Driven Radio Show Feb 21, 2026

Driven Radio Show #341: Ken Huening of Cover Seal

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Car

Ford Thunderbird

The Ford Thunderbird is a well-known American car that has been around for many years. It's recognized for its sleek look and was often seen as a luxury vehicle.

Term

Harley

Harley refers to a brand of motorcycles that are very popular in America. They are known for their heavy build and unique style, often linked to a specific lifestyle.

Term

carburetor

A carburetor helps engines get the right amount of fuel and air to run properly. It's an important part for older cars, as newer ones often use fuel injection instead.

Car

Dodge Custom

The Dodge Custom 880 is a big car from the 1960s that has a lot of space inside. It's a classic car that people who love old cars like to talk about.

Car

Dodge Custom 80

The Dodge Custom 80 is an older car model made by Dodge. It's part of their lineup from a time when cars had a different style and technology compared to today.

Car

The Chevrolet Corvette is a fast and stylish sports car that many people love. It has different versions, like the C4 and C6, which are just different models from different years, each with its own features.

Term

C4

The C4 is a specific automatic transmission made by Ford. It's known for being strong and lightweight, and it was used in many Ford cars for several years.

Term

C6

The C6 is a more robust automatic transmission made by Ford. It's used in larger and more powerful vehicles because it can handle more power than the C4.

Term

Quiet, numbskulls. I'm broadcasting. Hey, all you gearheads and car fiends, welcome

to Driven Radio Show, your weekly automotive happy hour. I am Brett Hatfield here with

my co-host and engineer extraordinaire, Mr. Mark Groves.

That's me.

And we are coming to you from Driven Radio Studios, which is conveniently located in

my house.

It's not a basement, it is a lair.

No, no, it's not. If you got to walk out with a bar and a couple of bedrooms in a theater,

that's not really a basement.

You could work harder at making it suck. You really could, I'm just saying.

Not gonna.

Not gonna, but you could.

Um, hey, Mr. Fuel line.

Ah, Jesus.

It's the interesting adventure of fear and disappointment continues.

Okay, let's get the easy part out of the way first.

Yeah.

Bike search?

Bike search, putting on hold right now. You know, I do look, there was, it's a hard task,

quite honestly, because I'm a big guy, so I know that I need to get a bigger bike.

Harley.

But there is this Honda Dream 305 and it's just adorable and it looks in great condition.

You can't.

I know.

You can't.

And the price keeps dropping.

And I'm like, oh, God.

Buy the sucker, drain the fluids, put it in your office, but you're not going to be able

to ride it.

Yeah, probably.

You're a bigger guy. I'm a bigger guy. We would both look ridiculous.

But I, you know, I keep them on Facebook and it's about the only place I look.

But I get it.

You know, it's, it's a money thing. And I got this, I got a, I got a feeling.

I get it.

I got a feeling this Thunderbird's going to drain me for a little while.

Well, it's not like these stray Harleys don't keep following me home.

So when the time is right, I'm guessing I'll have one.

I keep pretending that I'm a mechanic.

And on this one, you know, it's still all about.

It's all about the carburetor.

I did get the the really cool dual fuel line piece, went ahead and bought it.

A couple of other things.

I bought two different size hoses because at one point it says that, you know,

the original host size on the Thunderbird is five eights and three eights.

Five eights seems large.

Yeah.

It takes a lot of juice for a three fifty.

But the there's also it says for the actual carburetor itself.

It's a little larger.

So I bought two of them just to get they were like seven or eight bucks each.

So a couple of feet.

So now you're fully hosed.

I'm so hosed.

And I was actually I was almost feeling adventurous over the weekend until

I raised, wait a minute, I kept reading about stuff because I'd keep trying

to check before I really start digging in.

And there's a kick down for your for the trance.

Yeah, for the trance.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is kind of kick down.

This is new to you.

Boss is lost.

So I'm reading about that.

I'm like, oh, shit, I shocks.

I got to buy a kick down thingy adapter to get it onto the

only one 60 don't say shucks when you mean shit.

OK, damn it.

So so I'm looking at those now trying to find one to fit it.

And what I'm probably going to honestly do is last time when I got a bunch of

parts and stuff for the for the 64 Dodge custom 80 custom 80.

I called some and and talked to a guy who knew things and was super helpful.

So OK, so it's time to call some of it.

Yeah, I need to just get a get on a line with somebody who

half way knows their ass with at least one hand, if not both.

And just say, hey, you know, this is what I'm looking at.

This is what I had.

This is what I bought and they can see it because all the stuff that I've gotten

so far has been through some racing and just find out.

Hey, you know, what do you recommend for this kick down?

Because there there are several different ones, but once for GM, this and that.

And then there's this one that says it's for Ford, but it's a cruzomatic.

It's not a specific.

What is it? C4, C6, so I'm like, Jesus Christ.

What happened was in the late fifties, if memory serves,

GM wound up having a fire in their transmission factory.

And for a year or two, they were getting cruzomatic transmissions from Ford

and Ford and GM were both using cruzomatics. Oh, wow.

I don't know that that's what GM was calling them.

And no, of course not.

Well, that has happened.

Hey, that 10 speed automatic that Ford and Chevy both have now.

Yeah, that comes from the same factory and they both help produce it.

Oh, wow. So that's not completely unheard of.

And I think I'm remembering that, right?

I think GM had a fire and they were getting transmissions from Ford.

It was either that or vice versa, but they were both using

the same transmissions for a while.

So you may run into some strange stuff when you're looking for the kick down.

Now, what's interesting, this I will say, you know,

because I keep talking about how much of a wuss I am about this.

If I know what I'm doing, I got no problem.

If I have at least an idea, that's why I'm like, hell, I could dig in.

But, you know, when when it's a difference between driving down the road

and driving down the road and your transmission blows up

and you're not really sure what the hell this is.

They're not going to blow up.

That's where I kind of get an allergy.

And furthermore, before you start crapping on yourself for not knowing enough,

look how far you've come from just talking about having an old mopar

to having an old mopar, turning your own wrenches, solving your own problems,

replacing your gas tank, all the stuff you did on that thing.

You're just starting over with a new project, man, you'll get it.

Yeah, you'll get it. That's why I figured I will get in there and plus them.

And I'm probably going to give Rick Hunter another call over at Hot Rod Express.

He offered and I'm like, you know, F and take him up on it.

Take him up on it.

Call Rick. He will explain it to death.

Well, that's that's what he's good at.

And he's fantastic. That's why he makes you feel kind of, you know,

you make you feel confident.

Yeah, he makes you feel OK about the situation you've got yourself.

You know, you just do this and this and this.

Worst case scenario, you could ask Luke.

Oh, true. Oh, yeah.

And matter of fact, Luke, just side note,

I finally got to do a favor for Luke because he messaged me today.

Oh, it's funny.

You even mentioned that and said, hey, you know, when you you get your

your

Craggers straightened at some place up there.

I'm like, yeah, it was it was when I was living here in Alaytha.

Yeah. And real nice place, Tire City.

Oh, OK, cool. Yeah.

Kind of a real homegrown place.

Those are usually the ones who do the best.

They got shit done and the guy was super nice.

And I'd taken that one in that had the rim was kind of bent on it.

He's like, yeah, we can do that.

Oh, terrific. Tell me what the price was.

So I took it in, waited.

And then he's like, you know what?

Here you go. No charge.

Oh, that was cool. Yeah.

So that was the guys that I bought the doughnuts for.

You can talk to Rick. You can talk to Luke.

You know, there's it's not like you're without resources.

Exactly. And besides that, look at all the the people we've had on this show.

Someone will know exactly how to help you out.

By the way, need I remind you, Muffy Bennett, Thunderbird expert.

Oh, oh, my God, I had not even thought of Muffy.

Yeah, you could ask for worse looking help.

Yeah, yeah, there is that.

Six foot tall statuesque blonde happens to know everything about your car.

Nice. So you do have resources.

Truth.

Don't worry about the bike thing, Matt.

I'll help you when it's time. Perfect.

It's not like there won't be one sitting in my garage.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I've I've come close to bringing another one home in the past week.

And I have to. You're a foster dealership is what you are.

Yeah, well, Hatfield's home for recalcitrant hate filled Harleys.

There you go. How many soldiers do your Harleys have?

Hate.

All right.

On my end, dad's tracks almost done over hot.

Nice. Speaking of Rick speaking of Rick, the shot in Freud Express.

I saw yesterday in lots of pieces, all of them being sanded and prepped for paint.

Wow.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting to see that car taken apart.

Yeah, I'm excited about that.

Look, did you see any?

Was there any like frame rust or anything?

Or was that thing still pretty spotless?

No, it's in good shape.

And John Bouldersky, Bouldersky or Bert Dalsky

and his guys at Classic Collision do really, really good work.

And they do it at a very reasonable price.

I can't say enough good about their shop.

And we will have John on the show here in the next couple of months

to talk about that and talk about some of the other cool stuff.

I saw it in a shop like the 62 Corvette and the 70 Chevelle SS.

Three ninety six.

Just lots and lots of cool stuff.

And speaking of bikes, the one I got in mind for you,

I think I'm going to repaint.

Really? Yeah.

Well, you know, it's funny when I look at something and I'm like,

hey, the paint's pretty good.

The one person that comes to my mind is I wonder if this has really

any flaws to worry about.

I should call Brett because if it has any flaw, you're the guy.

It's got a couple of things in it that I can't live with.

It's really pissing me off.

And I think I'm going to change the colors on it.

Yeah, the HD and your ADHD is Harley-Davidson.

That's right.

It's black and kind of a cream color right now.

And I think I'm going to go back with like a pastel turquoise

and white, make it look like one of the fifties bikes.

Wow. Wow.

If you do the pinstripes inside and the correct Harley logo on it,

I just I found an example today and I really love it.

And the example I found has been completely dressed out in chrome.

Yeah. Well, the heritage I have, Dave Sider,

the guy who owned it before me, completely dressed the thing in chrome,

including the 60 spoke wheels and everything else.

The more I clean on it, the more of a gem that thing becomes.

I just think that changing the color would really make it pop.

Maybe I'm going to make you a style.

Well, remember, remember when I redid the seats and bags on the Muglide?

Yeah. And that thing looked good.

That's kind of what I got in mind.

I'm going to I'm going to do a little bit of freshening on it.

All right, dude. Well.

Sad story in the news from Haggerty.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, from Haggerty.com.

Had news for people like me and everyone else, all the DIYers.

And there's some well-known automotive brands that are in dire straits.

It's called First Brands Group LLC.

Probably never heard of them, except in the news lately.

They're a conglomerate company that owns popular aftermarket automotive brands

like Ray Besta's, Stoptech, Frickin Fram, Trico, Auto Light and some others.

They filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September of last year.

The company's liabilities have ballooned into billions of dollars

on with very little cash on hand.

Mm hmm.

And they were founded in 2013 and First Brands relied on a business model

that utilize and quote marks off balance sheet financing.

It's a borrowing strategy that kind of kind of hides and shades

the true amount of leverage that shows up on its books as liability.

You know, some people might think a line is the operative work.

It's very shady.

Yes, the company experienced meter art, meteoric growth in just a decade,

grew its portfolio to include 25 well-known aftermarket brands

that supplied everything from brake components, spark plugs,

windshield wipers, lubricants, but their reliance on debt

and complex financial vehicles was a house of cards came tumbling down in 2025.

The founder and CEO of the company, Patrick James and his brother,

Edward James, the James gang were charged by a federal court

in late January, 2026 with a multi-billion dollar fraud

scheme related to their operation of First Brands.

Now, the charge alleges that the James brothers deceived multiple banks

and direct lenders through fake collateral, double and triple pledged assets

and misleading financial statements, according to Southern District

of New York, U.S. Attorney's Office.

Now, investigators say that First Brands wasn't just inflating the accounts

receivable, the assets used as collateral.

The figures, they made them look extra sweet for private lenders

and was actually then selling those inflated assets two and three times over.

These guys aren't going to have to worry about what happens

to their personal property and their houses,

because the feds are about to give them a brand new place to live.

Oh, dude, yeah, it's going to be nice.

You know, you talk about having your bar right outside.

They're going to have a bunch of them to top it all off.

First Brands has sued former CEO Patrick James, claiming that he funneled

hundreds of million of dollars from the proceeds of these business

inventories into his personal accounts, lived a lavish lifestyle.

No kidding, really.

He's now he's denied any wrong.

You know, no, I related the lawsuit as well as denying the accusation.

No, everybody's got 37 reports from automotive news.

Yeah, I know, right?

I am. I'm part of me is just livid about this because, you know,

shit, where do guys like us go? Where do we go?

Well, and talk about Grady Packers.

Yeah, yeah, I worked for it.

It's a little personal for me, too, because quite a few years ago,

one of the reasons that I moved up here to Kansas City,

I was living in Dallas and working for a place that had multiple names

over the year and a half that I worked there, and they were all,

you know, incorporated companies and some LLCs.

But it was like diva, media star, rhino incorporated, blah, blah, blah,

and come to find out basically that it was Jamaica Bank, incorporated,

where this shames me as a grown man.

But one day, even the CEO and he was a Marine, he's a Marine vet.

And he comes in, he's like, hey, guys, by the way,

we're going to have some people coming in as possible investors.

So if you could stay in your offices and look busy.

And then he brought mom and pop through and I'm like, this is shit.

This is I'm using the S word a lot.

I'm sorry, this this show, I'm a little that's OK.

You know, I hit that adult language thing every time it was.

It was not cool.

So these guys jacking over people, especially people down the line,

the people who depended upon these brands, you know, and fricking frown.

These these great filter products.

And no, no, we got to screw it up.

So what I'm hoping is is that they're able to spin those out.

Yes, people will snatch them up at hopefully bottom dollar prices.

Let them rebuild and keep them alive.

Yeah. Amen. And keep them alive and let these guys rot.

The fact that the feds are, you know, have you in court and they're saying

you. You screwed off multiple billions of dollars.

They just I hate cheats.

I hate cheats and it sounds like both those guys are.

Now, granted, it ain't done.

They haven't been charged.

Everyone's presumed innocent.

Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Allegedly.

But they wouldn't be talking to you if things didn't look fishy.

So we'll we'll keep tracking this.

We'll see how it hammers out guilty.

It was the one I mean.

But God, that's that's a lot of different brands and stuff that you and I all use.

I got tricoblades.

They they make replica or reproduction tricoblades for old corvettes for judging.

And I got tricoblades on both those corvettes.

You know, I had to peel a rubber blade out of a modern

wiper blade and then work it into the the blades for the sixty four dodge.

They don't make blades for the shot and Freud Express anymore.

You have to.

They're two different lengths.

The two blades are two different lengths.

So you have to buy two different sets and each set is around fifty five bucks.

And they're made from Serbian mink.

Yeah. So, you know, no crap, man.

It's over a hundred dollars to put wiper blades on that car.

It's over a hundred bucks.

Wow. And like I've said, when everything's working on that car,

there is no better road car.

But geez, just getting there is kind of a hurdle.

It just gets a whiff of your bank account goes, oh, wait, we need this now.

OK, screw this. Let's have some good news.

Our special guest this week is Ken Hewning, the inventor and CEO of Cover Seal.

Ken is an avid collector of exotic and classic vehicles

and he's experienced rodent damage.

God damn mice in his cars on more than one occasion to his dismay.

Most solutions on the market to deter rodents were either impractical or ineffective.

He created Cover Seal as an easy and complete protection solution.

Ken, welcome to Driven Radio Show.

Yeah, glad to be here.

So let's let's start with the very beginning.

When did you know you were a car guy?

Did you have early influences?

Were you was your dad a car guy, uncle, friend, cousin, something?

Well, I mean, you start out in the 60s when I grew up and and you end up having like hot wheels, right?

And I mean, you get all the multiple ones.

You end up getting the ones that look a little garish.

And and then you have the hot wheel track and you're always trying to see how to supercharge them

and, you know, and win races.

And then we graduated into stock cars.

Remember those things where you actually go to an outdoor or not an outdoor,

but a place that you ran your stock cars.

And and then you got the mag tires.

You end up getting, you know, higher power, bigger,

wrapped motors and and trying to keep them on the track.

And actually, Dad, my dad was army.

So he he built me a little one of those foldable race track

so you can like keep in the garage and then unfold it.

And and, you know, have your own little race track with your friends and neighbors.

I was like a big hit.

Then dad, again, we're army, we're stationed in Izmir, Turkey.

I guess they were bored because they built like a one third scale Jeep,

which had a three horsepower engine in it.

Actually, a real Jeep.

So I was like the big man on campus.

I mean, I had this guy I'm going down in this little Jeep, you know, three horsepower.

And it was marked like an army vehicle and had aircraft tires, solid aircraft tires on it.

And so I guess I started out really early.

I was five years old when I was driving that thing,

a total of about three miles an hour down the streets of Izmir, Turkey.

So that's what I do.

That's cool. I want to drive one of those.

That's a hell of a story.

Got into it.

Oh, so yeah, I gave it to my son.

You know, it needs a lot of help and got trying to find the engine parts for that.

Basically, it was a lawnmower engine that they put into the whole thing.

But it was well crafted, kind of a fun little thing when you're when you're five years old.

So did you have to like pull start the engine on your Jeep?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it was on start. Yeah.

OK, so I've got the I got the end for you here.

Harbor Freight has a two hundred twelve C.C.

Predator motor that is designed specifically for go-karts.

You can really relive the dream.

And I think it might have a governor on it

so you can keep your kid from doing 70 down the street.

That will turn into one of those funny car stories, I'm sure.

So what was your first car?

And aside from the. All right.

So dad gave me a choice now.

I'm in like 10th grade, so I'm working at Safeway.

I'm saving up my money and he gave me a choice.

I could have his Volkswagen Bug or next door neighbor

was selling a 69 Camaro Super Sport.

That's not a choice.

Volkswagen Bug or 69 Camaro.

So I think I think I contemplated that thing actually for about 50 milliseconds.

And that went to the 69 Camaro.

And then that just opened up the door of all kinds of fun little mods.

You know, the Holly 650 double pumper, you know, the Petal Brock manifold,

you know, the the thrush mufflers, you know, the fun stuff

that you can easily bolt onto those things, right?

And that was a lot of fun.

You know, my friends had, you know, Chevelle's, I mean, Grand Torino's.

I mean, those were just the cars that were laying around, you know, in those days.

Now we drool over them, right?

I like to think I sold my 69 for carpet, actually,

when I when we had their first child carpet.

Yeah. Is that the hell of it?

You know, you have kids and it's like suddenly everything that was like,

this is the best, like, OK, bye bye, because I I really need a minivan.

Yeah, that was it.

I really need a new roof.

Now, by the way, did your 69 what size engine was it?

The 350 or 396?

It was a 350 and it had the chrome goodies on the hood

and it had the white stripes and blue with the white stripes going down

and and had the stock wheels on it.

Oh, dude. Nice.

Yeah, my father in law saw it and he took off my chrome mudflaps.

That was his first big move, you know, to.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, you're so bling, get the hell away from my car.

Stop touching her.

That was pretty funny.

Yeah, so I ended up moving on from that one.

And and, you know, the other early influences, like, you know,

back then there was the Opel GT.

That was kind of a cool car back then.

Looked like somebody put your shark body vet in the dryer.

Exactly.

On shrink.

They were drove it, it looked cool.

So now did you get one?

I take it you know, I drooled on that one.

That was like one of the desirable cars, but we were located in Germany.

So all you could get, you know, we were in Swybrook in Germany.

Dad was stationed there when I was like fifth and sixth grade.

And and, you know, you either had those three wheeled French things

that looked really gross like the thing or you ended up having Mercedes, right?

So that was all that was available kind of around that time.

And so we got back to the states and I went into high school and then the fun began.

Well, I had this set up for what was your first car?

What was your first cool car?

But you covered both of those.

I don't know.

The first cool car was because I've been working in the semiconductor industry forever.

And automotive electronics is one of my things that I got into later on.

I can get into that.

But so I've been my ex-father-in-law, he was into Mustangs.

So he had several Mustangs, sixty six, you know, with a Paxton and and

and so I was kind of looking at what car would I really kind of, you know,

desire that has kind of a nice cross between styling, but still good

engine quality. And I arrived at the 1973 Pantera.

That was my first cool car.

And I got it wrong.

Yeah, it was, you know, the 351 Cleveland in it.

You know, the dual points, the water pump that's right next to your ear.

ZF five speed.

Oh, yeah. And you had to have the right jiggle to get it, you know, into gear.

It wasn't a straight move.

It was a wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

OK, first, you know, in a second, you know, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle into third.

It didn't shift fast, you know, but it looked cool.

You know, like, OK, I had to change the electric window

bushings from the nylon pieces of due to to the the brass ones.

You had to change the cooling because they were notorious for cooling.

And there's a number of things.

But my license plate on it was

results of having been a nerd.

That's what it kind of said on the fray.

Well, that hard work kind of paid off.

But you had to replace the bushings in the electric windows.

You had to replace the bushings in the headlights.

Same reason, because it had those

craptastic nylon bushings in there.

But once you got through all that stuff, they are pretty cool cars.

Did did you still have the shift problem once it got warm?

You know, not really.

It's just one you got used to.

The it was it was a pretty reliable car.

And then I found a a GTS that had like really low miles on it.

So there was like, but I mean, that was more more cosmetic.

They didn't do very much on the engines and stuff.

It was more badging and they were just

unusually advanced for their age.

You know, you had electric windows, you had the cassette deck,

you had the electric lights, you know, the three fifty one on that car

was just a rocket, you know, the ZF transmission, transaxle was awesome.

I had a Ford GT and that was the next time I had a, you know, a tri transaxle

even though I had problems with that one, but really well balanced car.

I really enjoyed, you know, the the Panteras.

That was fun.

I might get one back later on.

You know, you kind of sell these things off and kind of move on.

But, you know, you start looking back on them, going, wow, that was really kind of fun.

I wish I had that back.

Well, for a long time, you could shop those for 30 or 40 grand all day long.

And now you can't find one that's not in the six figure region.

So have you always worked in the car world?

You said you worked with automotive electronics for a while.

What was your first car related job?

The career went from semiconductors and then my CEO at the time,

Jack Gifford, it was at Maxim Semiconductor, and he looked at me one day

and goes, goes, we haven't got crap in the automotive market.

And he goes, Huening, you like cars, run the automotive business units.

So I started the automotive business unit from scratch.

And we derived a bunch of parts, you know, that we use for the consumer.

And modified them to match the electrical requirements of the cars

and grew that business to almost 250 million dollars.

You know, I mean, billion dollar company.

And we started at zero, grew to about 2.4 billion.

But the automotive business unit, you know, grew before it got sold

to another company about five years ago to about 450 million.

So we were doing a lot of right things.

And I got a chance to see so many cool things.

I was going to Necrosome, I was going to, you know, all these great places

where they're integrating all these electronics and seeing the models

ahead of time and ruling, you know, out at Magnetti Morelle and out at Hela,

seeing all the cool lighting that was coming on down the pipe.

And so I got a chance to really enjoy the time in the automotive world

doing just making parts that the automotive manufacturers needed

for the next generation of cars.

Well, what was the parent company you were working for?

Well, it was Maxim Integrated Products.

So Maxim was an analog semiconductor company that did basically

all this real world processing.

We were the bridge between the digital side and what made cars go, you know,

all the analog stuff you got to be able to interface to humans.

You know, that would probably not be a bad business to be in right now.

Given that we're starting to see restoration on older electronic stuff

from the from the 80s, I bet that company could probably come along

and show you how to deal with older electronics.

Yes, we have a lot of parts that would fit back in those older days.

And you're dealing with voltages back then, you know, and you remember

the first electronics, you guys are talking about the Thunderbirds.

I just got finished restoring a 57.

So there you go.

Hey, here's your guy, baby bird.

Here's your guy.

It was so much fun.

But God, the elect I am looking at the automotive electronics

appear in the hood and there's like the voltage regulator.

It looks so cute.

Look at the wiring harness or in the Corvette.

What do you got?

A generator, no alternator.

You have a generator.

I know, I know.

I got one.

Your speedo is is driven off of the generator, right?

Yeah, no, it's the attack is driven off the generator.

The attack is you're right.

Yeah, and and I've I got 60 Corvette when I was 18.

So I've had it for almost.

Yeah, almost.

Let's see.

They're two.

Yeah, it's 40 inches, 30 something a long time, a really, really long time.

I didn't have any white hair then and my navel was a lot closer to my spine.

And I've got a lot of experience in that car, a lot of seat time.

So, yeah, I get it and I can appreciate where you're coming from.

It's just that, you know, cars that have real electronics in them

think early fourth gen Corvettes with that LCD dash.

Oh, yeah.

And people are restoring those now.

Those are 40 years old.

Uh, the I think there's going to be a lot more demand for companies

that can replace those electronics or can rebuild them.

And they're so primitive compared to what we have now.

It's probably going to take specialists to be able to do it.

This is a good point.

They actually don't fabricate that stuff anymore.

The that would be a challenge in that obsolete market.

And by the way, the military's got the same problem.

I mean, think about all the tanks and stuff that they've got, you know,

out there that is using the stuff that's like circa 1960s still.

Yeah, old planes to Commodore 64 up there.

Old planes.

Yeah, no kidding.

OK, so how is it tell the story about what possessed you

to make this first cover seal cover?

I'm sitting there at a BMW I8 and it got eaten by a bunch of road twice.

The thing is, you know, this is in Los Gatos, California,

so it's not out in the boonies.

I'm not next to a garbage dump or parking next to Chipotle garbage.

And then it was and it got eaten twice.

So the first time was $18,000 and they got into the holy crap.

Yeah, it wasn't the average road and damage thing.

And they got into the compartment where they charge the batteries.

So they nibbled on a wire that basically the dealership said,

we can't give you your car back.

We have to send to Necrosome to get your cable.

And that will take about three months because they ship her on on sailboat or something.

I don't.

And by the way, the cost of it is ginormous for a piece of wire.

OK, so I get it and they bundle it up and I get it back.

And I'm like, you know, mother effort, you know, what are my four cats really doing?

You know, you're dead to me.

You guys need to work for your living.

You know, hello and he wrote a bastard.

What are you doing?

You are pretty much you know, no food for you.

You got to go forage.

Well, about two weeks later, check engine light comes on.

I'm going there and and I bring it back in.

Hey, you guys must not have connected something when you're digging in the

innards, et cetera.

You know, I got this check engine light.

And of course, they send me the cool BMW technician video about three or four

more rat nests that are sitting in that engine compartment.

Correct.

Because I found out later that rats, when they find a place,

a rodents, when they find a place they like to be, they let out happy poop

or happy urine, right?

And so they can know their way back to the happy place that they were,

right, because they go by, you know, scent.

By the way, when you murder one, they let out the opposite of happy poop

to kind of warn their brethren or try and ward off what's eating them.

So.

So kill all you can.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of rodents in the vehicles.

So they nailed the BMW I8.

And after the second time, I was kind of going,

how do I keep these suckers out of there? Right?

I mean, I had it parked away from things and that will get into that a little bit

later, what you have to do to kind of protect your cars.

But there's no solutions out there.

So you got Iverspring flakes, mothballs, peppermint oil.

And by the way, they sell that tape and like, who's going to go wrap

all their wiring harness with that peppermint tape or whatever?

I mean, they sell it, but like, you know, who's going to actually

really get all the wiring harness wrapped in that stuff?

You know, forget that.

And then the sprays.

OK, that works for a little while, but most people spray in their

inching compartment and that second eating on my vehicle was in the

wiring harness down by the rear wheel and it ate one of the ECUs

for the stability control kind of thing.

So I'm getting angry, just listening to it.

That's it. Oh, it was a pain.

I'll wait to get the Lambo story.

Those things died in the Lambo and got cook-afried, you know,

by the Lambo engine.

He, you know, blew out the nest out of the tailpipe in a flanking

medieval flame out of the out of the exhaust.

When I, you know, when the exhaust was sounding funny, another story.

But all right, so I wanted something that blocked him out.

You know, it just sounds like justice to me.

Oh, my God.

Screw you, Mickey, we're coming for you.

Oh, here I go.

Flame on, right?

Gee.

But the babies didn't quite make it out.

So they were they were rather smelly after about a week.

So that was a baby baby mouse nuggets.

That 64 Dodge that I got when I first went to pick it up,

it had a super funk going on inside that was kind of they they

put like three of these, you know, animal repellent things in it

that smelled kind of like Italian cooking coming out of your beehull.

And they, you know, I got rid of those and I'm like, there's an interesting description.

There is a massive funk.

And when I when I pulled up the the rear seat was when I found the massive,

you know, mouse nest, there were a couple of holes in the in the lining.

Otherwise, it was really actually overall really good condition.

But man, that.

I remember that.

And yeah, it was nasty.

So and they had kind of the same problem.

They parked it in a nice barn, but they were they were farmers.

And, you know, it wasn't sitting in a field, but it had, you know,

at least they didn't chew up all the wires like what you went through.

But they made a home and then let me know they were happy to be there.

No, I want to hear all the critters stories.

I want the revenge story.

This just this just sounds like justice to me.

I'm all about it.

Go through all this stuff.

What about the design?

How did you come up with a with a way that works?

So, you know, and they got into a number of other vehicles

that they cheated into the Bentley in one day.

Wait a second.

You've mentioned some really cool cars here.

You got to tell us about what's in your stable.

Well, those are like old stable cars.

I'll tell you the new stable cars later.

But unless you want to digress.

We want to digress, man.

You've mentioned some cool stuff.

I'm wanting to see pictures now.

Oh, God, yep, I got pictures of them and my kids.

But these are these are more prominent.

Did you blow them out of your tailpipe?

I then we don't then we don't care.

No, we wrote it. We wrote it.

They were in the car seat.

So anyway, OK, what other cars you have?

Well, I had the 4 GT, the Ferrari 430.

Then I had a Ferrari F 50 for about 10 years.

Sold that probably at the wrong time, you know, and that was a fun car.

But it had 2,200 miles on it.

You know, it was like my my guy's dream of a car.

Right. I just got rid of the 1989 25th anniversary.

Kuntas, it was the one of three filters.

It was signed by Valentino Balboni, and it was beautiful.

But it had vapor lock and I moved out to North Carolina.

And then that's when I picked up the 1961 Corvette, the 57 Thunderbird.

I got one of the Audi R8 V10s with the the actual it's a manual.

You know, try and find a R8 V10 manual, right?

And then that's been supercharged to 734 horsepower, 600 foot pound of torque

and big old very breaks and stuff.

So that's my I'm going to need some alone time.

Yeah, I need to take a break.

Well, man, cool garage.

Fun ones in the stable.

So I've loved cars and not not not fun to open up the engine compartment,

show people and there's rat poop all over your, you know, intake, you know,

or your valve covers.

And so I was looking for something that would block the rodents from getting in

because what they want to do, they're not going into a car to eat it.

They're going into a car because it's got all kinds of cool hiding places.

They run under a car to avoid the owls, the coyotes, the cats.

And they go, oh, nice.

There's all these really neat nooks and crevices.

So we're going to take the food.

We shoved in our cheeks and we're going to run into these nooks and crannies

and we'll eat the food.

And then they go, wow, this is a great place to sleep.

And we can also nibble and to keep our teeth down.

So we'll find something to nibble on, a.k.a., you know, your wiring harness.

And breeding is not a bad place here, too, because you got a nice little room.

So it becomes a sort of rodent hostile, you know, in there.

And so you really want to keep them out

because there's a lot of fumes and stuff in the car that is not

conducive for them to be there.

But the safety is what they're into.

And and and, you know, they live in the environments that are the nastiest

things that humans ever created, you know, garbage dump sewers,

all this stuff that you buy that's like the sprays, the peppermint oil,

Irish spring flakes, the dryer sheets.

That's like, you know, Poo Paris, you know, they they don't really care about it.

You know, that's not going to drive them away as much as these people

will advertise this stuff, you know, peppermint oil.

And I tried all that stuff, by the way.

So in traps, got them after they ate my wiring harness, but not before.

And it was after the fact.

And so I try, I'm going, OK, what can I do to cover it up?

And, you know, there's these things you can buy there like gates around.

But a lot. And I bought a lot of these other solutions that were out there.

And I found them difficult to drive into.

There's one that's like a snow globe for your car.

It's got a fan on it.

Yeah, I've seen those.

Good product.

I I drove my car probably two thirds less because getting in and out of it,

you had to drive on to it like a surgeon, you know, you sit on the zipper.

You can't then you go, ah, damn it.

And they got to drive it back out and then repark it.

OK, pain in the butt.

And there's a couple others that you can zip your car up into.

But then it turns your car into a mold factory.

So, you know, they have to put in there pillow sized desiccants

like you have in your, you know, pill bottles, but they're pillow sized.

So to try and keep the moisture out.

And then your car still smells like all the industrial fluids

that are in the car that are permeating into the environment.

So that's that's a good funk to have.

So that's how covers still got created.

I came up with the idea of having a weighted apron around the car

and then had some collateral benefits.

So not only did it keep the rodents out.

My eye, by the way, has been under it for six years in the same spot

that it got eaten twice and it's still intact.

So that that's sort of, you know, evident, evidential proof.

But there hasn't been any traces of them running around inside the engine compartment.

And the other benefit is that it turns out under high winds,

it doesn't blow off because the air doesn't get underneath the cover to blow it off.

So you don't need the scoops on the windows.

You don't need straps.

You all you do is you put it down over your car

and it holds to the ground and it the wind actually blows out the debris

and water off of it, which is something that most covers don't do, right?

They they become algae ponds.

It doesn't let dust in your car.

So I had a friend own a Porsche with travel overseas.

He had a detailed one for three months, came back, pulled the cover off his car

and goes, damn, it's just like I left it all detailed, etc.

Because the dust that blows up from all those wind, you know,

the blowers that people use around their cars.

So that was a collateral benefit to it.

So what was your research process on this?

How long did it take to perfect the cover?

We're probably at the fourth iteration right now.

And I started learning more about textiles than I ever thought I I had.

And what's funny is I took home back in like in like seventh grade

and all these guys were giving me a hard time because I had a crush on a girl.

And I go, look, you guys are telling me that, you know, I'm a feminine

because I'm taking home back, but I'm surrounded by all these hot girls

in school in my class where you guys are surrounded by each other

in metal shop and wood shop.

So who's right?

That's right.

I learned all about, you know, textiles back when.

But gosh, there's so much more to learn.

So I visited the factory.

That's how we started getting the better fabric.

So we use like a four hundred and twenty denier ripstop

polyester that is about as thick as you can get before it starts getting abrasive.

And then we used a DWR coatings on it for durable water resistant.

So it's breathable and we add some vents on the top of the covers to

for people who like want to sit over like wet grass or their, you know,

their underlying ground is wet.

You don't want to steam your car because you'll get mold.

So you need to have the vents.

So if you're covering something like this, you need to have a way for it

to sort of equalize with the humidity around it.

Do you have anything in the fabric

that keeps the rodents from wanting to chew on that?

Yeah, good point.

So since it's on the ground, you know, it's right at their eye level, sort of speak.

But we use basically a PVC impregnated

for the bottom apron.

So if you look at the covers, there's a twelve inch black apron

that's PVC impregnated.

And then above that is a soft stuff.

So there's none of the harder stuff

that's on the bottom, you know, on anywhere near your paint.

Well, that stuff is not nesting material.

I'm going to take a one bite and it's like biting into plastic, you know,

they're not going to nest in that.

Now they'll take all the insulation out of my truck hood, you know, which they managed to do.

And I got nests full of truck hood insulation all over the truck,

but they didn't they didn't touch the cover.

And sometimes they'll nibble into it just for fun of it.

But then there's a tube of a corrugated

split loom tube is where we put the weighted sand in there.

So it takes a while for them to nibble through the fabric and the tube.

So they'll every once in a while nibble that,

but they're not going to take big hunks out of it like that Kimberly Clark material.

And you'll find half your cover in the nest, right?

Yep.

So that's how we kind of came upon the fabric.

And there's no fabric in the world that will resist a rodent nibble.

I mean, they can eat through wire.

They can eat plastic wood.

I mean, there's no such thing.

All right. So are the covers fitted

for each individual car?

How many different covers do you make?

I got a lot of questions.

So let's try to tackle them one at a time.

Are they custom fitted?

No. So we found that general sizes work the best

because we don't need to have those window cups

in order to be able to hold the car cover on.

And by having it a little bit more loose,

what it does is that it doesn't impact any weight on the paint for one thing.

OK. They blow in the wind so it sheds debris for another thing.

And most

car covers, when you're fitted like that,

you can tell what the heck is underneath it.

And in ours, you actually have to lift up the cover

to kind of understand what's underneath it.

Yeah, because they're a little bit more loose fitting.

How heavy are they?

Well, the sport car size is probably about 32 pounds.

The the like a large SUV would be about 45 pounds.

But you don't put them on like regular car covers.

Like you get people that come over and want to like

plonk it on the middle of the car and unroll it.

No, you take it, unroll it next to the car and lift one edge,

put it on your hood, put it on your window, put it on your trunk.

Go to the other side, give it a tug.

The weight drops it over to the other side.

It's the easiest car cover to put on. OK.

How many.

Now, you say you make them in general sizes.

What are the what? How does that break out?

You said so we have four car sizes.

There's the sport, which has a lower rear end,

but there's still 190 inches in length,

which is almost like the standard wheelbase

for every sport and midsize car.

OK, forget the Mini Coupers and some of those other smart cars.

You know, those are a different game.

And then the midsize is 205 inches

and it's a little bit taller because the midsize have the trunks.

Then we have a large, which is 215

in in length and that covers most sedans.

Like, you know, your your eight series BMW

or, you know, your your Bentley's, that kind of thing.

And then you go into the big Mungo full size,

which is like your Galaxy five hundreds, you know, way back when,

you know, the things that have the fins in the back, you know, the the Impala's,

you know, those like 1970s that they got or even the Thunderbirds.

They got really big, stupid, big Thunderbirds,

possibly older Mercedes S class that are 17 feet long.

Oh, yeah. So we have the full size.

And then we have a short bed truck, a long bed truck.

We also have a standard SUV like for my Jeep.

I've got a Jeep Wrangler, which is fun to have here in North Carolina.

And and then we also have the large SUV, which is like your explorers

or expeditions, those kind of. OK, all righty.

So how about motorcycles or boats?

You have motorcycle covers?

We do. And actually, they are perfectly fitted for a Harley.

So or four. Yes.

We've got a lot of good press on the motorcycle covers.

They don't weigh 30 pounds, by the way.

They're a lot smaller.

But we we engineered those to to really cater to that Harley crowd.

And then this year, we're also coming out with a RV aprons.

You want to talk about rodent hotels? Oh, Jesus, yeah, absolutely.

RV sit for six to nine months, right?

And talk about a funk that you get from nests of those suckers inside there.

So the apron is sort of a nice way of putting on the barrier around the bumpers.

And, you know, it also shields the wheels from the sun, etc.

But it keeps the rodents out and you don't have to drape over this

house sized cover over the RV. Alrighty.

Can I request that the Harley covers are four times heavier?

I just want to crush a little suckers.

We started out with a heavier weight and I'm going, Jesus, this is OK.

This is a little bit overkill.

And we started out with overkill.

So we we tapered back a little bit on the weight, but they still do their job.

Now, do you have any of those kits like the little whole kits,

patch kits, especially for older vehicles that have antennas that don't,

you know, go all the way down? Oh, yeah.

It's a two foot stick on your on your fender.

Hey, the both the Corvettes, you probably have it on your 61.

You've got that post that stands up about 14 inches in the back.

Oh, yeah. So well, and most people don't know why it's way back there

and why the distributor is covered by that cool chrome cowl that goes over the top.

Yeah. So it doesn't whistle when you're listened to the radio.

Well, they don't realize that the bodies are fiberglass, so there's no grounding plane.

That's right. Yeah.

Well, so we have the kits of people want to poke holes in their covers

and with the ripstop material that makes it great.

But I found I'm not a salesman for gorilla duct tape,

but that gorilla duct tape works wonders for any nibbles, holes, et cetera.

It's the right color.

You know, it's got the right stick them on it and getting people to go out

and order the tape versus fixing it right away, which is the best thing to do

if you get a rip in fabric.

It's just easier to point them toward the gorilla duct tape

and two thumbs up. It solves the problem.

There are two tapes out there that you absolutely have to have

if you're doing it yourself or you have to have a role of gorilla duct tape

because that stuff is just bad ass.

And then go to Lowe's, go to Home Depot,

go to where they have the foam board siting or the house wrap

and get a roll of the tape that they use for the house wrap.

I swear to God, that stuff is never coming off anything, not never.

That's fair.

And you want to cut about a foot long piece of it, catch one of the live mice,

tape them to the front of your car and take them for a ride about 90.

Well, you know, on GetCoverSeal.com, they've also got I was exploring the site

as we were chatting. Oh, there you go.

And I do like the indoor covers, too.

You've got like three different size indoor covers that kind of make the car

look like a Chipotle burrito, but that's exactly the type of thing that, you know,

I'm looking for. I actually, when I sold the 64 Dodge,

I let him go in ahead and have the car cover,

partly because, you know what, I didn't know what I was going to get next.

And also, I had made that antenna hole

a couple of times and it was like, you know, yeah, you can go to take this.

Oh, look at this.

They keep the dust off of it.

They got barbecue covers and patio furniture.

I'm starting to find stuff I need for outside.

She thinks that you're sexy.

You know why that happened is because I open up my stupid grill

and there's a fricking rodent nest. Oh, my God, bro, right?

Turn the grill on and let him go. Cook it.

Cook his little fuzzy butt.

No one wants to grill with rodent chips, right?

No, they don't smell good at your chips, but it used to be a dump.

They smell not good. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there's actually companies that clean out your barbecues.

And I really saved a guy a lot of rat poo sweeping

because he now sells the covers to his clients.

You're kidding.

There's companies that will come clean your grill.

Yeah, they do that.

Aside from one of your covers, Ken,

what do you recommend to keep rodents out of vehicles

besides one of your covers on a twenty two?

Yeah, or a plethora of cats.

Well, you said cats don't work.

Well, they catch them afterward.

You know, as they're coming out of your car,

they always bring the trophies, but, you know, the wasn't always at the opportune time.

So I realized, like the Bentley,

I literally parked it right in front of the garage,

but next to a downspout and downspouts and sewers are rodent super highways.

Wow. Found that out.

So you can't park it over a sewer.

It's just like, hello, here's the opening to hell right under my car.

You know, and I'll just park my really nice car in there

and wonder why there's one in the glove box and they come in in the morning, right?

Don't park over sewers.

Stay away from your downspouts or cover your downspouts with a mesh.

That's that's highly recommended.

A lot of people don't have locking garbage cans.

Hello. So rodents

forage about 50 to 80 yards away from their nest.

They go to your food stuff and then they hide under, you know,

and go into your car and and chomp on whatever you have in the garbage.

That's either out on the street or on your little

side yard, you know, behind the gate.

So and if you're going to trap rodents,

a you know, they got rid of in California that poison

that causes the rodents to bleed to death because it was getting into the other ecosystem.

So, you know, owls and hawks and, you know, good things were eating them and dying.

So I and the funny story is I put out the Costco sized bag of those pellets one time

when I had this first problem, right?

And I'm getting into the truck then and I turn on the air con and it's making this hell noise.

So I pop off the air box and there's all these fricking pellets in there.

So the rodents tried to kill me.

So the pellets aren't a good thing, but the, you know, the Victor traps

work the greatest, keep them away from your house.

Like put them in the bushes outside your house and your walkways and stuff.

So they're not near your house, because they'll attract rodents also.

And if a rodent gets caught in them, the rodents go, oh, look, there's something dead,

even though it looks like my friend. And then they'll nibble on that thing.

So it creates a bait trap.

But look how tasty Bob was.

Can of buffet.

So do you keep your cars covered inside garages?

Oh, yeah. I mean, most of the you won't get like the big rodents,

like the squirrels or the rats mostly into the garages.

You know, that's kind of a frightening environment for them,

but the mice will get in there and they don't nibble a lot,

but they leave a lot of poo and urine all over the cars.

That's bad enough.

Mice problems.

One of dad's Corvette smells like they've taken up residence there.

I haven't found a nest. I haven't found the little critters.

I've put the anti odor or the odor eating packets in there.

Those don't do anything.

I've done baking soda. I've shampooed all the carpets.

I've done everything I can.

I cannot get the smell out of that car.

Finally, dad, you know, closing the barn door after the horses are out,

got frustrated with it and bought two four post lifts for our warehouse.

So now both his Corvettes are up off the floor.

Let those little suckers crawl up one of those lifts.

I'm sure they could if they thought there was something good up there.

But yeah, I imagine it'd be a challenge for them.

What is in your stable right now, Ken?

What's fun in your garage?

Well, I mentioned a couple of things, the Corvette, the Thunderbird.

I've got the Audi R8, which is a blast to drive.

And the only one that I didn't mention was the Ferrari 458 Spider.

Oh, very cool. Anything you have your eye on,

something you'd like to add to the stable you haven't yet?

Well, you know, the there's a couple of cars out there that are fun.

A Chevelle would be really fun.

A C2 Corvette would be really also kind of got my eye on there.

I would love to eventually get an Enzo.

I just think they even they're ugly, but they're beautiful.

You know, they're still reasonably priced.

And when it comes to, you know, that level of supercar,

I've had, you know, the Venador and I had the Gallardo.

What am I getting a Gallardo back?

They have that V10 engine in them and they're they're so pretty,

you know, reliable.

Well, you essentially have that with the Audi, don't you?

You do.

It's exactly the same car.

That's why I got rid of the Gallardo in the first place, you know,

because I had them both.

I said, I like the shifter better than I like the the the paddles.

So I didn't drive the Gallardo.

So I drove the the R8 and it's black with a carbon fiber,

you know, your classic, you know, mean machine.

Dude, those things are cool.

I dig it.

What is the dumbest thing you've ever done in a car?

Oh, I got it.

So I actually had multiple choices on this one, but we love a good story.

I'll give you the one.

So I'm down at my grocery store in California.

And so I lived kind of up on a hill, 800 feet up in the air.

And the get to the grocery store is about a four and a half mile drive,

you know, up a kind of like really cool, windy, you know,

treeline road kind of thing, just kind of paint the scenario picture.

So I pull into the grocery store and get my stuff, you know,

I'm in my Corvette, it's all shiny, you know, the white walls are all white,

you know, and I'm I'm feeling like this is like a really fun drive.

And I get in and I pop the thing in reverse and I can't get it out of reverse.

It's stuck in reverse.

So most people won't realize that the linkages are outside the transmission.

And when I when I put it into reverse, the the gear shift popped out of that little slide,

that little cheesy slide that they have on the outside of that transmission.

And I mean, it's a 30 second fix.

Once you get underneath there, you tap, tap, tap, pop it back in.

You're good to go.

I didn't know that.

So I actually called my buddy and so he said, I can help you if you're bringing home.

So I'm going, oh, my goodness.

So I did a four and a half mile drive up the hill in reverse.

I look like a clown act, you know.

It was it was rather invigorating.

Did you get any looks?

Anybody wave?

Hey, how you doing?

You're going the wrong way.

Four and a half miles in reverse.

That would have been fun.

Up a windy hill.

And I did have a crick in my neck, probably from.

I would imagine so.

We've been speaking with Ken Hewning of Cover Seal Ken.

Please tell us where we can find you online and on social media.

So we're at www.getcoverseal.com.

And is it Cover Seal everywhere on social media?

Yes, we're on Facebook.

We're on Twitter.

We're actually looking to do, you know, a big connection with a couple other major

driving companies.

We got voted 2025 car cover of the year by a car and driver and road and track also gave us

good accolades for our technology.

So we've got some recognition now that basically we've changed technology that's

been around for like 50 years.

I mean, they're all covers with either Brayon, nylon, cotton, polyester, or acrylic.

I mean, those are the fibers that you have available to you.

So nothing's really changed in the fiber world.

And they're all just draped over the cars.

You can look at 50 different layers on car covers on Amazon.

But our technology is different because we have really high quality materials.

It's not cheap, but you get what you pay for.

And they last a long time.

They're silver.

So they reflect the light.

They're ripstop material.

We made a connection with AAA.

So we're the AAA members get a discount for buying ours.

And we're looking to make a push for that.

We're making a push with these car companies that park your cars for like long term storage,

you know, that like for airplanes, you know, for the long term parking for airlines.

And people don't want to sit their cars out for, you know, a couple of weeks out in the elements.

They would rent one of our car covers through the car parking thing and put them on, you know.

So we provide, you know, not a throwaway one, but one that's a little bit less permanent than the

ones you can buy on our site.

And I think the final one is that we're coming out with, since our car doesn't blow off and you

made a point about having the thing look like a burrito, you can put a fan into the base of

the car cover and blow it up within about two minutes.

And it makes a really good hail cover.

So I tried it out without a car underneath it first.

So I wasn't not that gutsy.

And I used a baseball sized hunk of rock, you know, and threw it at the thing and it

dissipated the energy.

It never touched the car.

So we're looking to see about expanding into doing hail covers so that you can just basically

flip it on with an app that's networked into your house and blow it up and keep your car from

getting, looking like a golf ball.

You hear that, Kansas?

You hear that, Missouri?

Keep your appeal.

Ken, I think you've only missed one trick, but I will give you this suggestion absolutely free.

This solid, gold idea.

This is, this is something you might consider.

Find a way to run a low voltage charge through the base of the cover.

That way, when the little rat walks up to it, he gets his butt zapped.

Oh, like, like those, uh, those badminton bug zappers that your grandmother has.

That's right, that's right.

My God.

Well, he goes all the way around kind of like a jail.

Have a little metal mesh in there and just run a low charge through it when he walks up.

Yeah, not a bad idea.

It's better than like the feline spray, you know, that they'll, people will use that around the

base of the car covers.

Oh, great.

You've gone from mouse whiz to cat whiz.

Yeah, ammonia.

Yay.

I was like in your car.

There's a difference, you know, you spray in your engine compartment and then you flip

on your air conditioning and you blow all that stuff inside the car.

It's a great smell, right?

Outside is better, but I like the electrical idea.

I have to think about that one.

It's a little low voltage.

Look at the same kind of voltage.

They run it through fireplaces that come on with a switch.

Yeah, yep, yep.

Just enough to really annoy the crap out of a mouse.

Yeah, it's got a zappament and you got to have it off the ground.

So it doesn't short out.

Yeah, of course.

Yep.

Food for thought.

There you go.

We've been speaking with Ken Huening of Cover Seal.

Ken, thank you so very much for lending us your time.

It's great hanging out with you guys.

Thanks a lot for the music anecdotes.

Is that what you're called?

I like the way he puts it.

I thought it was just bullshit.

Yeah, this is what my wife calls it at all.

Darn nice covers look like they're made out of really quality stuff and if they perform the

way they look like they do, just keep those little critters out of my car, dammit.

Plus, for the neighborhood that I live in, Raytown, Raytona Beach,

Hey gang in Raytona Beach, this would be a perfect car cover to hotbox in.

I don't think any of your smoke would make you out of this and you could do it in 40

mile per hour away so the popo doesn't even know.

Well, hey, remember now, that's legal in Missouri these days.

Yeah, but you're really not supposed to be doing that much.

Honest to God, you could drive down any road about five, five, 30 p.m.

That's Colorado too in California.

When I've gone to cover stuff in California and we do about once a year,

it's always a surprise to me.

You know, it always takes a second.

You're in your rental, you've flown into San Jose because that's the closest big airport.

You're in your rental car, you're driving to Monterey, you roll down the windows.

I was like, oh, damn it.

You want that nice, clean mountain air.

No, not so much, you better.

I quit doing that in college because I was sick of it.

And now I'm here and they're doing it in traffic.

That's a little off-putting.

I know I'm an old fogey, but I got nothing against it.

You know, I got gummies at home and they're great for falling asleep.

If you want to do it in your garage,

you does have those car covers in the garage.

Well, there you go.

You can put a hot box there.

See, throw a hot box on your motorcycle.

Throw it over your van, throw it over your Dodge Tradesman.

The tractor covers.

Sit in there and just get yanked.

Do it in your cabota.

Oh, God, yeah.

That's a really cool product.

I didn't know there was such a thing.

Thank you, Laura Baumgartner, if you're listening for bringing Ken to us.

That was a really cool product.

And thank you for listening to Driven Radio.

We wouldn't be able to do what we do without the support of our listeners,

and we really do enjoy this.

We love doing this.

You can find us online at drivenradioshow.com.

And on LinkedIn as Driven Radio Show podcast.

If you have a story you would like to tell or someone you would like us to interview,

please contact me at Brett.

That's B-R-E-T-T at drivenradioshow.com.

I am Brett Hatfield for Mark L. Groves.

Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time here on Driven Radio.

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Driven Radio Show #341: Ken Huening of Cover Seal

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