Jay On Why He Left Real Street Performance, Building Engines, and 2JZ Top Speed Record

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Welcome back to another episode of the Street Alpha podcast.

I'm your host, Tuques, and we have Jay from Real Street, right?

But he's not from Real Street anymore.

We have Jay from RS Garage now, right?

It's kind of weird for you guys to hear that.

Jay's obviously went on to his own venture and now he started his own company, RS Garage.

We're going to talk about why he started RS Garage and why he's no longer at Real Street.

Of course, most of you guys probably want to know and most of you guys probably think

that, or a lot of you guys probably think that he's still there because of all the

content over the years and so on.

But it seems like you're more content, happy.

Some of that could just be growing up.

Okay.

Yeah.

Because if you look at the first, the early content was so weird to me that

in the comments, there was one guy that said, it looks like you're holding a gun to

his head to get him on camera.

And being on camera is weird because whatever image you have of yourself, putting that in

front of the world, if you're not a boastful person, it's pretty odd.

My buddy, Jim Braun, we put him on camera once and he melted.

Most of the time, when you're on camera the first time, it's like you're melting.

I don't know.

At least for me, it was weird.

So I took a little time to get used to it and then what I do now is what I want to

do.

It's not, I don't have to juggle a few different people's perspectives on the content

and it's just my aim, which maybe I'm right or maybe I'm wrong.

I'll figure it out, but I can be authentic.

Whereas before, there was a lot of stuff that with branding and whatnot, you really had

to be careful.

But it was really great training.

I give it that.

I've had some really great training, like on-the-job training.

You seem a lot more comfortable also with the content you're doing.

We did an engine build video and you were just flowing.

This is the best my life's ever been.

I realized that it's up to me to make it that because I don't have a ton of time.

Most of my time is behind me.

I'm coming up on 50 and it's aging, but if you're playing with it, it can be fun.

So I'm just trying to learn to play with it.

That's cool.

That's good to hear.

We have to give you a proper introduction.

I know I probably threw you off with the real street thing.

You were like, wait.

But we'll talk about that, of course.

We just had to obviously relate to the viewers because most of the people know you from real

street.

So it's cool to see you doing your own thing.

So before we start, let's give a proper introduction to the legend, Jay of RS Garage.

Thank you.

So yeah, thank you for doing this.

I know you said you waited over a year to make this happen.

I was waiting patiently because I knew it would be worth it.

We spoke at FL2K last year and you had did another podcast at the time and you pretty

much were like, I want to wait to do your podcast because there's things that are working

in the background for the people to know about.

So I appreciate that, man.

Yeah.

I really appreciate that.

Best case scenario.

We'll cover some topics today that I don't have to come back to.

I had to wait to get a lot of stuff sorted.

And because the real street situation really kind of got gross at the end, I didn't want

to, I didn't want to come off and talk about it in a way that was really negative.

So I had to wait for them to make good on some things and I had to wait to cool off.

I mean, it's a lot to cool off from.

All those years.

Yeah.

I mean, it's good that you're patient.

You don't want to say things out of anger, like you said.

And sometimes it can just come across as unprofessional.

Some people may seem like they may think that you're complaining about it or you're being

a baby and so on.

But I've been there, man.

Trust me.

Yeah.

It's just life.

If you look at something on a very large block of time, you know, like my life, you

know, from the time I started real street performance to the time I left real street

performance, it's almost 18 years.

So it's a big thing to try to package up, you know.

And I wanted to, at least in the public's eye, look at that situation with as much patience

as possible.

Because if you caught me about it when it first happened, I was really hurt.

And I wanted to be able to process that and be able to look at it through an adult perspective.

Right.

Yeah.

I'm curious to know exactly what happened.

But we'll get into that in a little bit.

So I don't really know you personally on a personal level.

I just moved to Florida, getting familiar with a lot of shops out here.

So I'm pretty sure if you were in Florida, if you guys are into performance or you

guys are building cars, especially Supras, you guys have ran into Jay if you guys

went to real street back in the day or just been a local to Florida.

So for me, I don't really know too much about you personally.

But from watching those videos back then, I've seen a couple of the bills that you did with

some employees and things like that back then.

And you were talking briefly about your background and how you got into cars and how your dad

pretty much is, I would say primarily the reason how you started it into working

on cars and trucks at the time.

Yeah.

We had a small business.

Tree trimming and removal.

OK.

And my younger brother has still held on to that company to this day.

It's actually a hundred company.

It's a hundred plus employee company.

I mean, they really have grown a monster of a company.

But in the early days, my dad, he would we have limited resources.

OK.

So you overworked a lot of your equipment.

I mean, there were pickup trucks that had quarter inch steel pieces of metal laid

in the bed because the bed of the truck was beat out of it.

I mean, tree business is really hard on light equipment.

Yeah.

So stuff broke.

So I was as a as an early teen, I was tasked to fixing stuff because my dad was a guy

that was hard to get along with and not a lot of people could work for him.

So he could only keep people around him that were in a weaker position.

There was not a guy that was stronger at the tree service than him.

He was the head honcho.

Right.

So he looked at me and I was like, well, you're the repair guy now, you know?

So I just got to be the repair guy, which looking back really got me into

some pretty fun situations of way in over my head, but not knowing it and it

working out well.

Yeah.

Like put put a rod in that truck because it got it got bent and the kid

changes a rod in a truck.

And then that truck stays on the road for, you know, I there was one

truck I put a rod in when I was a teenager and I saw it like 15 years later.

And it blew my mind to see the it was the truck and it was on the road.

So it's weird.

Service vehicles are different than regular vehicles because service

vehicles are working every day.

A race car is a service vehicle, right?

So when we were watching it being raced, it's it's entertainment, right?

Well, work trucks are like the total opposite.

Like work trucks are just doing work.

They're like they're overworked a lot.

Right.

Yeah, different different culture.

I mean, it was a tree business.

My dad has had a tree business for years.

Yeah.

So I grew up around that.

Sometimes he would take me to work with him.

I hated it.

I'm not going to lie, but I wasn't doing the repairs.

I was just with him sometimes I would help out and get paid.

Pay was pretty decent for me being.

I think I was like 14 or 15 years old.

But yeah, I mean, it's long hours and so on.

So a lot of machinery.

Yeah, it's tough.

It's tough.

So any of that inspire you to kind of get into the performance?

Like when when was the transition for you to kind of get into performance from that?

The first time I drove a V8 car that was not underpowered.

So by today's standards, a 93 Mustang GT is terribly slow.

I mean, mid 14 in the quarter mile, around 93 or 94 miles an hour.

It's like most minivans run that.

But if you go back into the 90s, that's how things were.

So when you when you drive big, heavy equipment, it's slow.

And when you get into a car that goes a 14 in the quarter

and you've only been exposed to big, heavy slow things, feels really fast.

So I was I mean, I was hooked immediately hooked on

getting a car that I can make fast and it just happened to be a Mustang

because the Mustang was lighter than the Camaro at the time.

What year was this around 95, 96.

OK, that's a great year, right?

Yeah. At that time in the 90s, right?

There's these iconic cars in the 90s, right?

Oh, funny. I'm a 90s baby, too.

I'm 91, actually.

So at that time, there's all these iconic JDM cars

that were coming out over imports.

I should say, and you were interested.

It seems like in domestic stuff, right? Yes.

So obviously you're known for the Supras that any of that ever crossed

like your mind or there's TV commercials.

Did you ever say, like, I never look into no.

I never cared until I experienced it. OK.

My friend, Stuart Bursey, he worked at a new car store.

And if something cool, I hope I don't get him in trouble.

If something cool came in, yeah, he'd he'd bring it over.

And there was a Honda Civic Del Sol. Oh, wow.

Yes, I. So that was my first V tech experience.

OK, my first time looking over at a tachometer going past eight thousand.

It was incredible.

And then he brought over a Mark four Supra turbo automatic

and he took me for a ride on it or in it.

And I remember how smooth and how powerful and how accurate.

It was such a large departure from a Mustang.

The most and I still own a Mustang and I still love the Mustang.

But the Mustang has a specific behavior.

And it's a 90s American pony car.

Period. Nothing good, nothing bad, not not taking a shot at it.

But it's a 90s American pony car.

It's a fifteen thousand dollar car brand new.

Well, the Supra was like a fifty thousand dollar car brand new.

And it was designed to to be a gentleman's sports car.

And it was so smooth and so powerful.

It was just amazing.

I was like I was really that that's probably what got me hooked.

Was that first ride?

I mean, I could I could take it to the road of, you know,

and show you what we did with the car.

It's it's it's an awesome car. Yeah.

Do you think that people who are into domestic,

most most of the time they never kind of leave that they ever know.

They don't know what they're missing,

just like you don't know what you're missing.

When when Adam L.C. hopped in that big block Chevy drift car.

Yeah, the look in his eyes.

I mean, it's like I saw you look like you look open.

Yeah, I wanted to see it.

Yeah, I wanted to, you know, I like I want to I want to know as much about

the because this is what I love. Right.

So when I get to see someone else experience the same stuff that I love,

it's cool to to see them enjoy it.

You know, right? Yeah.

So like big domestic engines have a brutality to their power.

And it's like Shakespeare insides and then little engines

with turbochargers are way different.

It's like, you know, seafood or steak.

It's cool, though.

It's probably safe to say a big, obviously a bigger motor is going to have

more torque, you know, that translate to how you feel in the car.

Power for power.

So like if you have a thousand horsepower big block and you have a thousand

horsepower Supra, what would feel fortunately for me?

I still own examples, right?

So I have a 93 Mustang that makes 600 to the tire.

OK. And it's got it's many tubs.

Got three 15s on the back, a lot of rubber.

And at 600 horsepower, if we turn the traction control off,

I bet we could crash it for sure.

It is it's it's overpowered.

The chassis is overpowered and we're not drag racing it.

We're just driving it on the street.

We're having a good time.

We're going to get coffee.

We're we're it's an enjoyable road car and it's overpowered.

And then the Supra at 600 horsepower is like.

But the Supra at 900 or a thousand horsepower on the same road

with a very similar tire is is an is an absolute party.

It accelerates well.

It it rides the tires a little bit to let you know that

there's there's slipping, right?

But it's completely controllable.

I mean, you could just have a couple of fingers on the steering wheel

and a couple of fingers on the shifter and put a thousand horsepower down.

A Supra will do that.

Yeah. And not a lot of cars will do that.

So it's hard to it's hard to until you take someone for a ride

in a Mark Four Supra, yeah, they don't know what they're missing.

Just like if if we went for a ride in a thousand horsepower Porsche,

it's a different experience.

So all these cars are just different experiences.

Would you be able to tell based off of like, let's say a dyno graph,

how that car would feel if you're in it?

Oh, yeah. OK. Yeah.

The doesn't mean.

It doesn't mean that you you know it because you read about it.

Right. Or you watched the video or you watched it in person.

You don't know it until you get to experience that particular vehicle.

You know, it's like all these dudes that are hooked on

Instagram models are wasting their time

because they're never going to know what that thing runs like.

You know what I mean?

Like you want to you want to experience life in real life.

Yeah. So yeah, I could see the character of the engine,

but I'd still want to I'd still want to drive it.

Right. Yeah. Experience.

I've always wondered that because I'm not really

I'm learning more about like looking at graphs and so on.

And people who are around it all the time,

they're able to tell like how the car responds and it's almost like they know

how the car feels before even driving it, you know, just by looking at that stuff.

There's probably some benchmarks

if you're going to go through a lot of dyno sheets and you want to

you're accepting that turbo lag is a real thing

because if you're not accepting turbo lag is a real thing,

you got to be a blower guy and you you put a ripple on something

and it's going to be great. Right.

But it's it's not it's different character.

So if a turbo charge engine has usable boost by 4,000 RPM,

usable being 15 pounds.

OK. And a red line of 8000, a usable red line of 8000 RPM.

OK. That's a pretty awesome place to be.

If you have a turbo charge engine that makes full boost at

6500 RPM, right, with a red line of 8000 RPM, it's not as it's not as

it's a Saturday night ride, you know, like you're going to be driving in traffic

and Susie Menevan is going to be mowing away from you.

And there's nothing you can do about it.

And you're going to have this loud, noisy car that that you can't even

keep up in traffic.

So you got to look at the graphs and ask yourself what kind of experience

you're trying to have.

A lot of time it's like, I don't know if I should go with this

turbo, a 60 mil, 70 mil, right?

But when it comes to how the car makes its power, how my brain works for some reason

is like, OK, the car is going to make its power based off of whatever's already

there, like naturally aspirated before the turbo kicks in and then starts

to spool up and obviously give you power.

But at what point is it where like you have a turbo that's too big or too small?

Too small is pretty easy to see if you have the exhaust back pressure data.

OK, because too small, the back pressure will just keep trailing up.

Like as the engine speed increases, it's just going up and up and up.

OK. And it's too small.

If you wanted to look at it like you brought up an interesting thing today,

you said, I'm looking at engine dyno sheets and I'm trying to understand their character.

Right. So if you're trying to understand a turbocharger's character

on an engine, the exhaust pressure line is a super good illustration

because as it trails up, it's its next breath has a shorter exhale

than it does an inhale and you're not clearing the system.

So and I have this customer that just helped me come up with this the other day

when I was talking to him because he's a money guy.

Yeah, I said exhaust back pressure is I give you a dollar, you give me a dollar.

That's one to one. OK. Exhaust pressure is high.

I give you a dollar, you give me back 60 cents.

Exhaust back pressure is low.

I give you a dollar, you give me back a dollar 20.

So like, OK, when you look at how the pressure ratio of the engine performs,

it says a lot about how the turbocharger is sized and how it's going to perform.

OK. But you're going to have turbo lag.

The guys that really get stuck on turbo lag,

they're either not accepting of the character of a turbocharged engine.

OK. Or they just don't understand how it works.

That is a very, very interesting point.

Now, turbo lag.

One, is it acceptable?

Like in terms of RPM is 500, like everyone's looking to have one

everyone, a lot of people who are big or stuck on turbo lag.

Yeah, they want the turbo to kick in sooner. Right.

Power, man. So if you have a like mice, I have a turbo civic.

It's OK. 2023 type R and it has some turbo lag.

OK. I think that I would love that vehicle.

It may be a little bit more. Yeah.

If it had another 500 RPM of turbo lag for another 60 horsepower of wheel.

Turbo lag, like I'll take more turbo lag to get more top end.

If you have a turbocharger like these OEM cars that are on at 1500 RPM

or 2000 RPM, they're there for one, all the mapping is done

at a factory boost level and a factory boost level.

The pressure ratios are acceptable.

The air inlet temps are acceptable.

The vehicle is fine.

They put a factory stamp on it and they sent you out.

You're going to make it through warranty without losing an engine

or they're losing money. Right. That's the tuning.

Then you get into taking that same application and turning the boost up.

Well, now the turbo is too small.

So turbo sizing, power output and pressure ratio.

If you just put all those three things on the same

like checklist, right, you'd buy the right turbo

and you would accept its turbo lag for what it is when when that's

it's an acceptance game. OK.

And and I like right now, the super that's on my Toyota Supra

street car is it's really well sized for 900 horsepower.

It can spin the tires just over 4,000 RPM.

It's already coming on and you could break boost it at 3,000 RPM

and make 30 pounds of boost at 3,000 RPM.

It's super dumb and it will make down her horsepower.

And that's a it's a precision 7175.

It's it's even older stuff on on the 3.0 on a no on a 2JZ

with a 96 millimeter crank, a VVTI head,

BC 276 cams and 10 to 1 compression.

So it is an engine that has probably the the broadest

power band of street car Supra that you could conjure up.

OK, now with that being said, I really think it's going to be

more fun with another five millimeters of turbo

because I could use a little bit more turbo lag to get a little

bit more top end at a little bit higher boost,

pushing me up towards 1100.

I think 1100 is like a really sweet spot for those chassis

on an 18 inch tire.

OK, it's an acceptance thing, like you said, and it's also

based on your setup and where you want to be at. Right.

In terms of.

But you got to you got to be able to be honest with yourself

about traction available, OK, money available, fuel available

and in size, the turbocharger that is going to be in alignment

with those things, because if you like every once in a while,

a guy will call me like every five years someone calls me

and they're going to make the highest horsepower D series Honda.

It's like the same conversation every time.

And I love it because that that dude is obsessed with having

the highest horsepower Honda D series. Yeah.

And it's like, well, get a turbocharger that you can creep

the boost up with engine speed and just make the peak number

with the least amount of back pressure and the least amount of torque.

And you'll have the highest chance of pulling it off.

Because if you make the other thing is if you make 35 pounds

of boost at 3,000 RPM, right, you're way more likely to tear up

that engine than you would making 35 pounds of boost

at 6000 RPM because the time under stress changes.

Now, one thing I don't understand is

bringing the boost into early, you know, how that causes stress

on like rods and bearings. OK, he ever lifted weights?

Yeah. OK, if I take a 35 pound dumbbell

and I throw it at you and I tell you to catch it, OK, the way

that your body has to absorb that weight, the time and speed

and stress of slowing it all down is going to be higher on the body

than if you were able to pick it up and curl it at your own pace.

It's like nitrous.

Think about it like try to visualize like cylinder pressure.

Yeah. Nitrous makes a lot of cylinder pressure really fast.

Right. It goes boom inside the cylinder.

So you have this this whip up of cylinder pressure

and then it decays over crank rotation.

Whereas a turbocharger has this lower

sine wave that is over more crank degrees.

So it's less stress on the engine.

But that stress comes on at time.

So if you have an engine speed of 2000 RPM,

OK, combustion cycles are slower, right?

So the time under stress is longer.

If you have an engine at 8000 RPM,

the the combustion cycles are the same speed,

the same signature, if everything is going well.

But it but it's like it's like jobs of power versus big heavy blows.

Right. Yeah.

So it's the combustion time and the cycle time

and cycle time is the right way to do it.

Duty cycles, the right way to think about it.

Torque is hard on parts. Right.

So so you want to make torque,

but you want to be able to map your torque

and you want to be able to not make too much torque

at too low over an RPM.

A lot of guys blow engines up

with like say you're on the highway and you put it in fifth.

Right. And you floor it.

It's going to make more boost sooner

because of the gearing changes the amount of time

the engine is accelerating and it spools the turbo harder.

So you spool the turbo up really hard in a high gear.

Right. And you can make more torque

depending on how the vehicle is mapped.

If it's just mapped with like engine,

if the engine speed is not relevant to boost target,

it's just going to make 35 pounds of boost.

Yeah. If you make 35 pounds of boost at an earlier RPM,

it's more stressful in the parts.

It's easier to break stuff.

Well, with the analogy, when you see that, I understand.

It's easy to get excited about making a very fast car.

Yeah.

It's hard to get excited about fixing it

when you broke it the third time.

So my aim in in this environment that I'm working in

is I want you to have fun. Right.

I just I don't want you to screw a bunch of stuff

and have to either fall out of the game or not play for a year.

So can we have fun in a manner that that

we both win, right?

I'll steer you the right direction

and you get to have the fun

as long as your goals are reasonable.

It seems like you're obviously big on obviously

doing a great job for your customers and so on.

And now you're building all these engines.

Yeah. On a daily basis, I'm assuming.

How are you picking your projects now?

Is it like you just?

Well, it's it's way different than it was before

before I was starting to really settle into having,

I guess, a career and now I'm working for

random people, which is really terrifying

because you don't know the level of the installation.

Right. You could give someone a very nice engine

and it won't live well.

You can give someone a very nice engine

and they kill it on startup because they

they don't have any oil flow because they've

bought some Chinese oil cooler or they have the oil filter relocation

get plumb backwards and your brand new engine is dead.

That's scary. So right now in my current

world, I am

I'm just over a year in.

I'm building an engine a week

is a good place to be for me because it gives me time

to work on other things inside the company.

OK, because the company has to grow

into another sales company, right?

I can't work like this for 15 more years.

My, you know, you look at hands and back and mileage

like you ever heard Chappelle talk about mileage on a hoe?

Like, bro, I'm in it, man.

I'm 47 years old and I've been doing this type of work for a long time.

Yeah. So do you want to get pickled in mineral spirits every single day?

Because then you may have a tumor growing out of you in a few years.

Like it's a game. Right.

But I'm building an engine a week.

That means it's about a three day project for me.

OK. It leaves me the other two days to do other stuff.

And I'm working for strangers.

Now, some of them are wicked cool.

I've got some really neat customers that are building really fun cars

and they let me do what I want and I provide them with a killer product.

I've got some customers that are learning their way into racing

and it takes quite a bit of time to

protect them from making a mistake.

And then I have customers that are blowing stuff up

and they, you know, I bought an engine from this guy

and then I bought an engine from this guy and then I bought an engine

from this guy and you're like,

it's like it's like being on a bad date

where you just want to like fake diarrhea and leave the room

because that dude is going to break your engine.

Yeah. And he doesn't know why. Right.

And those are the guys I really try to slow them down.

And I say, hey, can I come see the car?

Like you already wasted 30 grand in a year.

Like fly me out to see the car.

Let me help you get let me help you get in the right direction

because if not, you're going to give up. Right.

You're wasting time. You're wasting money.

And now everyone is it's everyone's fault.

But but yours is like maybe can we figure it out?

You know, so and that is really arming me

with some really interesting conversations

on how to help people I haven't met yet. Right.

Because it's like before when I had real street performance.

I was meeting a very specific customer over and over and over again.

Yeah.

It was a guy that was like pre qualified.

His car was nice.

His wiring was nice.

His we were his technicians.

We got to start the engine up.

We got to tune the engine.

You know, like that's like when Victor was offering

and I don't know if he still is, but Victor had a program

that if you bought the engine from him and alpha tuned it,

he'd give you a warranty.

And it's like a warranty on a thousand horsepower engine.

That sounds pretty good.

You know, whereas I'm currently building engines

and if I don't have the luxury of starting that engine up

and tuning that engine, uh oh, it's just risk.

You know what I mean?

One of my worst things right now

and I wish I could just tell everybody about it

is if you're going to have engine parts power coated,

yeah, they must be cleaned, taken apart and cleaned

meticulously, because if you get them powder coated

and you put these powder coated valve covers or valve cover

on your engine and it sheds

blasting material into the engine, the engine is dead.

It's going to be dead.

It's going to be so dead

and and you're going to be left holding the ball.

And if that's a new customer that bought a brand new engine

and they put Joey's powder coat shop valve covers on,

they didn't take the baffles out.

The baffles don't come out easy.

You got to drill out the rivets, right?

Tap the valve covers.

It's a whole operation.

But if they missed that step

and you ruin the engine, I just sold you

because you've contaminated it with blasting material.

I mean, like walk through that conversation.

It hasn't happened to me yet.

You happen to me years ago

and it was it was a terrible experience for me and my customer

because we both lost.

And it was just like, man, I wish I would have known

those valve covers just got powder coated

before you lost your last engine.

And I only caught it because I was I was

I put the middle spirits nozzle in the valve cover

and I was watching what was flowing out of it.

And it was like this glittery stuff.

And I go, oh, man, that's why this guy's engine died.

So it's like, you don't find this.

You know, yeah, some things you want to find out the hard way.

Right. You know, so, you know,

it doesn't matter who you buy an engine from,

the you as an installer and sorry for jumping around,

but you as an installer have to make sure all that stuff's right

or that dude's engine is going to be dead.

So take the baffles out if you're ever.

Yeah, if you're going to powder coat parts

or if you've lost a rod bearing, losing a rod bearing similar.

If you lose a rod bearing in an engine or a main bearing

in an engine or a thrust bearing in an engine

and the engine doesn't completely come apart

in every single thing that came in contact

with engine oil is cleaned, assessed

and either thrown away or or or ready to go back in service.

The rod bearing stuff, like you got guys like the rebuild their engine

that put the same oil cooler back on

and it will puke the the old rod bearing failure into the new engine.

Damn. Now you're right back to square one.

Except you're shy, 10, 20 grand, 50, 60 hours.

Yeah. So it's just like, it's devastating.

It makes me wonder, like, how much debris is acceptable for your engine?

OK, shavings and so on.

None is really nice.

None is not is really nice.

Trust me. Some happens.

Yeah, there are some really small places inside of the piston.

OK, that you have to get a very fine little angled pick

and you kind of fish around and make sure that there's nothing hanging out in there

because that stuff will work its way into the oil, OK, out of the piston.

The cylinder head.

The cylinder head has a ton of places for stuff to hide.

And a lot of the cylinder head isn't accessible.

And it's not just it's not just

the oil galley in the cylinder head.

There's all these areas around the valve springs.

And some of them are pretty hard to clean out.

Yeah, if you've seen see port at the head or port at the head,

the cleaning needs to be probably two to three X.

So all those parts get washed two to three X more times

when there's been port work involved.

Yeah, if the cylinder head has been blasted, the plugs must come out.

And there are little ball plugs and you have to get them out

and then you tap it and put a pipe pipe plug in there.

And that must be done because if you blast a cylinder head,

you're never getting that stuff out.

It it is it is everywhere and just waiting to ruin your new engine.

Right. So you have to take a blasted cylinder head is

is a bit of a different procedure.

And these things had cost. Right.

So if you are pricing Joey's cylinder head shop

versus someone that's doing

soda blasting or or vapor honing,

vapor honing makes an old cylinder head look gorgeous again.

The costs are going to be way different

because you have hours in cleaning, hours in cleaning,

like right off the hit hours of cleaning take place

and the risk of failure goes up

because the media is induced into the job. Right.

When it comes to let's say if you have a motor that's already assembled.

Now, you're already pretty much have everything on the car.

You have your filter on, you have all the lines done.

Pretty much everything is assembled as far as fittings, lines and hoses,

catch can and so on.

At that point, what is acceptable in terms of debris?

You're going to have some things that obviously get into the system.

But I mean, what are you looking for?

A guy that has a clean assembled engine.

Yeah. And all the machine work is done properly

and all the parts were cleaned properly.

You know, you'll get a speck of a speck of aluminum in the filter.

Like the other day, I sent a picture to my buddy, Joe,

and I said it was this this filter that was all spread out.

Yeah. And I said, Joe, I think I'm really concerned about this one.

And he zooms way in and we're laughing because it doesn't matter.

It's not shedding material when when you cut a filter open

and it's shedding material into the engine because it's losing the bearing.

Yeah, it's time to stop.

And if you've screwed a piston up, the oil gets dark pretty quick,

you know, because your combustion is getting into the oil.

Right. Like pinch a ring or butter ring, things like that.

So, you know, if you really if you had a good handle on tuning

and you were using the right fuel for your power output and you were monitoring

and not overheating the components through a temperature runaway,

you'd you'd check the oil in your car and you'd say like,

engine's pretty good. Yeah.

Like when someone says to me, like, hey, I think I have an engine problem.

It's like, send me a picture of the dipstick.

You know, like, like let's start there because that's a

that's a quick vital to look at is the the oil

you know, there's a lot of things that your viewers can benefit from

when it's just like the care of oil. Yeah.

The care of oil, it's a it's a big deal.

Like you can buy the best oil and if your commute is short

and your oil never gets hot, you will lose engine components

because the tight clearance places never really get flowing with oil.

You know, a piston to

pin and pin to rod where you're talking about less than a thousandths

and it's splash lubricated. Yeah.

You want to warm the engine up. Right.

So, you know, years ago, we had a customer that drove the pins out of the pistons.

I drove the bushings out of the rods and it came down to his commute was too short.

He that oil never got working like it.

You started up and shut it off, start up, shut off, start up, shut off.

It's not good for the engine.

So, you know, there's a lot of things that

if going back to the care of the changing the oil, you're using a good brand.

You're warming the oil up.

You know, you're if you're using methanol or ethanol,

maybe you're alternating between gas and ethanol to keep the engine in good shape

because the ethanol wears the bores faster, just like methanol wears the bores faster.

Let's say if you're having a like an engine built, right?

Is the the build going to dictate what oil using based on the clearances of the bearings?

It will influence it for sure in that in outside temperature.

So if you're in an area that's a really cold climate, you have to make an adjustment for that.

If you're in an area that's a really hot climate, you have to make an adjustment for that.

And these are things that you basically ask whoever you're working with.

Yeah. OK, so this subject is as deep or as light as it needs to be.

Like there are some you can paint in broad strokes.

Yeah, because at the end of the day, there are so many other things

that could go wrong with a person's build that we don't have to

get within, you know, 1040 versus 1047 weight oil.

Like we don't have to play the game. Right. Right.

Yeah. Too many other things to worry about.

Why do you think that from factory, the weight of the oil is like zero 20?

A lot of the cars are coming with zero 20.

But like, isn't that just like basically putting water?

Oh, it works.

I mean, there's there's guys that run pro stock that run zero weight oil.

It's one run oil.

But in the OEM world, your aim is oil control.

So you run very tight clearances because you have a known amount of deflection.

If you take a very tight clearance engine and you put thick oil in it,

you'll ruin it. If you take a very tight clearance engine

and you operate it to X over its OEM power output,

you'll ruin it because parts will touch down.

But that's all driven by oil consumption.

The least amount of motor oil had it out of the tailpipe.

That's that's the aim and all that.

And there's also some pumping efficiencies, too, because it's

when you look at 50 weight motor oil versus zero weight motor oil,

going back to the pro stock reference, there's a lot of power involved.

Right. Free power.

That's why you have these engines that now have like variable

oil pressure targets.

Well, they're they're just optimizing efficiency.

The OEM is weird, bro.

You got to you got to understand that those guys are looking for 2 percent.

The piston engine has evolved a lot.

Yeah. But the thermal loss, how much

energy is lost during combustion versus transferred to the tire?

You know, it's hard to find very small numbers in that world.

Interesting. We're going to add 10 pounds of boost and laugh about it.

They're looking for very small numbers. Right.

Yeah. You have to really look at the relationship

between the piston and the ring and the bore and the oil and the fuel.

All those things are in this relationship, working together for efficient combustion.

And when you make a change to one, you can affect the other.

Right.

So if the piston, the wall clearance and the expansion rate of the piston

and the size of the bore and the finish of the bore and the design of the ring

and the tension of the ring and the whether it's a port injected engine

or a D I engine, all that stuff was very specifically tuned for one level

of operation and like when you get a modern engine that you like put ethanol in it

and all of a sudden it pushes oil into the catch can.

Well, the the the rings have lost control

of the of the cylinder to some degree. Right.

You know, so you could really get weird about combustion

and fuel and boost and the heat like it's a it's a big concoction.

You know, one thing that we could really focus on is we're very lucky

to be playing with the internal combustion engine that has such a wide margin of error.

Because if if we had to be as precise as you would have to be like monitoring a reactor,

we would have blown the whole place up by now.

You know what I mean?

Like engines are pretty flexible, like by an engine that's got 10 pounds of boost

and just put 20 in it and just does it. It does.

Like you could you could have a stock JZ and make, you know, 800 horsepower

for a pretty long time. Yeah, there's a lot.

There's a lot of engines that will just like the coyotes.

Oh, my God, the coyotes.

Those Ford guys really got what they deserved on that one

because that engine is great.

It'll just make a thousand horsepower.

That's bad ass, you know.

No, that's a great motor.

That's their systems.

So you have to look at it as a system.

So when you put thick oil in your new engine, yeah, it changes things.

Now you mentioned catch can pushing oil into a catch can.

One thing that I've heard was pretty controversial was that if your motor

is pushing oil into the catch can, your motor was built like shit

if it was a fresh engine built.

So should your motor be pushing oil into the catch can?

And what is the purpose of the catch can?

OK, the purpose of the catch can is to

give a place outside of the inlet track to puke

a wasted air that passes the piston gets into the crank case.

That air now has to go somewhere.

It can't stay in there.

It'll push seals out.

It'll cause the rings to flutter and lose seal.

So it's got to leave the engine.

Right. So we want to put it in a catch can.

So we preferably like a good case scenarios like how Honda

managed it on the B series engines with the catch can

that's integrated on the back of the block.

OK.

In the passage of oil draining back down to the head.

So the the engine oil is making it back to the pan.

Right.

Let's come back to oil level and catch cans in a minute.

But you want to get all that waste out of the engines.

Got to go to a catch can.

Right. Because most factory cars due to emissions are plumbed

from the crank case back to the air cleaner.

Right. And if you start pushing a lot of boost into something

and you're making more crank case pressure, you can work oil

into the inlet track and then the engine will blow up

because it's it's now eating oil instead of air.

And the oil causes the fuel to deteriorate.

And now you've got that nation. Right.

So the catch can is to take what's going to happen.

As far as waste. Yeah.

And get it away from the inlet track.

Now from the RB or even on the Supra,

those breather valves are on the valve covers.

Right. So if it's in the crank case,

how is it escaping through the head?

I think that they strictly.

Well, it works its way up.

So there's there's all these passages, which the next topic

with the catch can is you've got oil leaving the sump

and pumping throughout the engine.

Right. And some of that's going up to the head.

It's got a drain back down from the head into the crank case

so it can make itself available again.

So when you get into elevated crank case pressure,

you you hurt drain back and you trap oil in the top of the engine.

And there are some engines that will fill

one bank right up with oil and then the engine blows up

because all the oil is in the head, not in the pan. Right.

So when you're dealing with crank case pressure

in a perfect world, you let it out of the crank case. Right.

But from a manufacturing standpoint,

that means you're going to be managing the plumbing

and the oil air separation down low on the engine.

OK. And I think that because you already have to have

cam covers, why not just let it out there?

So it was just there are some some engines

that they manage crank case pressure better.

But most of them just come out of the valve covers

because of convenience, if I had to guess.

In regards to the statement that was made, is that true?

That if you're pushing oil into a catch can,

so your engines feel like shit.

If you're pushing oil into the catch can,

your engine may be poorly built.

Now, in the past few years,

there's been a lot of productive examination

of cylinder wall finish and people are learning about

the relationship between the peak of the crosshatch,

the valley of the crosshatch

and how often there's a peak in Valley. OK.

It's just it's this thing.

You get a pro-philometer, you look at the bores,

you you you accept that rings have become really hard.

You know, you're dealing with steel rings

where the cylinder wall is going to give up first.

So you have to prepare the cylinder wall

in a way that it can lubricate parts,

seal the rings and last a good amount of time

while you're probably using an alcohol based fuel,

which is working against you. Right.

So if you if you get it wrong,

the engine will pump oil out of it and it sucks.

I worked on an engine a few weeks ago

and I told the men how I felt

and I told them what I thought I saw.

And I said, hey, I'll go make some runs on the dyno

and I'm going to come back and see you.

And it pumped a couple of quarts of oil out of it.

And I said, OK, I think we should stop

and reevaluate what we're doing.

And that that gives you a very slippery

slope into the discussion of engine break in.

And how was the engine started?

Right. Because if I send you an engine

and it's you and your buddy and you think your buddy knows

and you trust him because he's your buddy.

And he he got lucky once.

He's no expert.

The guy just got lucky.

His new engine worked out and now he's an authority.

Right. Well, if you guys screw up the first start

and you're cranking it and cranking it and cranking it

and cranking it and cranking it and then it fires off.

And as a there's a the map sensors unplugged

and now it's rich and you guys are so excited.

It's running. You're like high fives and this and that.

Watch the water temp.

You know what I mean?

Somebody's got a cool.

Everyone's intense.

Everyone's like jogging around this new engine.

Right. And people are overlooking some things

that could really hurt the cylinder wall finish.

OK. You know, so when you start a new engine up,

you want to get the engine fired up quickly.

You want to get the oil pressure verified

inside of probably five to seven seconds.

And it's a long five to seven seconds.

Five to seven seconds.

So just waiting.

And during that period of time,

goopy, sticky assembly lube is covering for you.

It's OK. Right.

Everything covered in assembly lube.

It's the purpose of it.

As soon as oil pressure hits, because keep in mind,

not all engines will prime during cranking.

If you have an engine that will prime during cranking,

you take the spark plugs out, you unplug the injectors

and you crank the engine and just let it freewheel until it primes.

And then you put your spark plugs in,

plug your injectors in, fire the engine off.

Some engines won't prime during cranking.

Right. So you've got to fire them up.

You know, there's in the old school,

there's engines that you just like prime the oil pump with a drill.

Yeah. That's great.

But when you got into crank driven oil pumps, you lose a lot of that.

Right. So you get the engine fired up

as soon as you have oil pressure, you raise engine speed.

You want to get it up 1500, 2000 RPM,

get oil splashing around inside the engine

and then start to monitor for leaks and watch the temperatures

and all this, then start your high fives. Right.

But your mixture isn't too rich

and you don't have a misfire on one cylinder.

Like you get a guy that fires a new engine up

and it's got a problem on one cylinder.

And now that cylinder is only seeing fuel because the coil is dead

and he's happy.

He doesn't even hear it.

He's happy as cars run it again.

And he's just ruining the cylinder.

And then he figures out that he's made a mistake.

And three weeks later, he's like,

there's oil in my cast can.

I got it. I got it. I built a I bought a crappy engine.

It's like, well, did you remember that part?

Because it happened.

Yeah, I mean, like, like a lot of things happen

and people just want to forget they happened

because it doesn't really fit their narrative.

Like you screwed the engine up when you started it.

That sucks. That's a super hard one.

And now let's talk about good engines

that push oil into the crank cast can

because that that needs to be covered too. OK. OK.

If you have a very small straw

and you're trying to move air and liquid through the straw,

the air will get a hold of the liquid and carry it out of the straw.

OK. If you have a very big tube

with the same air mass, OK, the air is going to be able to pass the oil.

Right. They're not going to get caught up in traffic. Right.

So small catch can lines.

Dash 10 is the smallest catch can line should be.

If the engine is moving oil because of power level,

like we just got back from Bonneville and the engine was moving oil into the catch can.

It's never done it before. Well, it's on methanol

and the catch can lines are too small.

It needs one inch lines on it.

It's making like a hundred and fifty kPa of crankcase pressure

when it's got forty seven pounds of boost for forty five seconds

or something stupid, you know what I mean?

But big lines will solve that because if you if you take that same engine

and you put it on ethanol or you put it on gasoline,

it'll go back to making pan back. Right.

Because it doesn't have all that fuel washing the cylinder down.

So there's there's some troubleshooting needed.

But the but the worst thing you could say is

the engines ruined, drive the engine for a little while.

Did the spark plugs get oily? Yeah.

If the spark plugs get oily, the engines probably ruined.

Sorry.

If the spark plugs are dry and you're pushing oil into a catch can,

can we evaluate the catch cans, the system that you're trying to use,

the power level you're trying to make and like let's just fix it.

Right. Yeah.

And, you know, we're like working on some billet valve covers with JTO

and we're going to have billet valve covers that have actual OEM level baffling.

Oh, wow.

So you can have a billet valve cover that you don't have to push oil with.

Right. Because that's that's it's a thing, you know, like like

what's the valve cover design?

You know, if you if you have a car that, you know, and man, I tell you,

it happens, people have a 2JZ and everything's fine.

And they change the valve covers and now their engine's pushing oil into the

catch can. They just don't look at the valve covers.

It's like put the stock valve covers back on it, dude.

Yeah. You know, like it was working before.

Like let's let's remember the changes we make so we know where to go

back if we get lost.

So it's really not technically there to just catch a bunch of oil

or as a different passageway for oil to travel, it's more just for ventilation.

It seems like yes. And then oil is also a reservoir.

It's a venting reservoir.

It's really easy to or some people may think that a catch can is there

to just catch oil.

But like you said, after clearing it up,

oil is an indicator that your crankcase ventilation is probably high.

Yeah. Your catch can on ethanol, like I have a catch can on my Supra.

It never gets oil on it.

OK. It never, ever, ever, ever, ever gets oil in it.

I think one time the guys at the shop overfilled the engine

and I got on the dyno and it got oil in the catch can.

And I'm like, I'm like, that's too much oil in the engine.

You know what I mean? Yeah.

It's catch cans, especially if you're boosted, because again,

you don't want to be putting all of that that it's dirty air.

Yeah.

Do not put the dirty air into the inlet track of the engine

because the engine is going to get hurt from it, clean air.

So venting a catch can is probably going to help a lot more with ventilation as well.

Then yeah, you wanted to free flow.

Yeah. Yeah.

When pressure is present in the crankcase, it's costing the engine power

or worse. OK. At a minimum, it costs the engine power.

I mean, if you read about PanVac, yeah, there's some

there's some people that have experiences that they've aligned

with high PanVac situations and are not willing to let it go.

And then there's a bunch of people that they know PanVac is power.

So if you have an engine that will pull 20 inches of PanVac

throughout the rev range of the engine, that engine is going to make more power

than if it made 10 inches of PanVac or if it made zero inches of PanVac

or if it made three PSI of crankcase pressure,

the power will continue to increase because the ring relationship gets better.

And with high levels of PanVac, you can have

a pretty thin rings that still seal really well.

OK, this is a ton of stuff. Yeah.

But at a minimum, you don't want crankcase pressure.

And at a minimum, you don't want dirty air from the crankcase

going back into the inlet side of the engine.

Now, I wanted to ask you this because it's a common thing.

A lot of people have had this topic spoken about in other podcasts.

I've spoken about it several times in the past,

but I figured to ask you because you're Jay, right?

Now, how many miles did you put on your car after you build an engine?

OK, put 500 miles because that's always growing up.

That was always a thing.

500 miles, you should run your car until you actually can tune it.

OK, super common question and everyone's got their opinion.

Right. On one side of the spectrum,

you have a top fuel team that is going to build an engine

to go somewhere over 900 feet and try to win a race.

Yeah. OK, if it's burned up 100 feet from the finish line,

they don't care. They fix it.

And on the other end of the spectrum,

you have a OEM vehicle that the engine speed is limited

until it reaches a certain amount of mileage.

OK, it's a Ferrari, it's a Porsche, it's a Lambo, it's a Ducati.

It's a it's a high NBMW.

It's something that says I know it turns 14000 RPM,

but I need you to stop at nine for this amount of miles.

So they're acknowledging that there's there's two ends to the spectrum.

Right. If we're in the middle,

we want to make sure that we are supplying an engine that is

assembled correctly and that the customer is going to be responsible

through the break in period to have a responsible mixture aim.

So the engine is not too rich.

He's going to make sure that he doesn't have some crappy oil filter

adapter or some crappy oil cooler, because he won't even get through break in.

Like you got to kind of like do a pre break in checklist.

OK, from there, if you've got all the mechanical stuff sound

and you say, hey, Jay, fast forward, it's a good engine.

We just want to get to the dyno.

How much do we need to drive it?

I think that 500 miles is a very patient man that is cautious.

I think that a 100 miles is kind of what you owe your checkbook.

In a perfect world, nothing would

be contacting metal to metal aside from the rings to the cylinder walls.

Everything else is floating on oil.

Right. Right. In a perfect world,

that's everything has a hydrodynamic wedge,

whether it be splash lubricated or pressurized and nothing's touching.

Well, let's say that we live in that world.

We still have a certain amount of movement of the components

as they go through their temperature ranges and through their stress levels.

So when you look at the dance that engine components are doing

with each other during operation, a familiarization period is not a bad idea

because those end those parts are going to get used to working together.

So, you know, the how the how the bearing relationship

and the wedge oil relationship happen through the connecting rod

as it from zero miles to 100 miles.

It's really small changes.

But you're you're letting those parts familiarize themselves. OK.

And this is why in there's going to be people

that think that I'm on the spectrum for explaining it this way.

But get an old engine that's healthy and try to break it.

Hard to break.

Get a new engine that hasn't been run much and try to break it.

It will break because in the old engines,

everything's loose and sloppy and familiar. Right.

It's like I mean, you know,

I don't know if the kids are still doing it,

but like we would get a junky car and we would break it.

Yeah, and we would just bet on how long it was going to last.

Some of those engines are really hard to kill.

Yeah, they're old engines.

And then you hear about something like General Motors just went through

where they have this mass engine failure.

Toyota had a mass engine failure

where they have all these new engines out there

in the public that are that are blowing up.

Yeah. And, you know, they have to quickly figure out why.

Well, when you build your new engine

and you want to get it tuned, you want to get it finished.

Everyone's asking, OK, so what?

Take your car for a couple of cruises that week.

You know, just take it out for normal operation.

Just drive it.

See if something's going to fall off.

You just put it back together.

You know what I mean? Like, oh, it's yourself. Right.

So I've taken cars to the track

that had zero miles on the engine and I've made runs.

I've watched the crankcase pressure.

It seems like around run three, the rings were done doing

whatever they were going to do. OK.

And and the engine was going to live

however long it was going to live.

Those are low mileage, high stress.

We're going to go like when I go to Bonneville

and and just go right to whatever it's going to get.

You know, soft run, 8500 RPM, you know what I mean?

Like it's not ideal, but it happens in a racing environment.

But also in that racing environment, the guys,

they know they're shredding cash, right?

And and that's on that end of the spectrum with the top fuel team.

Yeah. If you got money to shred and you like talking about

how much money you're spending blowing stuff up,

who cares about breaking period?

Yeah, party, bro.

If you are a guy that says if this thing blows up,

I can't afford to have it broken in my driveway.

My wife's going to make me sell it.

I'm losing interest.

I think I'm going to get a different hobby.

Well,

tread lightly, you know, like give yourself a little time

to to maybe get it right this time.

OK, so it's basically dependent on what you're doing with the car

as what you're doing with the car and what your tolerance for pain.

Yeah, right.

So let's say for let's say for a lot of people like, you know,

you're building engines for let's say if they're not like

just building a drag specific car.

Yeah. What are you telling these people?

Go 100 miles. 100 miles.

Yeah, go 100 miles.

Don't screw up the startup.

Go 100 miles. OK.

If you if your patient go more, but but 100 miles is pretty easy.

You know, we we we did the engine

that's in Adam Elsey's drift car

and I went there for startup and Freddy is my boy

and we work together a lot and we just said, well, he says,

just do it however you want to do it.

And we probably left the thing run for.

Forty five minutes at twenty five hundred RPM.

And I said, this is the only break in it's going to get man,

because you guys are going to the track.

Yeah. And it's performed really well

because you have this relationship between the cylinder wall

and the piston and the oil.

And as the piston familiarizes itself with the bore and operation,

you're you're dictating how the oil is going to work

itself between the piston and the bore and operation,

like shit changes shape.

Yeah. You know, like your pin clearance isn't the same

after the first pass of the track, you know?

So you like just let it find itself. Right. Yeah.

Should that be stop and go traffic?

Idle is bad. Idle is bad.

Idle, there's not enough oil moving around.

All of your components that are splash lubricated are not happy at Idle.

There's people in my age bracket that had solid roller camshafts

on domestic engines. OK.

And you you didn't idle at low.

You needed to keep things moving.

So Idle is not your friend.

You you get on on the highway.

You put two thousand four thousand RPM on it.

You give it two or three pounds of boost,

you know, up a hill for half a mile, then you let your foot off the gas.

You you're running the engine in.

You're doing all the things you're going to do to it.

Right. You're just being gentle.

That's a really common question, too.

Should it be highway miles or stop?

Idle is not your friend.

There's a lot of expensive engines in this world

that have engine idle time counters because mileage is one wear set.

Idle time is a different wear set.

So there's a lot of engines that have idle time counters

because if an engine has

10,000 hours on it and it has

six thousand hours of idle time, it's a much different engine

than an engine that has eight hundred miles of idle time on it

and the rest service and heavy equipment stuff.

They they monitor idle time quite a bit.

And a lot of it has to do with, I guess, like you said, oil splashing.

Splash lubrication.

Yeah, you have you have oil that's pressurized

through the oil pump and you have oil that is bled out amongst clearances

to splash to get other parts.

And there's a relationship there that engine speed matters.

Oil coolers.

Yep. Now

some people, depending on the platform, may run one or two.

Now, is it bad to have two oil coolers

or should you even run two oil coolers?

Or is that also something that's based on the application?

What are you doing with the engine that you need to oil coolers?

So you don't even buy an oil cooler

if you don't have a temperature problem

because at a minimum, if you don't have a temperature problem

and you buy an oil cooler, there's like eight fittings,

a sandwich adapter, there's all this stuff that's like potential leaks.

Yeah. And not all of these kits are created equal.

You can buy a kit.

Like there was a slew of guys that were losing engines last year

and I was so lucky to not be one of them.

And it was oil coolers, restrictive oil coolers.

And when you are an engine builder

and there's a lot of good engine builders,

if you just look at 2JZ in no order, you have myself,

you have the guys at FFRE, you have Brian Roach,

you have Don Summerlin, you have Mason engines applied on the West Coast.

You have Mazworks, you have these guys that build good engines.

Yeah, there's a lot of guys that can build your really killer 2JZ.

So when all these guys started having the same problems,

we're like talking amongst each other, like someone's

it's like someone's walking through the ward and unplugging the patients

and people are dying and no one knows that it's just the janitor unplugging stuff

because he's just sweeping around like there's an oil cooler problem guys.

And it sucked.

I mean, imagine losing thousands and thousands of dollars

because your customer decided he wanted an oil cooler or worse.

You tell your customer, I know I did my job right.

I don't know what you did, but your engine's dead and it's your problem.

Let me help you not happen again.

Well, that customer could then go on a rampage.

Yeah.

And now you you can either decide to participate with the online mob

or just say whatever they're saying, it doesn't matter.

I know why the engine failed.

They're going to forget in six months because another drama is going to pop up.

Let's just not even engage.

Right. You know, but like oil coolers are killing engine.

Remote oil filters are going to kill an engine.

Like if I was going to sell a remote oil filter kit,

I'd have it so the lines only go on one way.

Now my customer can't screw up.

Well, what was the issue with the oil cooler was restrictive?

Was there something in the minor?

No, it's just it was not manufactured for the application.

It didn't have enough flow.

OK, you know, you have to as as great as it's been to become this.

Manufacturing, you know, globe.

Like, yeah, you can call an offshore company

and they'll build you apart for less money than a German or American

or any other Swiss, Italian, all these guys that were like,

we're really the early pillars, you can buy a cheaper component.

But it doesn't mean the place

that's building you that cheaper component even knows what it does.

They may not even know what it does.

They may take a spec sheet, find a suitable manufacturer

that makes something like it and say, make us that. Right.

So you may have an oil cooler that works just fine on a generator.

And because it met the specifications on paper,

performance guys start buying it.

It doesn't have enough flow.

Like, if you're going to buy an oil cooler, like just get a set

trap, like that's been accompanied.

I I I've never even I don't think I've even called the place in my life.

But like growing up, that was the place she called.

Yeah, they had it.

So as long as they still have it, they haven't

compromised themselves for more money, like just by one of those.

Right. You know, OK, like OEM level stuff, like,

hey, my car was not equipped with an oil cooler.

I have an oil temperature problem.

What should I do?

Well, what OEM car came with an oil cooler that you can poach from?

Like if if it's if you can still buy a Mitsubishi Evo oil cooler from Mitsubishi.

That oil cooler was proved in rally racing.

Right. It works just by that one and make it fit your car.

It's OEM, you know, so like got to be careful what you buy.

And then as far as temperature, like one would have become a problem.

Is that based on the application?

Like, what's your issues?

Look, if you, again, too cold is bad.

Right. I think that if you are consistently

seeing over two thirty or two forty

when, how long and what's the peak temperature of the oil reaches?

Because in drag racing, you're never going to overheat the oil.

Right. Circuit racing and drifting, you know,

some of the temperatures that I see from the LZ guys are

like when Adam was sliding me around in his car,

I was like looking at the water temperature gauge, like that's my engine in here.

Man, that thing is hot.

You know, like I was like, oh, we don't normally do it this way.

You know what I mean?

So, you know, two fifty.

I could throw a flag on the play.

What's going on?

And there are engines that race at higher temps.

Yeah. But they're designed to race at higher temps. Right.

Your stuff, if it's just regular stuff, you know,

oil could be twenty, thirty degrees hotter than the water.

And hopefully it's under two fifty.

OK, so two fifty.

Yeah, two fifty is like the line.

Great information. Good to know.

Now, we're going to come cover some more tech talk, obviously.

But I want to know how you started real street.

You start with you two of the guys, like how did real street really start?

I'll try to do this as quickly as possible.

Yeah, it's a big story.

So I had worked for a guy for about a decade.

And I had met a young woman that I wanted to start a family with.

So I started doing the math because I'd grown up in a household

that money was always like the biggest stress.

We never had enough money and not that anyone ever does.

But, you know, it's like my mom had a J.C.

Penny's credit card that she would go school clothes shopping

before the beginning of the school year. OK.

And those were your five outfits for the year.

That's we were tight, you know, and they did good.

They had four kids, but we we had a tight household.

And I didn't want to deal with that because most of my friends

that had already had kids, they would complain that their wives didn't work

and that they didn't have any money.

Like, why would I avoid those things if possible?

Right. So I needed to quit my job.

And there wasn't another place in town that I really fit in.

And I went and worked for Nero and Titan for a few weeks.

And that went from a situation of high pressure work area

where you had to perform to make your check to a very lax,

a days ago environment where it's like show up at 10 30, go to lunch at noon.

They their pace was too slow for me at the time.

So there's no one else for me to go to work for in town.

So I had to start a business.

And the guy that I had been racing with just said, hey, I'll do it.

And he filed all the paperwork and his mother did the bookkeeping

for like six months.

And I was I was in business for myself.

Yeah. Now, how did everyone?

How did they grow? Yeah.

So I wanted to work on stuff.

There was a guy that had gotten fired from Titan.

His name was Mark Conti and he got fired for being himself.

And I saw an opportunity in him.

You know, I have this probably one of my biggest single flaws

is I can love someone for their potential, not for their character.

And later on, that bit me with him, but, you know, it's whatever.

But he wanted to sell parts.

So he comes on.

He's selling car parts and he's selling car parts to.

Geo and Clay. OK. Geo and Clay also have a business.

Geo and Clay started to get behind with me.

And I found out because Mark wasn't telling me what was happening with the numbers.

And our bookkeeper ended up in like our accountant literally went to jail

for like five years for screwing up at his job.

So we had a nightmare when it came to the books.

And there's a lot of learning in this process.

But Geo and Clay fold up. OK.

They they got a business.

They owe money.

They don't have a move to make. Right.

So they owed me like 40 grand at the time,

which at the time was a lot of money.

Yeah. And I didn't have any more money.

I was I was going to be done.

That was going to be my last month because I couldn't I couldn't do it anymore.

And we went out and had dinner at Ale House.

And I'm like, well, kind of seems like we're all in the same problem right now.

We're very different people.

You have a hustler in Geo.

You have an architect in Clay.

You have a technician and auto motive

enthusiast in myself and you have a banker in Mark.

So very different personalities.

But we all can offer the same thing, something. Right.

So we went into business and.

I I wanted the accounting thing was such a nightmare

that I want to very simplified books.

So I I had them do TPS reports.

And it was that we joked about it

because we'd all seen office space and we'd say TPS reports.

And Geo came to me like a couple of weeks

in and he said, I figured out what went wrong at the other place.

And it changed everything.

And and we started making money.

And I remember the day that we made five hundred bucks.

And then there was a day that we made two thousand bucks.

And the place really went on a tear for about.

10 or 12 years, it was on a tear.

And we had incredible people and a high level of.

Freedom and a relatively cool vibe.

Yeah, you know, we had some really great guys come through that place.

And some some really great guys are still there.

So it was it was pretty cool.

The company started in what?

Two thousand and two thousand six.

You ended up being there for how long?

I think it was just shy of 18 years.

Eighteen, 18 years, which does make the Gold Digger song

a completely different song for me now.

It's completely different now, because I'm on the outside of it.

Oh, man, you do you think that I mean, I would see it that way.

But do you think that a lot of those tech talk videos

and a lot of the social media content is what helped the business grow to what it is?

Or was it more of the behind the scenes work?

I think that it was a collective.

OK, someone had to be the front man.

Someone had to be the connection between the customer and the numbers.

And someone had to be the guy that was probably already going to go to a race.

Yeah, but probably already going to want to race a car,

going to want to go Saturday and play with the dyno, going to want to build engines.

I was already that guy.

Like I was already that guy organically.

Yeah. So for a long time, it was a pretty neat relationship

because I didn't want to do their job.

They didn't want to do my job, you know?

So early early in that company's growth,

every time someone looked at us, they said,

how do you get so much done with so few people?

And because for the most part, we had something to do.

Yeah, it wasn't until we started having like

a leadership team and a board meeting that the place changed.

OK. Yeah.

That's when it like started to get started

because then you have guys with clean hands looking differently

at guys with dirty hands and there's a whole.

It's not it's not necessarily their fault.

It's a it's an epidemic in American business and business in general

that the dude with clean hands can only get more money

by either giving the guy with dirty hands less or getting more guys with dirty hands.

There's no magic trick in it.

You know what I mean? Right.

So there's a there's a

a pretty big shift in how the person in with the dirty hands is perceived

because I don't think I don't think that they're valued the same as someone

that is a got a business car with a job title that makes him feel like he's a somebody.

Yeah. So it's it's tricky.

Business is pretty tricky like that, at least my experience with it.

Right. Right.

When it comes to cars, Fast and Furious is like a big thing for a lot of these cars.

Obviously, that puts the super in the skyline to to what they are today.

Yeah. But in the performance world, like in the real world, I would say,

there's companies like Real Street that actually push that platform as well.

Yeah. Now, do you think the the super would be the face of of that brand for the most part?

Pretty much. I think early on it was OK, because it's super

chassis and platform alone itself to pretty stellar performance.

Yeah. And pretty good durability.

If we were going to be

guys that went at it with the same passion, but we were.

Um, maybe we were FD guys or maybe we were R 32 guys

or we were Camaro guys or whatever guys we were going to be.

I don't know that we would have had the same performance metrics.

I think the Supra is a really neat car.

I'm biased, right?

But I think it's a really neat car.

It gives it up, you know, like the thing parties.

So you guys are basically known for Supras and any other platforms?

Yeah, I mean, I worked on I worked on a bunch of stuff over the years.

I had a lot of fun racing with the guys from Joe Tech.

They had an integra. Yeah.

And when you are with a group of happy Spanish racers,

the the the fun and the competition

and the egos and all that stuff, it's really neat.

And I got to experience that with the Honda guys, with those guys.

Yeah. And it was my first big taste of Honda drag racing.

And Tony Paolo, who is another badass, obviously, in the space,

he kind of said, like, don't do this, don't do that, don't do this, don't do that.

And we immediately had a pretty competitive car.

You know, Tony, I remember Tony

we were talking about traction control and he said, just use a big control range.

It was like 500 RPM control range, and it would allow the tires to slip

but not cut its head off if it hit the rebel mirror because these are early ECUs.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

You know, they weren't they weren't what we have today in terms of execution.

So, you know, I we went fast way back then.

It was fast. I really even today, I like that racing a lot.

Like I could get into that type of racing. It's fun.

I'll motor Honda like I'm super geeky about it.

Super geeky about it, you know, the politics of it.

I don't want nothing to do with. Yeah.

But the performance of all motor Honda is like, I want to make it.

I want to do a rip in that thing. It's like a big motorcycle when I when I did

the podcast with Tony last year, I think it was

he had mentioned that he probably would never go.

But he would never go back into doing Honda stuff.

He's kind of passed that.

You know, I bet that there's probably a version of Tony

that he doesn't share with the public that he's on.

Bring a trailer and he's going to buy that one minty Honda

and he's just going to build the car he should have built instead of building

his all out race car. Yeah.

And he won't even post a picture of it.

He's probably got some secret Integra.

He probably does.

I should have asked him if he had any secret cars

because he's got a little bit of a collection, I think.

Probably maybe, who knows?

Yeah, I should have asked him that question.

He should. He's earned it.

Now, it seems like your departure from Real Street was for you.

You, like you said, it was a very big deal.

Yeah. It took you a while to deal with it.

But that basically is, for the most part,

people who watch this is who you are.

Like you are. I know.

You are Real Street, you are the face of the brand.

So it's hard to kind of rebrand and do something different

because you've done it for so long.

Right. So your departure from their party.

For me to rebrand or for them to rebrand?

In general, people would think it's a harder.

Yeah. Like, here you are face of the brand for so long.

So how is that something you thought about when you were leaving?

Or I didn't have a choice. OK, I was forced to leave.

OK, I took the deal that was available

that was going to keep the company from crashing.

I took the deal that was available

to get myself away from some situations

that I needed to get away from and they needed to get away from me.

It was a what.

There was a lot of deception at play.

And this is why I've waited to talk about it

because I don't want to get it wrong. OK.

I want to I want to I want to talk about it like men.

There's a lot of deception at play.

And once I really understood the level that

one of the guys was willing to go to to get what he wanted,

I had to get away from that situation

because I didn't want to go to jail.

Oh, was that serious?

Yeah, I didn't want to go to jail.

Now, were you ever in a space

where you felt like you were content

with the amount of money you guys are making?

Like, oh, dude, let me tell you something.

My number is 300 when I 300 what 300,000 a year.

Oh, that's where you're content.

Oh, yeah, 300 is a great place for me.

When I was making 60, I remember.

Then 100 came and I remember and then 200 came.

And I thought, hmm, I thought this was going to be better.

And then 300 came, you know, this is over again, 18 years.

But I was like, OK, I can do with this.

And my aim was to was to pay Brett more

as we earn more and me make the same or less,

depending on how much I was living outside of Real Street.

OK, because for too long in my career,

did I buy my own choices work too much?

So my there was a conversation that was had

and I later understood what he meant

when he had the conversation.

But they were going to ask me to leave.

And I said, well, I'm 47, why would I leave now?

I I want to I want to be able to

probably work another five or six years.

And I wanted to end so good that I can pop in

in any time that I could still do media for the company

that I could still, you know, I can go back to racing the car

because now I'm on my own. Right.

You know, I could you imagine being like, yeah, dude,

I'm the guy that started Real Street Performance.

I'm also the guy that was told,

don't mention cars in a video.

No, you're not racing.

No, you're not going to put a car video.

No, you can't dino your car.

No, you don't like don't say car

because they were so terrified of the EPA.

And even when the EPA lightened up

and showed that they weren't going to come cut our heads off,

the the fear has only started to lift.

They've only started to put car content back in their mix.

They got really, really tied up.

So this is an EPA issue.

It depends on your version of reality.

Hmm. Interesting.

I thought it's a play.

I mean, they could have they could have used

the EPA thing to help push me out.

Yeah, the EPA thing could have been a play.

I think that they had an actual fear of the EPA is my first guess

because we did get an attorney to try to protect us.

So we were we were afraid of the EPA

and you should be afraid of the EPA

because that's still a thing now with the new laws and what

you want to find out.

OK, because I heard that that's not I heard.

Somebody told me, you know, people talk.

That's not even a thing anymore.

It's like they right now it's not.

OK, you know, we we we only get a president for four right years.

And you don't know what the next guys.

I mean, like, I don't want to get into politics,

but we have no idea how weird things will get for how long

and how great things will be for how long cycles.

Yeah, they're just cycles.

The EPA.

That's a very serious thing.

It's affected other companies.

I've done some podcasts in the past,

so we couldn't even speak about street racing because of that.

And these are big companies, not going to say names.

But I've noticed that those companies who are having EPA issues,

they kind of fall back a little bit on social media and stop.

You're told to you ask a lawyer that you give 50 grand to.

You say, hey, how do I stay out of trouble?

And they say, get a different line of work.

And, you know, like by the letter of the law, nothing is safe.

The engine that I just used out at Bonneville

in a car that was made in a garage, it was never a street car.

The engine was a certified engine at one point.

So if you want to weave through the law, it's still an offense.

It's mega weird, very broad strokes.

But what they need to protect us from

and what they want to protect us from

and we should try to protect ourselves from is just like

gross environmental disregard.

Yeah, you know, like that the diesel, the diesel thing,

it's like, come on, guys, now there's again, a spectrum

because you buy a modern diesel truck

and with all that equipment that's on it,

it probably doesn't go 100,000 miles without problems.

Right, because the engine going back to our catch can talk,

the engine is breathing in its exhaust

and it clogs up the entire inlet track with crap

and the engines junk.

And on the other side of it, you have some dude

that gets off black smoking some guy on a bicycle.

It's like, you know, we got to find a better middle ground

to play in on that. Right. Yeah.

EPA started to shift things and it kind of affected you.

Well, there was a night they said, like, well, you know, one day

we're going to have a 50 million dollar a company

and we don't think that you've earned your seat here.

And that was that was said to you. Yes.

And I, you know, these are clues

that you've you've gotten yourself into a real entanglement

when you have, you know, let's cut to the chase.

Like I thought everything was going to be OK.

It was going to be different, but it was going to be OK.

We were going to manage this situation in a manner

that left us OK to see each other in the future

and be comfortable knowing that overall it had gone pretty good.

And there was a day that they took that away

and it was really dumb.

And I don't believe that all the men should be held

responsible for for a couple guys' actions.

Yeah. But the couple guys, like I remember specifically,

I walked into the office that morning and I saw them.

I saw they were they were meddling in something.

And when they looked at me, I saw the look in their eyes

and I said, I think you guys are going to go past the point

and no return today.

And they didn't say a word.

And I walked out of the room and that day they said,

you're going to sign this piece of paper.

And if you don't, we're going to figure out how to screw you out of it.

And if you sign it, can you tell anybody what we did?

We're going to figure out how to screw you out of it.

And I was like, Clay, the the the architect

should have been present for that conversation

because he may have seen that they were really wrapped up in a mess.

I was their biggest problem and they were going to solve it at any expense.

Because I wasn't going to get in line

because I was the dude that I was I was the same.

You know, I'm not perfect, man.

I make a lot of mistakes.

I had a really bad temper for a really long time.

And when I had my daughter, everything changed.

I wish I would have had a child sooner.

I think it would have leveled me right out.

But I didn't. And here I am, you know.

But there there were things got out of control.

Why do you feel like they had so much animosity towards you?

Was it because you weren't on board with them?

No, it's it's personal.

It's it would take so long to go through it.

OK, it's personal.

And I think that the character of each individual over time will show

where it went wrong because you can't hide that.

You can make a great reputation for yourself.

But you won't always be able to hide your character.

And I think that there's some major character flaws over there.

I think there's some really great characters,

but there's some really bad ones and there's some easily led ones.

And I needed to get away from that.

I I was I was in the middle of building a house.

You know, my third house is going to be this lake house.

I said, I'm going to one of my life goals was I'm a little lake house at 45.

And it all started to fall in.

Well, I was weighing over my head.

My wife was out of her head about it.

She's yelling every day.

These guys say don't say cars on a video.

Something had to give.

Yeah, I was no longer going to stay.

It was either give up on one or give up on the other.

So when they came forward and said, hey, we're going to kick you out,

I was like, cool, treat me fair.

And we went to a lawyer and I said, I don't want to fight.

I just want what's mine and I'll leave.

And as the numbers came together, the numbers were not in my favor.

And I said, OK, I'll lose money if we don't have to continue to fight.

And I lost money and then I still had to fight.

I mean, the reason why I delayed this podcast is because it's there's

some loose ends that are just wrapping up now.

And that is a total waste of everyone's time because the money that those

guys were ahead and the money that I'm behind, the money's already gone.

All we have is our time.

Yeah.

And to to hold back zero cost things to a guy that you out the company

like you cut the head off the place and you're just going to do it yourself

to hold back zero cost things to that guy is a power game.

Strictly a power game, you know, to to use the man's credit behind his back

for him to for him to find out nearly a year after he's been

out of the company that he has a large amount of debt that isn't his

and he can't do anything about it.

And you go see an attorney and the attorney says, we'll go get him.

And you go see the next attorney and he says, we'll go get him.

And then you find an attorney that's mature and she says, do you want to spend

the next year and a half of your life upside down, obsessed with this?

Do you want to spend a hundred grand at attorneys and you'll probably win

if you can get in front of a judge that isn't riddled in BS lawsuits?

Yeah.

And I go, I don't want to do any of that.

She said, are they paying?

I said, they're paying so far.

She said, see how it goes.

And I just had to like let it go.

You know, like, like there's a lot of stuff that the one thing that those

guys may not understand that they did me a solid on was when you're forced

to let go of so much in such a short period of time and you can keep yourself

out of alcohol and keep your head right.

It's it's it's pretty nice to know that you could get through stuff like

this without having to take you down.

I mean, sometimes things take people down, you know, like you see people

that their lives are coming unraveled and, you know, my I guess my biggest

single beef with those guys is and I know that we were in all over our heads

because it was the first time we'd ever broken up.

First breakups pretty rough.

And they didn't think about my family and that really pisses me off

because for years, despite how things were going, there's a certain

amount of like, I don't like you, man, but I'll cover for you because because

of that. Yeah, because I know that I didn't always not like you.

And and the stuff that you're into isn't the stuff I'm into.

And it's yours to deal with, but I'm going to cover you for that.

And they knew I waited a long time to get a family.

And I wanted to be able to afford a family.

And when they did what they did, it was super dirty that they couldn't

think in a bigger block of time.

All they needed to do is think in a bigger block of time and everybody

could have got what they wanted because they could have said, hey,

you're out. And I would say like, cool, is there enough money?

Yeah, we'll figure it out.

And they keep me on for advertising.

I never have to go to another board meeting.

I never have to listen to them get excited about money.

Money doesn't do it for me.

I need money, but I don't get off on money.

I get off on cars, you know what I mean?

So I don't need I don't need to like, I'm not.

If I won the lottery, you'd see the kind of shit I would pull.

Yeah. And it would be a fricking party for anybody I loved.

You know, and if I was broken two years

and a bunch of my friends had moved up the ladder a couple rungs, cool, man.

What are you going to do?

You know, so it was good and it was bad.

But it's a lot of learning, you know, but the

it was very important for me to leave without hatred

because hatred is very powerful.

And I watched how my father handled anger

and he was mega destructive and I didn't want to do that.

I didn't want to do anything that would change my child's life.

So as I went through and as I still go through the anger of it,

I just tried to think about what affects my child

because she doesn't deserve to be hurt because of my problems.

And that is a full time job when you got some bullshit going on.

It's a full time job.

So, you know, the brain inside of it sucks,

you know, on it sucks for both parties because there were customers

that were walking in their door and they were telling the customers

he's not here right now, like I was at the store,

which I think is super dumb.

And there were customers that they told that he stepped away from the company.

And when you deal with the level of dipshit,

power, greedy, gross men that will

that will just like pretend that everything's OK

after they've done what they've done.

I'm like, yeah, man, you guys, are you really buying a car online

on AutoTrader right now?

Really, I can get super specific with dealer listings

and see cars based on my budget.

You can really have it delivered or pick it up.

I think it is walking up the slide.

Really? AutoTrader, buy your car online.

Really? I'm done.

I'm done with you people like I am.

They will never come a time in my life

that I have any empathy for those men.

I want I want my time.

I want to move on.

And it sucks for me because when I walk into a place,

someone says, hey, it's Jay from Real Street.

And I have to say, well, different Real Street now, guys.

Different Real Street now.

So my identity is mine.

Right. I earned my identity over a long block of time.

They can earn their new identity.

If they had integrity, they would take me off their website.

They would take me out of their advertising

and they would build their own company.

I'm not here to help them.

And I shouldn't be because they gave that opportunity up

by going too far.

And that's why I waited to talk to you about it

because I didn't want to seem like I was out of my head about it.

I've had time to think.

We all screw up in life.

We all make mistakes.

But but as grown men, you you've got to learn to be more careful.

You got to think in big blocks of time

because making short-sighted mistakes like that

that really affect another family.

That goes on your permanent record.

You know, how long were you dealing with this?

Oh, yeah, less than a year.

Yeah, they were really started to roll me out like around April.

And that's when it was news.

Yeah, this is like it was news to me.

Yeah, I still stayed for the rest of the year

because there was no deal.

There was no way to pay the man that we everything was leveraged.

We had no cash to give me to leave.

That's why the car was important to me

because at least I left with something like I was telling,

you know, Brett, Brett had come in pretty early

and he said, I think this is going down.

I said, what no way they're going to do that.

But he said, man, I've seen this before.

Brett had come from a corporate world.

So he he he warned me.

And then when it started to happen,

he said, you need to get that car.

I said, man, it's not a bad idea

because at least if I got pinched

where I'm going to like lose my house or something,

I sell the car off.

Yeah, it's worth a buck.

You know what I mean?

There's something there.

And if my business grows and goes great,

I get to race another Toyota Supra.

OK, pretty good.

Right. But I needed the car.

The car was going to be my.

And the car you're talking about is the white race car.

Yeah. OK. Yeah.

And that thing was in jail at Real Street, anyway,

because they were so tied up in themselves racing.

The car was like, oh, no, never going to do that.

I mean, we went up to Oklahoma to help Jared.

When we got involved with Jared Holt,

the aim was to get on the street outlaw show.

That was the only reason why we got the first time

I met Jared Holt was going on the Internet

and watching him do this monstrous burnout

in front of his house.

And all I could think is, I don't ever want to build an engine for that guy.

You know, and like it turned into a great relationship,

but we only got involved to go to the street outlaws thing.

In all these years later, we go to the street outlaws

and Jared had organized a team

and the politics of the show were changing.

So it actually never aired.

But we won.

The guys with the import cars beat the guys with the domestic cars.

And it was cool.

And I wasn't allowed to be there.

Get the car ready.

Get back to the airport.

We don't want you there while they're filming.

But didn't you start this company?

I gave up too much power over time.

I'm not a power guy.

I don't give a shit.

I don't give a shit how strong you think you are.

I don't have time for it.

So I as I couldn't manage the stress, I passed it off.

And when I was doing by passing it off

to the right person for a long time,

and then the corporate mentality got them

where they they they lost sight.

They lost sight of where they'd come from.

They lost sight of who they wanted to be.

They lost like, you know, you you can lose sight.

You know, it happens in a lot of different segments of life.

Yeah.

But you got to you got to build the life

that you can look yourself in the eye and say, like, I'm doing all right.

You know, but money is tricky because money will lie to you.

Yeah. Yeah.

What's interesting is that you said you were fine.

You're cool with 300.

And I'm just thinking, like, you know,

what does that look like for a car guy?

Well, I have a house, family kids, family kids.

I have a Supra.

I have a Mustang.

If my Mustang throws the crank out of it, I order a crank.

I was cool. I was rolling pretty hard.

You know, like that's a great for me.

That was more than comfortable.

So my aim was to adjust my income as needed

to start to filter myself out of the company

while filtering Brett into the company, because he was the first person.

I had some really great guys over the years.

Yeah. But Brett LaSalle is a different dude.

And it shows in his performance.

And he he was so much better than me in so many ways

that all I could have wanted for the company was for him to be my replacement

as I aged out. Yeah.

And it just the it was such a good plan.

It just got messed up.

What was like the last video you remember doing there?

Oh, man, putting my small block four together for my Mustang.

I went I just stepped out of the meeting where they told me that I was getting

kicked out of the company and I went back to the shop and I was so beside myself

and I was putting together the Mustang engine and I was with.

The media guys and I couldn't I couldn't do anything.

I couldn't like work, you know, I couldn't I couldn't work.

And and you know, it's like it was tough.

And then as the year progressed and they really were pouring more stress on

the communication breakdown was total.

So it just got worse and worse as the year went on.

And I kept saying the same thing, like just package me out.

You know, like if I have to if I can't be like there's no going back.

Just package me out.

It's mine as much as it is yours.

Every dollar here is mine as much as it is yours.

Be fair with me and I'll leave.

I don't even I didn't even get an attorney.

And the more power I gave, the more they took.

And then it just got dumb at the end.

But I I understand in my heart that the things that are going to ruin

my life as I continue, it's only me outside of a health crisis.

It's only me.

Like I have I have a good reputation.

I am well known throughout the industry.

Yeah, I have a clear aim on what I'm doing with our garage.

I don't need to make a ton of money.

What I need to do is get younger dudes that understand that I can get them there.

And in 10 years, I can have my paycheck.

Here's my paycheck.

You boys keep the rest, which is what I wanted out of that place.

I wanted to be able to be J for them and just cover my cover my bills.

Yeah.

And let me let me grow old and I'll come in and I'll do your stuff

and I'll dino cars and I'll be whatever you want me to be.

As long as it's the same B I've been for the past 15 years.

Yeah, I wasn't going to evolve into a desk guy.

I'm not going to evolve into a desk guy.

I'm a technician.

You know, yeah, I'm I'm I'm cool with that.

So it's like, just let me be me and make some money off of me.

And now that didn't work out.

So it's like, OK, let me be me and let me get you to a point that you're making money.

Right. And if we do, you know, like at a million a month,

a lot of dudes are eating good, a lot of dudes are eating good.

A million a month.

If you sell a million a month in car parts.

Hey, listen, I know it sounds big.

Oh, crap. I know it sounds big.

Sweating men now.

No, no, it's when you got to sell three million a month is a lot.

You constantly are like on the hamster wheel.

And I think it beats the fun out of you. OK.

But like 500 a month, things are good.

People are eating. Money is money is flowing.

OK, you're not getting rich, but everything's cool.

A million a month.

Like, you know, you could start putting a lot of money in households

where guys that, you know, like you want to be the dude

that can't afford a second kid because you can't afford the second kid.

So you get it, you want to get into a job that you can afford your family.

You could afford your hobbies where you're going to be miserable

or you're going to have shitty hobbies, you know, like, like,

if you're in the cars, it's expensive.

You got to make a little bit of money to do it, you know, when it comes to car parts,

though, it seems like it's a pretty common thing.

A lot of people just seem to jump right into it.

But I've always wondered, like with the margins being where they are

with a lot of these companies and products, like it's

is it a more of volume based business, of course?

Or is it something that, you know, because you just said you do five

hundred thousand, you're OK, a million, you're that's like a sweet spot.

But it's a people based business. OK.

It's a people based business.

I want to be the guy that you think about when you need to order something.

And I'll be grateful that you think of me.

And the guys that I'm going to have with me are going to feel the same way.

And it's not bullshit.

It's not pressure.

It's it's having a clear aim of what the customer needs.

And it's being able to fulfill their needs and make a little bit of money in the process.

The engines deal is is complicated.

And it's intense because someone may ruin your engine.

And OK. And what do you do?

Right. Right.

But selling car parts, you know, like the the the people that are already here

are great people. I already have great people.

I need two or three more people and I see them.

I look over, I see them and I'm like, man, as soon as I can,

as soon as I can cut your check, I'm going to call you, you know.

And it's like they already know. Yeah. You know.

So, you know, if anything, the pressure of this business growing

will pressure those guys to treat their people better.

Because they could lose them.

I'm like, I'm waiting for your girl to start making those emotional posts

on Instagram so I can slide her DMs.

That's the way I look at that.

I'm just waiting.

I'm waiting for you to forget to call her on her birthday.

I'm a caller. Oh, you know what I mean?

Because because I can take a few guys on board here

and they can make a good living for themselves. Yeah.

And again, my aim is the same.

Hey, whenever it's time for me to slow my life down to the point,

let's pick a number that works, but it's your place now.

I'm retiring and retiring may mean

an engine when I want to build.

I mean, Ed Pink was like in his 90s, still building engines.

Yeah. Kenny Deathwater's in his 80s, still building engines.

You go by you go by Kenny's place on a Friday night at six o'clock.

You may find him on the dyno with a smile.

I want to be that, you know what I mean?

I'm not trying to I'm not trying to meet you at some bar

to drink, express and whiskey and drink, smoke, expensive cigars.

And I'm not doing that. I want to be in the cars.

Yeah. I mean, yeah.

So you're working back.

So you're basically creating with RS Garage,

what you've already created over there, but with experience,

with experience, obviously, but with experience.

I made so many mistakes, so many things that I just wouldn't do again.

I didn't know any better.

Yeah, I just didn't know any better.

I had my train of thought and nobody was going to change it.

And it worked when I was in my pillar

and just like they their train of thought worked in their pillars.

Yeah. But it was a it was a game of integrating everything.

And we just went about it wrong.

You know, everyone made their mistakes and and the thing popped.

You know, those guys, there's money involved for another three and a half years.

Pay me the rest of my money and leave me alone.

I just went to a meeting a few weeks ago.

I said, pay me the rest of my money and leave me alone.

I lost money. I told you, I'll lose money. Yeah.

Just let me be after that. Right.

And, you know, dude, I tell you where I go in this industry.

A lot of people are like, what do you mean, man?

Only a couple of people were like,

we don't want to talk to you because we don't want to deal

with these long emails we're going to get from your guys.

And I said, oh, I've seen those emails.

Wow. And I laugh about it because I'm like, I'll call you later, man.

Yeah. You know, I've been selling your shit for 15 years.

I'll call you later. Maybe you'll come around.

I'm not going to beg, you know,

because there's a lot of good brands.

There's a lot of good brands and, you know, the guys,

any reseller of good brands needs to do their best to protect those brands

because it's not like the offshore markets are going to stop trying

to take over these US based pillars.

Yeah. You know, people will make money

in the deterioration of the industry

and the people that are making money don't give a shit about you and me.

And and we could end up kind of wrecking our whole industry

if we're not careful and don't believe in the right people and the right companies.

Right. It's a slippery slope.

Oh, 100 percent. You're right about that.

Look at the turbo game in the past few years.

Honestly, the turbo game is I mean, I feel like there's

there's a lot of behind the scenes drama that I hear, you know,

because obviously I speak to a lot of people now, but I don't really get

involved in that. However, yeah, you just started to see a lot

more companies come out and and those people are,

obviously, they're not anybody new.

They were just working with a different company and other.

Well, you have all you have Garrett.

Garrett didn't want this space and it showed.

Yeah, they didn't really try.

And what they're bigger than turtles, right?

Yeah, they're huge. That's nice.

But when precision grew, it was because Garrett had cut them off

and they had to start sourcing their own components.

Precision was like a specialty job shop.

So they were taking parts from this place and parts

from that place and making these high performance turbos.

And Garrett was like, we don't want you doing that anymore.

So precision grew and that took, you know, 15 or whatever years.

Yeah. And they were building these badass units

that made a lot of power and they could fix that if you broke it.

Garrett makes some badass stuff, but Garrett won't fix it.

Yeah. So if you break a new Garrett turbo.

Sorry, if you break a new precision turbo, they work with you.

And then you have these other offshoots, you know, like the Apex line,

truck pulling coming into this market.

You have a heart.

It's another specialty line, truck pulling trying to come into this market.

And then you have some Chinese stuff that's getting rebadged and rebranded.

And it's like, well, yeah, precision is Chinese, too.

It's like, well, kind of there are components

that you can't get anywhere but China.

Sorry, America, I know, like they make some badass stuff

and you've got to get that part from that place. Right.

You know what I mean?

Like you don't get the pick and choose where some of the best shit comes from

because they went heavy into precision manufacturing

while we were busy thinking, this is America. Right.

You know, so, you know, there's some good units out there.

But I think it won't change that much

because I don't know that the the lower line turbos

that have come out in the past couple of years,

they're never going to outperform the top.

And and and sometimes people just want the top.

Yeah, you know, they say like, hey, man,

give me the turbo that'll make 1100 and I'm going to use it at a thousand

or they save money and they buy a turbo

that's 200 horsepower under, but they save money and they don't care.

And that's OK, too. Yeah.

You know, but I tested a bunch of those units.

I know how they run.

Like Polestar stuff, stuff's not bad.

The worst thing about Polestar is they

I don't know that they'll ever really be taken

seriously because they've already established their price points

and to change your price points by a lot

and go through actual branding exercise.

It's tough. Not a lot of companies survive that.

You know, it's like it's one of the reasons why Motek is great.

Motek costs more because there's more

high level people involved in that company

and it's worked for over 30 years that way.

So when you try to go into the space that you have to charge more than the best guy.

Right. You're kind of up against something, right?

So that all you can do is come in low and try to creep your way up.

You know, it took a long time to go from the Hyundai XL

to the Genesis line. Yeah.

So it takes time, but Polestar makes some neat stuff.

You know, I think that I think that if I were shopping

for something that wasn't a precision and wasn't a Garrett

and maybe wasn't a Borg, you know, I would I would shop for a Polestar,

you know, and or I would shop a TurboSmart

because there's people there that I genuinely like.

Oh, I've got they're doing on Turbos.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because there's the other thing like you want to give money to people you like.

Yeah. The worst thing is giving money to somebody you don't like.

Right. It's like.

It's like, no. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, this first thing for me, I've been to the game so long.

There's a lot of guys I just like dealing with. Yeah.

Yeah, they're cool. TurboSmart.

They're also one of the sponsors on the on the bill, too.

I have the regulator and, you know, their wastegate and stuff.

But great guys, like really, really cool.

Yeah, it's interesting to see them wander into the turbo space.

But I understand. Yeah.

Why they did it.

But their wastegates and like that little oil pressure regulator,

they've always made nice stuff.

Oh, it's really nice.

Yeah. Everybody who's seen the regulator on the car, they're like,

what is that?

Because some cars need that.

Yeah. Yeah.

My brother has some evos and like the way that the crankcase pressure

and the turbocharger and the oil pressure, the way they all interact.

Got to regulate the oil. Yeah.

It's just that's how that works.

So that's a neat part that will solve problems.

I put one on my super a couple of years ago because I'm like,

I wonder if I can burn this turbo up with not enough oil.

Because because I I hear people bitch about precision and like I broke them.

Yeah. But I know why I broke them.

I shot a turbine out of the back of my turbocharger at two to one pressure ratio.

Like shit happens.

You know what I mean?

But but to break one with good behavior, it's like, no.

I mean, I just went to Bonneville, ran the thing open for five miles.

We literally deformed the turbine housing.

The turbine housing changed shape.

Yeah. The turbocharger is OK.

But the turbine housing is no long around because you hold it wide open for five

miles, you need a different material housing, cast isn't going to work.

You know what I mean? Like it's pretty reliable stuff.

The turbo thing is weird.

I feel like a lot of people have their own kind of experiences with them.

And you blow up a turbo one time and you automatically think it's garbage.

I mean, there's people out there like that, too.

This is blew it up.

They put a different turbo on their car and all of a sudden

it doesn't have the same issues or anything like that.

And it's automatically a better turbo.

So we owe it to ourselves to ask why a lot more times.

I always ask why.

So I that's that's just me and the kind of person I am.

Yeah, I'm always going to look at, well, why did that happen?

What's the difference?

There's got to be something that's causing that or that's mature.

Yeah. Well, why is it going wrong?

Like we had a guy last week, he emailed me.

He wanted to blame his engine builder, his engine builders, a buddy of mine.

So I instantly engage and I'm like, tell me more.

You know, it's like, OK, guy, you burned a piston out of the engine.

Nobody's piston was going to tolerate what you did to it.

The part is overheated and it it melted away and opened up

and the engine burned up.

There's a reason why we say it burned up.

It overheated. Yeah.

Like it wasn't a clearance problem.

It was a burned up problem.

You know, but I have a luxury of like helping that guy through it.

What I'm not going to do is be like, oh, yeah, that guy sucks.

Let me be your savior.

That never happened with one of my engines.

Yeah, I don't have time for that.

I can't build enough engines.

I can't build 40 engines a month.

I can't service the industry.

I'm glad that we have so many good guys.

Yeah. You know, I could service from a parts standpoint, a lot of people.

But from an engine alone standpoint, like, yeah, man, I'm going to.

What am I going to do?

Spend five years wearing my hands out.

Yeah.

And walk around with balls of arthritis in my 60s.

No, man, you know what I mean?

Like, you got to think a little.

So now that you said that, which brings me to the next point,

I've been watching your videos and you've been rebuilding a lot of two J's

and also building them as well.

One of the more recent videos you were talking about

buckets on the head and how I'm not really sure if you were saying

that you shouldn't run a certain material camshaft or certain coated buckets.

But you never really explain why that cylinder head was having issues and so on.

So so just curious as to what the issues were.

You have the interaction between the lifter or bucket and the cam lobe.

And that is a constant thing in its splash lubricated.

So when you have an engine that has a chilled cast cam,

which is how the the widespread accepted method of flat tap it operation,

non roller cam operation is chilled cast.

The widespread accepted way to manage roller cams,

roller rockers is a steel cam.

Now, because chilled cast gets tricky to get when I send,

if you and I go in the cam business and we send a P.O.

for 100 cam blanks to the chilled cast factory.

It's like, bro, we just got a P.O.

for 10,000 units from Fiat.

We don't have time for you.

So billet solves a huge production problem because you can get billet cores

and make billet cams. Right. Right.

Chilled cast is a material that is it will smear

during oil starvation.

And then as the engine wears back in as it

re familiarizes itself, it often just kind of like wears the cam

and it wears the cam in a way that like no one cares.

OK, this is how engines have operated a flat type of cams

for longer than I've been alive.

Now, with a flat type of cam that's chilled cast,

it is possible to wipe a lobe off, meaning that you have screwed it up

so bad that the lobe will wear off and end up in the oil filter.

Like the material.

Yeah, it just wears the cam shaft out.

So if you look up and you could put it in your

in your on screen, but like.

Wiped flat type of cam.

Yeah, there's millions of photos of wiped out flat type of cams.

So that there's the risk of failure is still not zero with a chilled cast.

It's not. You're doing dumb stuff with your valve train.

You're on the two step.

You're using anti lag.

You're idling the engine too low because you think it sounds cool.

You're not changing your oil as much as you should.

Your mixtures are rich, so your oil is diluted.

You're hard on parts. Yeah.

Well, a chilled cast is like, I mean, I don't like what you're doing to me,

but I could deal with it.

Well, steel cams on a flat tap it will start to wipe the material.

It'll first displace the coating that that the coating will work

in best case scenarios for some period of time.

OK, and I have chilled cast cams or steel cams from back in the day

that I immediately started using with DLC buckets.

I'm pretty good with oil changes.

I'm pretty good on the tune up.

I don't do a lot of anti lag.

I don't do a lot of two step.

I put a thousand dyno runs on these cams and they are perfect.

OK, OK.

So you can have success with the component, but will you?

And if you say, hey, I don't care what Jay says, I'm buying steel cams.

OK, well, cool, man, I don't have time to talk you out of it.

Will you buy a DLC bucket?

Like, you know, there's this guy that says that that's not really what you need.

It's like, well, listen, a DLC by design is a resource in engines,

in tools, in very, very many markets because it helps

manage the crisis at the surface level when oil isn't there.

OK.

So it all it is is like overdraft protection

in slide lubricated or or slide parts where you have a lot of action.

Like, yeah, if you think about an RB26 cam lobe size

and a EJ Subaru cam lobe size and the position of the RB26 bucket

versus the Subaru bucket.

Well, no wonder the Subaru guys were having so much trouble.

They're all flash tuned.

The idle speeds are low.

The buckets, the large diameter of the cams, a long path all the way around.

Yeah. So you're just sliding longer and it kills parts.

But, you know, with a steel cam,

have the valve train set up correctly, you spend a little extra money

on DLC buckets, which isn't even an argument anymore

because they're so affordable back when I had to buy DLC buckets.

It was like a thousand bucks to get them coated.

You know what I mean?

Like just to get them coated, you had to buy the buckets and then get them coated.

But those buckets are in service.

I literally they're the buckets that are in the streamliner

that I just went three hundred eighty five miles an hour with.

Same buckets from 2012 or something.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

So like, yeah, it cost me a thousand dollars more for those buckets.

Look how much fun I've had with those buckets.

Those buckets and I have been doing stuff for pretty long time.

Yeah. And they still look damn good.

You know, I just put some BC cams on them and like away we go.

So, you know, the problem with the problem with it.

At the root of the problem is budgets.

If I can only afford this or that,

well, then having to buy a DLC bucket raises the job

by this amount of money.

Like right now in today's market, it's around 300 bucks more.

OK, because if you buy a Toyota bucket, you got to buy 24 of them.

And that comes up to, you know, 500 bucks or whatever.

And if you buy like a Kelford buckets, like 740 bucks.

Yeah. So the money is small,

especially when you think about if your steel cam goes wrong

and it rolls that material up, it rolls it right up the lobe

until it starts to wad up.

And then you've got this little raised lip on the lobe

and that little raised lip starts to cut the bucket.

And then the bucket breaks

and then it's hitting the valve and now you're on the brink of a catastrophic failure.

So if you have like an open downpipe and you don't ever listen to your engine

and this and that, like that could be failing and you just don't know.

Yeah. So it's like, you know, hey, you're drifting your car

twice a month.

When's the last time you took the cam covers off and just check lash?

It's a service item.

The engine was never designed to do that.

I know your buddies were all there up against the wall

and you held it on the rev limiter all the way around the bank.

And that shit was bad ass.

But your valvetrain is not designed to do that.

So can you just check the lash?

Can you can you visually look at the cam lobes and look at the buckets

and make sure that everything's OK?

Are you changing the oil every event?

You know, like, you know, there's there's ways to make both successful.

It's a controversial topic because of the players involved

because you have a guy that's got to protect his income

and his income is in steel cams.

And he's probably the guy that likes me the least out of the whole industry.

And that's life, man. You know what I mean?

Like just use chilled cast cams at school.

If you're going to use steel cams, yep, you should.

You recommend running a DLC coated bucket.

Yeah, if it's in budget.

I don't think you have.

I think you got to stop the if if you're going to use a steel cam.

Just get the DLC bucket because if it goes wrong,

the amount of money it's going to cost you is way more

than just buying the right stuff the first time. OK.

Because because now once you ruin a bucket, you've ruined the cam.

Right. So there's $1,500 in loss if nothing else was damaged.

If nothing else was damaged, it's $1,500 of loss.

So simple math says cheaper to buy the buckets now.

Right. Then it is to buy a Maft Drive ruined a cam.

And the main reason for the wear on the buckets

is because of the way that the head is lubricated.

It's a flat tap it thing. OK.

If you try to work through all of the engines

that are flat, tap it and all the engines that are roller.

And you try to assign them in columns of what type of cam would be for each.

Just paint with broad strokes. OK.

Flat type of cam.

If you're going to use a steel cam because you love the brand.

Just get a DLC coated bucket.

It's cheap insurance. It's cheap insurance.

If you're going to drift your car and bang it on the rev counter on a regular basis.

Yeah. Pull the cam covers off every once in a while and take a look.

Listen to the engine when it's cold. Right.

Have your buddy get a get a towel and stuff a towel in the tailpipe

to shut that thing up for a minute and listen to the engine.

Is the valve train quiet? OK.

All right. Shut the car off.

Take the towel before it catches on fire.

You know what I mean?

Like listen to the valve train. Right. Yeah.

So where do you where do you think what were you revving the two days to?

Like what are two days as you rep to?

It depends on the turbo size. OK.

But it seems like.

If you pair it with the factory oil system,

not factory oil pump, because there's a lot of B.S.

around oil pumps, but the factory groter design wet sump low capacity system.

You pair that along with the fact that your

transmission may be synchronized and you pair that with the turbo

that is on at four thousand because remember early on we talked about turbo lag.

Right. You really want to be done by eight.

Eighty three, eighty five by eighty five.

You're going to start wrecking your trans because it doesn't want to shift at that speed.

Those guys that post those videos like got my new trainee shift in at nine thousand

for one, the turbo is too small.

There's no power up there. OK. For two, they're just ruining the transmission

and they don't want to. They don't know.

They haven't thought about it under a large enough block of time. OK.

Now, the Bonneville cars, the liner really wants to go to ten thousand.

You look at the fuel map, the shape of the fuel map

and you're like, holy crap, this thing wants to go to ten thousand.

And.

And that's pretty neat. Yeah.

You know, nine thousand is very easy.

If you have the right turbo and you have a dry sump, nine thousand is like simple

and you have a dry sump.

Yeah, if you have a dry sump like Jared Holt has, I have a log

from his car where he just does doing a burnout at ten eight.

And I'm like, hey, man, can you not do that again?

He's like, I remember that.

You know, it's like just not again.

You know what I mean? Because it's hard on stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. So if you have the dry sump aside, obviously the oil is taken care of.

Right. Now, what other components does it start to break down after that?

Like valetrain components or oil?

Well, if you have a dry sump, I'm sorry, even then, you still have oil problems.

OK, OK, because oil gets aerated.

Like you should poach that clip off of Bill Daley's website for this

and show what oil looks like at higher RPM, because it just turns in a foam.

And like when you read oil ads, they'll talk about anti foaming and this and that.

But like oil has a tough life inside of your car.

You know, we when I had Real Street, I had to use a specific oil

because of the branding and OK, and because money was involved.

That was the oil I used. Right.

And now that I'm on my own, I can use whatever I want. Right.

So like I did some research and it's like, yeah, man,

the same thing that I was told 20 years ago is the same thing that I tell somebody today.

The stuff that comes out of that Pennsylvania crude,

it's like the best base oil on the planet. OK.

Not all oil that comes out of the ground gets to be motor oil.

Some of it's just not good enough.

So you get into like the the driven brand or Gibbs.

Back in the day, there used to be brands like

Penn's Oil used to be and they're making a push in marketing.

But that used to be the stuff is Pennsylvania oil, Penn's Oil.

You know what I mean?

So the main thing, though, and not to sound like a brand whore is

change your oil, you know what I mean?

Smell your oil. What does your oil smell like?

You know, again, are you getting your oil hot enough?

Yeah. Does it smell like fuel?

If it smells like fuel, it's ruined.

You know what I mean?

If you're using methanol fuel and your oil is getting like milky,

right, the oil is ruined like that.

That driven oil, it does a really good job of not mixing in with what is it

called driven driven. Yeah.

Where can you get that from?

It's a ton of brands, a ton of resellers.

OK, so it's common. You get it's common.

It's not.

They're a big brand in a lot of other places.

Yeah. And I met the dude at SEMA last year

and he was like, hey, man, I know you and we got to talking.

And I'm like, yeah, man, let's let's do something.

So I used driven oil at Bonneville this year.

Yeah. And while we were at Bonneville,

we switched between three different oils to look and see if there was

any measurable performance and pressure.

And.

There was and it and it comes out of the engine differently.

It comes out still looking like it went in.

It doesn't it doesn't beat up and change color right away from the fuel.

Methanol is really hard on oil.

Yeah. You know, it's it's if you have like a mechanically injected

blower car that you can't control,

fuel flow is just flowing into the engine, you know, within reason.

The oil is wrecked immediately.

You're changing that oil like every run. Wow.

Yeah. So we're we're lucky.

Like, hey, man, don't change your oil every 5,000 miles

if you're using ethanol, changing every two.

How much are you driving the thing anyway?

You know, are you driving it every single day on ethanol?

Yeah. Because if you are, you'll wear the cylinders out of it,

you know, because it's there's some reasons why gasoline

was the fuel of choice in the country.

There's early papers that that say alcohol based fuels

are superior in performance.

Well, yeah, they were, but they're hard on lubrication.

So we went to gasoline.

Not to mention there's a little bit of money to be made in gasoline.

A little bit. That's a valid point.

Yeah, a valid point.

I forgot to ask you about compression ratios and fuel

since we're on the topic of fuel.

What is a good compression ratio to run if you have a turbo car

and you're running boosts on pump gas?

And it's a port injected engine.

Correct. OK.

Because don't compare your boost levels

with your buddy's boost levels

if he has a direct injected engine.

They're not the same. OK.

So a port injected engine.

Is it a factory turbocharged engine?

Yes or no.

And if it's a factory turbocharged engine,

use the factory compression ratio

because they already assigned something

that would live at least through warranty. OK.

The higher compression ratio is a lower margin

of error when it comes to managing the heat in the cylinder.

The the pump gas world

with a properly sized turbo, you can make it up and boost.

You don't you don't have to

if you're in a limited class

where you can only use this turbocharger or this supercharger.

You keep putting compression in

until you can't keep it alive anymore and it's fast.

If you are working with a situation that you have a budget

and you just want to have an enjoyable engine

and it was eight and a half to one stock.

Yeah, make it eight and a half to one.

Like these guys that are all caught up and like.

It's nine to one or it's nine and a quarter.

It's nine point five or it's nine point seven.

As they inch up in compression,

they have to come down in timing.

They have to come down and boost.

Well, then you get yourself kind of in a in a predicament

because most modern turbochargers make a lot of boost.

Yeah. And like in the JZ world,

you could have a twin wastegate manifold

and a say a seventy six seventy five.

And maybe you can't make less than 17 pounds.

So 17 pounds on pump gas, 10 to one compression.

Now your car is kind of useless

and there's going to be dudes that chime in like this.

Is it like the stock block records?

Yeah, like they come in and they they beat their chest

and then they blow their stuff up and they disappear.

Well, you're going to have guys that make a lot of power on pump gas.

And I've done it.

And when I first started, I used to tune a car.

No, I didn't tune a car.

Chris speed tuned it, which was even better

because now it was in someone else's hands.

All I had to do is make a good engine.

And Chris and I were faced with the fact

that the turbocharger wouldn't make in less than 20 pounds.

It's a T 88 GK big old school,

Gretty like billet seventy six wheel,

eighty eight millimeter compressor wheel.

Like it was a badass unit for its day.

Yeah. And it would make 700 horsepower on pump gas

and the dude that owned it would take it out and street race it.

And he wanted to run on pump gas because C 16 was expensive.

That was his whole.

He's a really interesting character.

I see him every once in a while still.

His name is Ricky, but he he wanted to run it on pump gas.

That thing lived fine.

It lived fine because it had good gas flow and low compression.

So he was in a low back pressure situation

with an OEM compression ratio and some aftermarket cams.

It was like a best case scenario.

I mean, that thing would probably outperform

most modern builds on pump gas because again,

it made 700 horsepower on pump gas and it lived.

It didn't have knock sensors on it.

It lived because it was it was happy to do it.

You know, that's a big deal.

So compression ratio.

When you're building an engine, go back to the checkboxes.

Ethanol or gasoline?

Yes or no.

Port injected or direct injected?

Yes or no.

And then just say like, well, what did the factory do?

Because you're not going to gain that much power by increasing

the amount of power you gain by increasing

the compression ratio on pump gas is not worth the risk

of narrowing in on the margin of safety.

OK, the way the cylinder pressure is measured

or the way the cylinder pressure behaves in the engine

when you lose control of the cylinder because of detonation,

it is like bad news bears, you know, like when you're

when you hear that camera take off from the stop light

and it sounds like a chain is dragging in the engine.

Yeah, or like a lot of people don't know what detonation sounds like.

So if you've heard an engine detonate before.

This it's trying to stop the engine.

The cylinder pressure is so high that it's trying to stop the engine.

It's like a it's like a compressor surge tries to stop the turbo.

It's very bad for the engine, very bad for the engine.

It doesn't matter whose pistons you bought.

If you detonate it, it's going to break.

You know, it doesn't break.

It doesn't break the first time you detonate it.

Right. But if you put it under detonation,

it's going to die in seconds and that's not not a not affordable

situation, not an enjoyable situation.

So having a higher compression, people would probably want that

just to cover the areas where the turbo is not in boost.

Is that really what it is?

You're you're really jerking it from the top when you look at it that way.

It the gains aren't that big. Right. They're not that big.

Guess what? Your two liter engine is always going to suck at 2,500 RPM.

It's just going to it's never going to have the gusto.

So just stop trying to make it something it's not.

Yeah, size the turbocharger to make the power you want.

Deal with the lag. Have fun.

It'll be bad ass.

OK, now you mentioned knock sensors, right?

Now, a lot of people in drag racing or even drifting,

they don't really run all the safeties that you can offer.

Right. And I'm assuming that's probably because it's probably

dangerous to have a motor to shut off in the middle of a run

or some or if they're drifting in the middle of a pass.

It's probably dangerous if the car shuts off to do a safety.

Now, for people who are driving their cars in the street

and building, let's say a 2J or even an RB,

you know, you probably want to have all the safeties on for

just to make sure that the car lives for whatever it is.

Now, what safeties should you run or do you feel are mandatory?

If let's say if I came to you and you built my engine

and I was just looking for you to consult my build.

What do you recommend?

OK, the minimums.

Yeah. If we have a.

Well, we're going to get we're going to talk about sensors first.

OK, because if we don't have the sensors, we don't really have the safety.

Yeah. So there are two major types of aftermarket fuel injection.

There is speed density or volumetric efficiency.

Yeah. And there's pulse width and pulse width.

The air temp isn't really in the equation.

The air temp correction tables are there, but they're for you to figure out.

OK. And you to decide where is a proper volumetric efficiency system

needs to know the correct air temp.

It needs to know the correct altitude.

So if you, for example, you have a car that the air temp sensor

takes six to seven seconds to respond,

you'll never get into the timing correction that you thought you had.

The table set, but the sensors slow. Right.

So you get one of those.

They're super affordable, the rife, fast I.T. sensor.

So you buy that you buy that on the front end because you then

then you can know the performance of the of the intercooler system as a whole.

And how hot is the air you're feeding the engine?

Like I have an I.T. sensor on my Supra in the air cleaner itself.

Some days it'll be one hundred and seventy five degrees of air in length

temp before it hits the turbo because there's no air box.

It's just a filter in the engine compartment.

Wow. And all that has to be taken care of, right?

But get a fast I.T.

sensor so at least you can do your timing correction and your fuel correction

in real time from there when you talk about avoiding gross failures,

like gross failures, knock sensors are important,

but we've got to kind of put them to the side for a second and talk about

the wideband sensor is probably your first single

whistle to blow if the fuel pressure drops and it leans out,

the wideband is going to tell you if the injectors if the fuel pressure drops

and the fuel injectors run out because they're trying to cover for you

because it's got closed loop, the wideband is going to tell you.

So a wideband safety first and foremost

should be something that you want.

So it says, hey, my air fuel ratio

and we'll just pick regular numbers at 20 pounds of boost is 11.5.

That's my aim.

And normally it's between 1145 and 116.

And that's my cool thing.

Well, if it's at 12 to I want to do something about it.

And if I have that information, I can. Right.

So the lambda sensor is probably your biggest single,

like, hey, I got your buddy type thing.

From there, you can have a fuel pressure sensor

to help you diagnose the problem that you're experiencing.

Right.

And some systems need a fuel pressure sensor to do the model.

So sometimes you are forced to buy some sensors.

OK. But at a minimum, you know, like A.M.

used to make a 30-4900.

It was a fail-safe AFR you could put on any car.

And if it went over this air fuel ratio at this boost level,

you could open a relay.

So back before ECUs had safeties, you could just shut a car off.

Super awesome.

Oh, that's all those like Terminator Cobra guys

that would lean their stuff out and blow it up when the fuel pump went bad.

It was like the best thing that happened for them if they knew about it.

Yeah. So the safety is important.

Temperature safeties are important.

You know, if the engine's overheating, you want to know

if the oil pressure is low, you want to know.

Right. You know, like we set all the safeties

on the Balanbao cars at 55 PSI.

It's not what I want.

But if the oil is getting beat up, it's what I got to deal with.

Yeah. So, you know, like there's a if the oil pump belt falls off,

which has happened, a safety is there to shut the engine off.

Now, we had a driver with the guy that owns the Datsun Red.

He said, the car shut off.

I said, let's let's see why.

He goes, I put it back in gear and tried to bump start it.

But it went in bump start.

The oil pump belt had fallen off.

Oh, wow. He's just turning the engine

without the oil pump belt on.

Now, the engine survived.

Yeah. But I'm sure that when I take that engine apart, it's going to say,

like, don't be mad at me for looking like this because that day happened.

You know, yeah, just safeties are cool.

Knock sensors, though, big bowl of information.

The type of fuel used affects the knock sensors ability to be heard.

OK. So if you have a gasoline engine,

the cylinder has a fairly low quantity of fuel.

And it's like ringing a bell and it makes noise.

And you could see the knock on the knock sensor.

When you are dealing with ethanol, it's more fuel volume.

And the bell kind of has a towel on it.

So when you hit it, you can still hear it, but it's not really ringing.

And then with methanol, it's like you wet the towel and threw it on the bell

because I have logs from I've been collecting knock data now for a number of years.

And it's it's very fun to go through.

But if you want to use knock sensors,

you have to detonate the engine and in in order to do that,

you you pick an environment like a dyno and you

I did I did it with my super a while back.

I went to the dyno on a Saturday and I just said I'm going to detonate my engine.

So you pick a spot in the timing map

and you just put some big numbers in it like I'm up nine, 10 degrees.

Yeah. And then you start leaning the mixture out.

Oh, boy, as soon as that thing is lean,

it will ring like a bell,

but you have to knock the engine to get the data to use the data.

OK. And on rich mixtures,

you'd be surprised how they don't really detonate.

Like if you go back, you're young, but if you go back to like

Subaru tuning days or EVO tuning days,

the cars, you'd take the car to the dyno

and it would peg the wideband rich as soon as it went under boost.

And people would tune it by leaning the fuel out

and the cars would pick up 40 horsepower.

Yeah. Well, they were so rich to keep them from detonating

because Mr. Bishi didn't want that thing back in the service drive

three weeks after it left the dealership blown up.

And so fuel is a very good fuel as a safety.

Your lean mixtures are not your friend.

So you want to talk about safeties, fuel is a safety

from not only an octane standpoint, but a but a mixture standpoint.

Both of those work in your favor.

Now, if you're running the same fuel consistently,

let's say if you're always running the same 85 or ethanol

from the same gas station, does that not sense it really?

Is it really going to tell you anything, though?

Or is that you've kind of already broken your idea

because you're you're buying the same 85 from the same gas station.

So right now you have no idea what you bought.

OK. Because you don't know what's in the tank.

And I'm not trying to scare you.

Yeah, seriously, but you don't know.

Ethanol is a big market in America.

So you have the alcohol industry that's using ethanol.

And you have the consumer market that's using ethanol

and you have the farmers that if they don't sell corn,

they're out of business. So ethanol is this big deal.

Well, if you buy ethanol, it's at E 100.

It is taxed as a human consumable grade and the tax rate is very high.

If you buy ethanol as a automotive grade, it's E 98.

It has a bittering in it that if you drink it, you'll get sick.

So just to keep the drunks out of the gas station.

But from there, it's cut because Susie's Tahoe doesn't care if it's E 60.

Right. Your car does.

So what is it cut with?

Is it cut with 60 octane fuel?

Is it cut with 93 octane fuel?

Is it cut with 100 octane fuel?

So your gas station example doesn't really work

because all the sensors telling you is what's not gasoline.

Right. Now, what if you're getting it from drums then?

OK, now you're now you're moving on up.

You're going to see what you're saying.

You're going to get canned ethanol.

You're going to buy it through a night

or you're going to buy it through one ethanol.

You're you're buying a known product that has a lot number.

And if you call either company, they can tell you

when it was made and what's in the jug.

So real deal.

You'd have to have it dangerously lean to have good knock data.

You'd probably burn it up learning.

So you run it rich.

But what my point, I guess, more so is

do you even need the data?

What is the data for?

Is it just for to for fuel or like, let's say

if you have a bad batch of fuel, that's going to tell you basically that?

Or no, it's going to blow up.

Unless you have knock retard, like if you're talking about

because that's the other thing,

how many systems actually have functional knock retard?

All it's been for the past 20 years is a line item on the features.

Very few systems when you actually go to use

everything on the description actually works the way it was sold.

OK. So and I'm not trying to throw

anybody under the bus because everybody's probably just doing the best they can.

Yeah. But you'd have to have a computer

that that really understands where the crankshaft was in firing order.

Because if the firing orders one, three, four, two, four cylinder deal.

And after one, three,

oh, we had a knock event for two, number three cylinders now made a noise

and we do something about it.

So there was a period in time where

knock was managed grossly over the whole engine.

I see knock. I pull everything down.

And now you have systems that they'll see knock on a cylinder

and make a correction based off of that cylinder's needs.

And it will remove timing and add fuel.

But all that's up to the tuner to prescribe.

Yeah. And it really takes a lot of time to do that.

Right. It doesn't take a lot of time to keep people from blowing stuff up right away.

But again, if it's not lean, it doesn't just blow up.

But you, you know, like when someone burns a piston out of their engine,

it's like they wish they had that knock data.

Yeah. Because they paid for that knock data

and now they can use that knock data.

So when you blow your engine up,

like there's a lot of guys that have knock sensors and don't use them,

just log it because in the event that you got a problem,

at least you can now you can go back.

But like I went to the Motec training a long time ago for the for knock

and it was a high boost of motorcycle and the amount of diesel fuel

we had to pour into the motorcycle to get it to detonate was alarming

because it just wouldn't detonate.

It's a small, efficient cylinder.

It works good.

You get into cars like bad

like two valves with blowers and a lot of heat and the blowers

sucking air by the header because there's no place to put an air cleaner.

Like those engines can die hard from detonation in a short period of time.

And nobody has knock sensors in that world.

Yeah. You know, just to have knock sensors,

you're talking about a fairly late model engine.

Right. You know, I think that like the LS stuff,

I don't know if Chevy LT, early LT, like like a 93 Camaro.

I don't even know if it had a knock sensor because a 93 Mustang didn't.

You know what I mean?

Like the Japanese cars, the Evo's and the Subaru's and the Supras,

they came factory with knock sensors.

Right. If you go back to the old days of the super tuning,

that they relied on the knock sensors to stay alive.

A factory ECU with more boost, a factory ECU and an after market

turbocharger, knock sensors were saving your butt before 85.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Because it was factory tuned, right?

They knew exactly what the engine sounded like under knock.

So that was like a very, very important sensor.

If you're running pump gas, then I'm assuming on a turbocharged engine.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

If you go into like a Subaru tuning for years,

Subaru has a it's called a dam model is dynamic advance

and it's two timing maps or more.

And on a great day, use this timing map.

Oh, the wife put 87 in it.

Go to that timing map. Yeah.

You know, and then you're back on 93.

OK, let's work our way back to the other map.

Well, guys that didn't really understand the knock strategies,

we're just making the maps the same and the cars will blow up.

We've had a good amount of tech talk, right?

And I didn't really get to ask you much about your personal stuff,

but I'm curious, you have a collection of cars, I'm assuming.

Maybe it's a small collection, large collection, who knows?

But let's say if I gave you a budget of $50,000, right?

OK, to build a car.

What would you build in today's day and age with that $50,000?

My personal taste.

Would ignore the Coyote platform because I don't want to let monomusting.

OK.

And I don't think that I can take a Fox body through restoration

and everything for that amount of money to make it nice

because I have a Fox body that I know how much

roughly how much money is in it.

And it's really dumb.

I think I build a Honda.

I think that would be my move.

I think I would probably build a I would find the nicest.

Civic or RSX or Integra, the nicest one.

I don't want to take it to paint.

I'm going to pay the extra $10,000 for the car all stock.

OK, so I don't have to take it to paint.

OK, I'm going to pay the extra money for the nicest car possible

so I can just focus my efforts on modifying the car.

I don't have to see the interior guy.

I don't have to look for a 25 year old headliner from Honda.

Yeah, I'm just I don't have to take it to the paint jail.

I'm just making it run with the way I want it to run.

I think that's what I would do.

Now, would it be B series or K series?

Depends on the body, OK, because if it was a

if it's a B car, it's probably a B car.

If it's an RSX or a later Civic, it's OK.

So you you're not big on like swapping.

I am.

I am it's just I'm kind of like.

Stuck a little bit on the B series deal,

because I really like the way the mechanical shifter feels.

So I have to give the mechanicals.

I've had K series.

I had a K series turbo civic.

I never I never posted I had it or or what not.

It was just just I wanted to check it out.

Yeah, I had a turbo K series Civic and I hated the shifter.

I hated that shifter.

It was I don't know who shifter it was, but it was like

it was just wasn't that nice.

What is it about the shift that you don't like?

I've never most cable operated shifters.

It's hard to nail a cable like my new Civic Type R.

Shifter is pretty good for cables, you know?

Mississippi Evo is pretty good for cables, but direct linkage.

Like if you drive a trans that has a direct linkage,

it's it's very mechanical feeling.

It's very it gives good feedback.

Right. You know, there's there's all these

different facets of the vehicle.

How does the vehicle drive?

How does the vehicle look?

What's the steering like?

How does it sound?

How much power does it make?

Can I share it with friends?

Or is it too powerful?

Does it shift good?

Does it stop good?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, so it's not just one thing.

So if you put me on a budget that I got to build this thing,

one of the things about it is is going to be the shifter.

I mean, hell, tell you what, rethinking it.

It may be an S 2000.

Oh, I would buy go buy

like a pretty nice I don't care.

So what? I don't have to think of the paint.

I buy I buy this.

I just saw one the other day in Ventura.

Yeah, this dude's like, old dude, he's bought it new.

He's selling it for twenty seven thousand bucks.

It's got like seventy eight thousand miles on it.

That's great. You buy that car, you turbocharge it.

You keep it down in power

so you don't blow the trans and diff out of it.

You just enjoy it and you're in under 50 grand.

That would probably be my move.

That's a fantastic car.

I had to read them and I blew blew one up

and then I crashed it.

But yeah, I bought to another one after that.

You blow it up and crash it at the same time.

Well, I blew it up.

I tried to actually, you know, it's funny.

The first time I emailed real street was for that car.

And I'm not sure if I spoke to you, but I emailed about that car.

I went out one night and that was the end of that car.

So yeah, it was already blew up.

And then I took it out, lost control of the car, crashed into a product van.

And luckily I'm still here.

Crashing into what product van?

Was it planned?

No, it's cards just kicked out.

OK, and yeah, I was making sure you weren't.

No, no, no, yeah.

I lost control, slid, and then hit a product van

and ended up on somebody's graph.

But I got another one after that because I just I love that.

Those are the shifter in that car is like amazing.

Right. That's a that's an internal rail shifter.

It's on the transit actuates the shift rails.

Yeah, it's tight.

Yeah, that shifter was is amazing.

But now I think I do.

I would do a S 2000.

That'd be my move.

You can do that.

So you so then you'd be 50,000.

You probably buy the car for what?

Twenty twenty seven. You have 20,000.

I got 20 grand to mod it.

I bet I can make that work as long as I don't.

As long as it makes like 350 and I don't break the trans

because the trans are the trans is soft in that thing.

Yeah, I was granny shifting.

Yeah, but if you can make so much power with those engines,

it's hard for me to look at an SX

and not just say, I'll just get a Porsche.

I want an SX, but I don't know that I want to spend

Porsche money to get in this.

I want to buy a Supra again.

Well, kind of Porsche, like a 20 career or something.

OK, I had a GT three for a bit and that was a real treat.

But I don't need all that, you know?

Yeah, it's I already have a fast car.

I, you know, I just like the different personalities of them.

You had a GT three.

You say you don't need all that, right?

But well, I because it's boring car.

No, it was great.

I just couldn't afford to keep it because I was building my house.

A friend of mine passed it to me for pre covid price.

And I had a little bit of cash because I had sold my second house.

So I just told my wife, I'm going to buy this car.

And if I want to keep it, I'll sell the Supra.

And if I don't want to keep it, I'll sell it.

Yeah.

So I got to have it for a block of time with like no risk of losing money.

I drove it all the time.

I didn't give a shit about the odometer.

I was just driving it and it was great.

I had a really good time with that car.

But at the end of the day, my super and I like my super is not perfect.

Yeah.

But we've had a lot of fun together and that car is taking me for some rides.

And it's just not I'm never going to build another car like that.

And I know everything that's wrong with that car.

I know everything that's never going to be perfect on that car.

The car's been crashed.

I know I saw pictures of it crashed.

I cut the roof off of it to make it a hard top that my girl is a salvaged title.

And I don't care because I because I because I got what I got with it.

You know what I mean?

You probably take a super over the Porsche, I'm assuming.

But if you have the option, would you obviously the super I'm assuming, right?

Yeah, because the wide open throttle personality, like when I take my super out,

I have some concrete near me and.

When it when it starts to really squat down in third

and you can start to put down, you know, over 900 horsepower effectively

and it really runs in the sounds it's making.

And you put it in fourth and it just gets better.

It's hard to beat that.

How much money you got to spend on a Porsche to get that?

You know, I mean, like I liked my GT three.

There was a spot on my way home that I would ring it out every night on the way home.

Yeah, I there's a set of railroad tracks.

You could jump.

It was great.

You know what I mean?

It was a great time.

But the super, the power of the super and the sound of it

and just how it all works out, it's like, I'm a I like it.

I like the cars like that's my ride.

You know, a lot of people out there who make a lot of money

and they can buy all these exotic cars and Ferraris and stuff like that.

Right. But I feel like there's now that we're in this day and age now,

it's kind of easy to overlook the capabilities of a car

that's 20 years old now, you know, easy to overlook.

Yes.

You'll see an uptick in the R32 to R34 world right now.

You'll see an uptick in Fox Body Mustangs right now.

You'll see an uptick in the supermarket right now.

You'll see an uptick in anything that the age of the man

he's got some money to burn now.

So if you go back 20 years, you a 56

Caddy would have brought a lot of money.

And if you go look right now, a 93 Caddy may bring more

because the age of the man, because the dude that's 70,

he's got the money, but he's not crawling in and out of that thing right now.

And the dude that's 40 to 60, he's got the money.

He knows if he don't get that dream car, he may not ever will.

Yeah. So it upsets the market a little bit,

but you can see the trends over a large block of time.

Based off of what the men were into when they were young.

It's like you go to work.

Your kid has, you know, you know, most of us,

your kid, you go to work and then your life happens.

And then maybe if you're lucky and you start making some money

and you start looking for that toy, you may just want what you didn't have.

Yeah. You know, so it fuels the market.

Like these dudes that are doing these crazy civic builds

like a rotisserie 96 civic, like, hey, man, I understand.

Or like the the there's some guys that build some GTRs that are.

They're they're million dollar projects.

And you're just like, you must have really wanted that one.

You got a poster on the wall in your room of that one.

You're coming off the money like that and they're just doing it.

You know, I shout to Billy, you got a guy like that.

Um, the world's fastest GTR.

Yeah, Billy, that Tony T1.

Oh, yeah, that's Billy.

He's he owns that car.

He's in Staten Island.

Did a podcast with him, too.

Yeah. But the car is insane.

Oh, I've seen that thing make runs.

It is.

I've only driven like a I went like two hundred and a half in a R35.

And I remember the feel of the vehicle.

It's a neat ride.

But what they're doing now is like you can have on six pistons.

You guys are getting it done.

But it's got some things that work in its favor because the the transmission

unless it's broken, the engine is always under a fairly regulated rates of change.

Whereas a stick shift car, you miss the miss a gear or put it in the wrong gear.

You could really damage stuff or you're going to really damage.

So the ratios are tight and it's operated by a computer.

Right.

So you can get away with more per piston stress because it's somewhat regulated.

You know, you mentioned to me at F2K that you I don't know if it's if you

still haven't been working on it, but you said you you figured out

how to fix the crank issues that those cars have in terms of the the cranks breaking.

Well, no, I didn't figure it out.

The the rules have always been there.

OK.

If you look at the GTR market as a trend, early in the market,

they were going after these four point four liter these big engines

with long strokes because it will light the turbo sooner.

And when you drive away from a stoplight, it will accelerate better.

Yeah.

Well, when you take that that particular angle set that happens

inside of that engine with that stroke, the angles get rough and it breaks cranks.

So the the move is just less stroke.

That's why they went, you know, they've gone to big bore stock stroke

or big bore slightly more than stock stroke.

Right.

But they didn't keep going larger and larger and larger in stroke

because it's hard on the cranks.

It doesn't matter whose crank it is. OK.

It's an engine.

If you if you have the rod, if you look at like motorcycle

will form the one, the rods are never like laid over.

When you get into an engine that has a lot of stroke,

the rod has to lay over.

And as it's pushing back up the bore, it's it's wanting to push

the piston in the direction the rods going. Right.

The piston is trying to straighten that out. Yeah.

So the angles come for the engines and the engines break.

Cranks break.

So it's not it's not.

There's no wizard answer that nobody like woke me in my sleep

and said, here it is.

It's just the way things go.

Just say we were speaking.

I was like, oh, we didn't really speak too much about it.

But I think it was the past.

I think one of the cars that just went or actually Mac was about to race

against Victor. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's do have a little thing.

Yeah. Did they still have a little thing going on?

Did they race?

They did. They raced. Who won?

Victor first.

But I mean, so you recently came back from Bonneville.

Yep. And you went how fast did you go?

You said 300? Yeah.

Three hundred and eighty five was the exit speed.

So exit speed is so you have these

they're timed miles.

So you have an entry speed and an exit speed.

So my speed over that mile average was three seventy five

was my average speed over the mile.

Three hundred and seventy five miles per hour for a mile.

Well, how long do you have a timer that from the time you leave

the truck to the time you pull the shoot is around 80 seconds.

OK, so that car has about 15 seconds of straight turbo lag.

It first 15 of it.

The first 15 seconds are just turbo lag.

Is that due to gearing? Yeah. OK.

Gearing and it's a two JZ with two sixty four sixty sixes.

OK. And it really needs two seventy two seventy fives.

I mean, so more lag, more lag.

Then you can use some nitrous.

And what transmission?

Liberty five speed. OK.

And it's shifted by the ECU.

So all I do is sit back and

wait to open the parachute.

So is there any like actual steering involved?

Slightly. It's really intense.

You have to really look

far away and kind of like.

Don't take your eyes off of it

because I've had situations where I moved on the course

and to get it back where I want it to be.

You don't just turn the car.

You're like kind of like bending direction.

So it's real slow to turn.

And well, only because of safety, right?

You don't want to just.

Well, it doesn't turn that sharp.

But the car doesn't.

But yeah, you're not going to just turn it as much as it's going to turn.

Right. But it doesn't turn that much.

It's small angles.

You know, there's a big.

When you look at the videos or the course,

there's these big long turns to get off the course.

Yeah. And like that's a turn for that car.

The car's designed to go straight.

But when you are when you are under

that car goes two hundred and fifty miles an hour,

like an average modern car goes eighty.

Like if you were just in the car going two hundred and fifty miles an hour,

you'd look around and be like, it's a pretty nice place.

But but three hundred seems fast.

And and above, you know, like seems pretty fast.

Like when I was when I made my record qualifying run,

the binding that connects the parachute

to the main leash broke when it opened.

And and I had to wait until the car was going below three hundred

miles an hour to open the second shoot,

because if you open the second shoot above three hundred,

it'll just break to.

So you're like, what?

I'm like waiting for the car to slow down.

And it gave me a minute to kind of like look around.

I'm like, let's go pretty fast, you know, and you can't

can't use the brakes because if you use the brakes at that speed,

you'll just overheat them and then you'll have no brakes.

So you save the brakes for the end.

But when the shoot broke and it was just like rolling

down from speed, I was like, this is fast.

And then when I made my backup run,

I was the last car of the day and the last day of the event.

And they wait to run the long car last because it's the most dangerous.

It's the most likely car to really hurt somebody, aside from a motorcycle.

But a motorcycle kind of cleaned it up quickly because it's not that much stuff.

But the course was really beat up.

And I and I had committed to do it

for my friends and for the company.

But I didn't really want to do it because I about had enough

because it's just too fast going, you know, that amount of speed.

Yeah. When you try to like put it in your head

and you're trying to process it in real time and like.

You don't get to take a lot of like photos in your mind of how it's going down.

But like, it's a lot of stimulation, a lot of stimulation.

I can't even imagine going 300

and not even close to 400.

Well, a lot of your viewers have probably ridden street bikes.

And when you take a modern street bike out and you go 180,

185, 200 miles an hour on the street and you're a full tuck

and you're looking through the windscreen and there's a lot going by you.

It's kind of like that.

It's just the speeds higher, you know, but almost 400 miles an hour.

I know.

You don't really have anything around you to really see how fast are you going?

When you're on the street, you're watching cars.

You're watching the marzers.

OK. Hey, listen, you're going so fast that you

are watching the marker and the marker is far away and then the marker is gone.

You don't you're not looking like if you are going 25 miles an hour

in your car and you're looking at the asphalt, yeah, seems like you're going

pretty fast. Right. But when you're looking down

the highway seems like you're going pretty slow. Right.

So the perspective is very warped.

It's very warped because even though things are very far away,

you're going to be there pretty quick because you're traveling.

You're covering so much ground. Right.

And the engine is loaded for so long.

I wasn't really motivated to run the car because my friend Chris had just

passed, you know, days before doing the same thing.

I was lost. Yeah.

It it that's a whole thing

to try to process.

But I have my hand over the parachute button

as soon as I left the truck, my hands over the parachute button

and I'm watching the manifold pressure and I'm watching where I'm going.

And I want to see over 400 kPa as soon as possible.

And I knew I was slow on the boost curve.

And I'm like, there's nothing I can do about it.

So like, say the middle of third year, it goes up over 40 pounds.

And I said, well, that's that's what I need.

I need I need over 40 pounds to get me there.

And when I went into the fourth mile or the fifth mile.

And the boost was like 45 pounds of boost.

And I'm like, in my mind, I thought for a second.

You're going to hold this thing wide open like this for a mile.

Like, whoo.

And the engine speeds coming up and it's doesn't change gears until 9,200.

And it's a really incredible durability test.

Like that the durability testing that you get to do on components out there.

It's like when someone calls and they're like, hey, I want to get this piston

and you're not you're not selling them a piston because you figured out

some marketing scheme to sell a piston that you call your own.

Or you changed something or you don't even know

what the hell it is you're selling, but you're selling it because you're

in the marketing business.

That's a way different thing than saying like, no, no, dude, dude,

that part right there, that part's plenty strong.

And that's a huge advantage.

You know what I mean?

Like all these two JZ components, I can sell them with full integrity,

full commitment, knowing those components are better than good enough

because I've already tested them.

Right. And that's a big deal.

You know what I mean?

Like like going back to the turbo thing like reliability.

It's like, bro, I have the turbo wide open for, you know, 65 seconds.

And then I just shut it off because you got to shut it off

because something may be on fire.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like I did a health check.

I'm like, I got oil pressure.

The engine sounds good.

Time to shut it off.

But what I should have done is let it idle for three or four

minutes because the turbocharger is probably a nuclear temperature.

So like that's durability testing.

Like who's doing that?

That's Bonneville, Bonneville.

All those racers out there that are running those types of engines,

whether they're domestic engines or motorcycles or whatever,

those dudes are putting putting stuff to the test,

really putting it to the test.

Was that the record?

Did you did you set the record?

The record is it's it's it's a little bit less convoluted

than internet records, OK?

Because internet records, you just make them up as you go.

You could have the world's fastest blue Ford Ranger

with a 2.3 liter and a nitrous kit, right?

But out there, they're in a book.

There's a structure to it.

The vehicle type, the vehicle displacement, the fuel used.

OK. So those are your major kind of

containers that if you want to go out there

and you want to break my record, you need a

F is the engine displacement. OK.

So it's like two to three liters and you need a blown fuel.

Fuel, meaning methanol, nitromethane,

anything that you can cook up, rocket fuel, propane,

blah, blah, whatever you want.

Streamliner and then in gas, it would be a gas streamliner

where you're only allowed one fuel.

They supply the fuel.

They still the tank for you. Yeah.

It's like C 16.

Snow goes brand of C six.

Snow goes flavor of C 16. Yeah.

But the records go in a book

and I think that makes it

pretty neat because

like I've been with the racers before where

someone else has lost their record

and that they can't wait to go over and say,

that was bad ass, man.

Now I got something to go after.

Yeah, you're kind of like racing yourself.

It's a it's a it's a gentleman's game.

The pedigree of the people, the character of the people,

the community

and land speed racing as a whole.

They're really, really neat people.

Yeah, like there's there's a, you know,

a farmer in Northern California

and she shows up and helps and she's just a joy to talk to.

And there's a dude that used to work at Area 51

and he won't tell you, but he knows.

You know what I mean?

Like it's cool.

It's it's beyond cool.

Yeah, would that be the record technically for a 2J, though?

And sure, I think 300.

Now, here's where it gets murky

because a buddy of mine called me and is like,

is that the world's fastest import?

And I go, I don't know

because what if some Aussies put together

some motorcycle engine thing that went faster?

I don't know.

I don't keep good enough track of it,

but I don't think anyone has gone.

Well, there there isn't anyone that's done this stuff

with the Jay-Z, the way that we're doing it now.

That's crazy.

So three hundred and eighty five that that that car and that car

will go over four hundred miles an hour.

It it was so underpowered in second and third gear.

And then you just put bigger turbos on it

and you just run it at like 55 or 60 pounds of boost

and it will easily do it.

It'll be the same exact thing that it's always been.

A dude with a small displacement engine shows up to an event

with a turbocharger and a small displacement engine.

And the guys with the big engines go,

that'll never work.

And they see you break it and then they laugh at you.

And then you figure it out and you can make more power.

Like there's a dude out there.

He is a he's a bad ass dude.

This dude, he doesn't even need to open his mouth.

He he's a bad ass of a man.

Yeah, you can see it and how he carries himself.

And he watched the cars run this

this year with Jay Z's to the cars performed really, really well.

And he kind of gave me the look.

And I said, I'm just the guy with the little engine, man.

And now I'm on his radar.

You know, he's got this five hundred cubic inch nitromethane.

The sound of it is just like it goes in your chest.

It's incredible.

And I'll just be the guy with the little engine.

And it's cool. I like it.

I like that part.

That's so cool, man.

That goes back to the appreciation, like I was saying earlier,

like in the beginning of the podcast, when,

you know, the guys who are in this domestic,

so they ever look at the imports and say, like, you know,

maybe I should give it a shot.

Is it even worth it, you know?

I think that I think that one of the things we probably burn

a lot of bandwidth up in is comparing who's toys better.

Yeah. And it's like, you got a toy.

You like it? Cool.

Yeah, I got a toy. I like it. Cool.

Maybe we'll race.

But it doesn't need to be this thing, you know what I mean?

Like some of those Honda guys got a major chip on their shoulder.

And and I've dealt with it since I was a kid.

I'm like, dude, I like your stuff too.

Yeah. You know, like that's one thing

that's really been a blessing in my career is once I accepted

that someone else's dream wasn't mine to like.

Yeah, I just needed to help them get it done. Right.

My job got way easier because I used to be like,

that's a dumb dream.

If someone was going to do something that

I knew wasn't going to work out. Yeah.

I would say that's a dumb dream.

And and then I as I matured, I would just be like,

I'll help you the best I can.

And it wasn't that I was going to milk them out of their money.

I was going to help them understand that they weren't going to 10.

Yeah. But they were going to go to seven.

And there was a lot of fun to be had at seven, you know?

So it's just a but if you're in the cars, you're in the cars.

You know, I don't I don't really care what you're into.

You know, if you're in a motor sports or in a motor sports.

The other day I got in these conversations

about these dudes that race trophy trucks.

I'm like, I cannot afford a million dollar trophy truck.

But I would sure like to go for a ride in one. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Yeah.

Like those dudes in the Middle East that drive on two wheels for fun.

Like to to get in a vehicle and ride around on two wheels

was an incredible experience.

I think I stood up out of the window

because I looked at the dude.

I'm like, this dude's got it.

Yeah. It's completely comfortable.

I'm like, I'm going out the window.

You know what I mean?

I'm like, just dumb.

But it's but that's what the dude's into. Yeah.

So I don't care, you know, the import domestic thing.

I think Jason Miller probably does it best by saying like,

show up and race, you know, and you have these

like the a rotary versus a big block

and they run numbers that are just so tight.

Yeah. That's why that event is such a success

because it's we get we get to go all the way back

to just racing each other.

Yeah. I don't give a shit what combo you have.

You know, that's cool.

So with all this maturity that you've built up over the years

and obviously experiences,

I'm assuming you're bringing that into our garage.

So what does that look like for you?

What is the future of our garage right now?

And ours is real street, I'm assuming.

Yeah, because I can't take that away.

I can't change that.

So real street was a class that I raced by Mustang in.

OK, so real street was it wasn't even my first idea.

I just couldn't name my place meager performance

because everyone botches my last name.

It would have literally been meager performance.

Not good for branding. Yeah.

So we said, well, we'll just call it real street.

And in this, you know, I told those guys

this is what I was going to do.

And if they really had a problem with it,

they could have gone on Sunbiz and taken the name.

Yeah, and they didn't.

So, you know, even though we don't want to do stuff together anymore,

we we both got to survive. Right.

So it's like they can go become their corporate thing

and maybe they'll get bought by a PE firm

and maybe they'll get to be really rich dudes.

And if that's what they want, cool.

And for me, it's going to be a game of

using what I've learned to get what my house needs.

I want my daughter to grow up the best I can raise her.

Yeah. You know, like I'm I got my wife is really

a great mother to my daughter.

She's like almost too much.

She's mega intense with this child.

And and that's a big help.

But I got to pay for the I got to pay the bills.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like, like, listen, man, my wife's got a 70,000 mile Audi.

That shit is going to break soon.

I need to get her another car.

You know what I mean?

Like, I got to I got to do that role.

So I need to get our garage to the point where I'm making a living

and other guys are making a living.

And my older daughter is here with me and I'd like to get her

making a living to where if she wants to be in a relationship,

she can, but she doesn't need to be in a relationship to not live at home.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

And then there's a handful of dudes that like they're just bad ass dudes.

Like I can get them 200 a year.

If I can get a few bad ass dudes to 200 a year,

I'll just be making money and it'll be OK.

Yeah. And it's all there for me, you know?

I almost anywhere I go, I met with the same thing.

You know, it's like, hey, it's Jay from Real Street.

I'm like, hey, man, here's where I'm at now.

And I just I got to keep.

I got to beat the streets.

I got to convert people over to say like, like the other day,

a guy said, you I broke my engine

and you logged on when I had built a new engine

and you you tuned my car for me.

And I go, I did.

He goes, yeah, I go how to go.

He's like, it was really good.

And I go, cool, man.

He's like, I'm back in the game.

Can I buy some parts?

And I'm like, yeah, man, I've been doing this for a long time.

So I got guys that went out because of life

and came back in because of they could.

Right. And and they just got to find me, you know?

So that's I think that makes a reasonably strong position

for myself and for my family and for the guys under me.

Because fortunately for me, most of the people that I work with,

they know who they're dealing with.

Yeah, they can they can love me or hate me.

Right. They can say, I can't deal with that guy.

And that's their thing.

Or they can say, like, I know he'll share

and I and I want to work with someone that will share.

So they'll just show up. Right.

Yeah, there's dudes like when I left,

you know, it's a pretty it was a crazy time.

But one of the men said, hey, man, I want to tell you

that years ago you came into the office

and you threw a $500 American Express gift card at me.

And you said, hey, I think you need that more than I do.

He's like, I was embarrassed, but I needed it.

And I said, man, I don't remember, but cool.

You know what I mean?

Because the way that I looked at it is like,

I don't need to eat the whole steak.

Like if the steak's too big, like have some, man, it's OK.

What am I going to do to myself by eating the whole thing?

The last bite's not any better than the first.

Like you got to go at life and go at your relationship with money

with some flottling because if not, you're going to end up a rich dude

and there's some weird stuff and that has already played out.

You know what I mean?

Like a piece of mind is not it's not attached to your

financial statement.

A piece of mind is something that you are into your decisions.

And and I get off on helping people.

I get off on cars.

You know, like I'm a pretty regular dude in that regard.

You're not going to see there's not going to be this

Jay scandal that you're like, I never saw it coming.

You know what I mean?

Like it's not happening.

Yeah, it's not it's not my thing.

You know what I mean?

So I feel like I got it pretty good like that.

Wow. That's powerful, man.

I might have to be a clip in itself.

I don't really do motivational clips, but.

Well, you own to yourself and all these young dudes, man,

that think they can't do it.

Yeah, that's bullshit.

There's there's the trades are starving

for young guys with drive.

Yeah, and I have a friend that's a plumber.

He was one of my first guys at Real Street.

His name is Ryan and he he's a plumber.

And he's got it going on.

Dude's fishing.

Dude's home by 4 p.m.

Dude's got a Porsche.

Dude's looking at some JDM stuff, trying to put another car in the garage.

Dude's got a house.

He's a plumber. Yeah.

So so you want to be you want to be a plumber.

You want to get into construction.

You want to work on cars like these young kids go through a Mercedes

or BMW training program, make some money for yourself.

Like the Internet eventually is going to play out.

There's only so many people that get to be, you know, superstars.

Everybody else is going to have to work.

And the trades are a great place to make a clean living.

That same dirty hands, clean money.

I love that saying because, you know, my whole life, I walk into a place.

The first thing people notice about me is my hands.

In this dirt, the nails are dirty and there's a piece of tape around a finger

where I had to tape some shit shut and keep working.

And they look at you like dirty.

They look down. They look down on you.

And I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever, man.

Like it used to it was like the I got to play Pretty Woman for a bit

because I'm just me.

But, you know, like when I was rolling pretty hard with real street,

like I had tremendous amount of credit available.

Yeah.

We're like, you got a credit card that you could charge a million dollars on.

And they just look at you like, well, what do you do?

I'm like, I'm in the trades, man.

I'm in the cars, you know, in the conversation normally ends

because they want to talk about how rich they are.

And I don't give a shit.

Like, like Victor told me once, he said, I don't get it.

I don't understand how people get off on counting other people's money.

And I was like, thanks.

You know what I mean?

Like I can see a party that money is happening and everyone's sharing.

And there's enough money to go around.

Yeah.

But the dudes that are tight with money,

the guys are like trying to keep it all themselves.

And I got nothing to do with those dudes.

Those dudes are not like they play themselves.

They just let them play themselves.

I have to take a little business class from Jay.

Oh, don't do that.

Well, Jay, yeah, this is a great conversation.

A long one, too, right?

Three, three, 20.

Oh, we got to go.

But I do want to say thank you.

Thank you so much for sharing with us.

Yeah, thanks for waiting for me.

I appreciate it.

Like I said, I am this is this conversation,

along with some loose ends that just got tied up with those guys.

It closes the book for me.

Yeah.

And I've been waiting to close that book.

Well, I'm happy that you wanted to share it on this podcast.

Yeah. Not that, you know, this is a podcast for drama,

even when people may think about it like that.

But it's mostly correlated.

It's not it's you, man.

When I met you, you know, I watch a lot of people's stuff.

And when I met you, I was like, I think that guy's got it, you know,

so maybe you're in the game in 15 years

and we can laugh about this stuff, you know, it's OK.

Who knows, we'll see what we'll see what happens.

Yeah.

Hopefully we can figure out something that we can, you know,

work together on or something, maybe a car project or maybe we should build

a Supra, have J build it.

Who knows?

It's not going to have an RB engine.

Just going to.

We didn't talk about two J versus RV

because I'm tired of talking about that.

I can't. I'm over it.

Hey, you know what?

The difference between two J and RB is one of them is a highly loved

engine in one country and the other is a highly loved engine in the other country.

And both of the boys that are playing

with those engines are both having a good time and it's literally arguing

over blondes or brunettes like, bro, do your thing, pick your poison,

have your fun. Oh, man.

But yeah. Yeah, that's the best.

That's the best answer, I think I'm content.

I that's why I didn't bring it up.

Yeah. But yeah, I just do want to say thank you.

Thank you so much.

Make sure you guys also check out our video that we're going to be doing

together with putting together ahead.

Yeah, there's a ton of stuff I'd like to do.

If time permits, there's a ton of educational stuff

that I'd like to pair with you on management of hardware,

because hardware is something that the end user is in control of.

Right. So we could teach a lot of people a lot of stuff.

Well, we'll start with that video.

So make sure you guys go check that out.

I'll put it in the comments below and also in the description

and maybe up here, actually.

But if anybody is looking to work with you,

RS Garage, they want to build a 2J or anything else.

Where can they find you, Jay?

RS Garage dot US. OK.

So Instagram. Yep.

We have a my guy Mo has been working really hard

on a pretty large scale website project

that is going to be very fruitful to everyone.

And he's been managing sales along with two guys that are at his place.

And yeah, just Instagram is

RS Garage, phone numbers on the website.

You know, OK, we're we're accessible.

And, you know, in the next few years,

we we need to get another few team members and get growing.

But it's there, you know, this.

The the the opportunity is just sitting there for us.

So it's pretty cool.

Well, there you guys have it.

Appreciate your time, Jay. Thanks.

If you guys are listening and watching,

continue to keep watching and listening.

Make sure you guys are sitting all streaming platforms

and also make sure you guys head over to street alpha dot co

to purchase a merch until next time, guys.

We'll catch you on the next one.

Peace. Thanks.

Jay On Why He Left Real Street Performance, Building Engines, and 2JZ Top Speed Record

Toyota Supra

Ford Mustang GTD

Chevrolet Camaro

Honda Civic

Mitsubishi Evo

Nissan R32

Acura Integra

Hyundai Genesis

Lancia Lambda

BMW E60

Mustang Fox Body

Acura RSX

Honda S2000

Nissan Gtrs

Ford Ranger

About this episode

Original notes