I think once that happens, I think more people will be involved in the RVs.

Yeah.

Also, I think the good thing about his cast block he's trying to do is it removes some

of those intricacies of a billet block, which is nothing wrong with those.

But there's the area where that block is going to work is A, a replacement block.

Right.

Now find an N1 block brand new in a box.

You won't just it doesn't exist.

If it did, somebody's got it sitting in their garage.

Sakamoto does.

He's got like 10 of them.

You ask Sakamoto if he's not reserved for bills for the next five years.

But if someone does pop up, they want like $15,000 from N1 block.

I'm like, come on, more than a billet block.

Just the core.

So his block should fit perfectly in between.

I want 800 to 1200 because I'll be 30.

But can kind of fall apart at some point between a thousand and 1500.

It's just luck.

Yeah.

Like it's actually more luck.

One block will just flog at 1500 for three years.

The next one, you turn it up to 1150 and it breaks straight away.

Right.

Like it's a bit hit and miss.

And I unfortunately had that bottom end like of that scale where mine fell apart at 1170 horsepower.

But you're also all a drive, right?

All drive hurts at more years from the twist on the block.

We will drive on my rate.

You just spin tires and look cool.

Don't get me excited, you know?

So yeah.

But I think that'll fit a perfect opportunity in the market for that.

So I want it to hurry up and be ready and be out there and get in cars.

We are waiting.

I'll use one at some point.

I'll have to eventually, right?

Like just...

You already billet, man.

You're good.

No, for a second else.

Save the blocks for people who need it.

Actually, I have another GDR in the build right now.

It's going to get unveiled at GDR festival.

Oh, it is?

Nothing like what you think I would build either.

It's like, it might as well be the opposite of everything I do.

Okay.

It's going to be so cool.

It might irritate Tommy too.

I really hope it does.

Oh, now I'm curious.

Yeah, you're going to love it.

I'll turn it off camera later.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm curious.

When I show you, it's all going to click and you're like,

oh, okay.

Yeah, I'm there for that.

Now I'm building something that I want to show everyone.

I can build every type of GDR.

So this is going to be really cool.

I'm curious to know what this is.

I'm sure we hear off camera.

Off camera?

Yeah.

Let's just tell them to go to GDR festival now and then wind it up, right?

So if you want to purchase tickets to go to GDR festival for 2026.

They're all open.

So tickets for Australia, open on our website.

UK is up on our website.

America is now open on our website.

You get a discount, the early book, bigger discount you get.

75% off today only.

No, I'm just kidding.

I think it's 25% off at the moment.

Yeah.

50 if you use closed street alpha, you know, I'm just kidding guys.

So yeah, just support it and we want to make it big.

That's the end.

But the other thing I also want to say, like not just supporting it for like the

car enthusiasts to enjoy.

It's very important that the sponsors, traders get to enjoy it.

The races, the workshop.

Absolutely, yeah.

Events are also people forget they're rid of an economy, right?

Yeah.

If you put on a good race event, races want to go racing.

Guess where they spend that money to go racing at those workshops?

What do the workshops then do?

Develop more parts, get faster.

So if there's no events to go faster at that are worth racing at, then there's no development.

That's true.

The vendors, you're not going to make cool stuff for us to buy if they've got nowhere to sell it,

so I need it to work for everybody.

From the guy who can just afford a spectator ticket, who drives there on his own, doesn't

know anyone.

What's his day like?

What's a VIP?

What does he get?

What's his day like?

What's a racer's day like?

How does it look for the traders?

So for me, it's like, it's all got to work and I want to bring that mentality forward,

not just the GDI festival or any other events.

I may or may not end up doing in the US.

Like I've got big dreams over here, but you know how America goes, right?

Like you can dream big and make it, but you can dream big and fake it and you can dream big and lose it.

That is a fact.

So yeah, I just want the car saying to be cool.

The end.

I think that's just always been my thing.

Well, this has been great, man.

Thank you so much for taking the time.

So guys, just a little chance.

One hour, one hour, one hour.

I said, yo, we got one hour.

It's been two hours, but it was a great conversation.

I honestly didn't think it was two hours, but it was good, really good.

So if you can, you obviously know where people can purchase the tickets and so on.

If you can let them know where to follow you, where to find you on social media.

So obviously we have a GTR festival, Facebook and Instagram.

Motive video or motive underscore video on Instagram, youtube.com slash motive video,

a Facebook page, which old people in Australia still use for motive video.

I've got my own personal one, Andrew underscore, Hawkeye for Instagram.

And then obviously GTR festival.com for the actual information.

We get people go to Instagram and go, where's the schedule?

I'm like, it's on our website.

So everything you want in terms of classes, website has all of that for like racing categories,

entry information, schedules, et cetera, is all on the website.

So GTR festival.com.

And then just pick what country you want to look at and yeah.

Also, we keep adding countries to it.

Yeah, hopefully.

Hopefully, yeah.

You viewers, you comment below, what country should we go to a GTR festival?

I think you're hitting all the car stuff, like all the, maybe South Africa.

South Africa.

South Africa, they got some stuff over there, I heard.

Yeah, my friend Andre in Dallas is from South Africa and used to build GTRs there.

So yeah, yeah.

Yeah, South Africa's got a car scene over there too.

They've got those hill climb monsters over there too.

A lot of those, you've seen those?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, Dubai?

We're working on a UAE.

We're working on a Middle East GTR festival at some point.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Obviously now is not the time.

I know.

Okay.

Yeah, but Dubai would be cool.

Um, man, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, one or the other.

Okay.

It's, it's, I could talk an hour about the economy, how it works over there, the culture,

the car scene, what would require to make an event work.

Trust me, I've been looking into it a lot.

Yeah.

But that's, that would be a whole podcast just to even explain to you how to work out

where we have the event and why.

Right, right.

But it's one of those things where to become a proper destination event where we bring

cars from all over the world for like almost a GTR World Championship,

not an American World Cup, like an actual GTR World Championship.

Two cars from five other countries, like so 10 cars come in.

Something like that, it would need backing.

Like you would need either the government or a royal family to go,

you know what, we want this to happen because of the tourism will help with that.

If you didn't have that backing, the cost of the facilities and the cost of an event

and the cost of the transport, it wouldn't work.

Like I would tell you right now, most motorsport events like Formula One,

Supercars in Australia, all have government backing, all of them.

Most of them would never make a dollar if they were just private business.

Damn.

A lot, some would, but many of them lose money because the government wants them there for

tourism.

And if anyone doesn't know that or believe that, start researching.

I can tell you right now, all the big motorsport events, a majority of them,

not all, have government backing to be there in some way or another.

And without that government backing, they wouldn't go to that country or that city.

So we haven't done any of that with our business, but if we wanted to go to the next

level and do something there, we would need some type of help.

So it's in the works.

It's in the works.

So hopefully we'll see you, we'll see GTR Festival in different parts of the world.

As we know, it's in Texas, so that's where we will be attending and also in Australia

and next two months I think.

You can come to New Zealand too if you want.

It's only two weeks after the first one.

Just means you're going to hang out with me for two weeks.

I'll think about it.

That might be a little stressful.

My girlfriend might hate me for a little bit, but yeah.

So thank you so much for your time.

No problem.

I know we're trying to, we've got to card me to, I know Chinese like, I just looked at

Lee.

I'm like, oh, so thank you for coming.

Now, but thank you so much for your time.

Cheese man, I appreciate it.

We'll see you guys in Australia.

If you guys are watching from Australia, I will see you there.

We'll be there and we'll be having some content come out from there too, vlogs and

whatever else.

Maybe some podcasts as well.

We need Matuk's on the podcast.

Matuk's doing a podcast.

Yeah.

We're definitely going to get Matuk's on the podcast.

Yes.

We're going to, we're definitely getting him and I want to get Mick Mansor on the podcast.

Yes.

We need all the, all the sub titles if you get him excited.

All right, man.

Well, thank you so much for your time.

Until next time, guys, if you guys are watching and listening, make sure you guys

continue to do so.

Also, make sure you guys hit that like button and also make sure you're listening

on all streaming platforms and also make sure you head over to StreetAlpha.co

to copy your StreetAlpha GTR merch as well, which you didn't even see.

And also a motor video GTR festival merch as well, the whole nine yards.

Catch you guys on the next one.

Peace.

About this episode

Andrew Hawkins breaks down why RB26 builds often disappoint in the US, arguing it’s less about the engine and more about know-how, trial-and-error, and tuning. He compares RB vs 2JZ through the lens of chassis and real-world traction, then defends RB30 swaps as “capacity is king.” The conversation goes deep on RB cylinder heads, oiling (catch cans/dry sump sizing), and “chopping off” peak-torque in tuning to protect drivetrains. Hawkins also talks GTR Festival’s growth, cross-country plans, and why the event welcomes everything from stock Nissans to extreme builds.

1200 to 2000 horsepower 300 horsepower 700 horsepower boost butchered your car catch can cylinder head drag racing drag strip dry sump

Nissan GT-R Nissan Navara Nissan Skyline

Original notes

Andrew Hawkins on Why RB26 Builds Fail in America, RB vs 2JZ Debate, GTR Festival, RB26 engine failures, RB26 reliability, RB vs 2JZ comparison as he breaks down common RB mistakes, tuning differences, real world failures in the US, and what it takes to build a high horsepower RB the right way.

Motive Video Official Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/motive_video

00:00 Intro

03:30 SEMA Builds 2026

04:15 High Horsepower RB Builds

05:53 Location Affects The Type Of Car Build

09:20 RB30 Swap Popularity

10:43 RB26 vs RB30 Sound

12:55 2JZ's In Australia

15:34 American RB Build Failures

17:37 American RB26 Cylinder Head Failures

19:42 Stop Trying To Make RBs Make Power Down Low

23:53 Running High Lift Cams On an RB26

28:17 Tukes RB26 Cylinder Head Failure

37:52 Throtl Mickey RB26 Head

43:25 RB26 Oil Problems

47:14 Tuning an RB26

53:20 RB Billet Blocks

01:00:19 Daily Driving Billet Blocks

01:03:34 Driving With A Sequential Transmission

01:10:19 Best Clutch To Use In an RB

01:11:14 Twin Disc vs Tripple

01:14:09 Is a Sequential a Manual?

01:15:40 ZF8 In a MK4 Supra

01:18:44 The Ratio For GTR Is 4.11

01:22:47 GTR Festival 2026 Australia

01:23:40 Tommyfyeah Builds

01:30:14 GTR Festival Experience

01:35:14 New Event Coming Soon

01:38:13 PRP Blocks

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