Cleetus, Fl2k, Roadsters and Race Cars | F_cking Cars Podcast Ep 8

I went up there a few weeks ago with my friend

and his 1,000-horsepower Mach 1.

That was a big issue we were noticing.

Hey, f***ing cars!

Just cleaning up after a crazy week of putting

a bunch of cars together and doing bills

because it was the end of the month, so that's been a...

I feel like every day was like a couple days

and I just feel like I have whiplash, but it's all good.

Got the 32 out the door and back to the customer

after we got it all primed and back together.

So I got a bunch of progress on the Mustang,

got a bunch of it thrown together.

It's not all gapped and stuff.

I got out, spent some time tightening the bolts,

the bolts are in it.

I just got to tighten it all up.

Yeah, I'm gonna start making it a car.

Two cars is your bunch of cars?

I mean, yeah, you're right, it's not a bunch of cars, sorry.

It's more than most people are doing.

Yeah, I mean, we focused a bunch on getting that 32 epoxied

and stuff, so it was all brand new sheet metal,

but it's not blastering, so you have to physically

go through and scratch everything,

clean everything really good and make sure

it's got a good scratch in it, so primer actually sticks

to everything, so you got to be pretty thorough,

because that's the time that counts.

So it's been a month, for sure.

Yeah, I feel like I've made zero progress over here.

Truck's on the ground, but no alignment.

Steering's not complete just because it's super tedious

and then still waiting on some brake hoses and stuff,

so I just, I worked and worked, but I felt like I got

absolutely nowhere, and that's the way it goes.

Yeah, I mean, that's the way I feel like it's been

on this Mustang behind me, the 66 for eight months,

it seems like the customer had, or there

are some design changes and stuff like that,

and so we're just trying to keep up with that,

and then you feel like you're finally back

to making it a car again, and just, yeah,

I feel like I'm finally back to being able to pick up

where I left off about a year ago for some,

like, and that's just because of a bunch of design changes

and all the sheet metal work that I had to read

basically made the whole front end of the Mustang.

I mean, there's almost nothing that's original,

so it's pretty nuts.

Looks like the main part of the Fenders

is about the only stock part on the front end.

Yeah, the main part, basically it's got a really nice

factory hood, but we have our custom reliefs in it,

but yeah, the Fenders are actually extended

a little bit on the bottom, probably about two and a half

inches just because the rockers were extended

because the chassis would stick down

so we just remade the rockers longer,

and it actually makes the proportions way better.

If you look at the first gen Mustang,

the rockers are only like from the side angle,

like two and a half, three inches tall,

and they look, they just look really squatty and weird.

I don't know.

I know the thing to make cars shorter and narrower,

but for some reason the proportions from the side,

they never looked right from the get go, I don't think.

Yeah, yours has got definitely more of a full figure,

I would call it.

Right, it changes the proportions of the car,

it almost makes the car look like it's chopped a little

bit, but that's just because the rest of the body

is just a little taller.

Oh, I guess, yeah, they're roofed to the side profile size.

Yeah, and it almost matches the body line from,

like the top of the door to that first body line,

the length of that almost matches from the bottom body line

to the bottom of the car.

So it's, it like from the side profile,

it looks like a lot more proportionate,

and like someone probably would have drawn it this way

and then maybe built it the other way

just because of engineering problems and things like that,

but if it was drawn from the side,

it would be drawn like this in my eyes.

I also think of how much metal they saved

by not having two more inches of car.

Oh, I'm sure, yeah, that's quite a bit.

I mean, and that was always the thing

that even customizers in the day

were making cars shorter and narrower,

you know, in the sectioning, chopping, you know?

So it was definitely the thing.

So the shorter the car, the better,

I guess, to a certain extent at the time.

Right?

Why?

Now everything's super tall, like super, super tall.

Wait. Yeah, it seems like cars have gone more

for interior space than anything anymore.

Maybe that's because as Americans, we're getting larger.

Could be.

Yeah, I know, like you look at the front of an escalade now

and like the top of the hood and grill is like at my chest.

Frickin' huge.

Yeah, the last place I worked at up north before moving,

my boss had a brand new, like, I don't know,

it would have been 2020 F-250 crew cab, six foot box,

and I would park my 93 Toyota pickup regular cab

short box next to him.

And the hood on that truck was like halfway up

my door windows.

And the funny thing is, though,

is if I'd lined tailgate to tailgate with him,

we had the same size bed.

He just had 80% more truck ahead of it.

Yeah, it's not.

It's like a locomotive compared to what trucks used to be.

Have you seen that electric truck

that Amazon was making or Bezos was making?

I did not.

There seem, I thought they were like already sold out.

I'm not, I don't remember exactly about them,

but they were supposed to be like,

basically the Toyota pickup version of an electric truck,

like a small compact truck,

but it's like all very utilitarian based.

It's not like all the extras.

And you can order it with, it's like super customizable

where you could order it with power windows,

but you wouldn't necessarily have to or something like that.

It seemed like it was a pretty cool deal.

I don't know how far they are in it,

but it sounded pretty neat.

And it was cheap, it was supposed to be cheap.

Kind of like the Japanese, the K trucks,

the mini trucks that they have over there

or it's just like a super basic,

it's got a bed and the motors under the bed

just to get, it's just for utility.

It's not for luxury or anything.

That's what people are looking for.

Nobody, I mean, people would just want a vehicle

that's not gonna break down

and I'm gonna cost them a show of money.

That's all people want and that's it.

I mean, if they were affordable,

like I work three miles from home.

If, I mean, it'd be perfect for something small

and economical if I had to plug it in

and it doesn't cost much to charge.

Be something like that.

Yeah.

It's like my electric skateboard and just be,

it's the same idea, except all the weather.

I could see you riding a one wheel downtown.

No, I'm on the skateboard.

I was riding it last night.

It's fun stuff.

How fast does that go?

Like 28.

That's fast enough to get hurt.

I definitely have wiped out on it once.

I went to go get some food at festival

to bring home the grill and get crack

and then it'd be baked beans everywhere and shit.

It's pretty awesome.

Oh no.

Then it died on the way home.

So I had to like walk with a heavy, dead electric skateboard.

Yeah.

Boo.

Anyway.

Can you push them like anyways decent or?

Yeah, you can.

I was hurting a little bit from fall

and so kicking the board wasn't too fun.

I'm sure your wife was impressed.

Oh yeah, always.

Yeah, it's good.

Yeah, I was a, I get such a strange kick too

out of this like,

my Tundra was a full size truck, extended cab,

six and a half foot box or whatever.

And now the Tacoma,

which was always the smaller truck,

their cabs are larger than my Tundra cab.

They're just as wide and now they're longer.

Yeah.

I mean, you look at the Colorado.

The Colorado's are pretty much a half ton truck now.

I mean, they haul 7,000 pounds.

Like it's crazy.

It just, I don't know.

It seems like full sizes have gotten to be extra large.

Well, yeah, it's like the super duty,

the super duties and the three quarter tons

and one tons have gotten to be like all one tons

for some reason that seems like everything

has just gotten like exploded and bigger and bigger.

I don't really understand it.

The really thing that I don't understand is like,

you used to be able to get a half ton truck

and put your hand like walk up to it

and pick something up off the bed floor.

You know?

Oh yeah.

And you can't that that's like not a thing.

You can't do that.

Even with a Colorado or anything anymore.

Yeah.

Or they're all way, way, way too high.

It just, it's so stupid to me.

Well, it seems like most trucks

until you get to the three quarter ton and one tons,

most that half ton trucks,

they're not even like a utility based truck anymore.

They're just like a business man's,

I've got a truck, you know, luxury cruiser.

Yeah, no doubt.

No doubt.

It seems like you don't even get half tons

with a V8 anymore, except for GM.

Yeah, my buddy Trent, he said he had to search hard

for a F-150 with a Coyote in it.

They were trying to sell them

with a V6 turbo real hard.

Yeah, that's what they got.

You just need to do twice as much maintenance.

But I suppose it's better for the dealership.

Yeah, well, just sell, sell, sell.

Oh, we were talking about cars the other day.

Have you ever watched the Goods?

The Goods, no.

So it's a movie, oh man.

It's just all about used car sales.

It's freaking hilarious.

It's like all comedy, it's fucking funny anyways.

Is this a new thing or an old thing?

I think it's like 90s.

Oh yeah. It's gotta be 90s.

That's right in my comfort zone.

There are offices in it.

I can't remember the main character's name,

anyway.

The Goods.

You know what I need to track down a watch?

I've never seen used cars.

Oh.

Have you seen them?

Have you ever watched them?

There was like a body shop show on Comedy Central.

They only made one season of it.

And Nick Offerman was in it.

Hey, I haven't seen that either.

It was called like American Body Shop.

They would follow the ambulance,

the scene of a crime for the, just to get the car.

Ambulance chasers.

Yeah.

Normally that's lawyers, not body men.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

I guess it'd have to be on Comedy Central.

That's what they're doing.

Right.

I think there's a reason why it lasted one season too.

I mean, it was hilarious,

but I don't think everybody would be like,

ah, this is a good taste.

Yeah.

It seems harder and harder to find good car shows anymore.

I was just looking on,

I mean, I've got three or four streaming services

and it seems like there's very little

car-based TV anymore.

And I don't know.

So I just like watching stuff

where people are working on whatever

and not YouTube's great,

but it's just different.

Vlog style versus TV style format.

Sometimes in the TV shows,

there's like, I don't know, a comfort to it.

Yeah, because there's gonna be a conclusion

and an actual conclusion at the end

because there usually is some sort of like,

they finished it, here it is.

Yeah.

Plus, I think just production value maybe.

Oh, no doubt.

As a YouTube person, I mean,

running one or two cameras while you're doing stuff

and then piecing together a storyline

and doing voiceovers or music work.

I mean, it's a lot harder

than it may seem to make something palatable.

Maybe you're appreciating good,

like quality automotive TV.

Maybe that's why you like it so much.

Yeah.

Cause that's where you're trying to produce production.

I mean, that would be hard to do that.

It'd be a full-time job, dude.

Yeah, I try, I like to look back on the power block,

you know, every Sunday or Saturday,

Sunday morning you're watching the power block on Spike.

Yes, for sure.

Yeah, I was watching some episodes

where they were doing like Honda swaps and dyno in them

and they're like, we're up to 190 horsepower with this.

I remember where it kind of, even before that,

like the shade tree mechanic and all that shit,

they were like put a little hood on a truck

and they bolted on and just slam it right away.

Like, you know, obviously it lined right up, yeah, right.

Yeah, fiberglass, especially a fiberglass cowl hood.

They're always a perfect fit.

Well, I mean, in the early 90s,

I don't think anybody was making a sheet metal cowl hood.

Like, they were all fiberglass.

Everything was fiberglass.

And then you just told your friends

that you did that because it's lightweight.

Yeah, that's why it fits like shit.

That's why it fits like shit.

Yeah, race car stuff.

We take the seams to go faster anyways.

Gotta keep the air out.

Yeah, gotta tape it all up.

Yesterday at the Bradenton Motorsports Park,

the drag strip for FL2K, there was a Honda

and he had the whole grill blue painters taped over

for a while he was running.

I don't know how much that gains you, but.

You know, drag race?

Yeah, just like the upper grill,

he had the intercooler,

like a lower grill space completely open.

So it was blowing air into the intercooler,

but for whatever reason,

they didn't want air going through the grill opening

and the upper grill opening.

Interesting.

Yeah, I kind of thought it seemed like a moot point, but.

You think that would potentially be to

push more through the intercooler opening?

I thought that first,

but the way like the bumper bar space

of the front bumpers are,

you know, the front of the car is almost V-shaped.

So it doesn't matter what you do above the.

The pinnacle of that V,

that's not going to affect below it.

So I think he's just making it slippery.

You said, you sent me some pictures

that looked like pretty cool,

like fucking all kinds of crazy super car stuff

and everything pretty much.

Yeah, there's always a ton of V10R8s

and Lamborghini Huracans.

Sometimes I didn't see any Aventadors this year

or Ferrari sitting there.

Sometimes there's like a 458,

you know, a couple of Aventadors.

They're normally not running the Aventadors.

I think the Huracan's a better platform

for drag race possibly, probably just lighter.

I don't know if they're the same power plant,

but seem a lot of Huracan drag cars.

And then the R8 V10 is basically a Lamborghini Huracan.

It's the same drivetrain for my understanding.

But I do see R8s do wheelies

and I don't see Huracans ever do wheelies.

So there's gotta be, oh yeah.

We didn't have any of this yesterday,

but last year there was definitely,

there was a white R8 pulling wheel stands for like the 60 foot.

I mean, there was like six inches off the ground,

but just power wheelie and then setting it down.

Fuck, that's really rad.

Yeah, it's pretty wild.

My buddy with the, he's got two GTRs,

one's a drag car and he's got,

or it's a drag build,

but even at 900 wheel horse and whatever

he had it set up and he's like,

I keep thinking about selling the Skylines

and getting an R8 V10.

I'm like, don't get rid of the GTRs.

I think they're gonna hold value a lot longer.

I mean, you could have a GTR and R8.

Like if you could have both, that'd be pretty rad, right?

Yeah, it's just money.

Yeah, that's all it costs.

That's it.

Yeah, but I didn't see any of the C8 vets running,

but we didn't get to stay all day long.

So there, but there's a lot of stuff,

a lot of R35 GTRs and what's crazy is

they're in like an all wheel drive versus DCT class

and there was all wheel drive Hondas racing against the GTRs.

And I'm like, that just seems crazy unmatched, but.

Yeah.

I mean, they were running.

Somebody's running for Honda.

I don't know if I saw a Honda break into the sevens

but I definitely saw low, low eights out of them.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's a fucking reason.

If we get spoiled, my kids, my kids super spoiled

because we go to that racetrack all the time

and only to like the big events.

And he sees all these cars running like sevens and eights.

And then when he sees something run a 10 second,

he's like, eh.

Yeah.

Pathetic.

Well, at least he's got some, I mean,

that stuff sticks with the kids.

So your kids ruined forever.

Yeah, definitely, but hopefully.

I mean, in the nicest way.

Yeah.

Hopefully he doesn't dive down a deep money hole

with it all.

Well, I mean, you're exposing him to drag racing

and boating.

So, I mean.

Oh, what are you saying?

Nothing, nothing at all, dude.

I didn't say anything.

I can't say.

I think we're exposing him to a lot of budget builds too.

He's seen me take all that's worth nothing

and make sure I'm out of it.

But I mean, traditionally racing and boating,

I mean, are, you know, oh yeah.

The drag races were brutal though,

because it was a sunny Florida October day.

And although it was like only, I think it was,

I don't know if it was,

felt real feel was over a hundred,

but it was definitely, it was definitely hot.

I was, I got pretty sunburned.

But that's the price you pay.

Those guys take any extra, like for cooling those,

those cars down?

I mean, that's fucking hot down there.

Like, there's a lot, you see a lot of people

with the like big blower fans

sitting on top of the engine in between rounds,

but there's enough time between,

you know, they get a couple hours of cool down

before each like round of racing.

So that helps a lot.

When I went up there a few weeks ago

with my friend and his 1000 horsepower Mach 1,

that was a big issue we were noticing was the heat soak

because like his first run,

they did a tune to run 950s to do a 950 bracket

and he ran a 950.8 or 9.508.

So they were like perfect right off the trailer,

exactly where they wanted to be.

And then the next one was like a 9.7

because the car didn't get to cool down decent.

And when you're pushing an engine to the limits that much

where you're boosting the hell out of it,

it just gets a lot of heat soak

and it definitely has an effect.

I mean, I think a mid-engine car

would be even worse,

like just trying to get the heat out.

Yeah.

Yeah, like I said,

a lot of blower fans going on in the pits.

Wow.

But yeah.

I gotta get myself to a race track again.

It's been a long time.

Long, long time.

Yeah, we try to get out.

I just like the environment most of the time,

just being surrounded by cars and people

and normally nobody's paying attention to anybody.

They're all there doing their own thing.

So it's kind of,

it's a good way to be surrounded by people

without it being like you're at the mall

and everybody's bumping into each other.

I always enjoyed like in the pits

and going to race tracks

because there's always some rivalries

where like people wanna punch each other to a certain extent

but there's also like I wanna kick your ass,

but also all you need a part,

like here's a part quick,

like here's like, you know,

like they're willing some,

usually they're willing to help out

to be like in competition with one another.

I don't know.

It's really, I don't know.

Not all the time I guess,

but some of what I was supposed to do is kind of cool.

Yeah, like my friend at the Skyline,

he was at Texas 2K last year

and broke a drive shaft

and some Australian dudes or whatever sold them

or like we're gonna lend it to him, lent him a drive shaft.

I think he ended up just buying it off,

they're extra off of them,

but and I heard that over the PA a lot during the track.

They're like, oh, this guy's back on.

He just did it.

You know, he had to find a drive shaft

or he had to find this or, you know what I mean?

We were walking through the pits

and we saw some Honda swapping motors in between rounds,

but that's the benefit of a Honda

because it's like a, you know, like a Lego set.

You can just pop the motor out,

you can put a new one in

and slap all the turbo and stuff back on.

So just a couple of guys and a cherry picker in the pits.

That's nuts.

To me, it seems like the Hondas

were running like on the ragged edge

where they can run super fast,

but they break,

they definitely seem to break more often.

So they were being competitive with like the GTRs,

which are like this super engineered all wheel drive,

you know, V6 dual overhead cam twin turbo setups.

And then the Honda is like, you know, a $600 shell

with a wrap on it and a roll cage.

And then they put a CRV drivetrain in it

and the K24 and big turbo

and it's kind of like David and Goliath,

but they compete, but they're definitely

on that ragged edge of breaking.

That's nuts.

That's super nuts.

Fuckin' little Hondas, that's crazy.

Yeah.

I gotta get to workin' on my car again.

Oh, just a lot of welding, a lot, a lot of welding.

Yeah, I think it can be kind of daunting.

You fly me out for a weekend and I'll weld for ya.

That sounds expensive.

It's actually, I've been quite surprised

with the plain ticket prices

because like that's what I did for that GTR engine bay.

Oh, that's right.

It was cheaper for him to just fly me there

and then have me paying it then to him

to take it to a body shop and wait

deal with all that.

The biggest thing is the body shop jail.

See, I don't really love that.

I don't really love that term.

I don't love that at all

because it's derogatory to the body shop

from the customer standpoint

when 99% of the time it's the customer's decision

that put the car where it is.

I agree with you that that is definitely

that's definitely something that happens, but uh.

Sometimes I think it's the shop people choose.

They're trying to take it to like the guy down the road.

Then this shop gets overtaken with collision work

that gets paid that they pay out double

of what a restoration would be.

So it just gets pushed to the side

and never gets worked on.

So I mean, it's like you're taking a Swiss watch

to Walmart to get fixed.

Like you're not, it's just not appropriate.

Yeah, I think there's some of that, but

it seems like, how do I put this?

I think that sometimes the desirable shops

are overwhelmed with work and not a lot of skilled dudes.

And then so stuff kind of gets put to the side.

And then also, yeah, you've got your customers

that are not doing their part to pay the bill

or whatever to get things done.

And you just end up with two people

kind of button heads together or button their heads

and nobody's really, I mean,

both parties are to blame, I think sometimes.

Cause I think a lot of shops in the name of money

will bite off more than they can chew.

Oh, for sure.

The security of having more work lined up.

Yeah, for sure.

There is that.

That's why they always have,

there's body shops that always have a restoration

in the corner, but those are the customers

that always end up being sour in the end too.

Great.

Well, I mean, I imagine as a customer,

sometimes when you're giving money out every month,

it gets to the point where it starts to feel

like a long time of giving money out

and maybe not getting what you want.

And it's just a patience game.

And I think,

Yeah, to me, if somebody has like a preparedness

from both angles, you need to have,

make sure that you're educating your customer

on the process as well.

You know, if they're not asking any questions

and they're fine, you know,

this is what they're expecting.

I mean, sometimes you have to over explain things

and sometimes they know what's up

and they're just rolling with it.

So it's always, every person is different.

So.

Great.

Yeah.

And I think

Ever since the phrase paint jail came out

is also when the technician shortages kind of started.

So there is like, to me,

it's just a representation of the industry

as far as the shortage of technicians,

the shortage of, you used to be able to drop a car off

and be able to pick it up in six months.

And it's like pretty much restored and shit, you know?

You can't do hardly anything in six months

at any sort of high level.

No.

In my eyes.

Six months really isn't,

unless it was the only car you were working on for six months.

Even then though, there's still parts hanging up.

So you know, you're trying to set yourself up

for success.

So you're going to buy the most,

basically the best part for the price you can get.

And sometimes that part doesn't show up for a couple of weeks.

So sometimes you can't move on with all the part.

I mean, there's other things to do,

but you don't want to do things twice.

I'm not a fan of doing that.

So everything has its place in its process.

So if I'm not going to do step 40,

if it doesn't make sense and I'm on step 12,

you know, that just doesn't make sense.

But there's people that do it, man.

There's people that, there's like doing bodywork on cars

that have, you know, that are clearly not mounted

properly on the chassis and stuff,

or their jack stands are in the really

in the wrong spot on the car,

doing bodywork and stuff.

And it's like, it's just,

sometimes it's just backwards.

You get the car down on the floor

and get the lights turned on and they're like,

oh my God, we need to block this whole thing.

I'm going to get blammed.

But what are you going to do?

Yeah. And that might actually lead into a lot more,

you know what I mean?

Where you're paying a higher dollar for a product

because you're, somebody did something twice

where they could have just waited

and done it right the first time

and actually saved you money.

It costs a lot less to do it right the first time.

And that's based on experience

from working on different shops my whole life.

I mean, that's, you do it right.

If it's a well thought out plan being executed

and there's patients involved

will always be cheaper than redoing something at all.

Yeah. And I've even noticed that a lot of times

with products, it might seem like

all of this saved, you know,

Deltron costs three times the price of shop line,

but you use a quarter of the material and it's like,

so people don't realize that right away

when you're talking about the price of, you know,

again on the clear and then

but the finished product is higher.

It took less time for them to do in labor.

So yeah, you might spend more time, more money,

but you make it easier on the technician

and easier, you know what I mean?

And you actually use less material

to get coverage and you'll get a better quality product.

And sometimes you actually save money

by buying more expensive products,

which sounds better for a minute.

Yeah, there's always times where, yeah, definitely.

I did, I sprayed a lot of cheap base coat

before I realized how much faster

and farther I'd go with, you know, good base coat.

And I mean, the color's better.

I mean, I don't care what color it is.

I mean, the little bit, like Deltron compared to Shopline,

it is night and day difference in my eyes.

And I think they both have their place, but.

I do, I do too.

But in what I'm doing,

I don't have a need for Shopline for pretty much any.

I mean, it doesn't really do what I need it to do.

It's like, yeah, Deltron, DBC is pretty awesome.

They just changed it to Deltron

or Deltron next or DBC next or NXT or whatever.

It's just a, which I don't really understand.

They changed, they consolidated their lines,

made Deltron into NXT.

Now they came out with,

I just heard my paint reps going,

went down to Florida to,

they're introducing a new line to compete with,

to compete with like Lesnol or something like that.

And it's like, I don't know,

you just consolidated a bunch of stuff,

confused us all, changed all of our reducers,

changed a bunch of shit, changed all the numbers.

And now you're introducing a whole another system

because you said you were broke from doing some,

some single stage line that ended up going defunct.

So it's, I'd like, I'd really just don't,

it's just a chemical company.

It just pisses me off sometimes.

Yeah.

I don't know, I imagine that every,

you know, five, 10 years they want to change formulas

so they can justify all the engineers and.

I mean, there's,

I mean, there's definitely environmental regulations,

but you can't claim that it's always environmental regulation

and then we're broke, we're broke, we're broke,

but we have government contracts

and we're doing this and that too.

Like it's still, there's a CEO

that needs to make more money every year.

I get the gig, you know, numbers are numbers

and we got to make more every year.

I mean, that's the world we live in, you know.

Unfortunately.

Yeah.

I wouldn't want to be happy with anything.

Yeah, fuck that.

Yes.

So what do you got on the docket for this week?

Oh, this week.

Well, I have some catching up to do on the,

on that Nash just before we got to get it primed.

We had some, the customer make some mirror placement.

Basically, we didn't know where he wanted to put the mirrors

and I think we better figure out

before we do final primer.

So we got a, there's just not a lot of room for it.

It's a clamp on mirror, like a universal one.

So we have to shave the edge of the door a little bit

just to get a little more room.

The drip rail is kind of janky on the one side

and then we got to prime that thing.

And then I'm tearing apart that,

that 69 Mustang and getting the roof stuff

installed in that thing.

So finally getting to that.

How many hours do you think you're going to have

and putting the unicides on to do the roof?

I don't know.

I'm hoping to have,

I'm hoping to have in like 30, 40 hours

get everything mocked up and hopefully ready to weld

if not started to weld in.

Cause I don't think it's going to take much.

I think it's going to take longer to cut the pieces out

and make sure my new pieces are in and everything's square,

you know, welding everything in easy peasy.

Drilling holes is, you know, for plug welds

it sometimes gets interesting with these unicides

as far as like where to put the weld and stuff

but it's not that big of a deal.

Yeah, I just want to make sure everything's square.

I might do dissect one piece at a time.

So like brace up one side, peel one side out,

install one, you know, do one set at a time.

The center bulls are everything's going to be replaced.

I just don't want to do take it all down

and then we really be guessing and have to fit our,

you know, I'll fit the glass and stuff

but I don't want to have to get like

install it kind of mode, you know.

Yeah, I think one, one piece at a time for sure.

It's a good way to go.

Not Johnny Cash style, but.

Right.

So you said that that's a Q code car.

What is the Q code for us?

None?

I don't, I'm not like

I don't know all about it.

It's just a, it's a big block car.

It's got staggered shock mounts.

Got like some extra bracing for the,

the staggered shock mount is also like

a top and bottom piece that goes across

and connects the frame rails as well in the back.

So it makes it pretty rigid back there

as far in comparison to like a 69

that wouldn't have that staggered shock mount.

I don't know if there is sheet metal wise.

I don't think there's anything really

other than that, that's different.

I don't think.

But yeah, it's got a big.

It's not like a boss or anything like that.

Hey, I really don't.

I also know it's a Q code car dude.

And it needs to be painted.

He's still up in the air.

He's like, oh, but maybe black,

calm like another black car.

Oh my God.

Well, black cars are kind of a flex

and something like that.

Oil slick black or well, I mean,

I mean, there is something to be said

where you could have, I mean, you could be at SEMA

and every car you see is like,

like really fucking rad.

Well, not every car you see, I'm sure.

But at any high end show,

and you're looking at the cars in different colors

and it doesn't matter how nice it is,

it would probably look better black.

Yeah, I don't know.

If the bodywork is right and everything is tits

and it's that high end of a car,

I'm telling you the reflection on that car,

if that car had like the reflection of black,

it would probably look better.

Now there are some cars that are white

that probably wouldn't look good black,

but unless you see it,

I mean, that's just where I'm at.

Yeah.

I'm not a huge fan of black,

but I can admit that sometimes a car in black,

a super duper, duper nice car that's gloss black

and has that, they'll look.

Boy, that's hard to beat.

Real black, not shop-lined black.

Shop-lined black.

Oh man, you ever spray,

I'm sure you spray like a Ford UA black.

Yeah.

It's like, wow.

Yeah.

Fucking shit.

Me and my wife were talking about that,

she's talking about some Ford one black,

by that was black and she said something about black.

I'm like, well, that's actually like

just really, really dark brown

that I had to explain to her,

because then she was mixing up colors and she's,

now she's all interested in like

mixing custom colors and some good time.

Well, when people,

I'm not saying your wife will go through this,

but when people are going,

learning mixing custom colors,

there does turn out to be a lot of browns

if they don't understand the color wheel.

I'm like the first five colors,

usually they turn out brown.

Yeah.

Just keep adding shit, adding shit.

Yeah.

If you put enough colors

and you always end up at brown.

Yeah.

My friend with the Resto mod shop here in Fort Myers,

he would just did a 33 Ford full fendered car

and steel body.

I think it was kind of like the Brookville you did

where it's not actually a Ford body.

It's like a, you know, a repop from some company,

but full steel car, full body work, super straight.

But to do the blackest black possible,

they went with the Deltron,

I can't remember the toner number,

but it's the Deltron jet black toner.

And then they just go straight.

1683.

Yeah, DMV 1683.

Yeah.

Straight jet black toner for the base coat.

And then, you know,

Out of the cans.

Galing of it.

Yeah.

Yep.

So he did that.

And it looks, it is interesting though,

cause like the real true black has an effect on the eye

compared to, you know, like the brown black.

So.

Oh yeah.

It's like the absorption of light.

You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

I've never seen those super like they,

I don't know, those paint jobs that they're like absorbed,

those black paint jobs that absorb light,

they're so black.

Oh yeah.

Like the NASA, the NASA developed colors.

Yeah.

There's some cars that are painted like that

and they're fucking, I don't dig it.

I don't dig it.

It doesn't do anything for the car.

It's just like a void.

Because it actually does have a reflection,

but the stuff that doesn't have a reflection,

I mean like, why have it on a car?

That's so stupid.

You pay a bunch of money for a car

and then you can't see it.

Like that sounds stupid.

And the main cost of time.

Yeah.

We were actually just talking about like flat colors

yesterday cause I know I sent you a red Lamborghini

Huracan that was a flat red.

And then there was right next to it was a flat black

Huracan STO.

And my wife right away, I think some of it comes

from us having like project cars that were in primer

forever, flat black parts and stuff like that.

But right up, she's like,

I really like all the flat colors coming out.

And I think they definitely have a good effect

on the right car.

Like a Lamborghini doesn't need gloss paint to show out.

And so.

Well, I think even in the show world,

they're starting to the high end cars.

Like, I'm not gonna say that Riddler is gonna be

a fucking satin car anytime soon,

but they're starting to accept that satin paint jobs

are actually harder to do.

Like it's actually a hard.

But hard doesn't necessarily mean good.

Well, I mean, but if you pull it off,

it does look better.

It's never gonna, if a good satin job will,

it will never, it will always look better than a wrap.

Always a good satin paint job is like,

a good satin paint job with satin clear has a look.

And you cannot replicate.

Like that's where I, like I think that's where,

while we're gonna paint my car,

it's gonna be some sort of satin color.

I'm not really sure exactly,

but like a dark gray, blue thing or something like that.

I'm not sure.

I was, I was envisioning a gray or a blue.

So that's kind of crazy.

Yeah, I like a flat or a satin paint job

or an eggshell there.

Cause there's still a depth to it

that you don't get from a wrap.

Yeah, for sure.

The satin under, like, like a metallic or a pearl

underneath satin clear.

Now that's where you get into

some pretty awesome cool shit, I think.

Yeah, I think you and I used to both drive a shop truck.

That was a blue metallic satin.

Yeah, I painted that thing.

Oh, really?

Yep, it's still around.

It looks good.

And it still looks good.

I mean, some of the shoddy body work

that they had me paint over, you know,

but it's coming out, but yeah, it looks good.

I imagine that was probably a pretty shoddy body

to start with judging by some of the stuff.

Yeah, I mean, I remember the owner having one of the guys,

I say technician and loosely,

instead of fixing the bottom of the tailgate,

the little, it's not necessarily round,

but it's the rounded part of the tailgate on the bottom.

Instead of fixing the rust holes,

he just took an entire tube of Lord Fuser

and just filled it and thought that that was going to last.

So then, obviously, a year down the road,

when you put a little weight into it,

or it rusts more, yeah, so like.

Thank you.

I think the trick was you,

yeah, you do something like that,

and then you get the old international 670HS,

like the 90% solids epoxy primer.

Yep.

Load that up on there.

Ugh.

I hated that shit.

Oh, it's strong though.

Yeah, I mean, but at what cost?

Because it's not user friendly, it's spray,

it doesn't sand, like, it's, oh yeah, strong,

but big deal, what does that mean?

Yeah, it was definitely not user friendly.

But it was made for offshore oil rigs.

There wasn't supposed to be any finish work, it was just.

Yeah, so why the fuck are we using it on cars?

Because basically every car that's in Wisconsin

or the Rust Belt was living life

like an offshore oil rig in saltwater.

Yeah, that's true.

But they actually did do, at that place,

they did do stuff that was submerged in saltwater.

I helped with some of that shit.

Oh really?

It was like, yeah, there was,

we had a pressure pot with agitator,

and it was like, I think it was like 80% zinc powder,

and you put a resin in it,

and it would agitate the whole thing.

It was like spraying, like, I don't,

it was like you're spraying heavy zinc

through a fucking quarter inch hose.

It was heavy, heavy, heavy.

Really weird.

That was a one and done.

Like, I'm not helping with this garbage anymore.

I feel like I might have gotten involved

with something like that there, but whatever.

What are you gonna do?

Nothing.

Some days, some days I just wanna do nothing.

So you don't want your sheet metal,

you have to mill for your car still

or you just have to weld in stuff you already have.

There's some pieces and corners and stuff I have to make,

which isn't really that big of a deal.

Just so once I get kicking on it,

it'll get knocked out quick.

It's just the pieces that I need to make

are pretty minimal.

It's just the striving, trimming, fitting, tacking,

like hours of having a welding mask or helmet on,

which isn't like what I need physically right now.

So that's why it's kind of being held off.

I did use a welding helmet this last month,

couple, a bunch of times,

and it doesn't fuck my neck up too much,

but we're on our way to being better.

Little bites, Timmy.

Yeah.

Maybe you gotta do those ones

where they got like the Miller light box

and then they put the welding shield,

they tape a welding shield up and it's like on a pain stick.

Oh, that'd be sweet, right?

Something that, man, if it could be,

take the weight off on your shoulders somehow.

The mask isn't that heavy,

but it just, for some reason, just fucks with my neck.

What if on a gimbal, like a microphone stand,

you had a eight inch by 10 inch welding lens,

not like an auto-dimming,

but just like the sheet of a shade 10 lens

or something like that,

and then you just mounted that

in between you and whatever you're welding,

and then you can just weld away?

No, the place that me and you worked at together,

the one guy I worked with there at one time,

he rigged up, it wasn't auto-darkening,

but it was just like an old welder, just the lens,

and he mounted it like up a little farther away

from his mid-welder.

So if he like positioned his mid-welder right,

he could just hold it up and like it was interesting,

but he, I think he used it for like a day

and he ripped it off because it was,

I think it would be in the way,

you wouldn't be able to see how,

you'd have to be moving your head a lot

because you'd have to be seeing where you're putting

the welder and then whatever, but yeah, I don't know.

You just go with that.

There's a way.

Right.

So you take weld all your body panels on

if you have the option?

Yeah, unless it's a plug weld or something

that could be easily made and I mean,

I know some people that will take plug welds,

but that's kind of, it's yeah.

It's like, yeah, that's kind of where I'm at with it.

It just, it's a lot of extra time,

not a lot of extra time,

but a lot of extra fucking around

and I can put one hand in and make it up

versus putting two hands in and burying my face in there,

trying to, in the corners of a car.

Yeah, it's all made weld spot welds,

but yeah, I mean, if we're the outside body panel

and we're grafting something in

or I made a fabricated something,

putting it in, it's getting all TIG welded and hammered out

so that all the distortion,

either way, I mean, you put MIG weld, TIG weld,

there's these new, what is it, brass,

what the fuck are those things called?

It's like a MIG, but it's like brazing.

Like silken bronze or something?

Silken bronze, that's what it is, yeah.

I mean, those are okay.

I don't know.

I've used them before at a collision shop

and they were like, I don't know

if it's really a safe option.

How like, how actually safe it is, you know?

Right, oh, for strength.

Either way, yeah, you're,

because it's very low heat.

Right.

But anything, I mean, if you're burning it in

and it's welded and it's got good penetration,

it shrank, you need to expand it back out

and MIG welds just don't do that.

You just break apart, fracture and stuff.

But I do wanna dig in to see if those laser welders

actually, if that's a malleable weld,

that'd be interesting to know.

But I don't know, I can't see it being applicable

in the middle of a panel and then hammering it back out.

But I mean, I never thought you'd see a laser

take rust off a panel either, so.

Lasers.

Frickin' laser beams.

I love you, Scott.

Shit, I haven't seen that stuff in a long time.

They just don't make cinema like that anymore.

No, no, they don't.

Super sarcastic, awesome stuff.

Yeah.

That coyote all buttoned up inside that thing,

or what else?

Well, it's not necessarily buttoned up,

but it's like mounted where it needs to be.

My goal was to get everything welded into where,

I don't know if we're gonna get it fired

before we take it apart for paint.

I just want to get like systems wired,

get the harness made, get some,

at least some of these electronics talking to one another

and getting, making sure the lights work

basically getting it all,

some of the troubleshooting bullshit

that you're not leaning over painted fenders and stuff.

It's already together this far

and it's a car that's got so many electronics in it

that it's gonna be way more beneficial to do it now

than after it's painted.

So we're gonna get it basically as far as we can

in this capacity as far as like

not having it bodyworked any farther.

There are some things that need to weld on the body

like the rocker panels need to be welded on

some of that stuff,

I'm gonna be trying to

with some other resources

and some other technicians and stuff I have

that we hire on,

get some of the mechanical stuff figured out,

need brake lines ran, everything needs to be plumbed.

So it helps speed things along,

have somebody else do that

and I'll be working on the body panels yet.

I still have to make the,

there's gonna be like a transition from the,

like my finger right there.

Like that's gonna be cut open on the inside of the hood.

So the radiators got a blow through area

on the top of the radiator.

So they'll always be cooling coming through the top

just to keep on.

You're actually gonna make a shroud

on the radiator that goes to that?

Or how are you doing that?

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I want the shroud,

I want the dip down in the shroud on the radiator

to be built into the closeout panel hopefully.

So you take that all,

like that's the one piece potentially.

So you just take that opening

that would go to the hood and the closeout panel

kind of make that all into one piece.

So you could unbolt that, access your coolers,

all that stuff.

So is all the air from the radiator

gonna go out the hood or?

No, it's still, so the fan,

it's got the fan, the cooler setup has some flaps

and some blow through areas in the top and the bottom

and then has the fans in the center.

So the basically the blow through areas,

I'm just gonna take the flaps out

and they're going to be,

it'll be basically just ducted through the top.

It'll still have the blow through area in the bottom

and then the fans below it.

So just extra cooling.

I mean, it's gonna look fucking crazy too.

I mean, it's gonna be awesome.

I'm really excited to do that part.

Yeah.

That kind of stuff that nerds me out

because it's like there's only like this much room

underneath the hood that we could use.

And it's like, well, yeah, let's just make,

let's just use that up too.

You know, it's fun.

I mean, as well.

Functional scoops are always better.

Yeah. I mean, that's where I'm at.

It's making them function as styling is one thing,

but then styling and function together is like,

the kiddies titties.

Just cutting a scoop in a quarter panel is not cool.

If it's not ducted to something,

or if the big ones aren't actually doing something,

I'm not, I don't care for it much.

Right. But I'm right there with you.

Yeah.

That's right.

I had to talk to a guy asking about the scoops

on the quarter panels.

And he's like, well, it just kind of puts air

into the wheel, into the tire.

I'm like, well, that's what Shelby did.

Like they just put a hole here and a hole in the,

in the wheel opening and it's to relieve tire,

like pressure or tire wheel pressure.

And he's like, I just, he just couldn't grasp the idea

that he's like, well, isn't it supposed

to go to the brakes?

I'm like, well, it can.

It'll help as well.

But yeah, it's like, anyway, you know.

Yeah. I mean, there is something to be said

about having inlets and outlets,

like if there was a vented part in the back

of the wheel well too, to let air out.

Cause then you're, you know, your scoop

and stuff that's kind of relieving

a big high pressure zone there, like a turbulent area.

Well, it's creating a vacuum to a certain extent.

I mean, that's why your back wheels

are always dirty and shit.

And then it would cool your brakes

cause there's going to be air flow

even though it doesn't.

This is negative pressure.

Yeah. That's like, sometimes you really got to spell it out

but what are you going to do?

Yeah. I'm like,

we have enough brake cooling anyways.

I mean, it's, it's already a little bit

overkill in my eyes, but it's still, I mean, it's cool.

Literally.

Oh, so were you ever like, even up here down there,

like involved in a car clubs or anything like that?

Not any good ones.

I mean, like my, my friends and I, you know,

our car club, but not, not like we joined like an official.

We never, we never made it real official.

We didn't have plaques in our back windows or anything.

Just, just stickers and shirts and hats.

Oh yeah, baby.

I mean, I bet I've had my fair share of like,

we're in a, there's a mini truck club in Wausau

that we're, that were, I was kind of a part of for a while.

And then I was in a hot rod club

and from Appleton for a while.

And now it's just me and my buddy that have me,

my buddy and his dad have a small little traditional

in customs car, car club.

But you know, it's, it's just a, it's a weird deal.

It's, it almost turns in,

once they get to a certain size,

it turns into like a drinking club.

And it's just like, it's at least in Wisconsin it does.

So it's, it's weird that all these car clubs in the area

go through phases and it's like,

it all turns into like weird dick measuring and stuff

and whatever.

Doesn't everything.

Right.

That's very true.

We have the most

teenager car club name too.

It was Outlaw Customs with a K.

Oh yeah, dude.

It's gotta be with a K.

And look who you're talking to.

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

And then we had, in a hotel room on a napkin,

I drew out our logos and okay.

But it was kind of like the, oh, it was like a race track

that went up and then came around

and swooped into the K.

And then like on my 18th birthday,

I skipped school and got it tattooed on my ribs.

Oh yeah.

And then I had a buddy get it tattooed

on the inside of his bicep.

Another one got it.

I think another one got it on his ribs.

There's three or four of us that got it.

My wife has it on her foot.

Okay.

And, and okay.

Yeah.

And it's a good reminder.

I think tattoos a lot of times

are just like a reminder of a time in life.

Oh for sure.

Super cringy.

I think actually on my shelf in here,

I have an original Outlaw Customs vinyl

for like a back window still.

We had the windshield banners.

We had the stickers.

We had the embroidered hats, you know,

with your name on the back or on the back.

And then on the front it said Outlaw Customs.

We were trying.

Yeah, that made sure they had a,

I was in, they had like the windshield banners,

but then they put them on the bottom too, you know.

Oh, look at that.

Okay.

You're an Outlaw.

Frickin' Outlaw, bro.

Frickin' Outlaw.

It's just Jesse James and I, Outlaw.

And then later on, as I started to get more exposed

to the world, I realized that there was a motorcycle gang

called the Outlaws and maybe they wouldn't like me

having that there.

So then it was like, what do we do with this?

And then I was calling my stuff like overkill, you know?

Okay.

I was repurposing the okay.

Cause I don't know if you guys have noticed

any of this, but I kind of have a tendency

to go overboard on things, so it was fitting.

But I don't know.

It was a funny time, you know, having a group of guys

and we'd try to hang out and do cool things.

Oh, I was actually Dotson Club.

I was in a Dotson Club.

Oh.

Yeah.

So in Wisconsin we had, what was it called?

The DOW, Dotson's at Wisconsin.

Mmm.

That sounds fast.

It was not fast.

So in our Dotson Club we would, it was like a Facebook group,

Dotson's at Wisconsin, and then, you know,

there was like a handful of core guys from it

and all of the guys were, you know,

they're teens and low twenties

and they were always like, we got to have a meet.

We got to have a meet.

And then the moderators, like the group moderators,

you'd be like, all right, guys, why don't you set up a meet

and we'll do something.

And then it just never went anywhere.

So finally I went, okay, let's just have a meet at my house.

I'm tired of hearing everybody talk about it.

I'll just do it.

And I think the moderators actually,

or like the group admins from the club

got kind of upset that I put it on,

but it was like, nobody's doing it.

Like none of them showed up.

Or one, I think only one showed up.

The other ones, it seemed like they were kind of sour

because it's like, it's not your club.

I don't know.

But it's like, everybody wants to do something.

Why aren't we doing something?

And then, you know what I mean?

It helped that I was in my later twenties or whatever.

So, you know, I had a house and whatever.

So I was like, we'll just do it at my house.

It'll be easy.

And then we kind of like organize some stuff.

There was a guy that had a Datsun pickup,

Datsun 620 bullet side pickup.

And we popped the tailgate off.

There was a white truck.

We popped the tailgate off.

And like with everybody there,

I made a big rising sun on the tailgate

and painted it in the garage with everybody.

You know what I mean?

With some paint I had laying around.

And then we just like did stuff like that,

had like custom Datsun cake made,

cut it with a wakazashi, you know?

Cause you gotta get the swords out to cut your cake.

And then we did one like every year at our place.

And then, which worked good for me

cause it's not like my Datsun was ever super road worthy.

But then the last year we took,

we did one out of state park

cause people wanted to do like cool scenery

for the pictures and so just a driveway.

Yeah, sure.

So I borrowed a rollback from a friend

that had a small tow company.

And I, a bunch of the guys met at my house first

and we put my Datsun fair lady up on the rollback.

And then we convoyed out to the state park

and then I unloaded it.

So it was like a big unveiling kind of like we got there

and we unloaded the fair lady Z off

and took a bunch of pictures in the parking lot.

And then I got some young photographer kid

to, he hopped in the fair lady with me cause he was like,

I want to ride in the right hand drive car.

And we, and it was slam static,

13 inch appliance wheels on it,

like super tight fitment.

I hand made steel fender flares for it

and like molded them in and molded it.

So it was like, not just like a bolt on flare

like every single Datsun out there.

So I did a bunch of like little things

and it was, I've made sure it was all one color

for the event and we went out

and we're like bouncing down the road

kind of like a mini truck or whatever

we're just hitting them like,

every time there was a bump in the road

the frame would scrape and the guy's like,

is it supposed to do that?

And I'm like, yeah, that's part of it.

That's that's static drops for it.

It's supposed to scrape and that's fun.

And then it was the L20A motor in it,

which is a Japanese only motor.

It was a 2.0 inline six.

So it was like the 240Z motor,

but super, super short stroke.

So it revved really good.

And then I had a six to one header

stainless header made for it.

And so twin car, six and a one header

and then a three inch stainless exhaust

that had just a resonator

and then it's done before the rear axle.

So it was like a super whiny on the top end.

And we're like going on and he's like,

is it supposed to be this loud?

Yeah.

And then we're cruising and bouncing down the road

trying to find a cool place to take pictures.

And there's like a train of Datsuns going

and I went, if you see a car up ahead stopped,

let me know because we don't have brakes.

And he's like, what do you mean you don't have brakes?

And I was like, I can downshift.

It's not that big of a deal.

You just have to let me know.

So we're like just bouncing down the road.

But we pulled over and took some sweet pictures

out in the middle of like the woods there.

And I think it was like big O plane state park

or something like that.

Oh yeah.

So you'd like to go camping?

Oh, you go there.

It's not a state park.

Or whatever.

It's not a state park.

But yeah, that's a really awesome, really awesome park.

Yeah, so we went out with the Datsuns,

took a bunch of cool pictures, drove back.

Of course my car like broke down once or twice

because it was an angry old Japanese car,

but it went back on its own.

I think it was getting hot.

Maybe that's sort of what happened.

It was getting hot.

So we had to let it cool down

in between firing it up and driving it back

and stuff like that.

But I found it in an old cheese factory.

You got to give the car a break.

I had to.

That's crazy.

I actually had to cut in half

and then take a 240Z parts car and put a front end.

I think we've talked about this already,

but I put a whole nose on it from the firewall forward

and just a whole lot of everything in that car.

So it had been through it.

So it didn't have to be super perfect all the time,

but it was definitely an experience.

You know, I had the vintage 1970s dots and jacket on

while we were out there.

Oh yeah.

You know, it's not that easy to find a vintage

dots and racing jacket.

I would suspect probably not.

I'll have to wear it on one of these episodes.

I was thinking today, but I was like,

I don't think I want to turn the air conditioning

down cold enough to wear a long sleeve the whole time.

Right.

Yeah, so our last nice day here,

I think it's the last day in the 80s

for the year for sure.

Because tomorrow it's like high as 60

and then it's all, it's a slide down shit mountain from here.

Yeah, it'll be 50 by the end of the week for you, I'm sure.

Yep, it will be actually.

Yeah.

All four seasons in one week generally.

Yep.

Yeah, that's this week for sure.

Although leaves are changing,

so it's kind of a, it's all right.

But you know, when the leaves change,

then soon comes the leaves are gone

and that's when it gets really depressing.

All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray.

Yeah.

It's, it just makes you want to get out of bed, man.

I really liked the fall in Wisconsin

because you wake up in the morning

and you got to put on jeans and a hoodie

and then by the end of the day,

you got to be in shorts and a T-shirt.

Yeah, I just have like PTSD of when that ends, you know.

Yep.

Yeah.

Build season.

Oh yeah, that's right.

So do you have a lot of stuff lined up

for build season this year?

Yeah, we have a couple of cars coming in.

I'm just trying not to overfill myself like I did last year

because I had a deal worked out with a guy.

So his car was here and at a Volkswagen van come in

or like before the snow flew

and we didn't get to work on it until,

I think like this, we didn't start until like the end

of January last year or something like that.

So it was just like stuff burrito in here.

So I'm trying not to overfill

because I don't need to and I don't want to

and some of these projects still have to be filtered out

by the time we get some of them in.

You have a couple of cars for sure,

two cars for sure that are coming out,

truck on a car.

Actually, now that I say that, there's three, I think.

Projects?

Yeah, the one Mustang, another Mustang guy wants to build

is seemingly fairly stock on the outside

but it's more race car than it would look to be basically

but it didn't seem like he wanted to skip any corners

and stuff like that.

So I didn't hear any red flags

so we're gonna be moving forward with that customer

for sure and the other ones are basically bike takers

as far as like we'll be picking up and leaving off

with some of these projects,

we're not taking them all the way through.

So some of it's working with other shops around

and the others, that 158 Chevy truck that we're working on

is, I think they're gonna come with us,

come to us next week and see what we wanna,

they want us to accomplish

as far as like what bikes we wanna take for them,

getting the body panels aligned

and figure out, I don't know,

we gotta figure that out yet

as far as how far they want us to take it before

they take it back and I don't know, we'll see.

One guy said, do you want it to like finish it all the way

and paint it?

I'm like, all right, we just got a plan for it, you know.

Do you get your spray outs done for the 66?

Yeah, I like to, we spread out a 60s Ford color

and man that Ford dark green that they had

is like, it's almost John Deerey a little bit.

Like, so we did that just to have like a comparison

as far as what that 60s vintage green was

and then we did like, I think it was a Land Rover color

and then another one was like a Navstar, like a fleet color

and then one was a little brown

and the other one was like a little,

or like opaque and brown

and the other one was a little opaque and dark,

I guess, I really, I think we're gonna do a couple more

but I really wanna do us a color

that's not going to be, I don't wanna say it.

I wanna make sure that if this customer

doesn't necessarily wanna keep it forever

that the color of it doesn't deter buyers

or devalue the car as far as it being too unique.

I don't want the color that's a little more brown

because I don't want somebody to come up to the car

and say, why is that color, why is that car brown?

Or, you know, it looks too brown

or something like that.

I think it looks cool

but it's not necessarily going to be a sellable,

I think a sellable color.

Do you, are you calling the bullet green?

Like the bullet Mustang green, the John Deerey green?

Or are you talking about like that Blader one

that they did in the-

Oh, see, I was looking for the bullet green,

the bullety color green and I don't think,

there must have been another 60s green that we pulled up

because I don't think we got that color green

but that color green on the bullet is, it's still not,

it's, eh, I don't know.

I like it, but the 6970 I think had like a weird

tractor-y green.

Right, I think that's more what I'm looking for.

Okay, there's, can't remember what shop it is.

There's a really sweet, like it's a 69 or 70

with like a race livery and it looks like

an autocross car or something like that.

Roofing, roofing, roofing, roofing.

Ruffian, ruffian, yep.

Ruffian, I never knew how to say it.

But yeah, that stuff is fucking awesome.

Like that car is wicked.

Yeah, yeah, actually that is not saying

that that car is a lot of inspiration for this one

but that's a similar vibe that we're trying to accomplish.

Like it was supposed to be this way.

And that's where it's like,

I don't necessarily want to do a stock color

because there's not much stock about the car.

It'd be cool to have like stock

but just off a little bit kind of like the whole car is,

you know?

Yeah, I find myself more and more saying OEM plus.

I mean, really, really two screens.

I don't know a better term,

but there is something to that because like OEM,

like you want that OEM quality and like that finish

but then you want more with like, but tastefully.

So that's kind of like what that OEM plus is left off.

Yeah, it's like Shelby is OEM plus.

You know what I mean?

There's something like Hennessy

or you know, any of those aftermarket companies.

I don't know if Hennessy store or any more.

I think so.

I think Hennessy's making their own stuff now, right?

Is that what I'm thinking of?

I have no idea.

Hennessy's doing,

I think they're still doing something with Dodge.

And then I think they have,

is Hennessy the one that has the Venom, the super car?

I don't know.

I think that's Hennessy Venom.

I don't know.

You try and keep up with stuff.

I don't know.

Do you follow Oil Stain Lab at all?

Oh my gosh, that Porsche?

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

That thing is exactly what I want to see all the time.

I know.

They said that's what all of them should look like.

They haven't seen one?

They said they were coming out with an electric car

that actually felt like,

that actually had a driving experience.

Really?

He said it's,

I mean, it was in a podcast,

I think with the Oil and Whiskey podcast

with the Roadster Shop.

They were talking about,

I can't remember how it was,

however the power was generated

or pushed to the wheels or,

yeah it was something.

Oh, look at that.

That's pretty dope.

I wish that the light didn't blow it out.

Right?

Yeah, I'll take it.

Hennessy Venom.

Looks lame, pathetic.

Oh man, I wish the camera would pick that up,

Man, 46 Chevy.

I think that's where it's at.

Yeah.

That's way fucking different.

So what model is the 46 Chevy?

Is it just like business coupe?

So they made, what is it?

Style master and style line.

And was it style master style line?

It's a style master,

but there's like a bunch of different lines.

But yeah, so it's a style master business coupe

is what it's considered.

So the package,

it just had an extra long package tray.

If it was a two-seater car,

but if it was a four-seater car,

they just had a shorter package tray,

that's all it was.

And it had a floor that went from the back of the trunk

all the way up to the back,

or the front of the back of the front seat.

So it was like, it was a legit business coupe.

Wait, it's literally a two-seater?

It was, yeah, from factory, yep.

That's crazy, actually.

Yeah, that's what it is.

So that's the model?

Yeah.

Oh, I thought it was like a trim level

or something like that.

Well, yeah, that's probably, yeah,

you're probably right.

I would say it's probably trim.

Cause I'm thinking like Bel Air or 210 business coupe,

or 210, you know what I mean?

Yeah, that's all after this.

So it'd be fleet master, fleet line,

style master, style line.

That's what it is.

That's the model, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're different.

Cause you look at the fleet,

the fleet lines and shit,

that's like a whole low rider deal.

You know, these, these cars,

these style cars, they cross over

into low riders, like real hard.

Yeah, you gotta get some,

some hundred spokes on that thing.

Yeah, some fucking sirens.

You know, those dudes, they always do the sirens and shit.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

You gotta have the,

I think it's a siren because they call them bombs.

And then it's like the sirens

because the bombs, you know?

Yeah, you gotta have the, the ice chest

that sort of that blows air into your window on the side.

Shitty conditioner deal.

Right.

Or real air conditioner.

I just gotta get a lot of well done.

Fuck.

It's just time.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

One of these nights,

I'll probably start working on it again.

It'd be nice to just get everything tacked together.

So like, just to get like,

instead of tacking something,

you know, fitting it,

tacking it, welding it, finishing it,

maybe just get everything,

you know, fit,

tacked together and then go through and welded

depending on process and accessibility.

But I don't know.

We'll see.

You have a hard time.

Sometimes you just gotta stare.

Well, I mean, some of it is,

you don't really have a blueprint

when you tear a car apart that far

or even the 66 behind you

when you're putting it on a chassis.

There's not like a blueprint

as far as especially even,

you know, you want to do all the sheet metal installation

at a high end.

So you need accessibility to the weld.

So if you don't have accessibility to the weld,

you need to make accessibility to the weld

or remove the panel to be able to access the weld

to expand it back out and get it actually finished

to where you don't have three quarters

of an inch of filler in it.

So that in turn creates a lot of process

as far as making sure, you know,

you can access this before this,

or, you know, you're not welding something in

that will cover access up to welding something in.

So like I said, it's just a lot of like,

there's some of it is like a thought process

is making sure you're not screwing yourself later

and not being able to access a weld

and just making sure the quality can stay

as high as you can and not redo things.

That's the hard part.

Yeah, there is, I don't want to call it out,

but there is a show on TV of a guy that does like wild

custom stuff and you can definitely tell that

it's just like metal shaped and layered

and laid on top of other metal

with like overlaps and stuff like that.

Like they'd never actually trimmed out

and well.

Or like a TV.

Am I talking what?

You're talking like a YouTube guy or a TV guy?

TV guy.

TV?

I'll tell you after.

I love the show and I like his work.

Like I like the products and the vision,

but I can, I just know watching it.

I'm like, there's no way that that's finished out

correctly.

Yeah, there's some dudes.

There's a guy from Chicago that does some

custom work and he claims he's doing sheet metal

the right way.

And man, I don't see anything ticked together.

I see the dude lap welding, mig welding,

or lap welding and mig welding shit together

and leaving the sheet metal underneath.

Yeah.

Whatever.

I don't have time for those people.

The problem is, I mean, you get something done fast

and it looks good from a photo

and people are just in awe over it.

The dude's got like a crazy following,

but I'm not sure I want to be putting my name

on stuff like that.

I mean, the car will sometimes outlast you

and there's going to be one thing,

there's going to be one phrase that somebody says

when they take your car apart

and it's going, it can mean two different things.

They're going to say wow

and it's either going to be a good while

or it's going to be a bad while.

Good while.

You know what I'm saying though, right?

I mean, you're to a certain extent,

the legacy is leaving with these cars

that and they're being dispersed all over the world.

I think about that with like YouTube builds a lot.

Like I could, you can really just slap something together

and have it function fine

and you could work the camera angle

so it always looks fine and looks really awesome

and you could do it in like an unbelievable timeframe

but then like it's going to be one of those things

that people know the car and see the car online

and then it's at an event and they walk up

and they're like, you know what I mean?

So it reminds me of a, this is like often,

it's still car related,

but I can't remember, it was Snoop and Dre,

I can't remember what the name of the song was

but they had the 64 that was hopping up and down

on hydroxyn shit, you know?

So they gave that car away.

Like there's a big giveaway

and by the time it came around to the person

that wanted it to come around, Snoop was like,

like we're just going to give you a different car.

That's got hydroxyn, because this thing's a piece of shit

because we beat the fucking shit out of this car, right?

So it's like, it's the same thing.

Like it's desirable and it's cool as well as fucking cool

but like when you get there and the reality of it

and you get that, you won't be able to get down

the road with it, you know, it's like,

yes, selling me something is, I mean,

that's a sale, the whole salesman thing.

You don't want to be a gold chainer, you know?

A gold chainer.

This is Florida, everybody's a gold chainer.

That's true.

We saw a dog at the racetrack with a gold chain lead.

That's sexy, that's hot.

I did, I do love it.

Like every Florida event, everybody gets the chains out.

They'll have like three or four of them layered up.

Everybody was like,

Dude, your son burns some shit, man.

Can you imagine how hot that gets?

That's gotta be dumb.

I saw a guy had a big fat gold chain

and then he had this huge gold ring

with like a bird or something on it.

Like there's just no way you'd ever really wear that

except for like maybe for a picture

or you want to look like a boss or something.

But he had like just this huge ring on a gold chain

on his neck.

I'm like, what, what are we doing?

That's so funny.

It's Florida though.

I have never seen more gold chains in my life.

I actually like to ask people here

like that live here for their whole lives.

I go, so how long do I have to live here

before the state sends me my gold chain?

Is it a five year, 10 year?

Do you get different sizes?

Is that why I still have small ones and big ones?

Yeah.

Is there like a tax bracket

for having like what size gold chain

or the weight of your gold chain?

I'm not sure.

Maybe that's it.

Maybe I haven't had the tax bracket

to get my gold chain.

That's what I think so.

I think so.

Okay.

You hit that tax bracket

and you get the chain in the mail.

Bling, bling.

Bling, you've got mail.

Oh, shit.

Florida.

There was a Netflix show called Florida Man

and in that they say,

this is the freest place on earth.

And I almost believe it.

Or the wildest place on earth.

There's something like that.

Yeah.

It's definitely like its own,

got its own shade of redneck.

That's for sure.

Oh, yeah.

Swamp redneck.

There's a,

I think Joe Rogan said it once.

He goes, when the world gets bad enough

that you have to leave to Texas,

Florida's the last stand.

Yeah.

That's true.

That's very true.

Oh, I don't know how you're working that shit, man.

In the heat?

Yeah, I suppose so.

It's not too bad.

I don't know.

I get anxiety thinking about it being cold.

Really?

I mean, it's really not that bad.

I can turn the heat on.

I don't like turning the heat on.

I like the handcuffs.

Shorts and bare feet.

Yeah, I guess.

Oh, so for the tundra,

when I finally get the thing driving,

I'm going to put a YouTube video together

and I'm gonna try to go like,

YouTube or WoW style on one video.

And I've been writing the hook lines and stuff

for the beginning of the video because you got it.

In YouTube, if you don't have somebody

in the first 30 seconds,

you just won't get any views.

If you can't keep somebody a minute into your video

and get them hooked

and get them needing to know the answer to a question

or something, it's gone.

So in the beginning, I think it's like,

I needed to know if you could build a long travel

pre-runner for under $100,000.

And then it's like, I set out to make it happen.

And I did it with limited space, limited tools

and limited budget and limited footwear

because I'm always bare foot working on it.

So it's gonna be like limited space.

It's gonna show me working in the side yard.

It'll be like limited tools.

It's gonna be like my Chinese welder

and vice sitting on a CRV folding table.

And then it'll be limited money

and then it'll be like an empty wallet.

And then it'll be a limited footwear

and it'll go down to my feet with like,

wiggle my toes.

And you should have like fake blood on them and shit.

Like just all fucked up.

When I was in Tennessee painting that GT-R engine bay,

we epoxy-primered it the first day.

And then, or we seam-sealed it, an epoxy-primered it,

or we epoxy-primered it and then we seam-sealed it

because I wanted to epoxy up under all the bare bones.

So we epoxy-primered it

and I did it barefoot and we,

and the bottoms of my feet were covered in epoxy

over walking in it.

I had to take, yeah, paint thinner to my bare feet

for like 20 minutes to get them clean.

And so the next day,

I still didn't want to wear shoes

because I didn't want to wreck pair of shoes

because you don't really like fly across the country

with a pair of shoes to paint in and ruin.

So we went to Walmart and I bought a set

of Hello Kitty slides and then I did the rest of the video,

or did the rest of all the live streams in the video

in my Hello Kitty slides.

And I, so my kid told me when I do like that

and limited footwear, it goes down to my feet

in the Hello Kitty slides.

That's funny.

Like little Flintstone sound effect, you know,

that toes wiggling?

Oh yeah.

Yeah, I had primer epoxy in my hair last week,

because we had, we were priming the inside

of the inside and outside of that 32 Brookville,

like all at one time.

So I had a creeper on the bottom side

and then like, if you put your head up,

when you're spraying underneath there,

like it kind of goes around you

and then gets on the head rest of the creeper

and then you put your head back

and then it's like, yeah.

I had a head on and stuff,

but just like the bottom, you know,

underneath the hat, it was like.

I still had sock.

Even if it's hot, if I'm going to be doing something

that I have to be under it, like with my face, head sack.

I shut up.

It's gross and sweaty.

I want, like looking back, I wish I would have,

but yeah, what are you going to do?

So yeah.

Yeah, epoxy primer in there.

Well, at least you can tell people

that's why there's gray there, you know?

It's just epoxy.

Man, you would love the epoxy that we spray in our room

because it's, we use it top and bottom.

So we're using it on your Blastacar,

get all sheet metal right.

We're using it as the foundation

and we're using it over the top of your filler work

for finish work.

So it's a cohesive product top and bottom, yeah.

Like to me, it's like, it's meant from PPG.

It's a vibrance, it's in the vibrance lines, VP 2050.

And it's super hard if you start sanding it with 180.

Like, so if you're blocking it out,

you're sanding with 180, which also means

if it's super hard, that means it's not going to move.

It doesn't shrink in the cup as much

when you're done, like hardly at all, anyways.

But when you're cutting it with 180,

because you're cutting it with 180,

it ends up being straighter,

because you're cutting it straighter, faster.

So there's like, there's all kinds of benefits

to the even the process that it creates as well.

It's pretty, I like it just because it's cohesive.

It's just, you're going to have a similar product

from top to bottom.

I never really understood the restorations

that have all these layers of different primers.

It's all potential failure

in every single different primer you put on it.

I don't care if it's from the same company.

Right.

Oh man, I sprayed, not to bash a company,

but it's because I was ill trained in the product,

but I sprayed sickens for a while

and that is some aggressive stuff.

If you put it on too thick or too wet,

you'll peel or lift the next layer under it.

Or maybe,

because it might not use good products top to bottom, but.

That is a characteristic of the sickens product.

They are slower in general.

So because it takes so long for the solvents to come out.

They eat into the lower levels.

Well, you can tack the top and it feels ready to go

and there's still solvents in it.

And then because the solvent is so slow,

you put one more coat on it.

It soaks underneath, hits the wet stuff,

the dry stuff on top, starts to wrinkle.

Yeah, I mean, and I just talked to a guy that,

I mean, I'm not a sick,

I sprayed sickens at a couple of shops

and I am not a fan.

Like if you grew up on Dupont, PPG,

any of these, I don't know what,

Dynacode or anything.

I'm not really familiar with that stuff or Glazerut.

But if you grew up on that, you're gonna,

I think you're going to struggle with sickens.

If you grew up on sickens in Lesnol,

you're going to be struggling with PPG.

And I don't know what Dupont has for anymore.

I think it's, I don't know what Chromax or what did I,

what the solvent line ever turned into.

I think it's kind of shit to be about.

Yeah, I've always been PPG all the way.

I've sprayed a bunch.

I just, for me, the products, for me, work better.

And I'm, like I said, I know that there's millions

of paint jobs with sickens out there that are just fine.

It was just like, I will come in from PPG.

I had the worst with it lifting.

And then honestly though,

it made me a better painter spraying sickens

because I learned, I learned.

That goes back to when,

that goes back to learning something

only when something goes wrong.

Because if things keep going right,

you're never going to learn anything.

You're never going to have that extra knowledge.

You know, I think it's, to me,

the paint world's turned into just corporate greed shit.

There's a reason why Kin-Dig is spraying sickens now.

You know, it's not because it's a good product.

It's not because it's the best product out there.

I can promise you that.

No, it isn't because they only use one clear

that sickens produces because it's the hardest clear they make.

Because traditionally, sickens clear stays very rubbery

and stays very soft.

It is good for chip resistance and the collision world.

So it does have, I think it lacks in gloss

because it does stay soft.

I don't like it at all,

but they sell one hard clear and that's the,

so it's like, I learned that at the sickens training.

So like, this is coming right from the cat's mouth.

So it was all like, well, this is just

a corporate fucking stunt, basically.

You know, they're just paying them to,

because it was a big deal when they switched

from PPG to sickens in the sick or in the PPG world.

And then all of a sudden PPG isn't at SEMA anymore

and they're supposedly not,

from our paint provider's perspective,

they don't care about old cars anymore,

which is mildly frustrating because then they start

advertising for the triple crown of rotting in Nashville.

And now, as of last week, they're back in SEMA again.

So they're using us as advertisement,

but they're not giving us the same accessibility

to the color tools and things like that

even that they used to.

So it's really interesting.

Imagine there'll be a course correction at some point.

It seems like things always got to swing too far one way.

I mean, it's so expensive now to where, to me,

I think a smaller company could come along

in the paint world and do really well.

I mean, I think even that is like Asa Spades

or Ace or something.

There's small paint companies coming out there.

There's a company up North here in Wisconsin

that has supposedly a primer that's very similar to VP 2050,

but it's blue, but they're using it

to cohesive top and bottom.

So it's, I don't know.

You're never gonna compete with the big companies

as far as having, to me, you gotta have somebody

to lean against when you're spraying products

and you know, you're spraying $10,000 in product.

You wanna make sure you have at least a leg

to stand down if something happens.

Right.

But there again, they're always like,

well, there's no real warranty on the stuff

because it's all kind of on the shop

as far as prep and all that bullshit, you know?

Yeah.

Seconds, I think specifically taught me

that you never need to cover something in one coat.

They're like, their theory,

which I understand is to a certain extent it's true,

but they're telling me that, well,

you, it's the base coats like all these beach balls

stacked up and you're gonna,

lights gotta come to the bottom and come to the top

and you can't see, you should,

you're gonna see through it no matter what.

So spray light coats and yeah,

but eventually it's gotta be the fucking color

we're spraying, right?

Very light coats.

I was spraying a color last,

the last time I sprayed seconds

or last couple of times I sprayed seconds,

I know that the one color, it was a blue, dark blue

and it was like eight or nine coats with this waterborne.

It's like piss water.

Like I don't, I don't get it.

It doesn't speak to me.

I don't, I can't get that stuff to make money.

Supposedly there's places where you can make

$100,000 spraying seconds water.

Well, that's all great and fine,

but they'd probably have like the perfect booth,

the perfect setting, a technician

that's sprayed it his whole life,

like doesn't,

I suppose China doesn't,

doesn't fucking have anything to do with me here, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

What are you gonna do?

Keep spraying PPG.

Fully sponsored.

No, no, not really.

They'd be cool if we had some, let's do it.

PPG, let's do it.

Come on PPG.

I think, yeah, it's an American classic.

Can't be Pittsburgh paint and glass.

Yeah.

There's a sign in, I can't remember.

There's a sign, Pittsburgh paint and glass sign,

some hanging somewhere around here.

It's still hanging.

I think it's a grocery store or something.

Hey.

It's pretty cool.

So it's next on the truck.

You just wait into some parts

and that's it kind of thing.

Yeah, basically break houses is the big thing.

I've got to get the tie rod extensions finished.

We got the brunt of them done.

I worked on it Friday.

I had some, had to run the dog to an appointment stuff.

So my day was kind of split up.

So it was a super hardcore productive day,

but it's on the ground.

I did find out no matter how good you are at math,

real world is important.

I need to order some new set of springs

for the coilovers.

They're dual.

So I have a soft spring and then a spring

that's made to be your general calculated spring weight.

And then of course, if you got them double stacked

with the slider, you've got to calculate,

there's a calculation basically

to do what they'll be combined.

So like I had a 175 and a 300.

So you do 175 times 300 divided by 175 plus 300

and then somehow that gives you the combined spring rate.

I don't know.

There's a whole bunch of math that goes into it.

And it's going to be, bro,

it was going to be a super good setup.

So I had like one cushy soft

for like when I'm hitting small stuff, it just eats it.

And then I was going to have the other one to be,

you know, my main ride spring.

But I didn't calculate that.

So all that math works out really good.

But what you don't calculate and you don't realize

until you put the weight down on the truck

is that the 175 has to be able to hold the entire way

to the vehicle.

Otherwise it collapses.

That's the whole time.

And so you have to be like halfway through

like a halfway like the soft spring be about half,

like halfway compressed, I guess you would say, right?

Yeah.

So what you do is the shock has 12 inches of travel.

So you want your ride height to be at about six inches.

So you want to be in the middle zone of your shock

somewhere in there between 40 and 60% of your travel

is where you want to be landing.

So you need your stack spring height

to compress to your ride height.

Okay. So you calculate your spring rates.

I don't know who does not run off the bat.

Who's going to do that right, right?

First time.

With a lot of experience, I'm sure.

So then you calculate your corner weight

and then you do your spring rate

and your spring rate is changed by the emotion ratio,

which is where your coilover mounts

to the lower control arm

in relation to the length of the lever.

Cause you know what I mean?

So then you calculate it by your spring rate.

And then also my coilover has got a little rake back

to it like a, I would call it like castor almost.

You know what I mean?

Like the coilover is leaning towards the back of the truck

at 15 degrees.

So that adds like a cosine.

So you actually have to add that into your motion ratio.

Yeah, because you're, yeah.

You'd be lessening the spring rate

by putting it back potentially a little.

At an angle, yep.

And then that all calculates in

with your corner weight,

which I weighed the truck before I took it apart.

And then you do that.

And like I said, on paper,

my combined spring rate should be the right stack height.

I should have a soft and a, you know, like a medium

because you want a pre-runner to be pretty loose.

Yeah, you want a loose soft plush ride.

And, but like I said, the math doesn't tell you

the 175 just collapses because it,

in order to stay at a certain height,

they would have to hold the whole corner weight.

And it doesn't do that.

It's not splitting the load at 300

because it's not going to stay uncompressed.

So like double that thing or what?

So my shocks, when I had them,

I talked to the company that built my coilovers

and we valve them for, you know,

like a pre-runner setup.

So they have a firm rebound

and a medium compression or something like that.

And so with the 300 pound springs on my coilovers

right now, I can actually push the truck down

and the shock will hold against that 300 pound spring.

So when you're calculating spring rate,

you have to take in a factor

that the shock is fighting against the spring too

when you have, you know,

I have a two and a half inch bodied shock.

So it's a lot of fluids, nitrogen charge, it's valve.

It's like a Monroe sensor track.

You need softer, heavier ones

and heavier soft springs.

Yeah.

It's kind of, so what the math told me,

I could run, you know, a 175 or 200 for my soft spring

and a 300 to a 350 for my main ride spring.

I'm going to actually use my 300 as my tender spring

and I'm going to get, I think a 400 for the bottom

and then something that's wildly opposite

of what I learned in motorsports chassis fabrication

at Wildtech is you want on a pre-runner

on an off-road truck like a Baja truck,

you want a lot of unsprung weight

because since the shocks have to have such tight valving

to give you that clutch ride and that action,

you need a lot of weight of your axle

and your wheels and your tires

to pull the shock back out with your spring.

Okay.

Because you need such tight valving

that you need a spring that'll fight it to be able to,

so otherwise like say, say you're going over a whoop section

if your shock is stronger than your springs are,

your springs are never going to come back down.

And so, yeah, it's wild

because like everything that we learned

was more like, you know, racing,

you want as little unsprung weight as possible.

You know, you know, you've got people

that are running the inboard brake setups

like a Jaguar axle, all to get rid of unsprung weight.

You want a lightweight wheel, you want all this stuff.

Well, in the off-road truck

where you're cycling a ton,

you actually want sprung weight to keep that tire

to the earth while it's fighting your shock.

Interesting.

I bet that's probably why Morgan Clark's control arms

are always look like they're fucking four times larger

than they need to be.

Oh my God.

Yeah, but there are some aluminum mounts.

Fucking insane.

Like that thing traveling across the desert,

like just bouncing, the tires just bouncing across.

Oh my God.

Oh, did you see the one with the Nissan

that you just finished?

That's been like a...

Is that the Nissan?

Sorry, I thought it was a Toyota.

The red car or the red truck?

Yeah, is that a Nissan?

Yeah, it's a Nissan Frontier.

My bag.

I didn't even notice he said Toyota.

But he's been building that car

since he was working in his driveway.

Oh shit.

Yeah, so that thing,

was at two different shops before it came to Morgan

and then he hung out speaking to car clubs.

He hung out with the crew of guys

that did like the pre-runner stuff.

And he had a crew cab F-150

what did they call those something back in the day?

There was something special term

for those 90s, early 2000s crew cabs.

But he hung out with a bunch of these guys

and they did videos like,

I can't remember the name of the

Dirt Alliance or something like that.

There was like a old school,

you'd get the DVDs of the guys

with the pre-runs hitting mad jumps

in the desert and stuff like that.

He hung out with these guys

and the one had a Frontier

that he built, you know what I mean?

It was like a leaf sprung truck and stuff like that.

But you know what I mean?

He had built it with friends

and other builders and whatever.

He was just pretty famous for sending that thing hard

and it was like literally

he bought it from a landscaper,

crew cab Frontier.

And then he started the YouTube channel Terra Crew,

the guy that owns that truck

when that DVD world kind of fell off.

And he's like a school teacher.

So he doesn't have any budget.

So the Morgan was like,

Morgan helped come up with the name of the YouTube channel.

Like he's been around forever with these guys

and he's like, I tell you what,

I promise we're gonna finish this truck.

And so like Morgan's had to give up a bunch of hours

and like it's always been in the shop

since as long as you've had a shop

and he's been just kind of plugging away

and like his guys were on weekends on it

and stuff like that.

Because it's not really paying much.

And you gotta think that thing's got

like a $20,000 shock package on it.

So imagine how long it takes somebody

to get money like that

and then Morgan's eating stuff.

So it's been a really long process.

There's a whole video series on it's pretty sweet.

I've been watching it for a long time

and then they just got it together.

And I think Off-Road Expo is this weekend.

They've got it there and I'm sure there's gonna be

a lot of insane videos of that.

They were, did you see anything from Off-Road Expo yet?

No, I just seen like that fucking one truck jumping

over some other car or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Did you see, was it the F100 you saw jumping?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's Vivian.

That truck is insane.

I mean, it looks super cushy when he's jumping

and I'm sure it's not, but it looks like it.

It is.

I've seen videos of that truck doing like 120

over the whoop sections and over in Arizona and stuff

like that.

It is insane.

That truck is crazy.

That truck is actually, was originally a Tundra.

And then he rolled it once or twice

and then he decided to run an old truck cab

and then Morgan basically redid the whole,

the only thing that left over from when it was a Tundra

is the front suspension.

Cause it was like a super well-built

center mount front setup.

And then, yeah, now it's like an LS F100.

And that's the second cab that he's had on it

since Morgan swapped it over to that.

And then he's made it so the cab just kind of slips on

and is replaceable.

So the guy gets like these patina F100 cabs

and has them replaced every time he rolls it over

cause he pushed it, he goes harsh.

That's fucking cool though.

God damn.

But yeah, they were jumping drift cars

in a parking lot, pretty wild.

That's nuts.

The amount of abuse that those things take.

Right?

I can't push back.

That's crazy.

You're watching that suspension move feet

and it's like, how is this thing going to stay together

by the end of this run?

That's crazy to me.

Yeah, it's wild.

And then like their jumps they're doing

at that off-road expo are the worst thing

because you're going off a jump

and then you're just pan-taking on the pavement.

You're flagged up.

You ever see a lot of your trucks on blacktop?

That's actually kind of interesting.

Have I ever seen what, lunch what?

Trophy trucks, race on blacktop.

Stadium trucks.

Yeah.

Oh, sure, whatever.

Yeah, they'll run on the F1 courses after F1

and they'll put themselves in.

They have some shit.

Fuck, that stuff looks incredible.

Coming around corners, tire lifting up.

Oh, man, that's sick.

That was actually started by Mickey Thompson

back in the 80s.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's what you watch.

I like that.

Yeah, that's pretty.

I always like when they take the audio away

and then they have like toddler sound effects.

They'll sound like a kid's joke.

It'll be like all the trucks come around the corner

and it's like, brrr.

And then they hit the jumps and it's like, whee.

As all these trucks are hitting the jump, it's hilarious.

Yeah, stadium truck is wild.

Jumping trucks on pavement.

Yeah, right?

It's got to be, it's got to rattle your brain.

You saw the pictures of my truck sitting on all four wheels

and it's got like that low short course stance right now

because I need more spring.

It's definitely got like short course truck stance

right now.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes people set them up that way

so they unload a lot farther.

So I don't really know.

I need to get, I mean, right now I have like stock travel room

even if I was just running the stock,

so the springs I have now,

but I don't want stock travel thing.

It'll sit like two or three inches higher kind of thing.

Yeah, probably about three inches higher.

And then in the rear, until I can do a link setup,

I'm gonna take, I'm gonna build longer shackles

for my leaf and then I'll actually lower the rear

a couple inches because to soften the ride of the rear,

I'm gonna put longer shackles

because that changes the leverage on the leaf spring.

Makes sense.

Obviously I'm not doing anything extreme.

It's gonna change pinion angle a bunch and do all that,

but I want the truck to have like a planted wide stance.

So,

and the pre-runners aren't generally super tall.

The only reason they're tall is

because most, you know, a lot of them are like 40s,

but yeah, just to fit the tire on.

Yeah, seeing as my truck's not really a full-sized truck

is today's standards, it's gonna be sitting pretty,

so it's gonna look like a,

like it's got like a one or two inch lift on it,

like not very high at all.

Well, that's what I'd think is hilarious

about some of these trucks.

As you've seen a truck yesterday,

it's like a 15, 16, 17 Silverado

and it's like the rockers are like at my fucking eyeballs.

Like cool truck dude, but like, how do you,

you got to be exhausted just going to the grocery store,

getting in and out of the damn thing.

Yeah, and you gotta think most people

are like five foot nine.

You know, it's like a truck

that they converted to straight axle

and it's like with street tires on it, fucking cool.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I actually got to feel short

a little bit yesterday.

I went to go stand in the merch line

with some guys I was at the racetrack with

and then as I'm standing in the line,

they're like, oh, this is the, they're like,

we're in line to go take pictures with Cletus.

I was like, I thought this was the merch line.

And I was like, well, I'll take picture for you guys.

And they're like, no, no, you got to be in the picture.

So, but that guy's like six foot five.

Oh, was it?

Yeah, so it's not.

Did you like give them your YouTube card or something?

Fucking, here, here scan this for me.

Yeah, I should have been like 20 bucks

and you say subscribe.

And then I'll just use it in every video.

No, I don't, I'm really happy for a guy like Cletus.

Cause I mean, he's, it was just like a kid from Nebraska

that made a YouTube channel goofing off

and has made like, cause I'm serious living.

I thought it was something about in NASCAR.

He was like going to be racing some NASCAR or something.

Maybe.

Something in his last couple of weeks I thought I saw.

But it's really cool that somebody like started

from just making goofy videos.

And now he owns a race track

and he's got like all the multi-million dollar things

going on.

But I don't get like a fan boy feeling around him.

Like these guys were genuinely excited to meet him

and I was like really happy and it's cool to meet him.

I've seen him at the track before,

like when we've been there and like caught a word

in passing, you know, nothing big,

but like he's, you know, he obviously builds stuff

and he's a driver and does a lot of really sweet stuff.

But he doesn't have like, to me, I get giddy.

Yeah, we all put our pants on the same way, you know,

one leg at a time.

The only difference is when I put mine on

I make gold records.

Shit.

I think that's a Saturday Night Live thing.

Christopher Walken.

Guys, we put our pants on the same way,

one leg at a time, you know.

But no, but like when I was fan-boying last

at an event, Ed Iskandarian, that made me fan-boy.

Because like legend, like groundbreaking people,

you know what I mean, like.

I can't remember the last time I actually like fan-boyed out.

To be honest, sometimes I honestly fan-boy out

with a couple of my buddies from Eau Claire, Fast Freddy

and then Trent from Midwest Fab,

that those guys like, they've been doing it

for a long, long time.

And they're kind of, I feel like they're always just like,

Fred's like, the dude's been doing it forever.

Like the both guys, I mean, they're both so fucking talented

and they've been, they have a lot of knowledge

and even just the business side of this kind of stuff.

And I mean, just excellent, excellent people.

I mean, I think if I were to see some people,

like a couple guys like, if I was to see Morgan Clark,

Rob Iida, some of these are really kind of people

we talked about.

I think I fan-boy out a little bit more,

but I mean, at PRI last year,

I wish I would have talked to Brian Fuller.

I would have probably fan-boyed out a little bit from him

just because he was in the power block

and stuff back in the day.

But like Courtney Hansen was there.

I just about like, I was just,

I was this close to saying hi to her and stuff,

but I was a tiny little bit of fan-boyed

from Courtney Hansen.

But like Richard Rawlings and stuff was there.

There are about all the street outlaw guys were there

and it wasn't like, I'm like, hey,

that guy looks kind of like

that guy from street outlaws

and my buddy Jason was like, yeah, it is.

Oh yeah, shit.

I guess this would be the place, right?

Yeah, it's funny.

But I mean, yeah, to me, it's just like

the guys from street outlaws look like

everybody that was talking to him was bugging them

and shit.

So I don't know if Karen was like, whatever.

They're having their thing.

Yeah, like we were,

when we were at that private drag racing thing,

Cletus was there testing cars with his buddies too.

And like, you know, there was times I was walking

up to the staging lanes,

like I lined my buddy up for a burnout in the pit

here in the little water box.

And then he does the burnout and I walk up and like,

Cletus's video and stuff.

And I just kind of like stayed to the side

until he finished his video.

And then, you know, we'd pass each other

and, you know, exchange a smart remark

about Fords being noisy or something.

But like, I imagine it's just exhausting

being bothered by people all the time.

So I just don't necessarily want to be that guy.

Yeah, if you put yourself in their shoes

and be like, I don't want to talk to every fucking guy

about, yeah, I mean, I would be the same way.

Like I said, I'm happy for them

and I'm glad they're out there.

Like, because I like to see the possibility

and like see the path.

But it doesn't mean I gotta bother the guy.

I think there's a level of,

there's a level of not even wanting

that kind of success too though.

I mean, I don't want to be able,

I don't want to go somewhere just even,

I mean, I'm sure the guy doesn't get recognized everywhere.

But if he goes to any sort of motors,

yeah, I mean, he probably doesn't go to the mall

and get fucking noticed by, you know, everybody there.

Maybe a guy that's like,

hey, I think that guy was Cletus.

But you go to a motor sports event anywhere

and you're going to be just overtaken with people

I would suspect to a certain extent.

Yeah.

They kind of rope their area off so that way.

Those vice grip garage guys at Iola,

people just go nuts over it.

And it's like, they're just people with the phone,

just like you.

I mean, I'm not knocking any of them.

I mean, they've gotten to where they are for a reason.

Right.

There's certainly not knocking that,

but it's like, like you said, one leg at a time.

We were at the river one time

and I used to make like fossil hunting videos.

And I had a guy come up to me.

We're like in the middle of nowhere

on Peace River in Florida, like canoeed up the river.

Cause if you're smart, you always canoe up the river.

And then you, when you're tired at the end of the day,

you can go back down to the boat ramp easy.

So we were like up the river in one of our spots

and some guy comes up and he's like talking to me

and he's like, do you make YouTube videos?

And I was like, oh, do you see me video on something?

And he's like, no, I watch your videos.

That's fucking weird.

I was like, cool.

Oh yeah, I haven't had anything like that happen yet.

I don't feel like I've, I don't know.

And maybe someday I really don't have any aspirations

of being like, when I started the business,

I had a couple of people be like, oh,

so you want to be like the shop around of like,

no, not really.

I just want to make a couple of waves, you know,

and have just, I just want to be able to do this

for a long time.

You know, I don't want to peek at any point.

I just want to do this for a living.

Um, yeah.

All right.

I think that's a perfect spot to say to us in 10 years

when this podcast is huge.

A good way to say-

Stay humlask with it.

Why don't you tell everybody where to find you online?

Yeah.

So you can find me on Instagram,

Hungry Hall of Customs,

YouTube Hungry Hall of Customs on Facebook.

We have a Hungry Hall of Customs site.

You can also follow me on my personal name,

but in Strak.

Yeah, where do they find you, man?

You can find me everywhere at Tereshark TV,

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube especially, Patreon.

I think we need to,

since I screwed up the video last week,

I think we need to release this podcast video form

for everybody to watch,

but I'm still going to play

the How to Find Us on Patreon

if you enjoy the video

and you want to sign up,

help the podcast out.

Five bucks a month,

you'll get at least four videos a month.

You get them early,

you get full video

and you get some of our bloopers

when Quentin and I say things

that we're not supposed to do.

So until next time.

The stuff that gets us canceled.

Fucking cars!

They'll have an audio form

everywhere you listen to podcasts.

If you want to see it in video,

you can go to our Patreon,

which is patreon.com slash F underscore C-K-I-N-G-C-A-R-S.

And just for $5 a month,

you can get all of our podcasts in video format,

extra bloopers at the end.

So you can get a little bit more feel.

You can see some of the things we're working on,

even some of our more inappropriate moments

and help support the channel.

Make sure to subscribe

and hit that notification

so you get notified every week

when we post a new episode.

Yep, it'd be funny to see like a hand in the background

come through and like slap you in the back of the head.

They'd be fucking hilarious.

We can arrange that.

Insert slap sound effect.

Right.

That's funny.

Cleetus, Fl2k, Roadsters and Race Cars | F_cking Cars Podcast Ep 8

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