Levi Green of HammerFab

Working at the Roadster shop, and we went up there, and it was like, I mean, the most

humbling experience ever. It's like you're walking in, and this is the big leagues, you know, like,

I can vividly remember seeing you at the bench. I think you had just gotten the rails done,

and I think you were raising the wheel openings. At that point, you had some hype around you,

like you were sort of this mythical dude, this Levi, there's this guy, cool name,

Levi, yeah, it was a cool name. You're like, oh, damn, and then you go there and you

listen to Levi, dude, that's it. And this time I'm coming with some heat. So I had some

sample welds in my pocket from Wiotek, because I didn't have a TIG welder at home. So I kept

all the little sample coupons that they made us do at school to show that we could weld,

you know, I had these in my pockets. This was before metal detectors. And one of the things

that I first did was the bead rolled flames on the hood sides. Cool. Yeah, you ever done

that? I'm not saying it's cool. I'm kind of ashamed of it now, but yeah, we did. However,

one of the first 32s we built the customer demanded that we airbrush real fire coming out

of the louvers. Okay. But in the real fire, you wanted the real fire coming off of running

stallions. Oh, wow. And that's something quite the piece. But he thought the horses were

on fire. Yeah. Well, the horses were part of the fire. The horses were fire. Firehorses.

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out the roof basket today. This week we have none other than Levi Green from HammerFab,

all the way from Texas. Fresh off of a massive SEMA debut and whirlwind week for

all of us, but you included. Levi, it's good to have you. It's good to be here man.

Awesome having you man. We appreciate you journeying back to where it all started here in Illinois

in the worst possible time of year. Thanks for that. You need to come out here and cool off

after being so hot at SEMA. Yeah, good. Yeah, I like that. Jeremy's going to pour us some whiskey

and I'm going to do a quick little announcement to everybody. I'm going to also move this

water just so it doesn't cover your face. I know. Sure. Yeah, see that's better.

We have a special holiday sale going on right now on oilandwiskey.com, 35% off of all apparel.

Running through December 22nd, we are going to draw randomly out of the entries

three prizes. Number one, you get a Roadster Shop Edition Viper chair, just such as one of these.

You get second prize would be an oil and whiskey hat and oil and whiskey clutch mug. Number three

would be a heat wave visual prize pack. And there may or may not be some other surprise

items thrown in. This is the end of the year. End of the year is when we clean out the podcast

studio. There's always things that we come across, treasures, little nuggets and little

treasures that may or may not find their way into one of these prize packs. So again,

if you're listening to us now and it is not December 22nd, 2025, yet you still have time,

oilandwiskey.com, 35% off of all merch. That free Viper chair, dude, that's quite the piece

there. The guys out in the shop here Viper boys were nice enough to kick us a handful of those,

but the guys out in the shop, they're coveted. Once you get them, you won't go by it.

Signature color, yeah. Go on there and buy some merch, you get an apple to make you win.

Everybody's a winner. Levi, great to have you in person as well. I know it's quite a trip

for you to make it out here, but we insisted that we do this one in person because it's way better.

I don't want to do it over the waves. I'd rather be here. Man, this is a cool opportunity, man.

It's a great opportunity for us to have a builder of your status. We got to know each other a

little bit more formally in Vegas at the SEMA. We knew you were going to bring the heat,

but you brought the heat. That was a banger of a car, man. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah,

69 Chevelle. Yeah. The white 69 Chevelle with the blue stripes. We can actually,

we have the technology to pull that up whilst you're speaking about it. We can also see it

if there was just pictures on your Instagram. Oh, there it is. We'll fumble through it.

We'll get there eventually. Yeah. Look at that. Boom. Yeah, sharp car.

So how did that, how did that build itself come about? So that one actually started

at another shop down in Florida. Jeremy Carlson from Avant Guard actually turned us

on to that client and he'd never heard of Hammerfab, you know, but Jeremy did and I've

been wanting to do something with him and been down to his shop several times,

check out their facilities. Obviously, it's like Disneyland in there. And so this guy took

a shot with us and, you know, I knew we could build him a really nice muscle car.

Haven't really done too many muscle cars at Hammerfab yet either. And, you know, this one,

he was guns blazing. We just pretty much did it as quickly as you could finish it out.

I think it was a little over two year build. But some of that was going backwards in the

beginning. You know, we had to fix some things from the previous shop.

And, you know, it already had the roaster shop spec chassis. So we knew it was good

starting point and has a GM Performance Connecting Cruise LS3 with a 6L90, I think.

So yeah, I learned a lot about Chevelle's doing this one and I like them.

Always tough getting started when you're picking up on a project, isn't it?

Yeah.

We've had a number through the shop and it's sort of taken a long time to

know when to say yes to one and sometimes when to just say no. Like if you get it early on,

it's fine. And sometimes it came out of the shop that did nice work. But I've had some stuff

through the shop that I just sort of bowed out of. I looked it over and I'm like,

sometimes you just got to rip the band-aid off on those.

Even to this day, I've been in business 10 years plus now for myself and I'm still

listening for the right keywords. Oh, he said that. Well, maybe I don't want to do this one or

whatever. You know, you try and try and weigh it out to see if you want to get involved or not.

But first problem is money is not a problem. And I want this thing nice.

Yeah.

That's the alarm bells. I mean, yeah, five alarm fire. Run, run.

Sorry for the very early sidebar. We're just into this. But I got a great idea for a potential

podcast. We're not going to do it with you. That would be unfair because there's no preface.

So we pulled this up. This great video. And I'm just noticed that this is from the automotive

practitioner podcast that you just did. So from Miguel, right? So I just was thinking,

what a great podcast idea if we have the guests such as Levi come in, fly all the way out

here, right? And then we just sit and watch him do another podcast, almost like Mystery

Science Theater 3000. We just all sit there and watch and then commentary together about how he

answered those questions. It's an interesting concept. It is. It hasn't been done. I mean,

there's a lot of podcasts out there. Yes. But imagine a podcast watching the guests do somebody

else's podcast. That'd be tough. Yeah. I know. I know. I don't watch any of these

because I can't watch myself but me sitting there watching myself while you're commenting on it,

especially you in particular commenting on it. I couldn't stomach that. Look, there you are right

there. We're doing it. We're watching you. All I can say is Miguel did a great job.

Him and his wife both were great hosts. And, you know, yeah, go check it out if you guys

want to get the more details about Hammerfab and me. Or you can listen to this one as

another option. Those chairs, those chairs look comfortable. You just now you just got on here

and said that these chairs are way more comfortable, but those chairs look comfortable.

It looks like they sort of rock you back. You know, you look at the way Miguel's sitting.

He's got to kind of get a sit. Yeah. Like that, you know, I guess, but

that one went for about three hours. Did it really? Is that like normal here?

They tend to trail on and they can. But it's fun. Yeah, that's what it's all about.

But Miguel's a good dude. And I've known him for a long time. I met him through Carlson down there.

And yeah, he's got a cool thing going. But yeah, Chevelle, great customers.

Actually pretty young guy, him and his wife. They're about my age.

And he's just killing it in his industry and wants some nice stuff. And I'm very,

very thankful that, you know, he trusted us to take it all the way to the finish line.

And awesome that you guys wanted us in your booth. So that was a grand slam for everybody, I think.

It was a fun time for sure, man. That being white and blue too kind of helps.

It does. Yeah. I thought when I first submitted the car, because I submitted it like the day

you were early, you were early, that you guys said. And I was like, well,

we're planning on going to see him anyway. So I'm doing it. So I submitted the thing.

And I didn't hear anything. I didn't hear anything. I didn't hear anything. I was like,

man, we got a Chevelle. It's a spec chassis. A stance is on point. It's blue and white. I'm

thinking they're going to go for it. And then I didn't hear nothing. And then I was like,

well, I know how it goes. It's SEMA, you know, I'm going to hear like two weeks before.

And then it's going to be like Josh is going to call and be like, hey, you still got a spot.

That's exactly how we went on. You know all the industry and climate.

Being the first go around, it was, you know, we had to work through some things.

But we learned a lot and it all went out. Unless you were in the, in the know,

and unless you lived it, it looked like it went off without a hitch. Nobody knew the,

you know, the down to the wire planning. So it went off really well. Everybody there did

an amazing job of bringing really banger vehicles. And it was a good cross section.

That's what really, really we're trying to do is one, it's hard when you set out.

It's a great idea to have like sitting around, you know, launch your dinner,

having a few drinks and be like, man, this is the deal. We want nothing but debut cars.

That's cool to say, right? But it happened. Like that was that we were,

we were fortunate enough to have the, the applications in and we could do that many of

brand new, never before seen cars. So that really hopefully is the plan going forward

to try and continue that process to give it, give all you builders a great place to debut

and showcase the showcase the bills. What was your, what was your takeaway on SEMA?

Not anything to do with our booth, just exposure. I saw you were all over the place in front of a

bunch of different media outlets doing interviews. Like, how do you feel that does for your business?

Like this year in particular was really good in that regard. I always like to,

I feel like I'm, you know, kind of obligated to stay around the build of all the work

that we just put in. Like I didn't go roam around SEMA at all. Cause I've been to SEMA before when,

you know, when I was employee, I got to walk the whole thing and okay, that's cool.

Once and then, you know, but this year, you know, I like to hang out at the build. I like to,

you know, be there. If people got questions, you never know when that next client's going to

walk up, even though they're in your booth, you know, they, they may want to buy it.

I had several people come up asking me about, about the chassis. And I'm like,

well, you know, I'm here in their booth. I'm going to tell you about it. You know,

as much as I know, otherwise I'll hand you off to somebody else. But so I don't mind doing that.

You know, you guys got a good, good product, good reputation. And, but you never know,

somebody could come up and say, I want to build truck. You know, I think the first

time we met was 2019 SEMA. Remember that? It was before that. Yeah. I remember the 2019.

Yeah. We can tell, we can absolutely tell that story. We can get there.

All right. Good.

But what I took out of it is you're just not, it wasn't that impactful. Like,

if he'd met you prior to that.

Oh, he was, it was a, it was, it was a Detroit with a, uh, uh,

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

That car. Okay. Give me a full tour of it. Okay. But hey, no problem. I am forgettable.

You don't give me, don't, don't.

I know. Dude, everybody gets it. They got it the first time you took the dig, right?

I didn't know. I just want to make sure.

But yeah, the media stuff. I mean, uh, got a couple of interviews, uh, whatever,

even my own guy was doing some video stuff, which is pretty cool now that we're doing.

I've, I've got a young guy on board that he's just willing to do anything and everything.

I mean, you can do some fabrication. A guy literally came knocking on my door,

looking for a job as a welder. And I was like, at first I turned him away.

And then a few months later, he, he reached back out with an email and just one of those

kids that was hungry, you know, it's 20, 24 years old. And, uh, but you know,

I'll have him go do some fabricating or whatever, but he's really latched on to this

media stuff. And you know, he's just, I don't know if it's young kids in general

or, or he's just got a knack for it, but he knows how to run the camera.

He takes instruction really well, you know, we're using AI and all kinds of stuff to

hash our own clips and stuff. And so a lot of those clips that you saw in there were

from him, you know, so that, and he was doing it on the fly. Like he'd go back to the hotel room,

knock it out, knock out a video, put it up there and it looked pretty professional, you know.

So he talked about being there at the car and making sure you don't miss an opportunity.

I think that's really good. We saw everybody there with debut cars really do such a great

job at that. And there's, there's a level, right? There's a level of being accessible,

you know, and not being, you know, that guy, you know, everybody's had that when you walk past the

car and you're trying to, you're taking it out. And there's the guy that's like,

well, any questions I can answer for you? Let me tell you about the windshield wipers.

Now, something that we did hear this little special right there that not a lot of people

and they go, you know, it's tip to stern, like on the thing. And it's,

there's a level of like, not being dismissive, but like, hey, I'm right here on the edge.

You want to take it in, you know, not being that pushy salesman, right?

Oh, it's just the room. Yeah, read the room. Right. And it's what you make of that.

That whole show is what you make of it. You get in, get out, what you put in.

Exactly. Like we had a lot of people and I think we're sort of past this now, but

yeah, maybe just pre COVID. I felt like I was always hearing people sort of complain

about SEMA, like almost like throwing stuff on social media, like who's going,

I'm not going this year. You know, I don't see any purpose in being out there.

Just asking questions. If anybody actually feels like SEMA is beneficial.

And I think that's just, I mean, maybe at one point that sort of was a little bit true,

but it's changed so much. And if you're out there and you're selling yourself

and selling the car, what better place is there on the planet to do it than right?

What an opportunity to put in product for this year. I'm going to put it on a shirt

because we've talked about it a bunch of times. I'm putting this saying on a shirt.

It's secret to success is being at the right place at the right time.

That means you got to be a lot of places a lot of times. Just straight up. It's just the way it is.

A step further than that is you got to be bringing the right thing to the right

event in front of the right people. Because we have products, we do builds,

we do several things, but that's one of the things I've been kind of navigating here

lately is what shows do I want to go to? What shows should I really go to? Because they all

cost a lot of money. And there's a handful of them that are worth it every time. Like SEMA,

every time I've gone has been well worth it. I don't get paid to go. It costs me as a builder

a lot of money to go to any of them. But even that one, it's a whole week away from the shop.

You're not getting billable work done. A lot of diesel, a lot of hotel rooms.

But that's one, every time I go, I get something significant out of it, whether it's this podcast

that goes a little bit further or I've gotten customers from 2019. So I'm convinced whenever

I go to SEMA, as long as it's worthwhile. I like to get in somebody's booth if I'm

going to go, which that makes it easier. When you talk about bringing the right thing,

what did you see the outcome from, was it a couple of years ago or was it last year you brought that

the 55, 59 Chevy truck? The blue one? Yeah, first this Chevelle, which is maybe a more

widely likable or accepted or more popular car. How was the response between the two of those?

I think, you know, being in the booth was a huge hit for anything. But like the truck

to this day, it's still my truck. The color and that style of truck, those are really hard to build.

You know, trucks, everything's trucks are easier, but trucks are a lot more moving parts that you

have to get to line up right and everything. And the color on that one, that's a color that I've

loved my whole life. And it just anywhere it goes, it grabs attention. And I still get people

trying to buy it from me and I'm never going to sell it. Yeah. So, but I had a couple.

Never is a strong word. I've said it a couple times. I had a couple people come up to me at SEMA

2019 and and say, man, I want you to build a truck, you know, I didn't really have that happen this

year. But I will say that guy, he's convinced now that, you know, you got a good product.

I can build a good car. And he wants to do something else. So he's talking about doing

a truck, maybe maybe a OBS. That's something I mean, we can touch on too is the

you hear that story so many times talking about the validation, the validation, but that that,

that, you know, you're going, you're there, you know, to promote your your shop and your

wares and you put your best foot forward with a customer's vehicle. And that customer's

experience throughout that week or weekend, depending on the show that you're at, SEMA

is definitely one that's that's the top, right? So they have they have an experience

that they there's things that they can do the week of SEMA and places they can go and

experiences they can be a part of that no matter what amount of money or status they are,

they could not have done without that build without that relationship that you guys had

and without that build that puts you in front of those, they're able to experience things

and that excitement that runs through that that off more often than not, you're talking

even before the week's over, especially on the trip home about the next thing. Oh,

and like what's the next build and what's the next? Aside from new business, it's the repeat

that's like, Oh, wow, I enjoyed this so much. Let's run it back. Let's do it again. And

leading up to it, leading up to it with that customer. I think that's that's part

of our job as builders is get them hyped up, you know, get them excited about it.

You know, because they're spending so much money and a lot of times it's just

painful invoices after invoice and they're like, What are you doing? And sometimes,

you know, especially in the paint shop, I've seen that. And, you know, the finally

getting able to experience the joy of that. It's like having a baby, you know, you finally,

it's finally here. And so like that guy, in particular, you know, he's super busy

business guy and and he could be doing anything he wants right now. He don't have

to be going to SEMA to see his car. And so I prepped him, you know, six months in advance,

you know, soon as soon as you soon as I submitted the thing for the for the entry

for the booth competition or whatever. I told him I was like, dude, I just submitted your car

for the roadster shop. He's like, awesome. So it's definitely part of the process, man.

You're sort of building this like you're building this relationship, you're building

this community. It's that's the fun of it all. I mean, the car is enjoyable, but

the sort of the process, the debut of the car, watching people's reaction

to the car, the validation, like you said, and then you're almost like always sort of

onto the next one. I mean, you enjoy driving it known in the car, but there's

something about the thrill of the build, the debut and the hype of it being new.

Yeah, we talked about it a hundred times. It's just like a drug addict, right? I mean,

it is essentially an addict's deal. I mean, you're addicted to the dopamine rush

that you get from from the builder and the customer standpoint, right? And it's like,

oh, wow, that was amazing. Still riding on that high. Now let's craft how we can create the next

bigger high. Yeah, right. What's that going to be? Like what I want to do this again, right?

Right. And it's it's it's it's a very unique, unique aspect of probably any motor sports

hobby, right? This is something that we get to thrive off of. And it's it's a symbiotic

relationship with the builders and the customers. Because again, guys busy, he's got he's got

real world problems and business stuff to deal with and other things. This is a nice release

for it. That it's a byproduct of spending that much money. It's a byproduct that you don't get

by just sometimes spending that much money on another car. Like if I mean, you've got track

stuff and you got all that. But if you go on just buy a vehicle off the showroom floor and

spend big money on an exotic car or something. There's always the the

like the let down a little bit of the thing. You don't have that dopamine rush like you do

it at SEMA, right? It's probably very short lived, right? Until somebody else brings,

you know, whatever the thing that you're going to the first dinner, you're going to drive it to

whatever. And you think you're going to be, you know, cool. Yeah. And then there's four other

guys that are cooler. Kind of F eight and a 488. Yeah. Right next to you speaking from experience.

Yeah, it's all that's happened. Yeah. They guys obviously never purchased a Miata new

right. It keeps on giving right there. Having those cars out there, too. It's so beneficial

for the guys that have been involved in it as well, because for them to see what their

handiworks doing and the way it's received by just the world, it's, it's priceless. A lot of

those not all, I mean, not all of them, but occasionally a car gets built. It just gets

delivered and it just goes away. And it's sort of hard to praise them all through. I mean,

you'd say good job and nice work and this looks bitching, but sort of hard for them to really get

the praise. We're seeing it and watching the react to the comments when it shows up on like

American muscle HD and everybody's raving about it or somebody's like, hate the fucking wheels.

What the hell's the matter with you? You know, there's some of that, but I think that's huge.

It's difficult for the builders. It's difficult, albeit very important to make a customer happy.

It's difficult when you build a really nice car and the customer flies out and drives it back home,

right? And it's just gone and it's gone. And he had a great experience and he drove 3,000 miles

across the country and he sends a text like this is fucking awesome. This is exactly what I wanted.

I'm ready to do another one. It's difficult for the guys in the shop when they're home for

Thanksgiving, right? To share that text to somebody and be like, look at what I've been

working on for the last six months. But when you built a car, you were part of a car

that was at SEMA or something like that. And you can just go to social meeting back. Oh,

there's another picture of it. Oh, yeah. And so and so did a story on it. So I did the

wheel trim on this and I did that stuff. That's a validation as well for the blood,

sweat and tears that that employee has been putting into. And, you know, again, I use

Thanksgiving because that's the time, you know, you're seeing that family and they're

like, what have you been up to? And like, oh man, I've been killing it in this car.

We just did this. We debuted this, blah, blah. We'll show you some pictures.

All right. Well, I got this one I took on my phone, but like the customer loves it.

He's back. Those are great, but that there's something else about

look at all the things, look at all the things that this vehicle did that I was able to be a part of.

Yeah, not only that customer, but we had, I had, I think four, four of my main clients,

like big build clients showed up at the booth and saw it and and, you know, that's cool.

That it just solidified everything else even more, you know, and and I took two of my guys

out there. They had never been. Well, the one older guy, he'd been to see me years ago, but

they both, you know, did a really good job around the car. You know, I was it was kind of the first

time I got to see them interact with with a build in somebody's booth and talking to customers.

So I was really proud of my guys for how they portrayed themselves. And, you know, those

other clients came out and saw those. I assumed they wanted to be part of the process.

Like they on they on chassis now. All right. I was just going to say, there's

it's funny to watch. Like I've seen that over the years too. And you get so there's sometimes

there's a little competition that sort of starts like it's good. That's good. So good in the shop.

You mean well between the customer as they start seeing it and they're like, it's

perfect with that motor. Yeah, maybe we should do the supercharger.

You know, I guess that I guess 500 horsepower probably is enough for you,

but I can handle a little bit more. And some of it's nice for them to just have the visual of

like what's going on there because it sort of inspires their build. Like it's I watched it with

the boat community is really interesting to see like when hanging out with Scott, you know,

we had a customer's big into like MTI boats and stuff. And they're sort of like a community.

MTI does a great job of like building this community of boat owners. And they're

all there at the same time. And you got this guy's boat and that guy's boat. And

it's sort of like, how do you not get competitive? Like each guy sort of like, well,

he's got four motors like, well, let's do another one. We can hang five on there, right?

Like, and it just sort of escalates that way. But it also gives you a group of people to

talk about the project with excited with where a lot of times like if you're building a car,

you probably don't have a good core group of other friends that you could be like,

Oh, yeah, I did this. I got the LS nine. I did this intake. I did that versus kind of

having this crew where you can bounce ideas back and forth and something excited to talk

about. I think that's something that really haven't looked at it from this point of view before.

We've touched around this subject a lot. But you think about years ago, I say years,

15, 20 years ago, the builders community and the customers, right? There was a lot of

customers unless you were a couple of the top three echelon, a lot of customers were shrouded

in secrecy, right? The customers, you didn't have names associated with the amount of customers

that you do now, right? It went to different shops. So no, no shops really wanted you like

knowing who the customer was or talking to the customer. And it wasn't, it would never be a time

like we do nowadays, whatever. And it's like three shops going out to dinner with six or seven of

our customers altogether. Because that would be like, Oh, I can't do anything. And I got,

I got dinner with a customer. And it, it was always now that that's just changed, you know,

over, it didn't happen overnight. It's just, but it's gotten to a point, the industry is better

for it. And when, when a couple of our customers are friends with each other, but they're also

friends with a group of customers from other shops, it just makes everything work that

much better. That much smoother, that much easier, the competition level, and the accountability too.

I mean, everybody, everybody's talking to everybody and you better be knowing what you're

doing because you're going to ask you, you're going to ask me or whatever, you know. So

I think that's good though. I mean, I think it's great. So I mean,

it's a, it does, it just makes things better. I agree. Jumping all the way back.

We're not going to go all the way back to just a wee little Levi, but we could go back

to a medium size Levi. How did this, how did, how did, how did this get started?

All right. So I think, you know, I got to give credit to my dad first, you know,

him and my uncle, his brother, they both worked with General Motors for a career.

They were always into cars, seemed like when they were growing up, my dad wasn't really into

hot rods or anything as I was growing up. But he always told me stories about I used to have this

car, you know, he had a, his first car, I think was a 56 Chevy, two-door hardtop,

L.A.R. He had a 69 GTX, a 69 Chevelle. My mom had a 69 Chevelle. They both had those both

at the same time. See, he had a 37 Ford slant back with a 283 that pulled the wheels off the ground.

You know, that's the stories that I remember. And my uncle, he was a little higher up at General

Motors. I forget exactly what he did, but he always had a really nice General Motors product

when we went over to visit his house. And at the time, it was probably like a square

body truck, brand new square body sitting outside. Two-wheel drive, short bed, by the way.

Good man. On all the things he could have had.

He had an option for a long bed. I didn't take it.

But he's the one that actually... Send that email to you.

Yeah, he's the one that... He didn't live too far from where we were. I grew up in Missouri,

okay, so Midwest, not Illinois. But it was still similar temperature, you know, but I

latched on to classic cars at a fairly young age, probably around 10,

9 or 10 years old. I just kind of, you know, probably through hot rod magazines and stuff like

that. I started diving into that, getting interested and showed interest in, you know,

doing a project. And my uncle had these several cars sitting outside his house. He had an old truck

and then, remember, there was two bell-airs in the fence row, 53 and 54 Chevy bell-air hardtops.

And I just thought they were all cool. I used to ride a go-kart around his backfield,

back there. And those cars were right there and just dreaming about cars. And

when I was about 14, I remember we went over there and he was like, you know,

you're getting ready to drive, you know, if you want. If your dad'll let you, you know,

you can have one of those cars out there. Take your pick. And so I picked the truck,

58 Chevy truck. And it was just a pile of parts. It was literally a cab on a frame.

The fenders were laying on the ground all rusty. But for some reason, I wanted the

truck. I don't know. Was there anything else out there further along? The bell-airs were

more complete. And I should have went with that. But, and sad story is those two cars got crushed

later on. My cousin hauled them off for scrap. So, but not a car guy, not a car. But, but yeah,

so the truck is kind of what started it. And, you know, initially started dad and I were gonna

restore this truck. And I didn't know if dad quite knew what, what restoration we talking about

here, you know, and he was thinking more like a restoration. And so we were getting the classic

truck magazines and stuff like that that had some parts in there, you know. And I think that was

probably, that was probably maybe before you guys owned the business, maybe right around that time.

I don't know. What year? Probably, probably around 96. Oh, yeah. That's way earlier. Way

before. Okay. Yeah, 96. Well, I mean, we must be a similar age because 96 I would have been

just about getting 14. So I just, I just turned 44. Okay. Yeah. Got two years on me.

But, so drug the truck home. We start tearing it apart. I had no idea what I'm doing. Dad

didn't really know what he was doing much either. I mean, but we were just doing it

together. And I remember I started doing some patch panels and he bought me a Meg welder and,

you know, I grew up on like a 40 acre hobby farm kind of in rural North Kansas City.

So you'd welded some front and loader buckets together and yeah, yeah, I mean,

I didn't really do much welding, but dad had a, he had a stick welder. I never even stick

well, I've never stick welded my whole life. But that's what he had. And I would watch

him do it. And we had this big scrap metal pile of John Deere parts and stuff. And I practiced

a little bit with the Meg welder, but really didn't know what I was doing and started putting

some patch panels. And I mean, I messed it up. But at least I was getting familiar with the

machine and stuff. And then I graduated high school in 2000. And so, but a couple years

before that, I saw this article in the street router magazine. And it said hot rod university,

you know, it was wild tech. Yep. And so I was like, I told my mom, I said, that's, that's

where I want to go. And at that time, my sister, she was already going to college. She's two

years older than me. And so my one of my other uncles helped me out a little bit financially

to go to school at wild tech. And so that's what I did. I went to Laramie, Wyoming, moved

out there with very little to my name, you know, and see, I took like the summer off,

moved out there and started school right away in October, I think. And at that time,

they had a street rod chassis fabrication class, they had a high performance engine

class, general like street rod fabrication class like body stuff. And that that side of

it had a custom paint class. But you had to take some core classes. So they had had mechanic

type class, they had diesel mechanic, which I didn't want to do that. And they had a collision

class. And I didn't really want to do that. And so I figured, you know, I'm going to get

some paint experience and stuff in the custom paint class. So I don't need to take the

collision side of things. And so I was out there in Laramie, Wyoming for a year and three

months also took a three month business class, which at the time, you know, I didn't really

know I was going to be starting business, obviously. I just for some reason, I just kind

of had this, this inkling, like I think I might like that. And a nice tool to have.

Who was in in your class at that time? I'm always interested because we have these conversations

so many times. And I'm trying to framework the time wise. This is like the heyday. Oh,

2000. Yeah, why are tech is heyday 90s Chicago Bulls era of why are tech? Yeah. So this would

have been this would have been like shortly after I always forget the name of it. Jesse

James's shows and the choppers and all this stuff was on TV. Motorcycle mania, motorcycle

mania, all that stuff. Monster garage. Yeah. So that stuff was not that I was a fan or anything

was really happened. I think I don't know. I don't think overhauling started yet. No,

because that was a couple of years later. But yeah, so there was you mean specifically

who was there? Oh yeah, just if there is anybody you remember like, Oh, wow. Yeah,

I remember being in class with so and so. Well, one of my good friends now Jason Rock,

he's got a shop in he's in the middle of Kansas now somewhere, but he's pretty well known in the

Kansas City area for building some nice stuff. Years ago, he built a really nice 68 or nine

charger, like super nice paint job on it stuff. I think it was black. I remember that car.

Yeah, like exceptionally nice. Yeah, exceptionally nice. And dude just kind of came out of nowhere.

Yeah. He always builds a really nice car. He doesn't, you know, he's probably doing a few

now, but he's just kind of quiet, low key, but really good dude. Somebody I can call a good friend.

And, you know, there was only, you know, there's like 90 students per class back then.

And there was a handful of people in each class that really wanted it, you know,

that really had what it takes to be one of us, you know, and those people probably are

they probably all have their own shop or doing something big nowadays. But that's the one guy

that comes to mind. There's probably, I mean, you had like a four or five year period there.

Like, you know, Chad was probably a couple of years before you out of Wiotech. John York was

probably a year after you. Andy was a Wiotech guy, right? Andy Lee. Andy was, uh, he was a,

I think he's, wasn't he McPherson? When Andy? I was Adam. I knew Adam. I thought Andy was a

Wiotech. Yeah, I don't remember. Thomas Kearney, Wiotech guy a little later. Yeah. Yeah, everybody

ran through there and it's just, you know, always. Patzer? Try to. Yeah, maybe. Pat's just a great

dude. I don't know if that's Wiotech's biggest success story. I mean, crazy talented guy,

but he just sort of went off and did something, not in the hot rod community.

Brian Fuller was a Wiotech guy. Brian Fuller was, yeah. Jesse Combs.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people in that era. When, when you're, when you're finishing up school,

what's your, what's your idea for career path? Like, what are you? Very specific. So I, I went

out there with the intention of coming back and having a high end shop lined up. That was my goal.

High end shop lined up to work for. To work for. Okay. Yes. Yes. And so while I was out

there, I actually met Boyd Cottington. He came out there and that was a big deal. Like I was ready

for it. The funny thing was like, I had the poster of the yellow Zephyr fold out poster and I was

ready for him to sign it. And I kind of felt like a nerd. I was like hot rod nerd. And he shows up

and I'm like, all right, this is my chance. And I like raised my hands like, Hey, Mr. Cottington,

can you sign my paper? You know, and everybody's like, what are you doing? And I was like,

you know, this is freaking Boyd Cottington. You know, nobody in the class even knew who he was.

And I was like, I'm getting his autograph. And so I just, I don't know. That was weird, but

he signed it. Yeah, I still have it somewhere. Boyd seems like a difficult guy to connect with

though. I never knew him. I mean, I had met him a couple of times, but not, not a lot of

personality, like just kind of tough to really, yeah, cold. Maybe it was his circle was probably

different. That was just some punk kid, you know, yeah, we were, I can't speak to it. I've heard

too many stories of, of both ends of the spectrum. So I have no personal interactions that would

be. But yeah, I was, I was very specific. I had my sights on so why attack, they probably still do,

they do a great job. But at the time they had, I forget what they call it placement program,

I think is what they call it, where they help you get lined up with the career path that you

want. And they had sometimes they had a list of names of businesses that you could just submit

a resume to, you know, they make it kind of easy for students that don't really know how to

articulate themselves or put themselves out there. They kind of help you with that. And

so I use some of those. And I sent resumes to at least 50 shops all over the country.

Really? And I only got word back from a handful of them. And it was some of the top shops,

and they all turned me down. And so, so foos, I got a letter back from foos. I got a letter

back from posies. I got a letter back from pinkies. At least they gave you the courtesy

of responding, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that was back in the day when you got a resume

at the shop, you'd stuck it in a folder and keep it until later where now we just like,

Oh, yeah, they just get lost and you just get lost. Gmail. Yeah, right.

So, yeah. So I did that. I mean, I was very intentional about what I wanted to do,

but it was still hard to get in, you know, and without any experience. But

I had the gasoline in my blood. I had the like, I was, I was going to will this into

existence somehow, you know, like, just going to make it happen. But as soon as I got back from

wild tech, you know, I graduated with a diploma and I actually got an associates degree, which

didn't really matter much in our industry. And then my other uncle helped help me haul my,

well, so I hauled my truck out there. And if you had good grades and good attendance,

they would let you work on your vehicle in the shop after you got all your competencies done.

And so I, in the hot rod shop, I had like, aced it, you know, and I had perfect attendance.

We're like the mechanic side of stuff. I didn't, I didn't ace it, but I did pretty good.

And then so he came out there. So that was when I started cutting up the truck

and kind of lost touch with dad on that one. But

went a little different direction.

Different ways there. Yeah. Inline six didn't go back in.

Yeah, no. And that's where I, you know, cut the front end off, put a 78 transient front clip on it,

rebuilt all the bushings in the class. Like I, it was a pretty involved project for six weeks.

I think it was six weeks. I had six weeks to tear this truck down, put it on a frame table.

They showed us in the chassis shop how to properly lop it off and line it up and

make it strong enough to go down the road square. And then I remember that was a pretty

involved endeavor. And I had, I had one other guy help me on that. They usually had to have

like a team because he didn't have a project. And then we did a C notch in the back.

And there's no, you know, this was before chassis were really available for those trucks.

And even if there was, I couldn't afford it. I think I paid 200 bucks for this

transient front clip and nothing wrong with doing it that way. I mean, if that's

where you're at, and that's what you got to do, it's an improvement.

Hindsight, you know, I think I talked to you a while back about maybe sliding chassis in there.

Yeah. Yeah, we bounced a bunch of measurements back and forth to just seem like at this stage,

that's a tough one to, to swap out. Maybe in the future. I think I was like this close to,

I think I can make that happen. But it would definitely be better with a full chassis under

it. But so my uncle came out, we hauled the truck back to Missouri.

Let's see. I worked. I basically moved back in with mom and dad for about a year

and was looking for work in the Kansas City area until I could figure out

how to get into a big shop. And what were you doing as you're waiting? Are you in a

body shop? Are you? Yeah, yeah. So I got a job at, I remember the name of this time,

suburban body shop in Merriam, Kansas. So I lived on the north side of Kansas City.

And Merriam, Kansas is about an hour to the southwest. So that was the first job I got right

out of school. And, you know, I didn't know much, but I had a little bit of collision

painting experience, stuff like that. So they had me

doing collision stuff. And I was just basically the helper to the main painter

and prepping panels and doing the ease that one, two, three hour deals. And it was

flag hours. So that was my first experience ever doing flag work. And, you know,

you got to hustle when you're doing that. But I would always get just the

gravy jobs or whatever, because he was doing the big 20 hour jobs or whatever and killing it.

And then they also had a little bit of a restoration side of the shop doing hot rods.

He did some hot rods in the back. And it wasn't quite to the level that I wanted to be

involved with really, but it was something, you know. And they had an old boy there.

His name was Mylon and real proper looking dude, you know, greased back hair, rolled up sleeves,

tucked in every day. And I was kind of his protege for a while. And he was super detailed

and very clean dude. I think I talked about it on the other podcast. But

he's the kind of guy that he could he get a lot of stuff done. And but he'd never get dirty at

the end of the day. Like how did you get all this stuff done?

Sign of a true professional. Yeah, I worked with a guy like that early on to Carlos. Yeah,

it was Carlos. He didn't have cool like slick back hair and rolled up sleeves. He wore a polo

tucked into like dockers with like dress shoes. Yeah, and he was a body man. And he had a

teal snap on box and do like surgical. Yeah, surgical. Yeah. Yeah, crazy. He was he was kind

of my the first guy that showed me how to be detailed and and tidy and things like that. But

I would kind of follow him around. First vehicle I got to work on there was a 60 Volkswagen truck.

And it was just a real basic restoration. Nothing super high end. But I got to do

all the rust repair on it, which was cool. You know, I say I got to do it like I don't really

want to do rust repair now. But if I if I don't have to but I got to do basically from a sand

blasted body, all the all the patch panel repairs, the body work, the priming, the sanding of the

primer, I did the base coat and the clear coat all the way on that. And only thing I didn't

do was wet sand and buff it. And and then they had a 58 palette convertible that they were restoring

root pretty nice restoration. And I got to paint some of the interior panels for that was that

tomato red color. And then yeah, I didn't that's about the extent that I got to do on the hot rod

side at that shop. And they had an upholstery guy there. And he I think he could he could

probably tell that like I was cut out for more like there was something else that I was lacking.

You know, I know he just for some reason, he felt like telling me, Hey, there's just

other shop on the other side of town that's doing some custom stuff. And

and I was like, Yeah, I've heard of that guy. I actually sent him a resume, I think, you know,

and so I got in with that guy. He's recently passed away. His name was Tony, but

he was on the other side of Kansas City. So this was like a triangle hour to Kansas, an hour

to the other side of Kansas City, and then an hour home every day. So I was doing that

triangle for a while. And but I would go out there and work at his shop at night. And it was

just him, he had a guy in there with a CNC machine that he kind of rented the space to.

But otherwise it was just me and him in there doing just normal hot rod stuff,

boxing frames, putting in cross members, fat man stuff. And he did a lot of forwards. He had

a lot of 32 fords in there and Thunderbirds and F 100 trucks and stuff like that. That's he

was a Ford guy. So he liked doing all that. And that's where I really got like my first opportunity

to show some metal skills. And you're gonna laugh. But one of the one of the things that

I first did was the bead rolled flames on the hood sides. Cool. Yeah, you ever done that?

I've done it as a like a mockup piece, never that we've actually used

like on a car. I'm not saying it's cool. I'm like kind of ashamed of it now. But yeah, we did.

However, one of the first 32s we built the customer demanded that we have Mike Lavalle

airbrush real fire coming out of the louvers. Okay. But in the real fire, you wanted the

real fire coming off of running stallions. Oh, wow. And that's something that car actually

just was on eBay. It popped up. Yeah. I wasn't interested in purchasing it. But it was on

quite the piece. But he said the horses were on fire. Well, the horse were part of the fire.

The horses were fun. The horses were made. I got you.

Really two sets of hood sides, one plain traditional louver. So I feel your pain. I know. Yeah.

But he thought it was awesome. And I was like, Okay, you know, and so they actually it was a

Model A, I think that had these hood sides. And customer loved it. He loved it. And he

was like, What else can we do? You know, and I was like, you know, CD changer consoles.

And you know, in the headliner and you know, I think I made a dash. It was pretty basic stuff.

And it was, you know, looking back is laughable. But he was really first kind of first guy that

like turned me loose and just let me be creative, you know. And so I had from working there,

he would take cars to the Kansas City World of Wheels. And that show was coming up.

And he had a Thunderbird and a 32 Ford that was pretty much finished that we were going to

take and show off at the show. And I also heard that Rad Rides by Troy was going to be there.

And so I I didn't I've never interacted with Troy or any of them up to this point. It was just

one of those shops that were like awesome. And like, I would consider going to work there.

And they had it was a three day show cold downtown Kansas City.

And the chicane was there. So Glenn Grosage, Bill Specialty's twin turbo 62 Biscayne.

I mean, to this day, that car stands on its own. Yes, good car. So that was there. That thing was

a spaceship. I mean, in I think it was Kobo Hall, Kansas City, right there in the front row

had this beautiful display around it. And we were kind of off down the down the row, you

know, we were stuff we brought was it was nice, but it wasn't that in. But that's where I wanted to

go hang out. And I wanted to get close to whoever was involved with that and see if I can talk to

somebody or whatever, you know, I was gunning for it. I'm like, I like it, Tony, but I'm going

this way. I want to be in the front. Yeah, show the cars that are in the front. Yeah.

And that's where I first met Moose. So you guys know Moose, of course, he's Troy's

guy's been with Troy forever. And Moose takes the cars to the shows and stuff. And

he was there talking to some some people and he loves talking to people at the show. But

I remember I walked up and there was a father and a son talking to Moose

about a job, like the dad was doing the talking. And he's like, Hey, my boy here just graduated

wild tech. And I was like, wait, wait, you know, I sort of die. And he goes, you know, you guys

hiring or anything. And I was thinking myself, wait a minute, because the dad's doing a little

talk and he ain't gonna get a job. Step in when the time's right. Yes. But he just heard

he needs a fabricator. So I'm right there. As soon as he steps away, you know, so

so I just approached Moose and say, Hey, heard you heard you guys are looking for a fabricator,

you know, I'm your guy, you know. And so start talking to Moose. And he, he, you know,

didn't miss a beat. He said, Oh, come on in here and check out the car, you know, and

you know, he let me step over the fence and get in the driver's seat and sit in the

chicane. And they had this awesome stereo with the diamond audio stereo. And it was the

nicest thing I've ever heard in my whole life. And I can't believe I'm sitting in this car

right now. You know, he came around the other side and was showing me they had the Eagles on

there on the DVD player. I mean, it was like, that's cool. You know, coolest experience

for a young kid. I think I was 20 at the time, maybe 21. But so as three day show,

obviously, I'm coming back to talk to Moose again. And this time I'm coming with some

heat. So I had some sample welds in my pocket from Wiotek because I didn't I didn't have a

TIG welder at home. So I kept all the little sample coupons that they made us do at school

to show that we could weld. And, you know, I had these in my pockets. This is before

metal detectors and 911 and all that. So one of the easy to probably got out of the chicane

and looked down, there's a big old tear in that, you know, Alcantara seed.

Oh, shit. Well, coupons.

But I was just like, giving it my all, you know, I had picked had this is right when

digital cameras came out. So I still had all the actual pictures. I didn't have a digital

camera yet. Sure. And I had this album full of pictures of my work, you know,

and just just trying to give it my all. I don't care what you thought of me,

whatever, you know, and I must have made some sort of positive impression because he

told Troy about me sometime that weekend, you know, I haven't met this kid, you know,

she look into it, whatever. Well, then weeks went by and I followed up with a phone call,

you know, hey, you know, said you guys are hiring, I talked to Moose out the show, you know,

I'd like to come out for an interview, you know, and I feel like I had to do that maybe a

couple of times. And then finally one day I got this call from Angie Japan,

you know, hey, we'd like to have you out for an interview. I was like, yes,

you know, so that's how it started. Started my, I guess, professional hot rod building career was

around 2001 to around 2002. Yeah, I just up and moved to Mantino, Illinois. So

what was it like walking in there coming from your prior experience and now you're legit in

the upper echelons of the big leagues? Was it nervous, scared to do anything? Were you ready to

dive in and make it happen? Yeah, so I didn't, I didn't have much experience at that point at all.

I mean, I've said, TIG welding helped me a lot in Troy's eyes, you know, and now I know why,

you know, as a fab

Yeah, no, most shops in our industry, I mean, maybe not the higher ends, higher end shops, but most

shops, that's all they do is mig welding. And mig welding has its place for certain techniques,

as you guys know. But being able to TIG weld, and I even teach us in my classes now, I teach

some metal classes, but mig welding will force you to be a better fabricator. You know,

you have to be cleaner, you have to be more precise. You have to have a little bit more

stick to it-ness, you know, you have to be able to have some patience. And you got to be steady,

you know, it just forces you to be better all around. And so he knew that. And I just remember

when I showed up for the interview at Troy's, because I took the business class, they taught

us how to dress, you know, and I had these slacks on, had a tucked in button-up shirt,

long sleeve with a tie. Look at that. He loved that. And I walked in the door

at Troy's shop, and he's in the middle of nowhere. I mean, at the time, it was really the

middle of nowhere, you know, little town in Southern Illinois, Farm Town. And I walked in,

and I still remember this day I walked in, and I'm just kind of looking around, and Troy's over

there on the lathe, and he's just kind of peeking up. He's over there doing something.

Probably wearing shorts. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like dirty. He's looking at me like,

who's this kid? You know, like, so, you know, they, but they're very nice. And I tried out

for the weekend, basically. It was a couple of days, and I was just, I didn't really have any

direction or tests or anything that they gave me. I was just like, you know, what do you want me

to do? I can show you if I can weld or whatever, and then I can take a shirt. So I was just

trying to prove myself useful and show, show what I could do with the time that I had.

And really the only other thing I remember about that was the last day I was there. It was

a Sunday and we were just kind of chilling at the shop. And I was just like, well, I'm getting ready

to go, you know, do you want me to come back or what? You know, and he was like, well, you can

come back if you want to. And that was it. And so I was like, good enough for me, man. I'm

packing up my stuff, and I'll see you in a couple of weeks. Master communicator. Yeah.

But yeah, no, that was, so yeah, moving out there was a big deal. First time, well, second time away

from home, I guess, wild tech kind of broke me in from being homesick. So I think moving to Illinois

was a little bit easier at that point because I'd already been away. But yeah, I just, I remember

I hired on and then Andy Leach hired on about a week or two later. And he had more

experience than I did because I think he worked at ride tech for a minute. And I didn't have any

really custom like I didn't have that level of experience at all. I remember one of the first

things that that they put me on was these. You remember that green 44, the spaceship looking

one? Yep. Actually, I think that was a roaster shop chassis, an old school one. Like, man,

it must have been way back. I'll cut up. I don't know. That car just surfaced at

Berkshire's shop. Really? Yeah, he had it like doing some service work.

He called me asked you like a bunch of questions. It's got some it's got like two fuel tanks or

something. I don't remember that. And I was like, I don't have any idea. Like asking me for.

So that that car was way out there. And I remember he was asking me to make these

inner splashpans. And I'd never heard of anybody making an inner splash band. Like,

why are you doing that? And but I at wild tech, we had a little comp that we had to make

a mailbox. And part of that was hammer forming an edge. And so I was like, well,

I know how to do that, you know, whatever. And he was like, Oh, yeah, just put a return flange on

there and hammer forming or whatever. And I was like, Okay, I can do that. And I just remember

that inner splash pan kicking my butt. And just figuring out how to make this panel suspend

in space and but don't really attach it to anything. And it's got to have a nice

gap around the edge and you can't hit the wheel when it turns and making a part actually

on a functional to fit something to fit. So when you're making it like a mailbox,

yeah, it's where you're just making a part. But when it comes time to making something

that's got to fit something different ball game, did Troy let you fail? Did he watch you fail? Or

did he step in? Or does he did he tag in somebody that was experienced to say, Hey,

go help Levi or he just let you figure it out. I think it was a little bit of both.

Only thing I remember was like the the the scowls, you know, okay, like

and what do you think he's getting buyer's remorse? He's like, Yeah, yeah,

like, he's getting well good. What the hell? Yeah. And I just I remember feeling heat, you know,

because like that was the thing with Troy, like he's, and different people have different

personalities. Some people who have no problem being confrontational, I would say,

you know, with my experience there, Troy's not that type. He's, he's a very nice guy. He'll give

you a lot of chances. But you can tell just from the glares, you know, about what's that enough.

And the walking by and looking at you like hey, and subtle comments like you're making love

to that thing. What are you doing? And there was a lot of a lot of that, you know,

just kind of poking comments. And it took me for a walk because I'm kind of slow with that

kind of stuff, even today, you know, jokes and stuff. And so it took me a while to be like,

Oh, he's saying I'm too slow. I'm even slow on figuring out he's telling me.

And then Andy's Andy started and he had already done something with that car. And that was kind

of more down his, his alley of crazy fabrication is kind of what he was into. And I didn't know

how to do any of that yet, really. You know, I think I had the ability to do it. But I just,

it was too early for me. And they had this Roadster sitting there in the shop, 32 Ford Roadster,

Brookville body, brown primer, just sitting on jack stands. It had a flathead motor in it,

had some billet specialty wheels that they just had made for it that look like

old steel wheels. But nobody had started on it yet. And I think most had sanded the block down. And

that's it. Like sanded it perfect. And so that was that was kind of the turning point where I think

Troy was probably like, Okay, this isn't working out. You know, he never said it like that.

He never really spelled it out. I didn't get much feedback in that regard. But it was kind

of like, Okay, let's try something else, you know, and put me over there. And that's where I kind of,

I had a chance to focus on something that wasn't quite as over my head. You know,

and a little easier to grasp because it's just a 32 Ford. There's no fenders. There's no splash

pans at all. And so that was, as you guys know, Roger Ritzos 32 Ford, it went on to be one of the

most prestigious 32 Fords of all time, one street ride of the year, I think in 2003,

19s on the back of it, 19s and 16s. And yeah, just really timeless built car. And

so yeah, I did a lot on that. That's where I made my first set of frame rails on that car.

You know, the back half all curved and everything. I think that's probably about the time I met you guys.

Yeah, shortly after that. Yeah, I remember that vividly. We went on a field trip to come up to visit

Rad Rides. I think we just did that like unannounced. And it was me, Chad, and both of our dads.

It was like a father son bonding experience. And we were working at the Roadster shop. And

we went up there and it was like, I mean, the most humbling experience ever. It's like,

you're walking in this is this is the big leagues, you know, like, I can vividly remember seeing you

at the bench. I think you had just gotten the rails done. And I think you were raising the

wheel openings on the back of it. And it was just like mind blowing. And we didn't have a single

piece of sheet metal equipment in the shop. The stuff we were building sucked. And looking

at these cars and seeing like you at that point, you had some hype around you like you

were sort of this mythical dude, this leave. There's this guy. Yeah, it was a cool name. You're

like from the outside, like people in the industry, you're hearing about this and you're like, Oh,

damn, like that. And then you go there and you say, Levi, dude, that's it. You know,

it was really cool for us. We just we're a splash pan. You just finished.

And everybody there, we're like, those guys are like, Geez, man, what should I quit letting

people in the damn show get work to do? Like just guys giving a tour. Yeah. And there we are

just wasting everybody's time. But that was cool, man. I'll never forget that. Very cool.

Yeah, so that that was really, really glad to be part of that build, even though it was kind of

like, you know, for what Troy was doing at the time, it was kind of low key, you know, but

it came on strong in a different way. Cool car, really cool car.

Yeah. So and then after that, you know, then obviously, I had some more skills under my belt.

They had more confidence in me. I was able to do other things. You know, I remember I did

some little jobs here and there exhaust system, kick my butt first exhaust system I ever did

out of mandrel bent tubing. Took me way too long. And then

I see the next big job I worked on like full build was probably I don't remember all of them.

I know that I did a lot on George's Torino 69 Torino and the 85 Iraq or 87 Iraq. I'm sorry

that they're still building. It's getting about the debut here soon. I just went and saw it.

It's pretty awesome. I don't doubt it better be in damp 20 something years to be pretty good.

They bought a new off the showroom floor. It started modified.

It was pretty much new. Did you know that? No, the owner. So he works or worked at general

motors his whole career. I don't know if I think he retired, but he was an engineer at

General Motors. Great guy. And he bought the car brand new while working at General Motors.

The car had like 300 miles on it when they started into it. They had that much left.

It was 87. They started on 89. Wow, that's crazy. I didn't realize it was that.

And it was a teatop car. It's no longer a teatop car.

But yeah, that one was really cool. That was a spaceship. I mean, obviously,

you love it or hate it when you see it. But that was actually the first one after the

32 was Ross Meyers 36 Ford. Oh, that won the Riddler. So that one, that one,

forget about that one. Sorry. But that so the frame rail is like the frame rail evolution.

Okay. It went from the curved square frame rail, much like you guys do the

fast track chassis to, okay, let's how do we round the corners on this thing?

And so then the pole max and the metal shaping equipment starts coming into play more.

So Troy had a pole max. I knew what a pole max was. I knew what to do with it. I didn't have

a lot of experience with that, but they had that at Wildtech and they taught us what it was,

but we didn't really get to experience it. Troy had one and they didn't really seem to use it

much. So I was like, I don't know how to use that thing. And, you know, what if we put

some round corners on this? And so we figured out how to make the tooling for that. And

basically, I mean, that was before laser cutters and plasma cutters. And I think plasma was around,

but nobody had one yet. And saw cutting these rails out and saw cut some of it, or we would make it

like a like a press board template that was kerf width undersized and you hand drag the plasma

cut along it. Yeah, we did that. That makes quite the mess out of the shop. But that will

smoke a shop out. Yes. Yeah. But yeah, it was either that or band sawing it all out of

flat plate. And then you have to smooth them all up together, you know, you clamp them all

together, smooth them all up because you got to have that smooth as you run it through the

pull max and then pull max all the edges a quarter round and then TIG weld it all together.

And that had to be some extra in to get those things together. Definitely on a frame table for

that one. And a lot, a lot of labor, a lot of fitting. So that that 36 forward had those

real swoopy elegant, not only curve, but the profile of the frame changed as it went front to back.

He did that in the 57 Chrysler too, right? Yeah. I think I was involved with that one too. So I

did a lot of chrome molly too was chrome molly. That was cut out of sheets that were about this

big about 30 inches by, I don't know. Remember the build, the build log gallery on there

was that was hot and heavy. Yeah, whoever was keeping up with that was really doing a good

job. And I remember following that on the Chrysler building that frame. I'm like,

you got as crazy. I made most of that frame on how to chrome molly. And what gauge is all that?

That was a 90,000 thick chrome molly. Okay. The 36. Oh, that was 10 gauge steel, mild steel. Damn.

So yeah. Yeah, that's impressive stuff. Those chassis were always mind blowing.

And so yeah, I mean, by that time, you know, you get to the Chrysler and

thinking I'm pretty hot stuff. What kind of chassis when we build next?

And then it was probably the the Camaro and more splashpans after this. Oh, yeah,

I got better at this. I got pretty good to splashpans. But the Camaro, I remember the

Camaro and the Torino, I was working on those for gosh, I want to say like three or four

years simultaneously net, you know, like I do this one, then I did this one, then I do this one.

And, you know, I would have like a chunk of the of the fabrication on my plate. And then

some of it would get handed off to one of the other guys or they would come in and do a portion

of it or whatever. Like Andy Leach did part of the 36 forward. He did like the rear cross

member and stuff. And there were other guys involved. Adam Banks did some stuff on that

one. He made the hood and Dan Hulahan was involved with some stuff on that one. So a lot of really

talented guys at that time. I mean, the whole shop was full of like mega talent. I mean,

yeah, that was definitely the all star team back then, man. Oh, yeah.

Pretty wild. No, it's all Adam. It's all Adam. Is the other dude the dude with the mustache?

Troy. I forget his name. I just Adam just steals the show. I mean, I don't think he wants anybody

to know that there's anybody else like beneath him or doing it. I know you're talking about them.

They get some sounds. So I just I just went down there this morning and and hung out a little

bit and talk with them. They got some really talented guys. So after building those elaborate

frameworks, what was your reaction when Jack would drag it on the trailer pulling in?

Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember that much, but he probably did.

Our dad was built from the cut from the claw. Either him or Danny from George's Danny. He was

real good at that, too. Just grab with the forklift and pick it up. It'll be fine.

Yeah, that car didn't see the light of day much. It went to I think like two shows

and then it ended up at Ross's private collection. It's where it's at now in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

So he's got it. Yeah, I think it's never been out. Yeah. So when you're running through this,

you're thinking like you said, you're thinking you're hot shit, right? Yeah.

You're going to what's going through your mind.

I'm going to be at Troy's forever or you got an itch that needs to be scratched.

No, I didn't. I mean, I guess there might have been a minute towards the end where

maybe I was thinking about I can do this better or whatever, but I didn't really have a plan. I

didn't have like, it wasn't like it wasn't ever like I'm going to go start my own shop.

Now, I was like, while I was at Troy's, I was just committed to being the best employee I could

be. And that's just that's, that's where God at me at the time. And like, I'm just,

I'm going to do the best I can. I'm not I got nothing else.

It's great attitude to have. So and I think that's important for a while. You know,

there's plenty of time in life to do something different and obviously life's taking a different

path for me. But I totally didn't see Texas coming. You know, that was

caught me off guard, but you want to talk about that? Yeah. How'd that come about? Okay.

So, I mean, you know, working at Troy's, I got, I got nothing but love for Troy and

the guys down there. So they're like family. But you know, sometimes you get tired of family.

And you just got to have a little breathing room. And that's what I equate it to.

I remember I just got to the point where, you know, I just, I wouldn't hang out with them

at lunch. I'd go sit in a car and have lunch by myself. And then I was literally out in my car

and praying to God one day, you know, hey, if you got something else for me to do,

you got other plans for me, you know, send me a sign kind of thing. And about two days later,

I'm sitting out in my car again, I get this random phone call from Tyler Krauss. You guys

know who Tyler is. So, and I didn't really know him directly, but his brother Adam was

working at Troy's at the time. And I don't think they said anything. I don't think they

said like, Hey, call Levi or anything. I think it was just Tyler was at the time working

for Hot Rods of Andis. And as a painter, body guy down there in Andis, Texas. But

he called me and I'm like, Hey, Tyler, what's up? You know, hey,

you know, we're looking for a fabricator. You wouldn't happen to know anybody who's looking

for a job. Nope, sure don't know, but it's good to hear from you. That was weird.

Interesting way of tiptoeing into that. And I was there again, I was a little slow.

I didn't quite pick up on the poaching technique. There's a town about 15 miles that way.

So you guys come into the mix here in a minute. So, so I texted a couple of my close buddies,

had two really good buddies that I could pretty much tell anything and they're going to shoot

me straight. And this is even before I was married at the time. This is before I told

my wife, which by the way, I wouldn't recommend that I go to wife first next time.

I reached out to them and I said, Hey, I got this weird opportunity to go to Texas and they're

like, Texas, what are you talking about? You can't go to Texas. And I was like, you know,

you know, it's not what I wanted to hear. Yeah. And both of them said the same thing.

And I was like, that's kind of weird. Like, my friends should be like encouraging, you

know, to, you know, let's go. And so I was like, okay, it's not meant to be, you know,

and then my wife, you know, same thing. She's like, no, no, no, you can't do that. And

so I forget who it was. I think it was one of my friends said, why don't you call

Roadster shop and see if they're hiring. They'll probably give you a job. You know,

and so I, I, I don't matter if it was you or you, but I, I think I called and

you guys were like, Yeah, come on up and tried to set up an interview. I think your dad was

involved, maybe with some of it or something. But we were, we were going to have like an

interview. And I canceled on you guys. I don't know if you remember that, but

vaguely, it's a little fuzzy back then. Yeah. So, yeah, so it did that that didn't work out

for whatever reason. But, you know, be kind of interesting to if it did, you know,

yes, it's wild. But anyways, you know, I was down there working on my house,

trying to get it ready for sale. Of course, it was the worst time of the year and worst

state in the nation to sell a house at that time.

Shortly after 2008, you know, and you just decided to do it regardless. Yeah, I'm like,

we're going like there was so many signs, like miraculous type signs that happened,

like even my wife, you know, she had a cush job working at a bank downtown Chicago,

making more money than I was making. And it was very clear made made clear to her

more so than me. Like if we don't move to Texas, like we're afraid not to move to Texas at this

point, just because of a certain series of events. Gotcha. And so it had to it took some

convincing of her because I was like, we're I think this is what we're supposed to do.

But right, she had to be convinced. And there were some things that happened on her side

that was like basically she she was a risk officer at a bank in downtown Chicago and

her boss loved her. And basically, she went to her boss and she was like, Hey,

what do you think about me working remotely from Texas or something? And this was before

working remotely was even a thing. Yeah. And they were like, What's the matter? And they

started crying and everything. And we'll make it happen. Like, whatever we got to do,

we'll make it happen. And she was like, That's not the answer I was looking at, you know.

And so and then, you know, Harold Chapman, he's a hot rod the band is he made it really easy to

move to Texas. Great opportunity to go down there and work for another another good shop.

I was down there for five years. And got another Riddler winner under my belt. I mean,

I like to claim it. You know, I didn't do the whole thing. I did a big chunk of that car

as a 39 Oldsville model 60 convertible, which is really good car. It was really nicely done.

Amazing car. So, you know, they had they have a team, you know, it was a team team effort,

but I poured my heart and soul into that car. Pretty much the closest thing that I've ever

come to to hand building a whole car. And then Charlie Hutton did the paint bodywork on that

one. And we won the Riddler. So and, you know, people that don't know what the Riddler

award is, it's it's basically like the Superbowl of custom car building. And you really got to

be swinging for the fence. And basically what it comes down to is who has the least amount of

flaws. You got to have some other things to, you know, you got to have fit and finish. You

got to have crazy customization. But you also have to have the least amount of flaws doing

it like you've been doing it as long as you've been doing it, taking a little sidebar.

You've sparked a little fire here with Josh.

It's just interesting. It's just a question. And there's no agenda here. I just really honestly,

specifically from somebody that that has been involved with it on multiple occasions.

You feel the same way about the Riddler now as you did then?

About like the level of the show. Yeah.

It's been that was the last time I was there. I know there's some other shows now that are

neck and neck or gunning for it or surpassing it.

If that's the level you're comfortable with answering that, that's fine. Yeah, it's fine.

Josh could submit the more uncensored answer, I think, right? Is it?

No, it wasn't. I just was letting you know that you don't have to censor yourself if you

didn't want to. It's your car. No, your car is that car that Andis built that you had a lot

of work into. I specifically remember the tour that you gave me where they're late, late one night

with the media stuff and laying underneath it. It wasn't that impactful. No, 100%. This is nothing

to do with him remembering a little me. It was the impact that that car specifically had on me

and the amount we were able to get underneath it and look at all the stuff. And some of the

other cars that were there a couple of years before that a couple of years after that,

that level of competition in those cars that that were that were being built and those that

show is driving people to build. I hold still to this day in such high regard and that level

of difficulty has not been met. It's difficult to look at the things now. For no, I'm not

going to blame on anybody. I'm not calling anybody out. It's just a nostalgic thing for me to see

one asterisks in that. What's that? Can digs come here. Yes. 100%. Yeah. Yeah, that's that.

Yeah, I would equate it to like back then it seemed like things were trending towards being art,

like masterpieces from a design standpoint, just simply beautiful looking. And it sort of

got away from that and probably largely because everybody's just looking to check the boxes maybe

turn into a point system. If it's a point system, you know, like get after it, you know, if you're

out there to win, sure. This is an extremely detailed and in depth and nuanced conversation.

It's not any one person, any one shop, any one show, direction change, whatever.

There's a lot of the thing that just comes back to the not as many customers want to do that love

that type of build anymore. They want to build multiple and drive them. So there's no I'm not

saying that there's not like a hidden agenda of like this. This is to blame. It's from a

nostalgic only standpoint, just like when you see, you know, an old movie or you hear an

old song, you're like, man, sure was better back in the day. It's one of those things

that hits me is like, man, there was like six or seven absolutely banger cars in the eight that were

not only the highest level of fit and finish, but stylistically, they're pushing the envelopes on

types of finishes, colors, motor choices, design elements and stuff where it's just absolute

sensory overload. And again, looking back at this, you know, hindsight and nostalgic,

where everything's a little bit more colorful and a little more fuzzy when you think back about

things, you don't remember the bad, but you think back about the excitement level of just

getting into the show, right? You know, pre social media, diluting everything down. And then

once you're there, the amount of time you spend at a vehicle and taking in all of the details,

and then obsessing over those details and going back and looking at those cars a couple of times

and then the drive home talking about all those vehicles that that doesn't happen there.

That's changed. You know, it's just changed. I think the target has moved. So, you know,

obviously you guys are talking about the ring brothers thing the other day. I watched part

of that broadcast, but I mean, that car I saw before seeing before they took to any show or

they took to the quail or whatever that was. And I was like, that's it. Game over. You know,

like that car was over the top, even from social media distance. It's like, where do we go next?

Because that's not just Riddler. That's Riddler quality, but it also thrashes the track.

Yeah. And it's it's Riddler mixed with OE mixed with like track performance. It's sort of

it like checks all the boxes. It does. But again, back to not to not to pick on anybody, but

ring brothers built that car, right? And they debuted it at the quail. You've got, you know,

Troy Gudgel at BBT built a phenomenal 59 in Palo, right? And he debuted it at Siemens. None of

these folks debuted at Detroit. You know, it's it's a shame that what the ring brothers brought,

because Troy's 59 is so damn good. It's amazing. It's just that rings cars polarizing.

Any other year, Troy's 59 would have just blown out the Siemens show. But it's such a stark

contrast, like such a it's it's elegant. It's beautiful. It's so tastefully done and just,

I mean, masterfully done. He should have painted it when he built it in bare metal,

and he would have beat everybody. He would have been fine. He took him a whole other year

and a half to read to build it. But yeah, I think the the target has moved. I mean,

it's kind of constantly moving a little bit here and there. But I think the probably back

around 2016, you know, that was like, you know, and first building some really nice riddler cars.

Those are in my my memory, like some of the best of the best for art. Yeah. But these builders are

like, well, you can't drive the dang thing. Like, why am I paying all this money? And I can't even

drive it. It's a car. It's supposed to be able to drive it. Sure. And so now that the

trend has changed probably over the last 10, 15 years of being able to drive something more,

which is where you guys come into play. That's great for business because everybody wants something

that's drivable. Right. And, you know, I think there was also a trend there where everybody's

making custom chassis. I can make a custom chassis. Well, why? Now we're now we're at the phase

where why, you know, you guys, you guys could probably sew my own jeans too, but I wouldn't

wear them. But I have no desire to make a custom chassis. I mean, if I had to, could I

probably yeah, I could I could probably do it. Yeah. If you're and if you're doing something

that's like to the level of the 36 or something like something that unique, I get it. It's

there's definitely a time and a place to build it. Yeah. But my biggest point on that it's

it's a it's an engineered product. Don't spend your time on that because you can't do it.

There's no value there. When you have a budget to build a car, like take all that time you save

by getting a well engineered piece that you know works building everything reallocate that

the time those resources to make the car. That's one of the selling pitches that I give to my

clients that want to build a full build. First thing I do is try and talk them into a chassis

because I've already learned the hard way, you know, whether it's doing a front stub on my

truck or whatever you get by the time you get done piecing together all these junkyard

parts or this part of that party, you think you're getting a deal here and there.

No, you just spent twice as much money messing around when you could have just been two years

ahead and got this nice product. So I do want to button it up and put a bow on the on the

Detroit. I do have faith that Detroit. The Riddler award comes back in some point in time

as yeah, I'm just it has to build in something you kind of know there is things being built.

But I also I think that maybe it's just personal wish because it has been such a thing. It's like

the Super Bowl not meaning anything for a while. It's like the Pro Bowl. Yeah, it's like everybody

worries about the Pro Bowl. But it needs to be a thing again. Yeah, when like in that

2005 to 2015 1617 era was like you knew every single car that was competing, you know, who was

building something for that year. You knew every single car that won. You probably can't say that

for the last 10 years of no, I mean, I haven't I don't have anybody come to me or haven't had

anybody in my shop in the last 10 years say I want to win the Riddler, you know, and maybe

maybe that's for other reasons. But I don't know if you all can say the same thing.

We don't we don't get it and we really never have it. We're also don't really we don't build that

type of car. Steered a few guys away. Yeah, we've given up giving up a few builds because it's

not it's not our thing. Yeah, you know, and I don't honestly it for me, we're not really

equipped to do it to take a car to that level of like what you did with those. It's

it's not our skill set. Right. So there's there's the right guy to do it. It's

they got to find that guy if that's the car you want. Yeah, sure.

But you know, it's a tough conversation to have because I hate when we talk about it. I hate

like discrediting the guys who have no, because they've built some beautiful cars like

the details. Yeah, unbelievable. It's over the top. I just think they're like different

than what was done years ago. So I hate for it to come off as like you're speaking poorly about

those very good way to wrap it up. Yeah, I mean, no offense to anybody that has one. It does.

I think for the greater good of all of the the community and the customers,

a rethink maybe of the of the

the way the way the award is done to bring it back to because it should be

there's just some things that should be, you know, the the earth is round,

you know, north is north, south is south. And I mean, the Riddler should be the

the biggest award of the year, you know, really should be.

So you get that last Riddler under your belt. Where does it go from there?

Before we finish on the Riddler. Yeah, just Jesse Greening.

I feel like his name is he brought up. We're talking about just

all right, we can move on now. Three, three, he's got three of them, I think.

Two, two, whatever. He doesn't he only has one though.

Who cares? Because he's only got one at his place.

Who cares? Right?

Nobody cares.

We beat him that year, I think.

Good. He needed that little humble.

Yeah. So what's next?

Well, that was about five, four and a half years. That was probably about four years into

working at Andes. And I, there again, like I probably, I don't know how to go about this

without stepping on toes, but grateful for the, grateful for the opportunity to work there.

Grateful for Harold and Billy, who's no longer with us, the customer of that car,

being able to do that. Cool thing about doing that, that whole build was, to me at least,

was earning that customer's friendship after such a bitter start to that because it was one started

another shop. Really bad work. Anyways, we don't have to go backwards.

Yeah. So I realized, you know, this isn't the place for me long term. And basically,

I didn't want to go work at another shop again. And I dang sure wasn't going back to Illinois.

We're going back. Did you, you just like Texas at this point?

Yeah. Texas was good. Yeah. I like, I like Texas. You know, everybody's got the good old Southern

hospitality down there. And I like that it's hot, but I can get, you know, they got air conditioning

for that. And, but yeah, I was just basically kind of forced into figuring out the next step.

You couldn't convince your wife to move again. I could have easily convinced her to move back to

Illinois, but I was too stubborn to do that. So, but by that time we, we had a house, we had a baby,

pretty new baby at that time. And what better time to start a business, right? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Right in the middle of everything. So, you know, I didn't come for money.

I didn't have a bunch of money. So all I got is the grace of God to carry me on to the

next steps. And so I'm like, okay, God, what are we doing? You know, and

you know, sometimes you don't know, you don't hear a voice from God telling you do this, you know,

but you just got to take that step of faith sometimes. And I mean, I remember basically

the last year I was at Andis, I had to come up with a plan because I didn't really have a plan.

And I just, there's something turned on inside me, like the survival mode.

You know, I think I was in my early 30s. And I don't know if that's like a natural thing that

happened. Having the kid, having the kid helped. Yeah. And you start thinking about the future,

you know, what, how is this looking for the next 10 years? And if I don't do this now,

is this kid gonna be here all the time for the next 10 years? Yeah, yeah.

And like, if I, if I'm going to do a business on my own, if I don't do it now,

when am I going to do it? I'm 10 years from now, I'm going to be too old to start this thing.

Maybe, maybe not. But I've got, you know, my 30s, I've got the energy to do it.

I'm still stubborn, you know, I can just stay up all night to figure it out, whatever. So

basically, a year before I, before I parted ways with Andis, I, the car, the car had won the award.

It came back and it was planning to go to all the other big shows that year. So what are those,

the hot dogs nights? I don't know, there were several big shows that they wanted to take it to

and it won all of them. And so in that next year, there were some repairs that we had

to do and things like that. So I was still involved with the car for that next year,

pretty much all day, every day, taking it apart, putting it together, sending it to here, there,

whatever. Was that a good guy's Columbus? They go for a street ride of the year?

It did. I remember it out there. I think it was out there. I don't remember. I think,

did it win? I don't know. I assume it did. I think it did. I remember that car being out

there. Yeah. So I was there. Basically, that last year, I basically turned on second job working

at night. I started looking for deals on equipment, metal shaping equipment and

had no idea how to run a business really. I just, one day at a time, I had like 600 bucks

that I could spend that the wife, she wouldn't let me spend our savings to do this stupid

idea. So I had like 600 bucks. I remember it one time and I would just scour Craigslist every night

until like one in the morning looking for deals and I'd be like, okay, I'm getting that one.

And so I'd go give the guy cash. It was local. I'd go pick it up, load it in my truck, drag it

back to my garage. I had a three car garage and I had to keep one space for the wife other than

that. The rest of it was fair game. And so I just started stacking equipment in there. And

so if I didn't have the money, I would just spend the time every night, every night I was doing

something and I would go out in the garage, I would sand it down, I would paint it, I would get it

running. I would I got a phase converter in my garage where I could test the three phase stuff.

I had a pole max in there. I had a electric magnetic break. I had that thing packed. I had

a lathe in there. I had the lathe was functional. This is when I started making my prototypes

for my dimple dyes and stuff. So hammer fab was official at this point. Like I had the LLC

and I just I was just going for it. And so I just did that for like a whole year. And

and I mean, I was even doing my website. I couldn't afford a web guy. I couldn't afford

photographer or any of that kind of stuff. And I was just spinning all the plates.

Should have called Phil. He didn't need to do the fire website. Yeah, you don't think

scour and craigslist late night with 600 bucks in your pocket. You're lucky that God kept you

on the right track. You different discussions.

And I'm glad it worked out. Yeah. But you know, you stick to something like that. And

and at the end of a year, I had a whole garage full of metal shaping equipment right

hit the ground running. Yeah. And it all worked and it looked nice and cool. And so then I

started I knew when I was I was planning on quitting. It was like right before SEMA 20.

That must have been 2017 2016 2016, I think. And I was, you know, I quit and I went to SEMA

and basically by the time I got back from SEMA, I was I was hoping I had a job lined up,

you know, but it wasn't as easy as I thought it was. And I even, you know, reached out to some

guys that I knew that had a lot of builds that they wanted to do. George Poteet was one of them.

And actually, I remember I met with him on the side of the road in Texas one day,

and we stopped at Waffle House or not Waffle House, I hop. Why don't you meet me over

there and we'll have a discussion about it. And so him and Danny met me over there and

he's shown me all these builds on his phone and I'm like, yeah, we can do that one. Yeah,

that one. Yeah, yeah, I can do it, you know, and I must have been saying the wrong things or

something because he wasn't buying it, you know, like, you know, here I am, some kid doesn't

have anything to show for really. I mean, he knew who I was. I did the work on his car.

He knew as a fabricator I could I could throw down, but I think he he was smart enough to see

you're too risky. You know, I think George had just been taken so many times, you know,

he's probably pretty cautious about what he was doing. Am I right? You know,

yeah, 100%. But the one I will tell you now that when he showed you all those pictures,

you said, yeah, yeah, yeah, every single one. Yeah, that was it over. That was over with.

Yeah, you got to say no to the ones you don't like. And yes, to the ones you do, like,

that's that's the test because anybody that likes every single rendering that he's got to show you

whatever is not passionate about any single one of them. You're just ready for a job. Yeah,

it was it was a very, very unique thing that he talked about Thor of

that was his technique. 100%. He said it's what anybody to build a car just to build a car,

he wants to build the car that you're passionate about that you're just as

any of this because he likes all that stuff. And there's some things in there that he even knew

didn't look good. People send him renderings all the time, right? Or he commissioned somebody

for rendering and doesn't like the style of stuff. Or you might say, that looks awesome,

but I hate the wheels. He never wanted he didn't want anybody just to be a yes man,

he didn't want anybody just to be like, yeah, yeah, let's do it just for the job.

Because then you're just looking at for billable hours and looking for money.

He wanted the passion. He wanted the art. He wanted something that you're like,

hell, yeah, that's amazing. But we should do this, this and this. Then you've then you've

got a collaborative thing. I'll be honest on day one at that point in my career,

I didn't know how to have that conversation. Oh, 100. Who would? Yeah, who would in that

position? Yeah. But anyways, that didn't work out. So I went to SEMA just kind of hit that

was my reset button in 2016 and have anything show and have any obligations. I just went out

there and looked at some cool stuff and came back and then had one guy that wanted to build a

I say build he wanted me to work on his 33 Roadster Ford Roadster and he showed me some

pictures of it and they were literal pictures that he mailed me. So this is your first

indicator of this guy. 33 Roadster. Old school dude. No email, no nothing. Here's your pictures.

And so when he has to make splashpans for the front, he asked me to do some weird stuff.

And we, we danced, we danced around those things very carefully, but

he contacted me when I got back and he's like, Hey, you ever going to come down and look at this

car? You want to work on it or what? And I was like, yeah, I guess. So I didn't say I guess.

But I was like, let me come down and take a look at it. So I brought a trailer down there

and he was the first guy willing to start writing me checks. I mean, you got to take

it. There's nothing else. I mean, I got baby food. Yeah. Are you freaking out? Pride don't

pride don't buy that baby food. Is it like, is it set in that you're like, Damn,

I've got to get something in here. I got to get. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that first couple of weeks

and I remember so I went to go get a building, Lisa building. I've never done that before. I

don't know how to do that. And, you know, I wanted to get a pretty nice building. I want

to get as nice as I could for the price that I could afford. And, you know, it's like

2,500 square feet. That's enough to get going. And nobody had air conditioning. Nobody had

coated floors or anything. But I got like pretty much the nicest building that I could afford

close to home. And I remember the landlord and his wife, you know, I'm like, Okay, well, I want to

I'm ready to go. Like here's my deposit. Here's the first month's rent.

Can we do this? And then, you know, they're looking at me kind of the same thing. Like,

I don't know about this kid, you know, he doesn't have anything lined up and all this. And

I'm like, Are we doing this or not? Like, I'm literally quitting my job tomorrow.

Like, until you make it at that point. And then they were like, Oh, yeah, sure. You know,

but he ended up being a really great landlord and car guy too. So to this day, you know, we're

good friends. And I'm in a different building now. But, but yeah, I remember that. And then,

then you get in there and it's like, Oh, dang, this is real. Yeah, this is

all the other expenses. You probably didn't see coming in. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tons of stuff that

nobody ever tells you about that just nickel and dime me to death. And not only that, like the

little things that you have to do that don't make money, just so you can get to the point

where you're making money. Yeah. So I remember like the first week, I got this car back from

the and it was a total rust bucket. It had been in storage forever as a basket case project

that he bought out of the back of Good Guys Magazine. And just a pile of rusty parts been in

storage forever. And I had to get the car. I didn't have a lift or anything. I had to get the car

up off the ground so I could look at the underneath of it. And I didn't have anybody get it up off

the ground. You got to buy a jack. Well, I had a jack, but I didn't have any like wheel stands.

So I remember this very painful experience of building wheel stands out of two by fours.

Yeah. And it took way longer than you think it does. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you've done that.

Yeah, I built piles of them. It takes way longer. My favorite thing we posted pictures on lateral G

back in the day. And you'd have like 40 people ask, what are the dimensions? Yeah, two by four.

If you can't figure that out, you shouldn't be building the car. Was it Kyle Tucker was

the pioneer that wasn't he? He was the guy the first guy maybe for being a guy with such

an advanced engineering skill set. That's sort of what he can handle. He's Lincoln logged it.

Lincoln logged it. He's stacked two by fours. He screwed them together and changed the industry.

Yeah, but he painted them purple. No, he left them raw, I think. It's shocking for Kyle.

I just remember. Two eight, two eight footers of wheel. That's what it took.

Okay. I just remember being in that moment and thinking,

If you do the math, we're not making any money. Like, what do I got to be written?

And this time is just clicking buy. And what am I doing building these wheel stands, you know?

And it's still like that too. I mean, there's things that you have to do as a business owner.

Yeah, they don't make money. Don't make money. And you spend at least

half your time just putting out fires or doing this or doing that. And that's that was a big eye

opener. It was just you at the time, right? So you were the billable laborer and just me.

Are you wiring the equipment or you? Oh, yeah. So I hired a compressor. I hired an electrician

one time. And then I was like, I ain't doing that again. I'm gonna figure out how to

They charge more than we do. Yeah. And I'm like, it can't be that hard.

And so I wire it all now. I'm like, I mean, maybe not in the future, you know,

if I got something better to do, but it's not that hard. So yeah, I did a lot of wiring of

the machine, figured out how to wire up three faces. Most of the time on the electrical

stuff, it lets you know when you're doing it wrong too. It's like pretty quick. It's

like a buzzer. It's like playing operation. Sometimes it's only gonna let you know once

though. Well, then yeah, on the big one.

So yeah, so I was by myself for at least a year. And at this point, you know, I had my first

product. Talk about that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. The dimple dies, you know, my first product

was the three eighths crater maker dimple dye. And it just kind of had a cool look to it.

For some reason, everybody liked it. It kicked off to this day. It's still one of our most

popular products that we sell. And that just basically snowballed into several other sizes,

several other styles of dimple dyes. And all of our dimple dyes are specifically for

adding strength and style around a fastener. So I kind of steer away from the mainstream

punch flare ones. I don't want to get into that. I don't want to compete with that.

The smaller, more intricate stuff specifically to what we do as car builders seems to be a little

bit harder to knock off. It's a lot of little moving pieces that nobody wants to deal with.

And I'm willing to deal with it. So that's kind of where most of my products

are kind of fall into that same bucket. It's just a lot of little things to deal with.

And I'm willing to deal with it. And once I figure it out, you can kind of streamline

it, you can kind of scale it, teach somebody else how to do it. I think it's great stuff.

I follow your social media. Your social media is phenomenal. First, I mean, you do a great job

with the brand, the marketing, and the stuff's really great. Like me personally, it's all things

that I want. Unfortunately, at this stage in my career, I'm not building things anymore. But I

am in the process of acquiring some tools to start doing stuff at home again, at which point

I'm definitely hitting you up because it's all stuff that just hits it like right on the

mark. Because you look at that like the Crater Maker. You don't want to go make that.

Like it's sure you could, but it's like a chassis. Why waste your time doing it when it exists?

And there's a great product that already exists. Like your backing pad,

everything I see, it's all stuff that's very well thought out.

Fills a need.

Fills. It's phenomenal for fabricators. The only issue I see it's like,

I see too many damn Harbor Freight toolboxes nowadays that I think

guys just don't make the investment as much anymore. Like when I was doing it, even when I didn't have

a lot of disposable income, but I was buying Dynabrate tools, like I'm buying good stuff

because it's my job. That's what I took pride in and I want good tools. I watch guys nowadays

take a Harbor Freight cutoff tool and just, I mean that thing, it's like you're blowing on it

basically to get it to spin and it's just irritating the metal. And it's like a right

angle one too. And they'll sit there and you're like, dude, how the hell do you have the patience

for that? I mean, I spent half my paycheck just to get something that will zip through

that and get the damn job done. So I get on to the next thing.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's true. It's even an issue at our shops. Sometimes guys love

using my tools. Yeah. I have a slight rule. I'll let them use my tools, but after the

second or third time, you have to think about getting your own. If you're going to use it

that much because every time I go to grab mine, it's junk. Oh yeah. I used to get pissed about it,

but at this point now I'm looking at that like at least they're getting some use.

You don't have much left though. Oh, it's just, it is absolutely pillaged.

Absolutely. I mean, brutal. I mean, even down to like sacrificing parts, like the whole air

fitting. That's all the other day. I was looking for a hammer and I found the hammer handle,

but not the hammer head. I haven't seen that one yet. The only thing that I'll say is

is my Trump shear. That thing's going on like 20 years old and it's, it gets coiled up for

some reason they take, everybody takes great care of it. Like a handheld thing. It's a hand,

like a barrel kind of handle on it. It's, you know, it's a 120 volt. You plug it in. It's not cordless.

That thing just gets used every day and it just lives in my drawer. It's mine.

And it just lives. It continues to perform. Shocking. Right. I didn't think that. I'm

putting a bounty granted. They're probably I want that thing to disappear. Anybody listening

but still going strong is good tool says 19 gauge. I could probably do 10 gauge.

But great, dude, I love the stuff you're doing. I mean, really, it's a,

it's great stuff for the professional fabricator. Thank you. Yeah. So the products,

back to the timeline, the products, you know, I started ramping those up

simul, you know, alongside doing builds and couple of times the products have saved my bacon,

you know, a couple of times financially, you know, like income wise, you know,

they'll be like seasons where I get more product sales or this or that or whatever.

And then also around that time I started doing the classes, the metal shaping classes

around probably 2017. And the classes were originally going to be like a plan B,

like what if this car building doesn't work out the way I think it's going to sure.

And so there, there became this little lull in work. Like I remember I had like a hood

with a dent in it in the shop that I had to fix and like one other little thing. And I'm like,

now what, you know, and so I posted these class, I had this idea to post these classes. I

was doing the website. So I had full control of it. I posted these. I forget what they were

pole max firewall pole max class, how to build a custom firewall, how to build custom floor

pans, how to, and I, I don't remember exactly what I did, but I listed two or three classes

at a time, you know, like a month or so out. So people had time to plan for it. And I want to

say they sold out like in a few days. And I was like, light bulb went off. I was like,

dang, that was like instant cash flow, yeah, all upfront right now. And I got time to figure

this out. And so that's what I did. I just, and I had people come from all over the United States had

one guy from Canada come down. I've taught people from all over the country how to do metal shaping.

It's pretty cool. You get to the classes actually was a great opportunity to meet

cool people. Just, you know, one, you get to hang out with people, 10, 15 people at a time

from all over the nation, you get to hear different stories. But also I've got employees

from doing that. I've got customers from from the classes. And you sell product at everyone. So

I'm still doing the classes. I don't do them as regularly as I'd like, because I'm so busy now.

And now that we're in a new shop, the workflow of the shop with the equipment and the cars

and the way and stuff, it makes it a little harder to shut down production so that you can

make room to do to do a class. But I do want to do some more compound curve classes. But

is it big enough for you can have a separate facility just as a school?

I've entertained that I have a separate facility. It's right there. But for some of the classes,

I can do that. Like right now I have, I can just do TIG welding classes down there if I want,

because I've got a welder over, but you're not yeah, I'm gonna pull max. Yeah, exactly.

It's kind of hard to move the power hammer and the pull max. But yeah, big in a forklift.

Yeah, yeah, we could. But I mean, it's so my guys work for 10s most of the time,

unless we're doing overtime. So that's Monday through Thursday. So usually I'll schedule the

classes on Friday and Saturday. And if we hustle, we don't waste a bunch of time,

you know, shut down the shop. It's good format the way that you do it. I mean,

there's a lot of metal shaping classes out there, but they're kind of kind of vague or the

it's more like a hobby type thing, like structuring it as though like here's a here's a useful

project. It's very useful that you can actually apply. Yeah, that's my goal. That's

pretty clever. That's my goal is to teach. I don't want to teach anything that's just on the

bench or in thin air like that splash pan. You got to make something fit something. And that

you'd be surprised how many people have never had to build something that actually works.

And so that's part of the challenge is we're gonna show you how to make a template

on this actual car. It actually has to fit. It actually has to hold up be stiff and welded

in so that this thing's going to go down the road, you know, so people they always love it.

Mini 36 Ford fenders on anything. Have you? Yeah, that's the little Ron for me.

Hey, the fenders and the problem you gotta find the body. It's the many years ago.

But to your point, it's like, if you're not making something to fit something,

even like just the generic motorcycle fender, like, okay, like, tell you what you could do,

though, you can make all those mini 36 Ford fenders and hang a hang a body shop clock

right there in the wheel opening. How you got yourself something and paint that up, hang it

over the wall, a little dupe old DuPont clock, hang that, put the 36 fender over there. Tell

you what, that's business idea. We're about to go do a restroom break. And we're going to come

back with that. All of us are just you. Yeah, it's all of us. Okay. We got it. We're

going to come back strong. Yeah, we're coming back strong. All right, back.

Do we need to do the clapping thing? Does that that's sick? It sounds it looks cool.

It's a formal that's not giving it a hard time. It's an industry where he can

sync the video and audio at the same time. If there's a break, he can catch the front one

and just look for the peak, catch that and skip through. Yeah, that's what I thought.

It actually is a thing. Welcome back. Welcome back to everybody.

I know you sat there patiently waiting. You smell more like you smoked then. I peed.

Yeah. I peed first. I wanted to take this opportunity, a couple of things. This is one

of those rare times where there's a perfect segue. Okay, right? So you created the

segue, I guess, but just halting the podcast, but no sounds like a good segue. So go ahead.

That's not the definition of a segue. I'm taking it. I halted the podcast for the opportunity

to capitalize on the segue. Okay. The segue came from first you mentioned

some of the tools. Yeah, talking about the investment in yourself, right? You mentioned that

so many fabricators nowadays, you mentioned it as well, aren't taking the investment

in themselves, right? And buying those those quality tools, right? And it's difficult that

everybody's got bills and everybody's got things and time. And if you look at it from an investment

in yourself, those purchases seem a little different. You mentioned the metal shaping

classes, those are investments in yourself. Something else that you mentioned at the very

beginning was taking a three month business class without having any idea if you're going to

run a business. We mentioned in this podcast, if this is the 200th episode, this is the

200th episode. If it's not, we're close to it, right? No pomp and circumstance around here, right?

It was just another one. However, we've talked about so many times about the business side of

things of running your own shop and how much that you didn't know until you figured it out.

We have the solution. We don't have the solution. We're going to talk about the solution,

right? So Roger Lee from Ironworks and Troy Gudgel from BBT have been doing their business

classes. There's one coming up February 20th through 21st in Muhammad, Illinois at BBT FAB.

You can go to Ironworks Speed and Custom with a K. Still don't understand why he's

built with a K, but he does. It's cooler with a K. IronworksSpeedandCustom.com.

Look at that. We got it pulled up right there. You go there, right there on the

header, you go to business development class, right? You see that. I think that this is

an extremely important thing. I have to be honest, when I first started it,

like most hot rod builders and people in this industry are like, what? Why?

Why are you doing that? Now, after having the amount of conversations that we've had on this

podcast, we realize how important it really is and this is filling a need. There is

so many seemingly simple questions and I say seemingly simple because they're simple after

15, 20 years of doing it. However, there's a lot of people that don't have the answers to that,

however long they've been in business. Even then, nobody talks about them. It's like,

you feel like an idiot bringing it up. How do you guys bill for this?

Yeah. And nobody has like a uniform kind of approach to doing it?

They do a really good job of having that environment that's a proper size for

positive engagement and other voices of opinions, but not too big where you feel embarrassed to ask

a question. They also do a group after you've done the classes. There's a group that meets

like monthly that kind of follows up on progress and other things or challenges that you've had

implementing said great idea or something. So I think it's a really good idea. A lot of people

complain about, we've heard complaints about the cost. They deal with complaints about the cost.

I come back to the investment in yourself. I think the metal shaping class is a great idea.

I think that buying new equipment and tools are a great idea. Use the analogy I think

when Roger was on here before. There's a guy that will have no problem

borrowing from Peter to pay Paul or going into debt to buy a $4,000 Pull Max, $5,000 Pull Max,

$6,000, whatever. And not know how to use it. Well, and not know how to bill for it,

or not know how to make that profitable for the business. And I think that the business

side of things makes. It's important to talk about this is a positive thing for the entire

industry that we all will reap benefits for. So this isn't just like, you know what, we should

talk good about this class. I want people to get better at business to be able to hire more

employees and build more cars to buy more chassis. Like it's, but it's not supposed to say that part.

But for all, for all manufacturers and every car or the sexy, exciting, cool part,

the business is the part that keeps the doors open and keeps your kids fed and keeps your

employees getting a paycheck and growing the business and keeping the industry going.

Hey, I mean, this is good, good conversation. So I mean, being a good fabricator is one thing.

And I took years to get good at that. But then when you go to start a business,

there's a ton of things that you got to improve on, like personality, the way you present yourself

and on and on and on, like that I'm not really that good at. There's no playbook for it.

There's no playbook for it. And I will say, are you done talking about that?

Well, make sure you go to ironworkspeedandcustom.com with a K. Check it out. Sure. Go to business

development classes. They got one coming up. They will answer a lot of questions that you may or

may not have. I have not been, but I know the guys. They're good guys. They are good guys.

Yeah, you make a great point as you're talking through that though. It's probably the most

overlooked thing. Everybody's so focused on honing their fabrication skills. But there's a

lot of guys going off and trying to do that on their own. And you totally overlook the most

important part. Yeah. A lot of us who's running the business get paid. Yeah. And learning how to

deal with a ton of different people. I mean, you got to be a personality expert to some degree.

And I'm not that good at it. But I counted one day. I don't know if you guys have ever

done this count. At the end of the day, go on your phone and count the amount of people

that texted you or conversed with you on text, email, phone calls. Just in one day you blow

your mind. I think I had, I think I had, I counted like 35 or 40 people I had to talk with all in

one day about different things and have different tones and different attitudes and

stepping on, not stepping on anybody's toes and, you know, stroke and everybody or this

or that. It's hard. And it's an emotional roller coaster that you're not prepared for.

It is. And to be honest, like what better way, what you're doing in your class is you're giving guys

20 something years of experience, metal shape. And so there's some things that, I mean, metal

shaping, it takes a long time to master it. But there's also those little tips and tricks that

took you forever that in minutes, you can tell a guy and cut years off of his learning curve.

And the same goes for business. There's things you can fail at for years and years and years

and sitting in a class like that. And in a matter of minutes, somebody to explain that to you.

And the light bulb goes off. I mean, I'm fortunate I don't have to learn all those things

because I'm partnered with Phil. But on the metal shaping side, there was a lot of things like

that. Like I remember when I first started doing it, I did a class. I was, yeah, I was like 19.

And they were trying to explain to me stretching the metal, right? And me being like a stubborn,

I know it all, you know, I'm 19 years old, but I'm a hot rodder. And I've, you know,

you're not going to tell me what to do like stretching it. Why not just cut the panel

bigger? Because we're talking about pre stretching the panel, pre stretching,

just cut the panel bigger. How are you talking about? Yeah. And I was so stubborn,

it just didn't resonate with me, like what they were even doing. And then all of a sudden,

it clicked and you're like, Oh, okay, like I'm stupid.

Well, I think not to not to keep going on the on the on the business thing, but

there is the element of that on some of the things. I mean, I've been a part of the conversations in

the parking lot of, you know, Columbus good guys or other places, whatever, when it does come to

business talk, you can talk about fabricating, you know, in a tip. Oh, yeah, you're trying

to do that. Like if you're going to do that, like do this through the rampant on the dye,

like this, and you won't have that wrinkle problem coming out or on a plumbing issue or

something like that. Hey, don't ever use this line. You'll always have a problem if you're losing that.

Generally, if you've been in business for a while, it's met with like, Oh,

shit, okay, I'll do that. On the business side of things, some of this stuff is so

simplistic that you can't admit that you've been doing it wrong. There's always an ego that

you assume like you're right and you don't want to, you don't want to give anybody else

a peek behind the curtain. Like I've been doing this wrong. I'm a fucking idiot.

But instead of just being like, Oh, so that's how you're doing the materials. It's like that.

I need to start trying that. It's like, Oh, no, that wouldn't work there because what do you do

about this? I would see my shop is structured this. Guess what? We're all doing the same shit.

Materials are materials. This is the best way to track them. This is what we found works,

you know, I've had the conversation with my kids, like I try to like give them advice on

something and it just isn't no, dad, you don't understand what I've been doing this for

44 years. Like I understand how this works. Just just hear me out on this and then 25% of the time

it would actually click. Yeah. But yeah, 100. I mean, here's what I'll say. Take the metal

shaping class first, because you can't sell crap work. Regardless. So you've got to be a good

fabricator. You've got to sort of master your craft or have a handle on it. Well, immediately

after get into that business development class and learn how to charge for your work and run your

business. I've got a different take on it. Okay. I agree with you what you're saying, but I got

a different shape and class might be before you're operating your own business. Like even

as a fabricator working at a high level in a shop, you should absolutely do that. It's going

to take you if you've been in the industry for four years, he's got 20 something on you.

So go learn it. If you are, if you are owning your own business, whether you're brand new,

or you've been in it for a while, I think that you, the owner of the business,

should be taking the business class first, because either you already have enough metal

shaping skills to be having a business to people to come in or send your employees

to the metal shaping class, the fabricators, and you go to the business class.

Got it. That's, that's my, I retract my saving. You should have taken the metal shaping class

long before you got to the point of, sorry. Yeah, that's kind of, that's fairer than he's

agreed with you. Yeah, good point. But no, I see the point he was going to, it just

needed to be crafted into, we got to it in the end, because you would have not

been starting your own business. If you didn't in doing what you were doing, had you not

had the metal shaping. Yeah, the foundation. Right. Because you didn't, because you didn't

leave school and be like, you know what I can do? I have, I have a year and three months of skill

and teaching. I'm going to start my own metal shaping business. Yeah, no, I probably wouldn't

have went that way. Right. You could have went several different ways at that point,

you know. You could have made mailboxes. You could have made a shit ton of mailboxes,

right? You never know. I know some guys who sell metal art stuff. They're doing pretty

good. I know the guy in Diamond Lake Road went to that.

But it's a great inside joke on that. Sorry. While you were in your potty break, as you

generally call them. I'm not allowed to call it that anymore. I went and took a piss.

Big man piss. Make it better. That is so much better. You're growing up. You have

significantly more respect from I think the entire hot ride community. I did it

outside too. That makes you better. And not in this temperature.

We brought up a pretty good point in talking about how the classes have changed like with

COVID people not wanting to travel like the massive investment that it costs to

do it because it's like the class is X but then you've got flight hotel time away from the shop.

Talking a little bit about like what the alternative is and

I said he was kind of getting down the the path of doing a digital version,

which I think is a home run. And then you kind of linked it in with

not just for like the shop owner, which is generally a cool reef kind of thought,

but for all the employees. So it's a huge expense if you want to send four or five

employees out to visit you. But twice it's a double ways. It's an expense.

What you got to pay and what you're not doing.

But I guess touching that a little bit. You've kind of shifted gears a little bit on the

in person class versus doing something that's more accessible and significantly less expensive.

Yeah. For the for the end user, the customer, it's significantly less expensive,

but still an investment in yourself. We started doing what I call Hammer Fab Academy.

And we're still ramping it up. It's a huge investment on our part.

You know, it's a lot of time and effort that goes into video recording

step by step, how to do said task, whether that's metal shaping.

We've got a couple on our website for 3D scanning. I show like on a screen, like it's

it's it's real clean cut, like, you know, how you pop up the screen. It's doing that

screen share thing where you can see exactly what I'm doing. I make the cursor real big

so you can follow along because it'd be good for you. I taught myself solid works

and stuff by watching people on YouTube. And that's fine and dandy to some degree,

but you only learn snippets or nuggets here and there of what you're trying to do. And half

the time it's in a different language or you can't see their cursor or their screen is fuzzy

or it's not a car part. So it's like this isn't really applicable. So what I'm trying to do

with Hammer Fab Academy is we got the physical classes. Okay, yeah, you can still do that

come in person when they're available, get them because they sell out fast. Or you can go on there

anytime from the comfort of your home for less than 100 bucks, learn a specific task, exactly

what you're wanting to do geared towards our industry. And I'm showing you and spelling it

out verbally, you know, step by step, how to do this. So if you just got a 3D scanner and

you don't know how to use it, I got some really cool, easy videos to show you how to

do the basic stuff. And then I have another one where it shows you how to transfer that to

Fusion 360 and model that part. Just real basic. How do you get from here to here? Okay,

now we're going to we're going to have more advanced ones from there on out. So

got a few of those available at hammerfab.com right now. I mean, we've got metal shaping

ones. I'm trying to think what all the ones I have 3D scanning the solid work stuff.

I mean, basically, we were talking about it. And it's like, there's so many things that

I could teach you if I put it on video and make it easy for you to get. And so that's what we're

trying to do. And once we get a few more of them on there, probably going to turn it into a

subscription type platform where you can go get a bunch of information for really cheap. I mean,

you don't have to get on a plane. Masterclass and hot rod building. Masterclass and hot rod

building. Yeah, absolutely. And it has it just hasn't evolved with the times like look at the fitness

industry. And you look at the app based stuff. Yeah, the video content that's available. How much

you can wrap up into these apps to look for beginners to learn this stuff. Metal shaping

just it's, you know, forever it was either in a book or on a VHS tape, which then I think

they converted them to DVDs or you got to physically go and do that. But yeah, to bring it up to today's

standards minute. Honestly, I'm going to create a burner account and log on to that. I don't

want people knowing that it's like Jeremy from Roaster shop to take classes again. But

I've forgotten more than I've learned. I feel like over the years I'm going to make a like a

not RS 87 screen name or something. So I know. We got to like, you don't have

some burner emails. I've already seen some of those.

It's something that's not talked about even when you mentioned the fitness thing where I was going

of my mind was going by trains and what you've done is done watching all the videos.

No, but the byproduct of the way those apps or the digital is the repetition part of it and

giving you the reason to go do the project. So by the very nature of following along,

you're able to work on the project at a better cadence versus just saying,

you know what? I've watched some videos. I've taken this. Now I'm going to Saturday.

This coming Saturday is the Saturday. I go out in the shop and I start if you just go out

there and you just start with no clear direction and not following along. It's very difficult

to get from point A to point B much like fitness. If you just watched videos during the week

and said Saturday, I'm going to the gym and I'm going to go. I'm just going to start.

It's an easier path to start ABC to get through a project by following along

and pausing gets the next step and gets the next step. Then it is just trying to consume the knowledge

then like, okay, I'm going to go do things. Especially when you're just trying to get,

if you don't have the actual project to do, you know, you're just trying to learn.

I think a lot of it too is helpful for making decisions, purchase decisions on,

do I want to invest in this 3D scanner? Like how do like when I first got a 3D scanner

or actually before I got one, I was hiring a local guy to come do it for me with his

fair arm and everything. And it was super detailed and he did a great job. But then I've

realized, oh man, I could use this a lot more and it just makes sense for me to get my own.

But at the time, you know, $8,500 or whatever it was seemed like a lot for me as a small shop.

And why would I spend that money on this thing right now when I have no clue how to use the thing?

And so you could for less than a hundred bucks, watch the video and decide whether or not you

want to do that. That's what that's funny because and also you talked about earlier that you've

gotten customers off of it. Yeah, because for the last probably year, I've been deep diving

in and learning. I want to build my first 1911, right? Pistol and build it, you know, from like

from raw parts. You want to melt down the metal? You want to Jesse James it or you want to like

buy a kit? I've gotten really into like the Blacksmith video. No, seriously. No, you'd start with

you would start with a with a raw blank that's not fit, right? So nothing fits together, but

you start with the raw parts and then you've got to make them fit. But you don't

that's what happens if I get a brand new gun and then buy three or four parts because nothing

but there's a lot that goes into building a 1911 or 2011 that doesn't go into quote unquote building

or accessorizing other guns. There's a lot of specialized tooling. There's a lot of stuff,

but I've been really for the last probably year just consuming, learning all that stuff,

the individual tools, because I want to do, you know, all the slide fit. I want to do

all the barrel lock up. I want to do all the hand checkering. I want to do it to

me a long process. But there's been so many times I've done I've watched classes,

step by step YouTube videos from people. And then I end it with looking up that guy and like,

man, he does some really nice work. I just have him build me one. And it just ends to the

thing of like, because you go through, you know, some of the checkering tooling and then some

of the vices and then some of the lapping plates and then some of this stuff and you

know, that and like overwhelming, but I still I still want to do it. I want the I want

the satisfaction of doing it myself, but that definitely steers you into the fact if the

if the thing that you're trying to create or build starts to outweigh the the gratification

of the doing it, then it's just kind of like, you know what, Levi, I really wanted to do the

fenders on this 36 Ford. And it's it's a it's one eighth scale. And I need you to build

these rear fenders for it. I'd rather just you do it versus you teach me to do it.

We've gotten some full builds that way. 63 impala in the shop. Him and his dad came and took our

class years ago and he's a former Navy SEAL awesome dude, you know, top top of his game.

So he's paying attention to details. He took a stab at it and he had this car on us. He built

the frame table for it. And then he put the car on the frame table, smoked the floor out of it.

And then he came and took a class. And he was like at the end of the class, he's like,

hey, would you be interested in working on a four door appala? And I'm like, you know,

four door. And then and then it turned into a cool deal. Like I don't know if you guys have seen

the cars twin turbo Nelson racing, but that's a unique individual, especially like you said,

upper echelon used to performing at the top of his game. If the thing he wants in his mind,

he knows that himself and his skills won't live up to his expectations.

Then the honest thing to do is it's better off just get the craftsmen to do the thing that that

you want. Those dudes are smart. And it's it's it but it we've been those we've all been in those

situations. As we progress through life where the things that we've done before

you start wanting a better job at and you really want to get better yourself,

but there's just some things you just can't do. You have to resign yourself to the 20,

30 years of experience to that stage. Now let me just pay the guy that does the thing better

than I do. It's tough, but it's I know exactly what you're talking about. I feel like I went

down that like midlife crisis sort of thing. Maybe that's what it was. You watched the C6.

You want like Jesse James, you watch what he's done, right? He mastered his craft.

And then obviously something he just did it again with the 2011, the new one. Well,

but something was going through his head that he needed to expand his skill set. So I went from

making bikes to making knives. And now he's making guns and he's doing that really well.

And maybe it's just because I was a fan of his early on. Do the same thing. Dude, I went from

like building hot rods and I'm like running a big hot rod shop and then I want to be an engraver.

You know, I went and I took an engrave. I just there's the only time I just like

pieced out of the shop went to like a three day engraving course somewhere in the middle

of nowhere, Missouri. That was cool as hell. But I realized that when you put that kind of time

into learning a craft that you've sort of gotten good at, it's so hard to not be good at something

else. Yeah. And same goes for like now woodworking. You know, I've got all these tools that were

my old man's and it's like they're there. I kind of want to use them. So I'll like

tinker with it, but I'm not any fucking good at it. You know, I've fortunate that I've

got some friends that know their way around it. But if you want to apply that to like the

Hammerfab Academy, the thing I'm missing is you can go on YouTube and there's countless

tutorials, but nobody just gets into it for the guys with a short attention span.

What we'll say, just get into it. Let's let's get started. Yeah. And they have to gear

in a different way. Well, we get let's gear it up for learning, Josh. But just get into it

like, Hey, here, guys, we're building a firewall. Here's the bull max. Here's this. These are the

dies. Here's the part. Let's get started. And just do it. I don't want to. I don't need all the

like theatrical crap, like the the influencer YouTube. I don't need your personality. Let's

get into it. Show me step by step. Let's move through it. Show me how I could pause it at

any point, right? Yeah, but show me how to build the part. Yeah, we've had people download

and I can tell if you've watched it or not. And so I've had people download stuff and

I'm like, are they ever going to watch it? You know, and then and then couple weeks later,

they'll watch it and you can tell when they've completed it. And I could kind of turn it into

a little bit of a gaming thing where, you know, once you complete it, you get the next one

and all this stuff back to we could probably text Jesse James, see if you can get in on that

new 2011. He just just dropped it to buy one. Oh, see, I mean, it'd be way quicker than

Josh making his own way. Three of us will go way better, too. Well, yeah, I know it'll

be stop. Don't be mean to that. The thing is you got to check it out. It's cool. Yeah,

so that's like kind of to what he said, like it's such a barrier of entry to building stuff

to this level. Yeah. And then like you expect anything you do, you want to have it to

that level. And you're like, just I want to see it. I'm 20 years old. I'm going to do it.

Do you struggle with that with other things outside of like you've sort of mastered your

crowd? I mean, there's you'll always grow, you'll always learn, but you're very good at it.

When you look to like take on something new and you see guys doing it at a super high level,

is it like frustrating for you to like, you mean like not correlated or correlated?

No, not correlated. Like outside of I don't know if you've got another hobby or if there's

something you've seen that you want to like take on. And it's just like that, like to go get

into that. I would just buy that.

I probably can't afford it. But yeah, I mean, I would love to have one or two.

I know. Well, because you look at it and then you know, you know,

that's the way you want to do it. Right, Josh?

Like that's the way you're 20 years away from being able to do it.

It's 100%. No, not in a bad way.

No, I know this. I'm you're not saying anything that I haven't gone through my head.

I 1 billion percent know that I won't even not not even talk about like come to Jesse James.

I couldn't build a 1911 to the caliber of a of a Springfield operator, right at a at a $900 entry,

right? Just bare bones, 1911. I can't do that.

I can't put a light on one that's designed to fit for one.

Is that one that you cross-threaded or stripped the thing?

I stripped my head, Josh. But that's all over the internet that it's a common problem.

You brought it down to the armory and I knocked that thing out.

But no, the thing that there's two things about wanting to do it.

One, it's the challenge of doing it. I know going into it, it won't be going through it.

I'm going to learn that much more about the individual piece of machinery,

like the actual inner workings of the gun that much more intimately.

And I know the respect level that I will come out of for the purchased firearms at those levels.

So it's still it's still a thing that I'm going to do at some point, hopefully here in the near

future with all intentions, understanding, knowing that it will not be it'll be it'll be a functioning

piece. Okay, so that's that's it. Go ahead.

Okay, so suspension stuff. Chassis stuff. Sure.

You're talking about like we're just going to hold this up here for the rest of the

we're dabbling in the suspension stuff for a body moparse.

And I'm finding out there's probably reason a lot of people don't do those cars.

But so you're talking about like you're really good at building chassis.

I don't have any intention of building chassis and being a competition, but

it would affect how well this podcast is throwing that out there.

But I will say like trying to create a product line that has to go down the road like that.

I'm learning like, dang, I got some more respect now because there's there's a lot involved.

There's a lot to it and and making a big package product that you can ship that you can

mass produce that you can, you know, make it easy to install and all this stuff.

It's very challenging. So yeah, it was that's an undertaking that was more than I thought it

was going to be. Yep. I still like the challenge. Sure. But you know, we're still moving forward

with it. Yeah. Well, I think I mean, I think you did a great job with it and your skill

sets applicable to that. Like you're a great fabricator. So, you know, like the quality is

going to be there. It's just sort of the learning curve of what things do,

how they work, flushing it out. It's more like the test in tune and improving it and

getting it to the point of a product. But it's not like you're learning how to weld,

you know, like you can definitely do that well. Yeah, but I don't have many hobbies in that

regard either. I just I'm just a car guy. I mean, for the most part, I got some guns.

I don't have anything like super trick, but I guess I don't have anything super tricky there.

Yeah. I'm building my own guns. You just heard me tell the story and this felt horrible.

You've got a pretty good collection, dude. It's pretty impressive.

It's a it's it's definitely a it's a very good outlet. It's nice to go blow out some steam every

once in a while. Yeah, it's blow off some steam. I mean, with with around here, I haven't I mean,

help me. We used to go shoot all the time. But you live in Texas. We can't even have a cap gun

here. There's a feet per second rule on a slingshot. You can only have so much

tensile strength on your rubber band. It is illegal and you have to have a license.

It is a it is a there is absolutely besides the cost of the things and the age of me,

there is absolutely no difference than what I what I do now on a Sunday afternoon,

especially like this last weekend, it was snowy out and so like that. There's nothing to do

outside. What I do now when I go down to the gun room and put on a record and clean or

organize or, you know, reassessorize or in the middle of a build is no different than,

you know, 35 years ago and climbing up to the treehouse and playing with your hot wheels,

you know, and saying no girls allowed. It's the exact same thing. It is 100% a little kid.

I was bringing girls up to my treehouse. I don't know what you were doing.

That was the spot. That was the spot. You're doing that at like 18, though.

No, crazy. That was just weird.

I think that would be a good hobby for you, though. And a treehouse. No, the gun stuff.

I mean, Jesse didn't start that until I mean, he's not a young man. No, he must have started

that in his late 40s, I'm assuming, and he got pretty damn good at it. Right. But he's more

talented than you. But that was weird. It got too nice. It got too sweet. It got too sweet.

And he had to dump some vinegar on it. Oh, I know it was coming. Maybe you could intern with him.

Yeah, I could. I would love it. I would absolutely love it. If I get back to this letter here at

the end of the podcast, that's maybe where I'm going. Yeah. Have you guys had him on here?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I've met him a couple of times. He seems like it's in the Austin area.

Yeah, he's not too far from me. Dude, just he's modern day Johnny Cash did the second.

He's been on the podcast twice. Second time he comes on. He knows what he's doing.

I mean, there's nobody. Everybody knows he knows what he's doing. He knows and he knows what

he's doing. He comes on. He's got the he's full blown. Like as soon as we come up, it was Zoom

comes up live. He's in the middle of Tig Weldon, the rails on the 1911. He's got his hood

down, whatever he flips up. Oh, we live? Well, he proceeds to build a functioning 1911 while

having the entire podcast doing all the stuff and then like actually shoots it. It was an amazing

episode, but the dude is super, super talented. Yeah. Super talented. We've gone through the

business progression. You're getting build. I guess we didn't really talk about the how you

kind of kicked off the business with equipment and stuff like that. We didn't really get into the

where we're at now, how the how the builds came in. I've got one that I think we need to touch on.

Kind of a personal thing. Well, no, it's the OBS Tahoe like it or hate it. It's cool.

Love it. It's really cool. I don't know if you've seen it. It could be probably is the coolest

Tahoe being built currently. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, definitely. There's a lot of Tahoe's being

built. There's another one being built that's not really worth even noting other than it's got great

wheels, beautiful wheels. Yeah, but yeah, the flares on that are badass. We're given. We're given.

We're given a guy. You were at the party, right? Who is it? So I want to get there. I don't know

cause nobody does. I'm not worth it. Calm down. Go ahead. Had a perfect set up. Okay, go.

You were at the party. I wrote the best on RS Roadster Shop Party. Do you remember when Troy

got up there to accept his chain and he brought up that bumbling idiot that couldn't say a word?

I didn't see the guy. Yeah, nobody did because he couldn't say a thing. He just yeah, for somebody

for somebody that for somebody that can't shut the fuck up. He had a problem in front of a

bunch of people. Locked up. Yeah, he did. Okay, I missed that. Let's find. Let's find it. I think

it's under Matt Saxon's Tahoe. You got to Google. He's building a I know Matt. I've met Matt. Yeah,

he's out here. That's a good on your hood. Okay, there it is. There's that's all we're going

to go. So obviously pretty basic compared to what you're doing. But it's of course,

it is. Look, his hand handles cars, Mike. It's creative. So he's a builder has a shop.

No, he well, he's got a body shop up in Michigan. Okay, but greening Jesse Greening's doing it.

Okay, not going to fall in like the Riddler winning, you know, level of what Jesse's put

out in the past. But it's that red that red s 10 square body s 10 that turned the background.

Could be the coolest thing he's associated with. Yeah, it was. Yeah.

Yeah, it was a story about that. Nice try. He showed up to triple crown in this beautiful

square body s 10. Okay. And I sat and I'm like checking out. I'm like, Oh, man,

these things like you forget kind of how cool they are like proportionately and it'd be fun to build

one. Well, the next day, he's cruising along and he had it lowered on factory suspension

and cranks a manhole cover catches it right on the front cross member.

So Jesse's in the past. He puts Jesse greening through the wind. Jesse goes through the

windshield. No, no bullshit. Yeah. Headfirst into the windshield. And it just, I mean,

rolled like the subframe frame under just like this. He was he was supposed to drive it back

to Michigan. He did not drive it back to Michigan. Luckily Jesse's beard took most of the impact.

Quite supple. But this is what back to the floor in that thing. You can't even tell.

Look at the engine cover. It'll be maybe the second best Tahoe out there. You got to

hurry up and get that thing. No, it is probably. Oh, okay. Have you, have you seen the one that

rustic nails doing? Look at, look up, look up RNC something. Yeah. Hills is badass. He's doing

a wide body one. It's got carbon fiber flares on it. I have seen that. Yeah. RNC hot rods.

Yeah. It's funny because it's a truck you would never think to why this thing's wild. Yeah.

I saw that the other day. He's a really cool. How does he have it in an enclosed trailer

with the flares? So he made the trailer. He made the trailer from scratch. No, it has a,

it's got air ride on it. The trailer is the ramp and it airs down. So it's like one big ramp and

it airs up over the wheel wells. So he drives like over the wheel. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's how

it, how it goes. Hang on. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe that's not the trailer. I don't know. Well,

he doesn't have the quarters that wide. Yeah, the wheels would still be. There you go.

Yeah. He's into the road race stuff. He's a really cool dude. He'd be a good one to have

on the podcast. Kyle. Hey, we're not following him. Look at this. Watch what's going to happen

live here on the air. This kind of stuff. This is what blows my mind about this whole industry

is the amount of guys doing stuff like at that level. There's just so much talent out there.

He does like interior decorating for Starbucks and stuff all over the country. I mean,

he's top notch. Like this kind of stuff, rustic stuff. That's what he specializes in.

Oh man. There's so many people I know here that are making comments that I want to make a comment to.

Yeah, that one's very nasty. I can't wait to see this monster. I got a monster you can see.

American Muscle HD. I got to drive this when it's done. You just steal it.

What is that? Pro charge? Is it pro charge on that?

Yeah, it's a pro charger. Independent rear. So that one's pretty cool, but ours is cooler.

Ours isn't going to be a road race though. You got some stuff on your

kind of sucks that Max Saksson is going to have like the fifth coolest

Tahoe. Yeah, but he's buying it at like a fire sale discount. He's getting a Tahoe.

He's buying Mikey's when he's about to run out of money on that thing. Mikey ran out of money.

He ain't work. He works one day a week. We got some videos on there. So you hear

all the hot rod shop guys coming in here. You even talked about all my guys work four tens.

Mikey works one eight.

That's with the two hour lunch break. He walks by.

Flares are sick on this. It looks good. Customer specified he wanted round wheel flares

when he brought us the truck. He already had a rendering done for it, which I think the

real thing turned out better than the rendering, but it's one that you'd never think flares work

but then like you see yours like fucking flares work on that. I will say though doing the round

arches you got to nail it because if it's off a little bit everybody's going to know.

So right now it's just got mock-up wheels on it. There's a 22s in the back. It's going to have

probably going to have 21s in the front and a little bit of a stagger.

So yeah, we did the body line into the wheel flares there, which is really cool.

Those are all butt welded on, metal finish, TIG welded. Not an easy task. Everybody, all the

experts on the internet think that that's easy and you could have just bolted them on.

So just give you a little bit of what we went through to do that. So first we sculpted one

side out of clay, modeling clay and 3D scanned that and then reverse engineered it in fusion

and sliced it up and turned it into a 3D printed mold that we could bolt to the truck as sort of a

buck and it was durable enough that we could kind of pound on it too and then now we had a mirror

image that we could 3D print and bolt on the other side that was perfect. So instead of cutting

it out the old-fashioned way out of wood and gluing it together and all that it was like,

I mean you guys have done that. I think that's probably where I picked that up from was

early 3D magic mic stuff. Yeah well so we've done it as like a sort of a skeleton where we'll

do that. We'll kind of design it and then scan it, bring it into CAD and then mirror it. Mike,

he did it on his dots and 3D printed them all just like you said. It was actually pretty cool.

Mike just does it like a little bit better. He's got to take it to the next level.

But yeah, I like this project. He's probably going to be sick.

So we're talking about building a custom aluminum dash for it. We've talked about

different routes on that but these trucks you know they're coming on hot but there's

not a lot of stuff available for them aftermarket. The dashes all crack on them and you kind of

got to decide which route do you want to go especially when none of the you know the modern

head units and stuff are going to fit in there anyway so you're going to have to redesign the

whole thing so. Is it a barn door or tailgate truck? It's a barn door and I don't know is that the

cool one or not? No, it's a it's 50-50. I'm a tailgate guy. This is a new debate that

was just to give Kyle a shot. My brother-in-law, he lives by the barn doors.

He loves the barn doors. This guy's a barn door guy. I'm a tailgate guy. They're more practical,

usable. The barn doors? The barn doors tailgate looks cooler. I'm with you. I would build a truck

with a tailgate all along. The barn doors are more usable, huh? Because you can get in over the

tailgate. Yeah, there's like a certain operation of which one to close first. You guys making

consistency for these yet? We do. Yeah, that's under that third, fourth best one. Fifth best one

that's coming out. There's another Tahoe being built. Let's just call it that. I wish it was under

this one. Well, you've got something interesting under that. I see like some big struts in the

front. Trailblazer. We didn't build it all. We're, you know, corrected some things. Did you?

Some sort of late model. You didn't even got the final fab yet. There's plenty of time.

Yeah. That's the other thing, man. Like, where, when do you decide? It's not welded in, right?

No. You get on bolted. That's eight bolts. What's the rear suspension? So it's all front front and

back is 2019 Camaro. Oh, so it's independent. Yeah. Okay. So the customer wanted the struts.

He wanted the original GM stuff in there because he's a GM guy. He has GM dealerships.

Yeah. What's the plan here? Where's the debut? There's no set date yet, really.

But this guy, he's a good customer. He's this in his first rodeo. So I feel like we're going to

finish it strong. He's got some good ideas. We're kind of over the hump. Like the hard

things have been accomplished. We had to go backwards a little bit. We built a really

cool floor in the back of it. Flares were a real big hurdle. But we're over that now.

We're going to do different door handles. He wants the roof rack. We're going to just make

some billet ends for it because I can't stand the plastic stuff. Just a few little details.

But basically, it's going to be OEM plus looking other than the flares. He wants it to look

white and gray two tone again. We decided, so this is a 99. It's got the kind of Easter egg

dash and the airbag dash. Yeah. So we're going to revert back to the like 88 style or

whatever the square dash square style. Really? Yeah. Just because it's easier to fabricate

out of aluminum. 96 is where it's at. That was 95. 96 was the last year. Yeah. That does

cup holders over there. It's the best cup holders ever. Just don't put just don't put a top

heavy just don't put a top heavy one in and take a corner. I actually just got one. I got a 97.

Did you? Yeah. I don't know what if I'm going to do with it, but they're cool. Yeah, they are cool.

When you get there, such drastically better trucks from just like aerodynamics and sealing

and weather strips and like, I want to know I've gone back and went to the Tahoe and

I'd loved scratching that edge. I want it. I want a short, short box, regular cab Z71

four by four. Yeah. I want his short box. I wanted like a 96 Z71 in that

forest green. Yeah, those pop up every once in a while. You needed to work for Troy with your color

palette. I just that that truck in that color at that time was the that was like the epitome

of what nobody wanted. And no, it was the it was the most expensive looking one. That was the

that was just the best. The dark blue is great. The black is cool. But that that

I remember when they were on Hunter Green was just like lowered on 20 inch Torx rust.

You absolutely love that. It's super cool. I got a sweet spot for the four by four seven.

Like I had a 95 Z71. I want one bone ass stock untouched. You got to level it out.

You pump the front up. That's not torsion bars. Crank that thing up. It'll ride like crap and

wander all over the. No, just put keys in it. Just put keys in it and it doesn't change

anything. Have you guys done any OBS trucks recently or we have done to

to pick up trucks, short box, single cabs. Oh, yeah, you did the white one with the crazy

chassis. Yeah, and then we did another one black step side for John Hall. That was pretty cool

truck. So what are did you guys have to deal with like the door adjustments? What'd you guys

do about all that? Left on the one we left it as it was. Put a pin, can't it be done with it?

Yeah, this one was a little bit too far. So what was that? You guys like weld gap the edges?

We didn't know both. They were one was a survivor and the other was like a pretty

straightforward build. We didn't do like not like you would traditionally do a high end car.

Was the hinge tweaked on the on the something with the truck was tweaked.

We're not sure what it had been hitting the back jack and a four by four. I tell you

what, that whole A-pillar will give to your will. Yeah, we ended up making the hinges adjustable

four and a half, which was a lot of work. But if you're tight gapping, I think it's only we figured

it was less work or about the same amount of work as metal gapping it. And so instead of warping

the entire panel and requiring a lot of bodywork, we just redid the hinges and scooted it. Yeah.

It's going to be pretty dialed in when it's done though. When you're doing something like

that to that level of metal shaping, are you still the guy that's shaping up those flares?

No, I got one of one of my guys. He's fairly new at metal shaping. He did all that.

Really? Yeah, he used to be a body job used to be a body guy,

and he got tired of being a body guy. So he wanted to learn how to do metal. And so

basically he's been there for two or so years now. And he's doing a great job. He didn't do

all the floors. He did another guy did the floors, but he did all the flares. And

that was his first attempt at doing reverse curves. So I kind of coached him through it.

And once he got the first one, he just rocked them out. I mean, that's not easy.

How's the original metal on those trucks? It's not bad. It's thin and it's galvanized.

So you got to get the galvanizing off before you start tig welding. So it's already thin and

you got to grind a little bit off of it. So you got to be careful not to grind it too thin

before you start but welding it because otherwise it just disappears. If those are

galvanized, I wonder why those cars, those trucks disappeared in the Midwest, like evaporated.

They didn't galvanize the wheel openings. I think they salt line those.

Yeah. I don't know. We're coming up on standard question times. A very special

extended version of standard questions. So we got some new ones. We got some bangers.

Been working on something. Yeah. Behind the scenes. Couple of them just came up.

Just right through this podcast. I don't think we got to rename it because standard

questions would be standard. Well, we're always, we always do the standard questions.

And sometimes this is like a standard plus. We standard plus. Yeah. Like an OE plus is a standard

plus standard questions and a very special extended standard questions brought to you by

the standard wheels. H R E. First up, we'll go with just a generic standard question.

Um, first question we're going to go with would be we're going to get the car thing out of the way.

We're going to go straight to car. Okay. So you graduated high school. You're talking about

graduated high school. 99 2000 year before me. You graduated in 2000. You I know you had a

project vehicle that's technically going to count as the first car, right? But you've

talked about that. You have to have transportation, right? There is another vehicle that comes in the

first transportation car. We know dad's GM guy. Parents both had muscle cars. It's a

tried and true GM family. So it's a GM product. Definitely GM. We could start there. Okay.

So that's your that's where you're going. You don't answer. I know you haven't listened

to you're too busy. You don't listen to a lot of these podcasts. And that's good because

this is you came in here with no preconceived notions. The first vehicle was it a gift or did you

purchase it? Was it handed down? It was it was pretty much handed down. If I did buy it,

it was like a couple hundred bucks. Okay. All right. Hand it down. You had throw in the kitty.

Wow, dude, I think in Missouri. And then you took this to school in college. No, that one didn't

make it to school. Like a like most successful hot rod builders on this podcast. I got a wild

Googling to get make sure my years are right. I got a wild card in 2000.

2000. So I'm get it's it's a early to mid 90s car. I was in the family probably got a bunch of miles on it.

Yeah. 2000. So you got 90, 96, 97,

mid 90, early 90s. I'm going, I'm going, it's a GM product, but it's specific, but it's in all

but it's plenty. It's Pontiac. It's grand, it's a grand am or grand prix. I was going to Oldsmobile

four door grand am or grand prix. Did your parents work for Pontiac?

I was thinking Bonneville. I was Googling. It's a really, it's a really good one. It's green with a

tan interior. The gold stripe down the side. They get a lot of snow out there. Grand prix or

grand am. That's going to be like 93 or 94. That's my guess. I'm mid 90s Oldsmobile

Bravada. It was mom's. Bravada is a good one. Bravada is a good one. It was mom's car. She piled

the miles on it. Yeah. And he bought it used off of mom and it's just your

transportation dude. It gets you through the winter. I'm absolutely champagne. I'm absolutely

came in gold or I'm absolutely, absolutely color blind in this pic, but it is a it is that

era grand prix or grand am. Okay. I'm going 95 Bonneville. Final answer. Yeah. You guys are all

close, but not for the first car. Don't tell me it's a sunfire. My first car was a 75 Chrysler

New Yorker Broham. Whoa. Yeah, that's how two door, two door with the upper window. Wow. Does

that even look like a big boat of a car? What year do you say 75 New Yorker? Wow. Two door.

They're kind of rare. Michel would know exactly what this is. Huh. How did that come about if you

said it was in the family? Yeah, my dad was kind of into those. So we had some big caprices

and he had two or three of these and he had a really nice one. It was just like

that. It was it was maroon though. It had a maroon interior. Actually pretty cool.

I actually know those things with a cool slam. Yeah. Followed up to my very next question.

You said that car didn't make it. It did not. It did not get wrecked. It was a low mileage car.

I gotta say it had to be a train. There's the only thing that would take that thing out. I drove it

through high school and actually I wrecked it once in the winter time on an icy road,

wrecked it right into a cliff embankment and it didn't even hurt the car. Of course not.

But I kept that car for years. Dad had it up on some blocks. I thought, you know what,

I'm going to do something with it someday. Actually drug it down to Texas and by the time I

got it down there. It was such a rust bucket when I drug it down there. I sold it to some kid for

like 500 bucks and yeah. Time to move on. That was about the time I had the kid.

It's almost got like the front ends got a family truckster look. It's got a little AI.

It's got a little AI in it. It had a generic car. 400 big block in it. I mean that thing

we just purred 100 miles an hour down the highway like a cloud, floating on a cloud.

It's got a little Johnny Cash. It's a 49, 50, 51, 52 thing going on too.

So that doesn't match the back. But the second car, the second car was a 89 Corsica.

Oh, okay. Also with a Maroon interior. Third car was a 89 Oldsmobile Cutlass

4-Door. Also with a Burgundy interior. First three cars had a really clogged interior.

That GM Burgundy. It was like borderline corduroy, wasn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, I had the 86 Pontiac that I wrecked the crap out of.

Came from the factory with cigarette burns. Like I just, every one of those Burgundy interiors.

What I want to know, this is perfect. Anyway, what is the

your most memorable law enforcement interaction story?

I can't prepare for this one because I heard this one on one of the previous one, I guess.

I think he came a little more prepared than he wanted to lead on.

Okay, so first cool car I had. Nobody likes to admit they listened to this.

First cool car I had was my 99 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP.

Oh, that's a wide body. Do you have it? You had a Grand Prix.

Yeah, the GTP was special too. That was when I got out of Wojtek.

This factory supercharged. Supercharged 3.8. That sucker would get with it.

And great dash. Great gauges. I love the red dash and it had the pop-up display.

It has a lot of cool things about that. Heads up display.

Red, black or white. Silver. Silver.

Silver surfer. The car only existed in Silver.

They did it in green. They did it in black. They did it in red.

The Bonneville green. No, the GTP.

Yeah, I feel like 98% of that. Goldbergs was silver.

Goldbergs was red. It's been a long time in that car.

So yeah, I had that car. I hopped it. So I bought it in Missouri shortly after Wojtek

and then drove that to Troyes. I had that for years and years and years,

even after I got married. And then I put over 300,000 miles on that car.

Well, I hopped it all up at Troyes. I lowered it, put 19s and 18 mil Miglia wheels on it,

which were pretty cool. How's that doing in the winter?

Great, man. It's a four-wheel drive. Oh, I know it's four-wheel drive.

I didn't have four-wheel drive. I lived like half a mile from the shop.

So I blew the engine in at one point and then went through it, did a cam,

rocker arms, computer. That was when you had to send your old computer and get it back

and see what else. Everything you could do almost. I had headers on it.

Had full cap back exhaust. Who specialized in like the ECU? Transverse V6 or the blower?

SLP, I think. Back in the day, they made a bunch of stuff for that.

SLP. I had pretty much everything you get for those without going to the next level,

because they were getting like six or 700 horsepower out of those V6s.

And mine, actually we put it on Troyes dyno, chassis dyno down there.

And it registered over 400 horsepower at the front wheels. I don't know if it was accurate,

but it felt, I think it probably was accurate. A little torque steer and that sucker when you get

on it. They're 240 horsepower from the factory and that thing would launch instantly off the line.

So anyways, back to your story. I was going to Bible study one day, okay? Out in the country.

I'm pause. I'm just going to, for everybody out there, I'm going to preface this. So you've got

the hopped up Pontiac, right? At Rad Rides by Troy. You're making somewhere around 400-ish to the

tires. You're knocking out Crow Molly, you know, tank rolled corner welded chassis. You think

you're the King Kong Ding Dong? He's walking out of the shop like Hunter McGregor. Yeah, he's walking.

And you're headed to Bible study. All right. Pick it back up. So I take this kind of side road,

country road. I don't take 57. I take this other one. I think it was 45 going north. And

I just got my new computer in there. So I'm like, man, I want to see what this thing does.

Careful you break it. There's nobody ever out there. Well, there's this mini van in front

of me and she's going slow. And I was like, I'm going to test this right now. And I floored it

around this mini van. And before you know it, I'm doing 135. And there's a cop right there.

And I was like, oh crap, I just pulled right over. And he just pulled up right behind me.

And I thought I was going to jail. And also part of the story is like the weekend before,

I must have been coming back from one of the shows. I don't know if it was

Indy good guys or Columbus good guys, but I would drive my car to those shows and park it and go to

the show and come back. Well, I was going through some po-dunk town in either Indiana or I think it

was Dyer. Is that right? Dyer. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was going through there in middle of the

night and some cop pulled me over like a week before for going like five over or something.

And he took my license. Okay. So now that I'm going 135 with no license, I get pulled over.

And I thought this guy was going to drag me out of the car and throw me in jail.

I'm headed to Bible study. Did you think going to Bible study for real?

Yeah. For real. So what do you tell the cop?

I would have faked a seizure.

So what are they going to do about that?

Pull a squeak. He's a state trooper or whatever. So not like your normal cop.

I didn't know how this was going to go. And so he comes up and he was just super cool.

And, uh, well, what were you doing or what were you thinking or something like that?

And I was like, officer, I'm sorry. Like I, I was just testing out my new computer.

I said, I'm on my way to Bible study and he's just like, what, you know?

And, but he was super chill and he was like, well, here's your $350 ticket.

And you got to go to court and have a nice day.

So what do you write you for like 15 over something?

Well, he wrote me just under whatever the limit was. Yeah. So,

You're lucky there.

Really cool dude. I mean, I felt like I was looking out for me on that one, but

It won 35 jail time I think. Yeah.

Usually that's at least a night in jail.

And that one, I mean, I had just put my foot in it like it would have went more.

I mean, I don't know what it would have went.

That's the fastest I ever went. I never tried it again.

I learned my lesson, but uh, uh, yeah.

So it turns out the whole jail time thing, regardless of the speed,

as long as you pay the lawyer enough and then you make a donation,

all that stuff is amazing.

How they don't really want to put anybody in jail for speeding.

Well, so they'll take your money to court.

They'll take a lot of money.

So I went to the courthouse in Mexico, you know, you walk up to the window.

It's not like you're in the courtroom.

You walk up to the window, you tell them, here's your ticket.

I went to pay my ticket.

And they're like, okay, well, here's another $350.

You got to pay right now.

And I was like court processing fee.

Yeah.

Didn't see that coming.

Yeah, I didn't see that coming.

And then they said, you also got to go to driving school.

For so and so many days, you know, have a nice day.

And I'm like, okay, you know, and, you know, 700 bucks or, uh,

yeah, 700 some dollars, you know, it's, it was a lot.

Yeah, but that stings.

It hurts.

At least I didn't beat the alternative.

Yeah, that's kind of the point.

All right.

Uh, deviating just a bit, a little new one.

New standard question.

This is going to be a standard.

We're going to ask everybody.

So it's it's currently not stand currently not standard.

It's brand new right now.

It will be standard.

I know the standard builder answer.

What that's going to be.

We don't want I don't want the standard builder answer assuming

you get to the point and I trust that you will.

I can see it.

There's going to be a time you have the means to have a car built

and you're not going to build it.

You're going to hire somebody to build you your dream car like this one.

What's the shop that you hire to build you your vehicle?

And why and why and what's the car?

Oh, yeah, of course.

Dude, great question.

Great question, huh?

Yeah, that's a hard one.

Yeah, I know.

That's why it's a good question.

No budget.

We only no budget.

No budget.

You're hiring somebody to build it.

There's no budget.

And I don't care.

You don't even have to be in this industry.

Like it whatever you're buying.

You're having somebody build you a vehicle.

What is it and who is it?

What is it?

I like these.

I've actually thought about this.

It's a good question.

Yeah.

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Terms apply.

It will probably be Troy.

Rad rides.

Just because the details over the top.

Right.

And I just don't do it when you're an old man.

I would do it younger because it's going to take a while.

I mean, you just do.

What would it be?

I'm trying to think what he would be really good at.

He likes big cars.

I like big cars.

He likes green.

It wouldn't be green.

I wouldn't let him do green.

Would he agree to that?

I don't know.

It'd be like khaki.

Might do a green.

Might do a green with this one.

So I'm really into, lately I've been into like 59 Buick's.

Like an Invicta.

Yeah, Invicta La Sabre.

Actually, I've got one.

I've got two actually.

A coupe.

I don't have a coupe yet.

I got two convertibles.

But I like those.

I think he could do one of those really well.

Ask me a big money car.

You have to sell a shit ton of crater makers.

I mean, that's a lot of trim.

That's a big car.

That's looking ugly car.

I would request a Roadster Shop chassis though

because I don't believe you guys make one for that yet.

We do.

Do you?

Yeah, we do.

Yeah, I think Adam Banks would do a good job

building that Pundit Troy's light supervision.

Now, those guys do a good job.

I mean, just kind of pay it back, I guess.

Yeah, for sure.

I don't know.

That's a good, that's a great answer.

And it's a great car.

It's a great way to kick off a brand new standard questions

for 2026.

It would have to be supercharged.

Lane frame.

Oh, yeah.

You're mixing it up a little bit.

Troy doesn't do that.

Make him do it just because he doesn't like it.

Turbo nail head.

Maybe because he can do that well.

Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be cool.

I'd say bring it all the way back old school

and put that GTP motor back in it.

They make 426 horsepower to the tires.

Front-wheel drive.

Being that this is a brand new question,

I'd like to know, hit it.

Not prepared for that.

You're not prepared for it?

No.

Haven't given it anything.

He's building it.

Haven't given it anything.

You shouldn't have to.

If like it should just roll like.

No, it's not something you just like.

Oh, it is.

You're just he just did it.

Yeah, he did.

He did.

He was he's in the hot seat.

Now you are.

Who would it be?

What's the car and who's building it?

Shit, I have no idea.

They're honestly the first thing.

It comes to mind.

The first thing is going to change throughout the year.

The first thing that came to my mind when you just said,

who's going to build it?

No budget.

Cole Foster at 36 Ford.

That's cool.

Just.

Okay.

Because that's all that.

Just because you know it's going to be fucking cool.

Yep.

And honestly that and what Cole Foster just because of the cool

because you know he's because if I'm going to do that.

Oh, we'll take it.

We'll take it a little further.

All right.

And maybe this is going to this is why I answered it the way I answered it.

Not even thinking about it.

You know, we all know everybody that we're going to ask this question.

It's going to be extremely difficult to disconnect yourself

from being the project manager and the customer and just be like,

you know, there's some things I like and just build me the car and surprise me.

Cole Foster with the 36 Ford.

I just say, make it cool.

And I don't have to be involved and try to worry about styling or come up with cool things

like that.

That's true.

Maybe I wouldn't do the air ride.

I just let him do like he did on that Cadillac and just walk away.

Because that's there's a there's a time, you know, when you get to you want to have

the person impress you and not it be your ideas.

I will say this.

I think that's really cool.

The thing you have to keep in mind is that you aren't going to look as cool as Cole Foster

driving said 36.

I think that's what I think that's in you.

I know what you're seeing.

No, you're seeing like I want the exact same.

You're seeing like early Cole Foster where he was building like these badass bikes.

He did that nomad.

He did.

He's done some really cool stuff.

I can wear my jeans like that.

Got a badass flannel.

Slick back.

He's just got this like, yeah.

He's older now.

He's got white hair now.

He's great.

But he's got this cool vibe and that's what you're I think that's what you're attracted to.

No, I wanted the car because it's cool.

I didn't want to be cool in it.

OK, then he's got to knock it out of the park.

He's got it.

The car has got to speak for itself.

The car has got to stand on its own.

I don't understand what it is.

Who hurt you so bad that you have to hurt others?

It's only you.

Yeah, it's mostly you.

All right, you guys got to go, too.

I would say at this point in my career right now, I've like

come in full circle back to old school hot rods.

I'd go Alan Johnson on a 32.

Maybe I've never been a three window guy, but I'd almost go like three window coupe.

Three window or five window coupe.

And reason being anytime I talk to Alan, text Alan, call it Alan's.

Alan's busy.

Alan's in the shop working on the car.

Yeah.

And he does a nice fucking job, dude.

And that's his that's his wheelhouse.

Like there's a lot of other crazy stuff I'd like.

But I just right now under pressure.

That's I think that's the way that's that's an answer.

Yeah.

That's the thing is it needs to be the first thing that pops in your head.

I just kind of got to know him and Seema.

Like, yeah, I mean, he's always been one of my heroes.

Alan's a great cool dude.

But like, you know, he's kind of standoffish and all that.

Yeah, he's not he's not.

But once you once you get into it with him, he's like,

he's just quiet and shy.

He's not standoffish.

He's just quiet.

We had a really good conversation.

Actually, he was dancing on the back of the thing.

He's not standoff.

He's just the most fucked up thing I've seen.

I think it's amazing.

Alan just the most amazing.

Did you hear the so I debated dancing to with him again?

No, it's Tim.

Tim Strange did his podcast and did a recap on Seema.

And he talked about the husband and wife, the couple that their

daughter owns the grease monkey prince, the pink.

Yeah, which is a great.

Yeah.

I don't think that car got nearly as much attention.

Have you seen the color in person?

I love it.

It's amazing.

Black flames.

Yeah.

But that color is amazing.

So anyway, that they're her parents, right?

They were at the party.

So his his comment was it looked like Alan Johnson.

Alan Johnson dancing looked like he was trying to stand up in a canoe.

I'm not having Alan build me a car based on his dance.

No, of course not.

Based on his body of work.

Right.

That's what I'm 100%.

Great.

That's a great pull.

I would add on to that.

Not that anybody had.

I would like to buy.

I wouldn't want to commission Bobby to build it.

But I would like to buy one of the flamed speedsters from the

street rider cover.

I want to own one of those cars.

Right.

You guys think street riders are coming back someday?

Dude, I mean, I find myself coming back to them.

It's going to be a new.

I feel like they're falling off pretty hard right now.

No, they're coming back.

They're going to come back.

Street rods or like nostalgic hot rods?

No, like 30s, 40s cars.

But I think they're going to be made where you can drive them across country.

Yeah.

For me, the thing, the two things that fit in them.

That's the problem.

Some of them.

40s you can.

Not a speedster.

It's not going to happen.

No, but the things I'm craving right now, like it feels.

I know is we're aligning this because we send them back and forth like a bad

ass black 40 Ford, but put.

I'd like to put a spec front in it, but like tune it up a little bit to make the lower

like we did the gas or drill the arms or something to sleeve them.

Yeah.

You have my fives on it.

I guess I guess I got to do white fives.

I guess I should be careful how I said it because I know there's like a whole

bunch of guys that are just into that right now.

Yeah.

Still.

But like overall, like like sale prices and stuff like this are not great.

Yeah.

I feel like you could steal most of those cars.

Like we send shit back and forth and you're like

60 grand for that.

I just sold 200 grand parts on it, like 20 grand a piece.

The answer.

The answer is 100 percent.

Yes.

Because without fail, history shows it no matter what it is, no matter what you're

into, no matter what, if it's cars, music, whatever is the pendulum always swings back.

I agree.

The harder it swings one way, it swings back the other way.

Now, whether or not we're still in business to be doing it, I don't know.

But yes, it comes back a hundred percent or it'll come back with

a different, different.

A different flair.

Different flares to it.

Yeah, different flair.

You know, back in the day, you talk about, you know, pinkies and you talk about how many

people were building high end traditional inspired hot rods, right?

And how big that fucking was.

I mean, think about loaded.

Think about hemrod.

Think about some of the stuff.

Think about how much stuff Alan Johnson was doing.

Think even about Rogers, the 32 Ford that you were talking about.

But that was the shit.

And then the ancillary that comes from that of Hardcore Jalopy Journal and the

Ham and how many people just do.

I mean, traditional metal craft and people that just build bad ass hot rods.

And that was the absolute pinnacle.

It, it didn't stay the pinnacle from 40, 49, 48, you know, it was a fucking thing,

you know, and then muscle cars and other stuff came and then it absolutely hit.

It will, it will hit again.

I hope a 48 never comes back around though.

That's a car that has no business coming back and stuff.

I'm talking about the year where those types of cars were the thing when

traditional hot rodding was, you know, so big and bad and it swings back.

It just, I mean, there's guys building great stuff.

Like there's that Rex rods out by you.

Yeah.

His business.

A lot of people building traditional stuff.

I mean, I would love to have some traditional street rods personally.

I think, I think it does.

I think that, you know, they are that the last 15 years of pro touring, you know,

that went everywhere, you know, it's just the same thing that happened with,

you know, like three or four different swings in, in muscle cars and,

and so like that between pro street and, you know, other stuff like that.

It's just nothing goes away and dies.

It just, it's like the tide.

Yeah, it's just, yeah.

If you feel, what is it?

Feel it too much time to think about.

He's going to be some Miata builder that we've never heard of.

And it's going to be some J-spec Miata out of wherever.

First one that came to mind is already out there.

I just can't get over the Russell built Baja 9-11.

That just looks like something I want to just

Good pull.

Beat the living shit out of, have fun with just the fabrication quality.

Everything is just so bad ass in them.

Yeah.

I hung out with TJ and Vegas.

You guys went and made the, no, I'm going to tell you a story.

He, we were gambling, right?

Both playing roulette.

We didn't even realize it was, and then we looked up, so we talked for a while.

I think you guys made the smart decision to go to bed early.

I did not.

So we said they're talking, he was going to send one to hang for a year,

like to talk about on the podcast.

So I didn't think you were going to be interested.

I know you tried.

You were, you prompted that in the booth when they came by.

Yeah.

And there was a little bit of interest.

Like it was selfishly, you were throwing that out there, not for like any

business advantage for anybody other than the self-satisfaction of driving it.

Yeah.

You presented it so well.

I was sold.

We are going to do, we're going to do a content grab and a filming session.

And we're going to do a car swap.

We're going to do a vehicle swap, right?

All together.

Yeah.

When you get this damn Trans Am done, and then that's a good one to swap with.

What year?

The 70 years.

Yeah.

But me and Phil's, but we're just kind of slow to get it across the finish line.

But it's right there.

But that'd be, that'd be a great one for them to.

I don't think that thing.

You 100%.

That's a great answer.

The one he added Seema two years ago, three years ago,

the gray black.

That's amazing.

Just be perfect car for me.

I want you to have it strictly because that is the vehicle you go to jail in.

Yeah.

100%.

Yeah.

I know.

Within an hour, within an hour.

I want the call.

So you're to what?

In the back of Ivanhoe.

That's the golf course.

Okay.

Yeah.

Just come get me.

That's what I mean.

There's a full take of gas when they start.

See the shortcut, huh?

Those are some dudes that I just hope have so much success.

They're going to that thing because if you follow them, who is it?

T.J. Russell, Russell, Bill.

I do this like Baja 911s.

Okay.

From out of the 930s and the fabrication qualities over the top,

but styling and just functionality.

This has been a shout out, heavy podcast is so good.

And he's a genuine look at that.

Dude, let's just go to that.

There he is right there on the podcast.

Those are cool.

Yeah.

Those are like your street ones.

Right.

Yeah.

That's your poor man.

The 911 light.

I wouldn't say poor man.

No, still.

Keep scrolling.

You get into like the bad boy one.

I think it's the Baja 911 is the Instagram page.

Oh, is it?

You sure?

Yeah.

Okay.

Positive.

86% positive.

It's going to be another company that's not him.

No, Baja 911.

Doesn't even exist.

I think it's Josh's Googling skills.

Right there on the right.

The second one down on the right.

What?

On his page, Russell Bill.

Yeah.

Like I said, you go to Russell Bill.

He just changed it recently.

He just recently changed it.

That's what I heard too.

But they're like billet arms and stuff and like just very well

thought out.

Yeah, that looks like a lot of fun.

That'd be great in the Hill Country.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, you could fuck some shit up.

We could mount some guns on it and go hog hunt.

Dude, a 50 cal on the roof.

Yeah.

We got the connection there.

And yeah.

50, 50 be a little much.

Maybe we break that down with the 556.

That little thing over backwards.

Yeah.

Let's just do full auto 556 with a suppressor and we

get that's a good pull.

That's a great car.

I'd say that are having a.

You can't pick two.

Okay.

I guess one then.

What is it?

You got to save some more for some other answers

because we're going to keep going.

I'll bring it back later.

All right.

Good.

You got to save some more for the.

I don't know if you could beat that car,

that color combination.

I love everything about that.

You're so going jail.

Yeah.

I'm at the point now where I think me and

Jerry should give it to you as a surprise.

I could just.

So you go to jail.

Just to show that we're not the irresponsible.

Exactly.

That's been an expensive joke.

It would be, but not not really hilarious.

You guys should if you look at how in the damn car,

if you look at how many times he's going to say

you fucking recharged it, it's going to always be like.

What?

Sorry.

I can't hear you from the other side of the glass.

Who would go to jail first?

You guys for the embezzlement or me for the.

I will pay the tax.

We're not going to register that thing in a Montana LLC.

We'll pay the taxes.

All right.

That was that was a really fun new question.

Great segment.

Yeah.

Great segment, Josh.

All right.

Next up.

Best piece of advice you ever received.

The one that pops in my head first was

early on before before I hit the ground running in my business,

I had sort of a mentor that I reached out to.

He's actually from Chicago land area.

He has big corporation.

And he said something along the lines like,

don't spend the money until you really need to

like go as long as you can.

Like I know you need you want all these things,

but and that's something that I think about every time I get ready to spend money on something

still to this day.

I check myself and I say,

do I really need that right now?

Or do I just want that right now?

It's great great advice.

So then to spin that into advice,

you would give somebody a newer guy getting started.

Do you buy the power hammer?

Do you buy the Bailey power hammer?

Do you buy the pole max?

Forget all that you got by the 18 wheeler first.

At the pig rig.

You get the car.

Do you struggle through it?

When I was working at Troy's is a good example.

When I started working there,

he didn't have all the fancy stuff.

I mean, he had a few little fancy things.

He had, you know, they only had a four post lift.

They didn't have two post lifts.

You know, he had a pole max,

but nobody was really using it.

You know, and he didn't have a power hammer.

They, they had a little planching ever.

So yeah, I mean,

he was doing amazing things with very little.

Sure.

And I think that's still possible today.

But I think it requires discipline to stick to that

as long as possible.

That's good.

Next up, if you were doing anything other

than this profession for a living, what would it be?

That's a good one.

I don't know.

Do not say preacher.

No, probably wouldn't be that.

Why?

But that's a preacher.

Oh, really?

And his dad was a preacher.

And his brother was a preacher.

Um, it's Jody's favorite song,

son of a preacher, man.

No.

It's, uh, I don't know, man.

Maybe, uh, maybe a race car driver.

I don't know.

Okay.

Race car driver.

That's a good one.

I feel like I'm a good size for that.

You are a great size for that.

I'm pretty good at driving.

Okay.

So yeah, I mean, I can drive things with four wheels,

but I'm not real good at three or two wheels.

Three wheels is a game changer.

Yeah.

Nobody can race three.

Everybody that was good racing three wheels,

ain't alive no more.

Roger, uh, Berman, Berman.

Reservation, three wheelers.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

He's an old OG like, uh, motocross and

he race three wheels.

Yeah.

I think he's got a little hitch in his giddy up.

As a result of it, but I was just a race car is good.

I think you and me are both kind of built for, uh,

either a jockey or race car driver, but,

or fighter jet pilot, but I don't have a vision for it.

Fighter jet pilot, that's on a different level.

Yeah.

You gotta be built.

Other access fucks me up.

You gotta be built completely different.

Yeah.

I can, it's cool that I can never do that.

Yeah.

No, I, no, hell no, because there's no,

there's no tap out.

There's no like time out.

Like that would be, I think I could get like

memorized a cadence for like 20 seconds.

I'm like, do, do, do, do, do.

And then instantly it's like, oh,

whoa, I can't do this anymore.

There's no way I could do it for a prolonged time.

In that cockpit, you couldn't do it with a

cigarette hanging out of your mouth.

There's no like, I can see that.

Valid point.

Trying to like, okay.

Hold on.

I got a light with my knees.

You're, you're just an asshole, honestly.

Just a flat out.

That was a fair assessment.

It was.

I agree with it.

You're responding harshly tonight.

You don't fly for long though.

There's no vent window in an F16.

Oh, you fly long enough, dude.

You can't sit through a 30 minute meal without a cigarette.

How long is a flight?

Like a longer than that probably.

I don't know.

Like you're fighting bad guys.

You've been in the air for longer than 30 minutes.

I don't know.

You gotta be away.

You're telling me that.

Look at how bad ass those fighter pilots are.

I'm telling you, somebody's figuring out a way.

It's smoking there.

I'm just saying, I'm just saying.

He's more world war one, like biplane.

Yeah, old school.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

I'm down.

Open cockpit.

No, I'm down.

I'm down in the, uh,

damn it.

I can't remember the name of those things.

The turret.

In the turret.

In the glass.

Yeah, that dude was smoking.

That dude was smoking.

He was smoking.

Yeah.

I'm sitting there, feet up.

I mean, I'm just cinched in.

He's burnt one off.

One on the other one.

Yeah.

I'm one off the other and soft packs in my jacket pocket.

Oh, yeah.

You're right.

Yeah, I could have been that kind of fighter pilot.

Absolutely.

I'm not a pilot.

That's a gunner, machine gunner.

All right.

Can't believe where we go.

In that 75 Chrysler, Broam, what was the go to CD to listen to?

Well, that thing didn't even.

Obviously in the G shock.

I had a CD player in it.

Everybody knows that it didn't come stock with a CD player.

It had an eight track.

Right.

But it had a CD player.

Yeah, of course.

And I had like a JL 10 inch sub in the back.

And some six by nine's.

So that's hooked up.

Yeah.

It sounded pretty good for what it was.

It wasn't like dialed in.

I didn't know anything about car audio stuff,

but probably in the back seat.

I mean, I was, I was, I liked rock and roll,

like anything really.

I mean, but I was listening to some hip hop back then.

You put six by nine's in it.

So and you said I had six by nine's in it.

So you were listening to hip hop.

Yeah, I had some.

I don't know who it was back then.

All the all the main Nelly's bone thugs.

Oh, yeah.

Two pock.

All those guys.

I don't know.

You know, it's not my favorite now, but.

Oh, that's the question wasn't that's not the question was,

what were you listening to then pock and biggie?

Yeah.

Some Metallica probably.

Did I hit it?

Gee, you might have.

I just went.

I just went real loud in my headphones.

Hmm.

Bone thugs.

There's one of them.

It's hard not to like bone thugs.

I mean, it's it's vivid.

I got vivid memories.

It was also the harmony that got everybody.

Yeah.

I was you listened to pock and biggie.

Really?

I was.

Well, I mean, I was one of the other man.

Bone thugs.

I I listened to.

You were pretty much whatever Phil played like biggie sucked.

Yeah, I wasn't a biggie fan.

Nobody liked biggie.

Phil was in.

I was pretty West Coast.

The only West Coast.

Where was that?

What's the armed armed and dangerous?

Ain't too many can bang with this.

What song was that from biggie?

I know I know the song.

I don't know the song.

And it's just be juicy.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

No, that was bone and biggie.

And there's bone and two pock.

There's a bridge.

Good.

Yeah, they did Cleveland really kind of brought the nation together.

Bone bone thugs was just yeah, they were about harmony.

And biggie, that was nothing good about biggie.

Really?

No.

Was it an East Coast, West Coast situation?

Yeah, but he just he was he just sucked.

You think so?

Yeah, I kind of like the way he flowed his rhymes.

What in between is taking a breath from being massively overweight?

Yeah, there's three verse lines.

Yeah, he banged it out, didn't he?

I'm not a rap guy, but I'm just saying like, you know, I had to listen to something.

Yeah.

All right, last but not least, everybody's favorite,

the one that will always be a standard because it will never be an answer.

Bert Reynolds or Sylvester Stallone?

As a person or a car?

Just in just it's a total fantasy.

Don't even worry about the car.

OK.

Overall, I'd have to go with Sylvester.

Wow.

I knew I liked Liva.

Wow.

Man, it's most of the talented.

It is.

Yeah, I'm finding that I want everybody that voted for Bert

to listen to exactly what Phil just said.

I'm not worried about me.

I'm worried about everybody else.

Well, it might change people's answer.

Yeah, I said the precedents.

Really?

Yeah, dude, Stallone crushes him on all fronts.

Yeah.

I watched some driving videos, you know, the Trans Am comparison.

I thought you were going to go there, but.

No, it just is.

It's just in the general.

Just in person versus person.

Stallone, definitely.

That's an answer.

That's fine.

It's a that's why this question is so good because it literally you have no idea.

It's divisive.

It's it's almost like a Democrat Republican level of divisiveness.

50 percent of the country.

It's about it's about it's about like that.

Liva.

It's been an absolute riot, man.

Really fun time.

And I think that we do worth three and a half.

So three and a half.

That's a record.

Before we let you go, where are things headed?

What is new with hammer fab?

What should people be looking for?

So we're coming out with some new products for F bodies.

I like F bodies.

The newer ones, their gins, four gins.

I got a couple of four gins.

I love them to death.

Come on, man.

I think people are missing out if you don't have a fortune.

Nice.

What are you doing for the fourth?

So we are coming up with some products.

They they lack in a few areas.

So we're trying to solve some problems there to the skip shift.

Skip shift.

Eliminator kit.

I don't have that now, not yet.

But I think the two that I have already have that.

You figured out how to put two 12s in the back

and a place to put your T tops.

Not yet.

That would be nice.

Not yet.

But we do have an amperac that we just developed

for the fortune that fits inside the factory plastics.

So you can put two small amps in there.

In mine, I've got two Rockford Fosk gates in there.

And when I first got the car,

it had stereo stuff everywhere.

So this packages it really well and cleans it up.

So it's not all hodgepodge.

We're going to come out with some speaker boxes for those also.

So we just want cars would absolutely the GM actually worked

with sound engineers to develop that back hatch glass.

Absolutely thump with a single 12.

Really?

I drastically downrated when no stereo system.

Did you really?

Yeah.

Yeah, I feel it.

From a stereo guy?

Yeah, I feel it.

Dude, I'm telling you,

you put one JL 12 in the back of that thing and some power.

It sounds good.

Who will I feel like make your heart stop?

It would have screwed up the drifting that.

Oh, I've seen your talent.

You could do that.

You could thump and drift at the same time.

Yeah, that car slippery car thumps.

So we've got a little ashtray thing too

because nobody smokes anymore.

Really?

I mean, some other than Josh.

Well, even Josh still smokes and he smokes in his car

and uses the ashtray.

Okay.

There's no ashtray in my truck.

Do you new cars come with ashtrays?

Do you smoke like a motherfucker in your car?

Yeah.

But I don't.

There's no ashtray.

Josh has a solo cup with a little bit of water.

I always see it.

There's just ashes all over the window

in the top of your door.

Yeah, I understand that.

I smoke driving my truck.

And your truck smells like a fucking taxi cab.

He said that I use the ashtray.

There is no ashtray.

I don't know.

You got a solo cup with a little bit of water

in the bottom.

I've never done that.

So we have an ashtray retrofit kit

where you can put your base knob in there

and a toggle switch of some sort

if you want some interior lighting

or something like that.

So we sell it as a blank and pre-drilled 3D printed part

that just goes in.

So a few other little things like that

that we're working on.

I got third gen Camaro rear battery tray mount.

So you can move your battery to the back,

get a little more weight over the wheels

so you can not just burnouts all the time.

I think you're on to something with the fourth gen stuff.

Being serious because just as they're fast cars.

They're fast cars.

They're popular cars.

I have never been a Firebird Formula Pontiac

version of the fourth gen fan at all.

I always liked the WS6.

The Camaro.

The WS6?

The WS6 was always the thing of like,

ooh man that's a super car.

I never wanted to own one.

It was always just a little.

Looks like the Batmobile.

It was just a little weird and it was definitely more feminine

than the Camaro.

More females had Firebirds than they did Camaros.

So Camaro SS was a connoisseur's car.

WS6, if it was hopped up you're like oh

shit that's probably pretty fast.

But the majority of the Firebirds were just Chick's cars.

However that newest rendering.

Oh I've seen it.

I talked to that guy.

I was like dude I gotta build this.

So sick.

Absolutely.

I pulled it up and showed these guys and I'm like this is awesome.

He did a new one today with the red one.

Different color.

Yeah dude that was sick.

I could do it out the roof.

Little flare thing.

Yeah.

But everything else weighs like.

Look at the gray one.

Look at the gray and green one.

The gray and green one.

That hood scoop situation interacts with the hood.

It's so bitchin.

LS9 in there.

Yeah.

Yeah I can't believe.

Oh we're not even showing it.

Sorry we're sitting there looking and we're.

There it is.

For everybody to see.

Dude why am I blighting.

Dude's building the car for Autotopia for Sean.

What why can I never remember his name.

Chris Ruffian.

Get Ruffian.

I always get it mixed up with.

Chris Ashton.

I always get it mixed up with Rivian and then I sound like Moron.

Chris Ashton.

Ruffian.

He does.

From Ruffian cars.

He's designed a bunch of stuff for him.

Yeah.

But that is.

That's sick.

Yeah I would love to build that.

Yeah that's the first time I've seen the Firebird,

the Pontiac version of the 4th gen.

Or I'm like oh yeah it's way better than the Camaro.

Somebody needs to build that car.

I'll do it.

Do it.

You should do it.

I'm going to change my answer.

It's going to be I want Levi.

To build you a Firebird.

Build me that Firebird.

Yeah I love it.

Well we have just a couple of house keeping items.

We have one first up.

We got to do a whisker review.

What did we drink today Phil?

You brought this to the table.

1792 bottled.

I know a single barrel.

Different.

We almost killed that ourselves.

Yeah we.

Thank you for helping out on that.

We appreciate that.

Yeah no problem.

A nice smooth drink.

I haven't had 1792 in several years.

Any of them.

I've got them.

I just haven't drank any of it.

I'll find every once in a while.

Randomly I'll find one of the rare ones

the different color band on there.

Yeah like the rare one that you found the date

that you didn't buy that you're not going to be there

when you leave.

Stupid.

I called him and he talked me out of it.

It was 500 bucks.

For what that was I would I would.

You guys have your own brand of whiskey?

We're not yet.

We're working on this.

It's embarrassed.

2026 2026 man.

Stay tuned to the channels.

No I want to I want to bottle when you get it.

When we do.

You going to drink some?

No.

Well you taste at least taste some.

Probably not.

But you just want to collect her.

I just I just want a collection.

I'll fill it with sweet tea man.

We got Adam Peltz as a cool decanter over there.

It's good.

I've been a fan of most of their stuff.

The sweet wheat is awesome when you can find it.

That's like by itself drink it only 12 years really good.

Bottle and bond and the full proof are full proof good.

Full proof is a little strong for me.

Yeah.

Big proof or what's the what's this like 102 or 106.

98 is that is it 90.

It's low proof.

That's right.

98.6.

Easy drinker.

I was going well like the first few was like the first sip was strong.

Second sip was good.

Third sip was strong.

It's just like okie.

It's kind of okie but I like it.

Yeah.

I was fine.

I haven't drank bourbon.

Probably since the last podcast.

So at least a week.

Yeah but I mean I've drank.

You know other things but it's just the bourbon hasn't been

hidden as much.

I got into the bourbon on Saturday night.

Little Christmas party.

The old fashions the pre-made old fashions that were

had put a hurting on it.

Had to be delightful.

Lots of sugar.

Lots of lots of sugar.

At least the sugar.

I think the sugar is what gets you.

You don't need to do that.

Single barrel 1792 that's what's that 90 bucks 80 bucks.

No 60 59.

Can't be.

Yeah.

That's a that's a absolutely buy it if you can find it.

Great price point.

Great bourbon.

That's a great one.

Usually can't find it at retail but when you do.

You lucked out today.

I did.

I had a good day.

It's the right time of year.

This is everything.

I was getting like wicked FOMO like seeing

shit all over Instagram.

Everything's dropping this week.

I bought nothing so far like decent this year until this week.

Now it's everything this week.

Big big stuff drink dropping.

I thought it was all like the week before Thanksgiving.

They've changed.

Buffalo Tracy's changed some things a little bit.

Washed out.

Yeah.

They're like hot rod builders.

Like they just can't get the deadline.

So probably a couple of weeks.

We have some homework for everybody that's out there listening.

First up.

Make sure you go and follow Levi at Hammerfab on Instagram.

Buy some crater makers.

Buy some backing play by if you're a vest in yourself.

If you're a fabricator to spend some money,

it's going to it's going to pay off in the long run.

Get the master set.

Get it all.

And if you're a business owner.

What's your favorite product that you produce that's the best bang for the buck?

I mean probably the master set dimple dye set because you get a few bucks.

Quite a few dollars off.

I think it's like a hundred hundred fifty dollars off.

It's like a free dimple dye.

You know by the time you buy the whole set comes in a nice foam liner that we make in

house on our CNC router fits in your toolbox so all your dyes are organized really nice.

You know exactly which size you're grabbing you know when somebody stole it.

You get that at hammerfab.com.

Absolutely.

So if you're a business owner what you should do is go to hammerfab.com

buy your employees the master set right.

Get them some tools.

Buy that for the shop and then you send them to the class.

Buy that to the in the shop.

Then you're going to sign.

Then you're going to go straight over to ironwork speed and custom

and sign up for the business development class.

Learn how to make money with those.

Learn how to make money with those tools.

And then you're also going to roll over to oilandwhiskey.com

and buy some merch before the December 22nd on that 35% off and win.

One of the Viper chairs.

Yeah that is absolutely to get your hands on a free Viper chair.

A hundred percent.

Yeah you don't who cares about the merch.

Get your chance to that.

And we're putting it out there live because we're going to be drawing

the names live on our recording on the 22nd.

So we're just going to be there live on the recording live on the recording

when you hear it like we're going to do it and you're going to record it

and then you're going to hear it but you think it's live.

We're going to pick out some additional top secret items out of the studio right.

Yeah yeah we get some that sounded like some excitement.

You heard it here first fellas they are took a second to register

but there's some cool stuff here.

Yeah could be that brass knuckle slingshot.

It's not going to be the brass knuckle slingshot.

Let's be honest.

It could be that limited edition katana gift.

It's not going to be that.

It's not going to be the katana either.

So I wasn't sure if I was supposed to bring a gift or not.

No there's no there's no press here.

I was working on one but it didn't work out the way I wanted it.

Okay so I'm going to figure it out though and I'll send you guys some

but I was working on these dimple dye coasters.

Oh okay so sweet.

I'm going to figure it out.

Okay cool.

And I'm going to get you guys some but they're like a giant dimple dyes.

Levi it's been an absolute blast man.

This has been absolutely more than we could have ever imagined.

I'm so excited and glad that you were able to make the trip.

We'll see you again next week.

Levi Green of HammerFab

About this episode

hood sides

WeatherTech

Viper

69 Chevelle

Chevrolet Chevelle

windshield wipers

SEMA

Porsche 488

Ferrari F8

Ford 1937 slantback coupe

Chevy Bell Air 53

Chevy Bell Air 54

stick welding

C notch

60 Volkswagen truck

exhaust system

laser cutter

plasma cutter

TIG welder

hot rod

Pole Max

splash pan

one eighth scale

Pro charger

wheel flares

struts

galvanized

Pontiac

Invicta

air ride

four post lift

Chrysler

Camaro SS

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