Porsche Talk with Rennch - Michael O'Neal

G'day everyone, welcome back to Porsche Talk Radio Show.

Ajmal's been out and about showing his car off to lots of different people, but more importantly,

that we've got a guest this week.

You might know him from previous shows like Wrench or Solopreneurio.

Welcome, Michael.

How you doing, Mark?

How you doing, Ajmal?

Good.

Excellent.

It's great to have you.

Thank you.

Spanning the globe and three very different time zones.

It is a typical thing when it happens when your co-hosts live on the opposite side of the globe

from each other and the guest is the other bit, you know.

Yes, literally.

It's like we've divided the earth into thirds.

We have.

For listeners, I'm based in Perth, Western Australia, Ajmal, not far out of London,

and Michael LA, USA, for those 11 American listeners that we get each time.

We somehow just can't penetrate the US market very well anyway.

We've seen it a great job on this show in Northern Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia,

all the English-speaking places, except the USA, Michael.

And it must be a funny-sounding accent.

I don't know what it is or the fact that it could just be 11 million different

automotive avenues to satisfy your interest.

Yeah, I don't know either.

Maybe it is the accent.

I can understand you, but I have a lot of Aussie friends.

Yeah, look, but I've been with the US a number of times and you guys love Aussies.

We love Aussies.

I mean, there's a lot of fun to be had.

You guys are just down.

There's like, let's go.

Yeah, let's we're in.

I like that about you.

Before we talk about you in any depth,

I'm always surprised when we have guests from the US,

not one of you asked me for the powerball numbers

because I'm actually on the next day ahead of you.

So I could actually probably have them.

Isn't that how it works?

I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it works.

Yeah, OK, I'll take some through.

After this, maybe before all the Sunday football games, American football,

I'll see what you can tell me what the scores are.

Yeah, OK, yeah, make a dollar or two.

So look, typically at the start of the show before we roll in you,

we're going to talk about what's happened in the since our last episode.

It seems to be a very big automotive event

which Arjmal has been preparing for for months called Goodwood Revival.

Arjmal, give us a brief update.

What's it about? What do you do?

So Goodwood, I mean, Goodwood has two big events.

So there's the festival speed that everybody knows about.

It's super cars, it's racing.

It's held around the Formula One Grand Prix at Silverstone.

And then there's revival, which is more it's kind of a dress up.

People dress up 40s, 50s, 60s.

The cars are mostly pre-66 kind of, but they kind of bleed into every era.

There's no set rules about anything, but there's a lot of racing.

There's a lot of events.

There's a lot of entertainment and it goes on into the evening.

And I only went to the first day on the Friday,

which is good because it rained on Saturday and Sunday all day.

And we missed that.

But the huge news was that I took my 1966 Porsche 912,

which I can't admit was terrifying.

How far away is it?

There's a reference for the listeners here.

It's 90 minutes.

OK, yep.

So we drove down the night before.

So the problem is, you know, I changed the wheels

from my Fuchs wheels to the Group 4 steelies.

I love those.

And I call, but I put them on.

So, Mike, you get this, I put them on the day before I went down.

Smart. And I was I went to jack up the front of the car

to put one of the front wheels on my go under.

And, you know, the torsion bar.

Attaches at the front, the two bolts are hanging down.

The two M10s, but there's a gap between them.

They're not tightened up. Is that what you're saying?

They're not they're not tightened up.

So and remember, I've had that panel new.

That's a new panel under the tank.

So I just get, you know, whatever,

18 mil span or whatever it is, I got it on there.

Turning, turning, turning, turning, turning, turning, turning, turning.

Take it on. They're still there.

So I get on the other one.

It's nothing.

So I take the bolts out that the threads are stripped.

In the bolt or in the body?

The bolt, it's smooth.

You can run your hand across it.

And oh, wow.

So you discovered why they were loose.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm like, oh, shit, I can't.

I can't now go in this car to Goodwood after, you know,

like thinking about it for all this time.

And fully see, I told my wife who was coming with me,

she's never really been in the car in a distance.

And so I just go down to the local motor factor.

Supplier, and I just get a couple of M10 bolts.

And I think if these go in, I can tighten them to a good torque setting.

Then I will go for it.

So I put those in and they're fine.

But what I do is when we set off because we go to the day before,

I stop every kind of 45 minutes.

So I stopped, we have two stops, actually.

And every time I get under the car to have a look,

and I've got a spanner on it, it's still tight.

This confidence is spying for your wife, right?

Yeah, right.

But it was, I know it was.

And you know, Mark, I've told this before,

and I don't know what you think, Mike, but on my 9-12,

that I never have an idea of how hot the car is running

apart from the temperature in the cabin.

So normally the gauge kind of moves.

But most of the time I can tell how hot it's running by

the oil pressure light coming on and the temperature in the cabin.

So I'm sat in the queue on the Friday to get in

and the temperature gauge has gone up higher than it's ever been,

which is past halfway.

Sure, there's no airflow.

You're sitting in line. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. I'm sat in line, I'm sat in the queue,

but it's only gone above the white block at the bottom of the gauge,

which it never normally moves above.

Yeah, mm-hmm.

But I can feel it's hot in the car

and the oil pressure

because obviously the viscosity of the oil changes

when it gets so hot.

So the oil pressure light starts flickering on and off.

And I'm like, oh, my God, it's going to explode.

And then that'll be the engine will seize.

But then the but then the oil gauge,

the temperature gauge stopped working.

It just dropped down to the bottom suddenly.

No.

So I just think I just think, oh, sorry,

just we just going to keep going.

But most of it in and it was it was it grows.

They're great, to be honest.

I had a fantastic day there.

The amount, the variety of cars, the people,

just the atmosphere, the stalls.

There are quite a few cars for sale that I took a liking to.

And and the one that I took a liking to,

I never thought I would BMW Z1.

Really?

OK, with the doors going down.

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Right. Yeah. They're kooky little things.

They never sold. Yeah, I don't think it was left hand drive.

So I don't know if I can't remember

if they were sold in the UK as a right hand drive.

But it was thirty five thousand pounds.

And I and I thought I could sell a kidney for that and get that.

I've never seen one in real life.

Do you have them on the road?

Do you see them much in LA?

Michael, like, if there's a place anywhere

that there's going to be an odd car in the LA.

Yeah, I've we have everything, but in fact,

I think it was Seinfeld that said pick any car from any make.

And there's one within forty five minutes of LA.

Yeah, OK. Name it.

You name it.

And someone's got it around here somewhere.

Although they lost a tremendous amount of those cars

in the fires earlier in the year. Sure.

They were like right where all the collectors

lived is what caught on fire.

Yeah. So some definite stuff was lost.

But yeah, I've seen a number of those at just different events.

But no, we don't seem like driving around.

Yeah, I was just curious that so.

But one thing I want to say, Ajamal,

I I have always wanted to go to Goodwood Revival.

Like it's it is one of the things that I really want to do.

And tonight we're actually having a one of our local Porsche dealerships

has just built new buildings and expanded and is doing a like a cocktail party

and this is actually what I'm wearing to the cocktail amazing,

which is full on good wood vintage over all on Goodwood.

Like I have white coveralls.

I'll do a tie. I'll do the whole thing.

The exact gentleman going for 60s genuine motor racer who has to work.

One hundred percent. Yeah, got it.

Yeah. The and we'll see if they turn me away at the door.

But but hopefully they won't.

I feel like this is a great look.

I feel like we're talking about

a bit of posh cosplay down on here at the moment.

We've got the Ajamal dressing up to go to a car show.

Mike's dressing up to go to a car show.

Look, it's early in the morning here, so you should be right from dressed at all.

Right. Sure. The but this whole

you try to explain this to someone that's not in the car

and no car enthusiasts, you doesn't know what Goodwood is.

You know, the revival.

It just looks like grown ups at Comic Con.

A hundred percent.

The thing about the thing about revival

and you'll have to let us know, Mike, when you go to this event is

the revival has become more than just about cars.

It's it's obviously it's about an era of multiple eras.

And my wife isn't a car person.

She got me the tickets for my birthday, you know, 10 months ago.

And and when we got in there, we were there for an hour

and she went, this is brilliant.

Just being able to the yeah.

And just she said we should definitely come next year.

Great. It's like a time capsule.

Yeah, exactly.

And even on the track when you go to go on.

I was going to say, I bet next year

she'll have a number of different outfits ready for the period.

Correct. Part of that's the thing.

If you guys don't know that is that when people go to Goodwood revival

very often, I don't know if you are forced to.

You might have to have to be.

But people are wearing that era.

They're wearing like 40s, 50s, 60s era clothes and mechanic outfits.

And there's a whole vibe involved.

And I think the closest we got to that here was early

Luftgekult shows, which and maybe not so much anymore.

But there's a celebration of at least with Luft.

There's a celebration of air cooled culture.

And one of the reasons I think many of us are involved in the Porsche world

is that the vintage Porsche world, not the I'm a dentist

and I bought a convertible 911 Porsche world.

The when I go to a drive, let's say like a Sunday drive

and I meet at a coffee shop in Malibu and then we go on some back roads

and then end up at there's a place called the old place where everyone gets a burrito.

You're sitting down at this table and everybody's Anthony Bourdain.

Like everyone's super cool doing super cool stuff.

They're wearing a vintage Rolex and they're listening to Sinatra and they've got

they just get it like there's a taste level that is really cool to be around.

And you talk to them about what they're doing, you go, man, that is so awesome.

It's really the thing for me that draws me to the Porsche community.

I don't know if it's global, but certainly in this area, excuse me, in this area,

that's what you get when you mix with those folks is that you get there.

There's a cool factor that's really fun to be around.

And that is what I think Goodwood revival has plenty of.

Absolutely. No, I agree completely because yeah, it's way more than just cars.

The cars are kind of the sense piece, but it's the atmosphere.

It's the way people kind of the vibe, how people interact between each other.

And then you're right.

It's and people aren't made to dress up.

It's people choose to dress and they choose the era that they want to dress to

and they accessorize and then you get the big mix.

There's someone who's really dressed up.

There might be in kind of vintage black tie or cocktail dress or something.

Then you've got the land of girls.

Then you've got the guys in the overalls.

You've got the guys in the flat caps.

You've got the guys in the tweed.

It's I love everything about it.

And I've never been to Goodwood before, like you're probably going to say

that's crazy because it's 90 minutes away from my house.

Well, I one of these years, I'm going to be there.

Hopefully next year I'm up.

I'm good friends with Mike Brewer, who's like a big car.

He was on a wheeler dealer like and he, you know,

he's typically there every year.

And I'm like, dude, let's we just got to go and hang and do Goodwood.

So one of these times I'll make it out there.

Definitely do it, do it.

So the trip home was eventless?

You know.

All right, because so dish.

So in the in the car park where I parked it.

So we arrived at it opens at 8.30 in the morning.

We arrived maybe 20 past nine.

So I pulled up, I park up and the car park is full of super cool cars

because you're in the three 1966 car park.

Sure. So it's Porsche's.

There's like a there's a a Gullwing Mercedes part next to me.

There's, you know, Aston Martin's is everything.

And then right in front of us is a split screen BW bus.

Nice.

So I'm not particularly into buses, but I love the split screen

with the multiple windows, 30 windows or whatever they've got.

And anyway, so I look around the car park, then we go in, have a great time.

But when we come back and it's time to leave.

The people who own the bus are having a party.

There's like 20 of them and they're surrounding the car

and I'm something going, oh, God, it's not going to start up.

Oh, the pressure.

We're just going to back for a second crap out of them.

It's like the first T when you're golfing in front of 20 people,

you've got to hit it in front of everybody.

It was like that.

And because on the way there, my first stop.

I wasn't paying attention.

And normally, you know, I put the pedals on the floor and just started up

and it's fine, but I didn't.

I pumped it and it was in a supermarket car park that are parks

and it backfired just as the lady with a trolley was walking past behind.

And she swore like I've never heard before.

And you know, you like get out of the car.

I'm really sorry.

And she's giving me that I thought she's going to murder me.

But with us.

But then when it's time to go and everyone's drunk, who's around this bus

and they start talking to us, oh, I love your car.

This that whatever.

And and then as I'm getting in, they're all looking.

God, please fire up.

So it fired up, but it ran rough.

Suddenly, it just ran rough and it ran rough all the way home.

Oh, huh.

But like, like missing it could have been a yeah, yeah, something like that.

Yeah, something like that.

Down on power, stuttering and it just a bit, you know, when the whole car

is kind of shaking and and it just felt like one of the plugs has just given up.

But I thought my wife was like, let's just call the breakdown people.

Get it towed.

And I was no way.

I want to blow off.

Yeah.

So we should power it with no with no temperature gauge.

Yeah, so we just power it home.

And as we get closer, obviously, it's stuttering a bit more.

It's struggling up the hills.

I'm having to change one of the things I never got is, Mike,

because you want to you're quite any of your cars got a dog leg first.

A what?

You know, a dog leg first gear.

You know, not a one gearbox.

No, no, no, I have a nine 15 in all the cars.

See, on mine, it's got the five speed with the dog leg first.

And right.

The annoying thing is it hits the seat.

So I have to really struggle to whack it into first gear.

And then when you're in stop start traffic, I'm using both hands

to kind of hold it in place so it doesn't pop out because the factory

short shift in there, buddy. Come on now.

I'm going to have to do that.

Yeah. And then so all the way back, it's stuttering this out.

And, you know, a couple of places that I stopped and I thought,

is it going to fire back up?

And it did. And then it poured with rain, obviously.

So luckily, the wipers are fine.

The lights kind of work because they like, you know, they're more like candles.

And the thing that I realized is because I don't drive it at night.

It's got left hand drive lights in the point the wrong way.

I'm they pointed the wrong way.

So they pointed out blinding oncoming drivers.

Oh, that's funny. I didn't even I didn't even think about that.

So so my my car was delivered in Milan.

New. So it got imported probably about seven or eight years ago.

I was just just so you're aware.

It's actually the lenses of your headlights that do this.

You know, you got this funny fluting and stuff in it.

That's why they reflect. Yeah, that's right.

That's what yeah. And that so I didn't know, you know, I just put the lights

on and I'm driving.

But then when I get into the country lanes and it's not particularly dark,

but and I'm like, hang on, why am I lighting up the opposite side of the road?

And interesting. Oh, crap, they're the wrong lights.

So anyway, I made it home, survive.

I had a quick look underneath and the bolts are still holding.

And haven't that was it's Tuesday now.

That was Friday evening that I came home.

I haven't been in the garage to have a look or anything.

Yeah, OK.

Got it. It's scared to go back in.

So that was me.

Yes, to get to go back in and I want to send it off.

So there's a guy called Max at Revival cars

and he just does 912 specializes them.

He's a genius with the carburettes.

I don't want to send it to him and say, can you just make it run?

No, make it make it good.

What year is it again?

Yeah, the 66.

Wow, it's early. It's good.

Short wheelbase. Yeah, that's fun.

Yeah, but it's a five dial, though.

Wow, you should get my Subaru Swap for 300 horsepower

and make a 911 R and then you'll have a real car.

We'll only die.

We'll come back to that in a moment about the Subaru Swap again.

The so.

On the weekend at my in my garage,

I installed a what's called

colloquially a diner.

So I've replaced the dynamite six volt dynamite

with my 356 with a alternator that's in the same size case.

Right. Of course.

The job looked relatively straight.

Hang on, is that 12 now 12 volt?

No, no, still six volt, still six volt.

It's actually manufactured by a UK company.

Seems to be a lot of 356 that's coming out of the UK,

at least in my garage.

I don't know why that is.

Typically, they'll come in out of LA.

However, the UK stuff

electrically seems to be pretty popular and robust.

So and, you know, unlike most

that car electrics come out of the UK.

Hopefully these will be quite good.

But they're not made by Lucas.

Don't worry, we'll be fine.

Your mileage may vary.

Yeah, but the part of the process

is where the oil filter is.

I was like, you know where it is

because it's the same motor, it's in your car.

That actually has to come off

because you've got to take the whole assembly out

and the fad and everything

because it's attached to the other end of the dynamo,

or the alternator, whatever you've got.

And as I do that,

and as I put it all back together,

it all went together pretty well.

It all measured up exactly the same.

So good product so far.

I could use, it's wired up different

because I've got the external six-volt regulator

on the firewall of the engine bay,

which is a thing for around 356s.

The, so basically bypass that.

Use the existing wiring loom, which all worked well,

has the way the, you know, the old battle light works.

I've reused the field wire

from the generator to the regulator for that.

So it all, everything,

all that part of it was pretty straightforward.

However, the, putting the strap bracket

that holds the oil filter back on,

lining it up, the oil filter's diameter is probably,

I don't know, the equivalent of six inches

for the, those 11 American listeners

or 150 mil for the rest of the world.

The, my hand isn't quite big enough

for the spring loadedness to line up the holes

and I can't really get a tool in there

because of where it is.

So I'm trying to hold it with like my palm,

my hand while trying to guide a bolt in.

Anyway, this whole thing,

this went on for an hour and 15 minutes.

I couldn't get this bolt into this thing.

Mate, I was ready to just douse the car in petrol

and throw a match at it by this point.

I was furious.

Like everything else, everything was technical.

I'm, you know, making everything work nice,

good all apart, put all that together,

replace gaskets for the generator stand, all that sort of stuff.

And one bolt, man, I was, I'll tell you,

it was just brutal, brutal.

Now you know, it turns out I could just use

the impact driver on a low setting

and use the pressure of being able to push it

to get it lined up.

And I just, after that long, you know,

you've gone through everything you get,

I was trying to get something to hold this bolt

because you've also got your line in front of it.

So I had to rotate it or anything about the whole thing.

It was just one of the, you know,

we've all been there where that,

what seems to be something you'd even think about

should be a simple task, you know,

putting a bolt into a nut.

It ends up being the thing

that just destroys the whole experience

of you feeling like a superstar

that you've fixed something in your car, right?

Yeah.

Success though.

Yeah, yeah.

It all works fine.

Works very well.

So the, you know, it's got a,

it's just an old ladder,

it's got the regulator built into it

and all that sort of thing.

So yeah, everything's,

it worked exactly as it describes on the packet,

which was very good.

The other thing I spoke about briefly in the last episode

is spark plugs,

which mentioned your plug failing just recently,

just then, Najmal.

I just want to discuss briefly.

In the past, I've used NGK iridium plugs,

which as a reference,

they're about five times more expensive

than the standard copper ones.

Okay.

However,

Five times?

Yeah.

So it's about $25 for a spark.

One of those spark plugs

is about five bucks for a normal spark plug, right?

The,

I, in the past, I've used them

and not really thought about it.

That the fact that they clean,

they don't fail.

The same way copper plugs fail, right?

There's, they just never have a problem.

And recently, my car,

what I changed the plugs probably about,

I don't know, three months ago,

and without thinking about it

and just put copper plugs in.

And the car drives like a dog

if you don't drive it for a,

you know, a week or two

and you'd get out there

and it runs on three cylinders

for the first five minutes

and you feel like you're in, you know,

your grandad's tractor on the farm

because the whole thing,

because when you've only got four cylinders,

you drop out one of them.

There's 25% of your power got it.

It's a different story.

Yeah, yeah.

In a six cylinder, of course.

But the,

but yeah, it was just a just shit me to tears.

I'm thinking, why is these plugs so bad?

Pulled them out and looked at them.

Well, yeah, they're a bit,

this one's a bit dirty.

And getting the plugs out of a bad motor.

So that ain't that easy, right?

Especially when the closest one,

the easiest one to get out,

which is number two,

which is when you're looking into my engine,

but it's the right hand one closest to you.

That's usually the no brainer.

That's the one where I dropped the plug

between the head and the sheet metal.

And I do have little fingers

and you've got, of course I've got webbers.

It's got the bigger manifold.

So the gap to get in there is even smaller, right?

So you can't use the magnet to try and pick up

because it just goes whack against the sheet metal.

The whole thing was like,

there's half an hour in my life, I don't know if I got back.

So it was just one of those, another one of those.

And like the hardest one to get,

you know, the number three,

which is right at the back left,

that's where the web is almost hard up against

the firewall.

You've got to try and get around.

You need four joints in your wrist.

That thing just went in and out like a breeze.

So anyway, since I've changed back to these Aridium plugs,

the car runs like a dream.

It actually runs so much better.

So they might be a lot more expensive

than a typical one, a typical spark plug.

Just spend the money, Ajmal, get Aridium plugs.

I'm telling you, for those flat four motors.

I did not know about that.

I'm going to give it a go.

They are significantly better.

Yeah.

Well, hopefully they're five times better.

So I want to try those,

I mean, I want to bring Mike into this bit because,

and before we go into Mike's projects and stuff,

just about what he's thinking is when he starts something.

So I am terrible at overthinking stuff,

overthinking projects and things like that.

You think that wasn't apparent by the nut and bolt story

you already told?

Yes.

Very apparent.

The tiniest thing I'll procrastinate

for ever and ever and ever.

And whereas things like, you know,

changing plugs or, you know, even when I had the wheels

for the car and they were just sat on the floor,

I didn't change them.

You've had those for like eight months, haven't you?

Something like 18 months, they've been on the floor

and they're just in the way.

And then I got the tires and put them on.

But it's, Mike, what are you thinking

when you start a job and you think,

I'm about to get into something

that could just keep me, my car off the road

for three months, for example.

Do you just go, I'm just going to go for it?

Or do you go, no, I'm going to give it a window

of when the weather's not so good

or does it not come into your thinking?

Let's see.

Let me address that in multiple ways.

Number one, with a slight insult,

which is the never is never,

the weather is never not good here.

It's always 75 degrees and sunny.

And I wish I were kidding.

I don't know what that is.

That would be about 20, 26 Celsius.

That's right around there.

26 is perfect.

Yeah, and it's like, today it's like a little warmer.

It's like 30.

We're like, oh, wow, it's a little too warm.

But rain is, when it rains here,

people call the FBI, they're like,

what something's going on?

There's aliens or something happening right now

because it just doesn't happen very much in our lives.

So that weather part isn't a factor.

But man, my car's been down since last October.

It'll be a year since I've decided to use my own car

as a test mule for my current project.

So, I mean, a little bit of a factor.

It's weird though.

For someone like me who has multiple long-term projects,

I get probably as much enjoyment in the garage

as I do on the road

because I really enjoy the restoration process

and I really like the journey as part of this.

So, you know, it's different.

I think I've been without.

I mean, I've not had a car to go hot rod around now

since at least last October.

So it's been almost a year.

I should have one by then,

but not generally a factor.

It is nice, it's funny.

You're talking about your Goodwood trip.

I've done multiple, multiple, multiple

Targa Californias in my car.

And those are five-day, 1,500-mile,

basically road rallies on roads

that you would all describe as a video game.

Like, you just can't believe this is a real road

that's like an hour from your house.

It's like, oh my God, why is this so good?

Why is it so great, right?

So it's amazing.

You get five or six days of that.

And typically during that,

we'll visit at least one to three race tracks.

Willow Springs, Button Willow, Laguna Seca.

So we'll have a track day intermixed on that.

And when we're with, you know,

there'll be 99 other vintage Porsches on this five-day

thing, so we kind of take over.

It's very interesting on public roads

where for about five days

we just ignore all laws and signs attributed to those roads

because you're with 100 people

and everyone's going 100 miles an hour.

So it's like, hey, what are you gonna do?

And then you also get a skewed sense of your own speed

because you're cruising very often at, you know,

90 miles an hour on a back road.

And so it's like a little two-lane road

in the middle of nowhere in California.

And very often the streets are designated

by the land lines, like the land ownership lines.

So sometimes they wiggle in really weird ways.

And this one, I was coming back, it was day five,

we'd done, you know, 1,000 plus miles.

And now we're actually heading to a track.

I was pretty tired.

But I was cruising at like 90 something,

maybe 100 miles an hour on this like two-lane road.

And then it was literally 90 degree left.

And the sign said 25, I think,

is what it recommended you were supposed to turn that.

And I was probably going 60 by the time,

but it felt like I was going 25

because we'd been doing 100 for an hour, you know?

So I'm like halfway through this turn going,

oh, I'm nowhere near slowed enough for this turn.

This is not going to go well.

And so all of a sudden it was like full rooster tail

into the gravel and sideways and just smoke,

not smoke from all the gravel.

And I stopped and I was like,

you know, full, you know,

pucker factor in the middle of that thing.

And I just went, all right, I guess I'm done.

This is, that was the end of my target.

And I was like 55 miles an hour all the way home.

It's like cruise, right lane.

I'm all good now.

But anyway, point being,

when I get into a long-term project,

I get very into it.

And I've actually stayed away from the garage

from a couple of days

because I had a bit of a catastrophic end

to my last test drive.

So I've been like, God, I have a lot of work

that I've got to do right now.

But otherwise, no, the super long story short

is that I do not factor in me driving.

And the reason why is because here in Southern California,

we're very fortunate that on literally any given weekend,

there's a hundred car shows I could go to.

So I'm not missing much, you know?

There's not a lot of FOMO because it's like,

yeah, there'll be another one next week.

Yeah, see, that's amazing.

Because over here, you know, we're very,

we love talking about the weather in the UK.

Sure.

And we've had, this summer has been a heat wave,

drought, hadn't rained for like three months straight.

And it was kind of 30 degrees,

I was sick of being hot and sweaty all the time.

But I didn't take the car out

because it needed a couple of things doing to it.

One of them was I took it to a show in June

and I got home parked on the driveway

and the throttle pedal got stuck solid in the position.

Yeah.

And I pushed it into the garage and I left it.

Left it for months and months and months.

And when I went back,

literally all that had happened was the linkage

behind the big air box was just disconnected.

Yeah, it just, it just come undone.

Oh, it just went, poof, it just flopped over.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Like one of the bell crank things,

the bell crank just popped out, yeah.

Yeah.

And it got stuck against the tinware.

So I put that back.

But I'm also, so I drive around issues rather than fix them.

So I drove it for a long time with higher idle

or it would not be great when the car warmed up.

And so I put in the modern one, two, three ignition

and the distributor and it made a massive difference.

But again, like the wheels,

I had that for months and months and months

just sat in a drawer until I went, I'm sick of this.

Like I'm sat in traffic and it's idling at 2,000 RPM.

I'm like, this is ridiculous, why am I doing this?

So I changed it and I thought, why don't I do this sooner?

But also I'll know things are about to fail

and I'll let them fail while I'm out.

Sure.

And sounds like a good plan.

Which is ridiculous.

Yeah, which is pretty stressful because I mean, it's crazy.

Do you guys know the best way to fix

squeaks and rattles in your car?

Yeah, head fires.

Yeah, new stereo.

Yeah.

Noise canceling.

Yeah, gotta, yeah.

Yeah, fixes everything.

It's great.

Yeah.

My car rides, my car rides like a dream

with my noise canceling headphones on.

Let's talk about you, Michael, for a bit.

We've sort of danced around our cars quite a bit here,

been going for a little while.

I wanna talk about obviously your Porsche projects

and for those who don't know you, the four people

of our listeners who've never heard of you,

tell us, give us a bit of a background,

not just of your cars, but what you do

and where you are in this space

that we are engaging in right now.

My first 911, excuse me, in 2003,

I was an autocross.

I had an 89 Honda Civic SI

and I just won a national championship in it

and the car was great at this specific class

in SCCA racing and my buddy JJ,

I can't remember if you met JJ when we did Rensport,

but he had just gotten a 78 orange 911,

911, a single orange 911.

It was like, oh, I didn't know we were old enough

to get these, I was like mid-30s

and I sold my Honda and I made one of two terrible

cross-country Porsche purchases that I've made

and this guy was like, oh, it's in fine fettles,

what he said, I'll never forget how he said that.

And I took a flight from Colorado where I lived

to LaGuardia, which is New York City

and took a train up to Northern New York

to Fishkill, where IBM was.

And within 30 seconds of looking at this car

in fine fettles, it was totally,

like the rear thing was rusted out

and underneath was wrecked and rusted

and but of course I bought it because I was there

and I went all the way across country

and what I'm gonna do is say no.

So I bought it for $8,000.

There was a $72,911 and totally stock.

Well, a little bit of tweaks on it.

And it made it as far back as Nebraska,

which is one state away from Colorado

before the engine blew up on me.

So I drove it and I've got these great pictures.

I was, when I tell you I was in the middle of nowhere,

I mean like fields to my left to my right

as far as you can see nowhere,

there was nothing around.

72.

And we ended up dead.

Just so you know, 72, is that like a 2.4, 2.2?

Yep, 2.4.

Yep.

2.4, yeah, okay.

2.4.

So my girlfriend's driving and I was napping

and I hear,

da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da,

pow!

And I was like, oh, that didn't sound good at all.

And so ended up getting it towed to a Volkswagen place

and popped the oil thing down.

I mean, the pieces of metal that came out

that were quarter sized.

I mean, they were an inch and a half.

And I was like, oh, that's not good.

So it turned out that a critter had built a nest

around one of the cylinders fully packed,

like packed it in with caked mud

and you couldn't even see it.

And so it totally overheated that cylinder

and that rod just completely melted in a boom.

And that was that.

So I ended up putting a three liter in that car,

but it was totally a mess.

The chassis was really weird.

Then I had a chance like a year later,

someone said, hey, there's a car sitting in a field,

not far from where I was.

And I went and knocked on the door

and the guy said, no, I'm gonna restore this.

And I go, well, let me just buy it off you.

And I ended up, he goes, all right,

well, I'll sell it to you for five grand.

It's a rust free car.

And I said, all right.

So I bought it for five grand

and then I spent the next four years and 2000 hours

fixing the rust on that rust free car.

I think you misheard him.

I think he said free rust.

It was free rust.

You're not rust free.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, he was in Australia.

So he had it all backwards.

But the upside of all that

is I literally bought a super cheap $200 welder

at a place called Harbor Freight,

which is our like cheap tool place.

Sure.

And I just went to Pelican forums and I just started.

I literally just started cutting and welding stuff.

You know, I was a bicycle mechanic for many years.

So I had some acumen and I had changed.

My big thing is in 2000,

I had changed a clutch on a Honda.

That was like my biggest thing I'd ever done

because you kind of have to pull the motor

to make that even happen.

So I was pretty proud of that.

Saved a lot of money.

So that began this process

and that rust free car would eventually become my gray car,

my wide body gray ghost is what it's,

what's the internet named it.

And while I was building that,

before you started that car,

before you started that,

had you done any welding?

Oh, zero.

No, no, no, no, zero.

Yeah.

No, no.

The welder just went at it.

I literally bought a welder and went online

and at the time there was no YouTube.

So it was just forums.

And I wanna say I had a buddy Zach

that kind of showed me a couple of things,

but welding is not like,

welding for what we need to do

for body work on these cars

is not the hardest thing in the world to do.

If you can run a hot glue gun,

you can weld on a car.

That's the God's honest truth.

Because the hard part about car restoration

is not the welding part.

It's the prep of the panel that you're putting on.

The shaping and all that sort of stuff.

It's how much time it takes you

to make the fit perfect on,

like if you have a rust spot or something like that.

And then to have the Hutzpah

to cut into it,

knowing that you can put it back together.

But the truth is you get two pieces of metal like this

and you get your welding gun between those two pieces

and just go zap.

That's all we gotta do on these cars.

Then you move to another spot and zap

and just make sure that the two pieces are level

and you're there.

There are situations where you need some experience

and like if you're welding on flares and stuff like that,

where you've gotta really make sure

it's even and all that kind of stuff.

But if you're doing like a little rust panel

or you've gotta replace something,

a little chunk of your gas,

like the gas tank support, for instance,

was the first thing I did on the 911.

That is a, I could go show you the piece,

but it's like the front of the gas tank in the 911.

It's kind of, almost looks like a dog bone,

like literally like a drawing of a dog bone

where it's like, thin and then it's got the bulbous ends

on the left and right, kind of looks like that.

And so you just have to drill around the perimeter

and those are your spot weld holes.

You take out the old piece,

you clean up the rust and stuff underneath,

put pour 15 or primer or whatever,

stick it back on, clamp it and just weld in those holes

and you've done it.

It's not, it's very much not rocket science.

It's very, very easy.

So I did that.

I did the inner and outer rockers.

I did the gas tank support.

I think I fixed one of my fenders

and then we ultimately welded on the rear fender flares

and I ended up getting front fiberglass flares

and that was it.

And while I was building it, the lore of the car

is that my parents passed away while I was building it.

So I mixed their ashes into the primer

because that, as you guys know,

if anybody wrenches on a car, that's our safe space.

That's our fortress of solitude, I think in a lot of ways

because you're just there doing guy things.

Your knuckles are bleeding.

You're trying to get a bolt off for 45 minutes

but it's problem solving and we love to solve problems.

We enjoy that process of like, what am I gonna do here

and hell or high water?

This, you know, what I always say to my car

when the bolts are stuck, I was like, I'm gonna win.

I'm a person.

You're not a person.

I have more knowledge than you do.

I'm gonna win.

I have a lot of tools here now.

It was crazy to think of, by the way,

that I've moved into a place that has a four car garage

here and outside of LA.

The amount of tools and fabrication I have now

compared to when I did the gray car in a single car garage

with very dim light and a $200 welder, it's crazy.

Like I could bang out that gray car now

instead of four years.

I could do it in, you know, three weeks probably.

But, you know, what are you gonna do?

Yep, yep.

So the gray car, what motor ended up in that car?

So when the motor blew up, I put a three liter in there

and I drove that with a three liter with, in fact,

in 2015, I think it was,

I wanted to like upgrade it

and make really good hot rod sound.

So I got a pair of PMO carburetors, brand new.

I think I spent eight grand for these brand new carbs.

It really looked the part.

So it was like a three liter with carbs,

sounded great, I had the sport exhaust,

everything was great.

And then I made a mistake.

Mistakes were made as my girlfriend likes to say.

I made the mistake of getting into a real 911 RSR

who around Coronado, we had a Coronado Festival of Speed

which is, Coronado is a Air Force base

in South in San Diego.

And for years and years, 40 years,

they did a vintage car race right on the base.

And like on the runway, they'd set up this track.

And I saw a guy and he was going out.

I'm like, hey man, can I get a ride?

He was like, yeah, hop on in.

I was like, really?

And he was just doing practice hot laps

but he was in a real 1973 RSR with all the fixings.

And this was, that's about a 300 horsepower car.

And I took one ride and then I went,

I need 300 horsepower in my car.

There's no comparison.

And so this is a true story.

While I was there, I posted an ad on Pelican

selling my engine.

And I think I was asking 12 or 15K for it.

It was beautiful.

It was a really good looking engine.

I lived 12 minutes away.

And by the time I got home,

I had five real offer, like it was sold

by the time I got home.

And I put it on a crate and sold it and someone took it.

And then I found on one of the locals called Craigslist.

It's like a, you know, whatever market

kind of a classified thing.

Somebody had a three six for sale on Craigslist.

And I bought it completely unknown.

I had no idea anything about anything.

And I stuck it in my car.

And up until October, that was I think eight years ago.

It's never done anything but spit out,

you know, 300 horsepower super reliably

and been an awesome engine.

So it had a three six for a long time.

And now it's back down to a three liter,

but the three liters made by a different company

that doesn't say Porsche on it.

Yep.

What have you done with the Porsche motor?

Sold it to Dave at TRE Motorsports

who's using it for, they have an IROC series

where they've taken all the original IROC cars,

the 74 like Skiddle's colors of all the IROC cars

and a bunch of builders from around the country

built them to spec so they could have

an a vintage IROC race series.

So he bought that.

I sold it for I think 30, 31 grand or something like that.

World's Deer's Horse Power.

What's that?

World's most expensive horse power.

Yeah, tell me about it.

Well, and that leads into what I'm doing now and why,

but yeah, it was about 30,

I think I got whatever it was 30 grand

and plus a couple of trades.

And he stuck it right in that car.

And so then now I had this little empty vessel,

but I will say that once my,

once this Subaru thing is built and the test mule was good,

you know what you can buy now?

You can buy a 3.6 liter case,

brand new from Porsche.

From that era, the 1990 through 1997, I think,

basically the 964, the 993, you can buy those.

And then there's a company here in San Diego called Audubon

and Audubon gets literally every takeoff

that Singer doesn't use from the 964s.

So they have all of the hoods and deck lids

and fenders and all of the engine parts they don't use.

So basically they have these completely, they have boxes.

I mean, a hundred boxes of disassembled 3.6 motors

that are just missing the heads,

but everything else is there.

So you just need a block, you bolt that all together.

I don't can't remember how much you're selling them for.

It's six grand or something like that.

So you get a brand new block,

get those parts for another six grand,

get some heads from eBay for a couple grand

and you've got a three six for,

you know, 18 or whatever it is,

which is still ridiculous,

but neither here or there.

Do you think, okay, let's talk about the Subaru Swaps.

All right.

Why did you go down this path?

Was it financial or is it the challenge of the engineering?

Is it just because I've got a Porsche,

doesn't mean I have to have a Porsche motor.

What was the thought process on going down this path?

Multiple tiers, cultural was one of them

and financial was one of them.

Cultural was, I have a YouTube channel.

It's wrench on YouTube, R-E-N-N-C-H.

Right now I think I have 33,000 subs,

but at the time when I got this car,

I think I had 1200 or something like that.

And what I knew is that I, not the great car,

this is another car that I'm calling the blasphemy build

because of the Subaru engine.

And I knew that I needed a build.

I needed a long-term project

that I could get people to invest in

and they would stay subscribed

and they would follow the path, right?

That was the idea.

I ended up finding this race car.

It was a completely finished GT2.

It was actually the crazy, 1969, 911 S,

number 22 off the line.

So my serial number is 000022 on that car.

But the chassis had been so crazily modified

that it wasn't worth restoring.

You know what I mean?

Like it wasn't worth bringing back to its original S form.

So it was, I mean, and when you saw it,

it was completely cut up and vented

and all the kinds of weird places and stuff like that.

But the entire rear panel had been removed.

Like there was no rear,

what you might consider like the rear cross member

or what would hold the license plate

didn't exist on that car.

So you could pull an engine,

a race engine straight out the back.

That's so you could just do quick swaps of drivetrains.

But it had no drivetrain,

but it had all this other super trick stuff on it.

So I ended up buying that for, I wanna say like 10 grand

and I needed a drivetrain.

So the first thing I did is a buddy of mine

who does gears and such, Matt Monson,

with, oh no, guard transmission.

He was gonna kill me if I forgot.

He goes, oh, get a G96 transmission.

They're great.

Six speed cable shift, you know, okay, cool.

So I got that.

And I'm starting to think about the motor.

Here's the issue with the motor, you guys.

And this is a global show,

but I want you guys to get some semblance.

I've already talked about at any given time

I can go to a, even a small Porsche cars and coffee

will have a hundred vintage 911s.

They're everywhere.

The problem is, despite what I think

is the highest density of vintage 911s in the world.

I think we have more here than anywhere else in the world.

Oh, I'd agree.

And there's probably, there was eight.

We just lost Ed Pink.

There's probably seven guys

that rebuild the engines in these cars.

And that's from San Francisco,

all the way down to Tijuana.

Like seven guys that you would really trust

because these engines,

at least certainly the six cylinder versions

of these engines, they're Rolexes.

They're very, very precise.

And they require some real skill to assemble.

Well, we just lost Ed Pink who was doing

all the Singer engines.

That means we've got seven dudes

and we've got this huge density of Porsche people

that some of which buy 40 year old cars

that they want to rebuild their engines or whatever.

So the reality is,

if I-

You're working two years

to get an engine rebuild, aren't you?

A hundred percent.

So if I bought a three liter from eBay,

it would cost me 12 to 15K.

And then if I brought it to any one of those seven guys,

they'd say, cool, bring it to me,

you'll get it back fall of 2027.

It's two years because these engines take

two to three months to properly do.

And they've got eight people ahead of you

that are waiting for their engines to be built.

And the rebuild will cost you at least $30,000.

So now you're in for $45,000

for 180 horsepower of antiquated technology

versus this Subaru three liter flat six,

still a flat six.

It was in all the outbacks.

You guys have tons of them there in Australia.

But if you look spec to spec,

they're almost identical except

the Subaru has quad cams, variable valve timing.

It's light, it's 65 pounds lighter.

Out of the gate stock, it's 245 horsepower instead of 180.

But with an ECU, it's an easy 300.

And it's $1,200.

Off the show.

So okay.

And it drive by wire.

You put it with a nice modern ECU like a Haltech.

And now I've got launch control, cruise control,

traction control if I want to attach it.

I've got all kinds of different options.

I can tune it with my phone.

I can tune it up at auto zone for $70

instead of having to go to the Porsche dealership

and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to do like,

oh, how about an oil change for 600 bucks?

I'm like, or the local grocery store for 40.

You know, that's the difference between the two.

So I decided to put that in,

but I wanted to do it 935 style.

So I made this really cool twin turbo.

Like it looks ridiculous.

Detuned with running,

I could drive it to Tahitian back,

420 horsepower on the turbo.

Like all day long, 420 with six pounds of boost.

It's barely doing anything.

That's running E85 ethanol and it's bulletproof.

So as I started building that,

a ton of people were like,

hey, do you do kits for these cars?

I said, no, no, no, no, no.

Okay, yes.

Yes, I do.

In fact.

Then you had to design one.

Literally, that's how it went.

I had a guy that I just welded on some flares.

I've gotten very good at welding flares

on like wide body flares on cars.

And I did his, he put SC flares on a 76 912,

90 horsepower car.

And, but it has the modern,

everything else in this G body, right?

So we're sitting at lunch and he goes, yeah.

He just put a deposit down.

It was going to get his engine in 11 months.

It was a type four Volkswagen engine.

He was spending $14,000 on it.

And he was going to get two,

just about 200 horsepower out of it.

I go, oh dude, and for another thousand bucks,

I could give you 300 and a much more modern flat six

and it'll, in a rips.

And he goes, okay, let's do it.

And I went, oh, all right.

I guess I'm in business then.

And so that was really the first,

that was probably about this time last year

that he said, all right, let's do it.

So my whole thing had shifted from like,

let me make this really cool one-off car

that has active arrow, active suspension,

3D printed tail lights, like all kinds of cool stuff to,

oh wait, now I have to manufacture something

that's bulletproof for every single car it goes in.

And I've got to make it fit.

And my goals were I want to make it invisible.

No one, I don't want anybody to know what's in there.

It's still supposed to sound like a Porsche.

No one will know what the car's in coffee.

And in this case, all you have to do is drill one hole

that's about an inch and a quarter

so we can fit the plugs for the hall tech

from the under the seat to the engine compartment.

And that's it.

It's the only mod you have to do to your car.

So I've hit all those.

And I think it's, and the issue with the engines

isn't getting any better.

So I fully think that by this time next year,

everything you see around me

will probably be plated in gold.

I'll just have a gold plated house.

So will, how are these cars,

are they air cooled or liquid cooled?

Water, water cooled, yeah.

So you've got to, if you've got an old Porsche,

have you got to do the plumbing

for the radiator at the front?

You don't have to do a darn thing

because I've done everything.

So if you, it's as plug and play

as an engine swap has ever been.

So like if your car is, you know,

how we have our Porsches when you pull the engines,

the rear of the car is jacked up real high, right?

If you're there waiting

and you've got your driver's seat out

and you're ready basically.

When my, when the crate arrives,

the big wooden crate says wrench on the side.

When the crate arrives, you crack it open,

you can be ripping around your block

probably within three hours.

Wow.

Wow. Yeah.

It's fully, and it comes with everything.

One thing it doesn't come with is a clutch

and whatever exhaust you want to use

because I don't know exhaust you want to use,

but it's built for Porsche exhausts.

It's got Porsche flanges on it.

It goes right there.

You just plug it in just like you would

any other Porsche exhaust.

And then you got to plug the drive-by-wire pedal in,

which is like six things you got to plug in.

And then put power on ground, run the tack cable,

run the tack wire, and then fill it with fluids

and vroom vroom.

Oh, so what about fuel and stuff?

Is the old pump work,

or do you need some kind of fuel pressure?

Do you just specify that?

Everything is totally,

now if you have the option,

what I will offer eventually,

because I'm gonna offer like different tiers,

but there will be an E85 tune

that I will offer.

An E85 can be a little more,

a little rougher on fuel lines

and fuel pumps and that kind of thing.

So you may need to replace a pump at that point,

but so far, so far,

I'm running it on my gray car,

totally bone stock.

And I will say that having driven a 36 in that car

for years, the responsiveness of drive-by-wire

versus cable is crazy.

It's neck jarring.

And that's completely tunable.

That's what's cool about it.

I could do, well, I got a 90 minute trip,

I gotta go to Goodwood Revival.

I can just click a button and go into eco mode,

and it'll just totally save on fuel,

and we can just be in cruise mode.

I get to the track, I can give it a full track spec,

and it'll completely change the dynamics.

It's like sport mode.

So I can literally click and have sport mode, sport plus,

whatever.

And my goal for the Blastumi build is,

I'm calling that car a Techno Mod.

So instead of like a Resto Mod,

if it comes on a 2027 Mercedes S-Class

and I can invisibly integrate it,

I'm gonna do that.

So I want it to be the kind of thing

where like I'm sitting at a car's in coffee

and I'll say, hey, Siri, let's do that.

Hey, Siri, let's go racing,

or hey, Alexa, let's go racing or whatever.

That the car goes, okay, and the windows go down,

the whole ride drops a couple inches and the tail goes up.

I want that totally, it's in my vision to happen.

I want that to happen.

So that's all gonna, it's gonna happen at some point.

I don't know how, but I'm gonna pull that off.

But anyway, point is, this has opened up

a whole different universe for me in terms of like,

I'm pretty good at taking a piece of metal

and turning it into a thing,

but this year, my biggest tools,

my best tools in my toolbox

have been a 3D scanner and a 3D printer.

They have changed my world.

The...

Yeah, because we had Jeff on,

from Australia, home-built Jeff.

He's the same.

He fabricates anything he needs.

He's got a 3D printer.

He's got a laser thingy metal cutting machine.

I'm jealous of that.

Yeah, I'm jealous of his little laser cutter, CNC.

Yeah, which is amazing.

And to be able to do that and do it so quickly.

But your build, is it only recently

that you first fired it up?

Did I see that on a video or as a video?

Let's see.

I think the first fire of the twin turbo one

was like January 2023, maybe 2022.

And then this gray one,

I think started my like production version.

I think December is when I first started it.

And then just recently it's like,

basically when I started and got proof of concept,

I completely removed it

and then started working on packaging

and like making everything look great

and perform well because that's the big difference,

you guys, between what I have to do

with the Blasphemy build

which is I can do anything I want.

I can fabricate anything and make anything work

any way I want and that's just the way it is.

This one I can't.

This one has to be reproducible

and it's got to work

in a bunch of different cars and iterations.

It's got to be bulletproof.

So every little step I took, I had to make it work.

And then I also wanted the presentation

to be super clean.

When someone opened the hood,

I didn't want it to be this crazy, like ugly thing.

Like just looking like a stock Subaru engine.

It's like, I wanted it to kind of look like a Porsche,

what is it, like a Porsche turbo engine

with the intercooler on top.

I kind of wanted that vibe.

So let me see if I can show you guys very well.

For people on video, you can maybe see this.

That's what the kit looks like.

I saw when you were polishing some of the parts up.

Yeah, it looks pretty amazing.

And what I was thinking was,

so let's say somebody in Australia wants to do this

and they come to you and they say,

right, I want that kit.

What kind of things can they spec

or is it all just standard?

They get a build.

Right now it's standard,

but what I was alluding to before

is I do want to do like standard

and then E85 and then turbo

if you want to do a turbo version of it.

And it'll come with different specs based on that.

And it's not super hard for me to do.

Like with turbo is actually one of the easier things

for me to do is prep for a turbo.

I can just put a oil feed line.

And then with the headers,

all I have to do is just put kind of those quick fit

fittings on them.

And they can just do whatever they want on their end.

They just make fabricate the headers to the turbo

and then however they want to do it.

And then it's the tune.

The tune itself, you know,

it's crazy how much IP is involved in it.

I've had people that have reached out

and said, I already have a motor.

Can you just tell me the kit?

It's like, no, because the kit is a unit.

Like I need to take the motor.

I need to disassemble a bunch of stuff,

clean a bunch of stuff, replace the park plugs,

Saracote, a bunch of stuff, make the headers.

You know, there's a whole bunch of custom bits and bobs

that go on it.

Why are it, like it's got to be like this full,

it's like a crate motor basically is how I'm selling it.

None of that works if someone already has the motor.

The motor is not the expensive part of this.

It's like my IP is really expensive.

And then the ECU is by far,

it's like three times more expensive

than the engine itself, you know?

Could they send you the motor though?

Somebody said, I've got a motor, can I send it to you?

Yeah, sure.

But it wouldn't be, it would be,

I mean, the kit wouldn't get crazily cheaper.

Yeah, I was about to say,

by the time you actually ship a motor,

Mike mentioned earlier, it was like $1,200,

he could get them starting from or whatever.

That's, I can't imagine that being,

the shipping of it there, then him doing it.

Seriously, it's in the cost of the project,

it'd be much easier.

Mike, just find me a good motor.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, what I said, another guy looked,

he's like, I just had one rebuilt.

I go, I totally get it.

I mean, I could sell you the kit

and you just transfer the stuff over.

I'm not interested in sending a bunch of pieces

and then hoping you know how to assemble it correctly

and it's gonna work and be tested.

And then, you know what I mean?

Like it just doesn't work that way.

I will eventually probably sell the cradle,

which has gone through a billion different iterations,

the actual cradle to mount it to the 911,

as well as maybe the radiator mount.

That is something that I could probably sell.

But you know, again, your mileage may vary.

Mike, tell me, with the testing you've done

through the twin turbo car and stock engine,

what's the bottom end good for?

How much have you wound up this motor?

Because once you tell someone they can have 400 horsepower,

they're gonna want 500.

Oh yeah, give them 500, they're gonna want 600.

I'm just curious as to how robust

is that bottom end in the Subaru?

Stock?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So my buddy AJ has this motor in his Subaru Legacy

and he has a single turbo.

He's got the same CSF radiators.

He's basically got the same setup as I do

for the twin turbo version.

Dynote at 550 and runs it regularly at 400, 410

or something like that.

I don't think anything over 410, 420 is like,

I don't think the odds are in your favor.

And look, let's be realistic.

420 horsepower in a early 911 is horrifying.

300 is plenty.

My rear tires are 340s.

They're this wide.

This is more than my car.

It will, it's probably three of your tires.

Yeah.

You can go fully sideways with 300 horsepower, no problem.

So, I don't know how many axles you want to break.

That was gonna be my question about when,

how much is too much?

Because at the end of the day, it's the chassis.

It's how much it can handle.

There's no other driver aids.

And when I think about my 912, it's great.

I'm tearing around the country lanes

and it's old and small enough to feel really quite fast.

It makes it nothing more than years to bleed.

Yeah, exactly.

And when I'm going a bit faster, I have a 996,

which has 300 brake horsepower.

And that is, I think the perfect amount

for the kind of roads around where I live,

because anything more than that,

you're gonna lose your license

because you'll get caught by the police

or you'll kill yourself or somebody else.

And it's still, the engine is still hanging out of the back.

So I know that if I ever lost it round a bend,

there's nothing I can do about it.

I'll be going backwards into a tree.

And so I feel like it's just enough.

Whereas with a car like that, if you're at 400,

you kind of know that you've got way more than expected

and you know where to push it

or when not to push it and things like that.

So it's kind of fixed.

So it'd be really interesting what someone would say,

well, what your opinion is of,

if you've got that much power in a Porsche engine

and you've put a Subaru engine in with all of these mods,

if, as you've said, it feels and sounds the same

and handles the same because of the weights,

the same, all of that.

So it's for somebody wanting more power

and not spending $30,000, $40,000 on buying the engine,

getting it done, then getting it fitted in the car.

And then for it to break down again in 18 months

or two years or three years

because you've been ripping it around too much,

it kind of to no brainer then.

I think so.

These engines are, I think that Porsches,

let's say 69 on up,

are 300 horsepower is like the perfect amount

for these cars.

Maybe a little earlier, you go 250, something like that.

But if you end up having like some sort of RSR

or even RS Rear, 300 is just delightful.

It's just such a perfect amount.

400 is definitely excessive, but this is the SEMA car.

This is a build that's supposed to be for YouTube.

It needs those numbers.

It needs to look the part, blah, blah, blah.

Flames coming out of the back.

Yeah, and I might.

I mean, it will have waste gates

that will be splitting flames out the back.

And it's like, all right.

But I wouldn't put 400 in the gray car at all.

Tell me, you're thrilled with three.

Michael, how big is your market?

How many fellow enthusiasts will be content

to put your product in their car, do you think?

Like, are you thinking 50 a year, 100 a year?

How scalable is your list?

It's a good question.

I think I'll sell two to six per month.

Okay. Generally.

Yeah, okay.

I think that's probably about right.

What's weird is even with enthusiasts,

we have a thing called the,

I don't know if you've ever been to the Toy and Lit Show

here in LA.

I'm familiar with it.

We have, basically it's Porsche Super Bowl week here

in February.

And that is, there's a whole bunch of like,

every major shop, and there's a bunch of them around here

will open house.

And they'll have these like events

from basically Monday through Sunday.

And then Saturday is the Toy and Lit Show.

And it's at a hotel right by LAX, the airport,

couple ballrooms, bunch of tables,

all the big, you know, Pelican and Sierra Madre

and all those people are there.

But these are, a lot of people are like,

if they're a concourse collector

and they need a specific wrench defined for their,

their concourse restoration that goes in the tool bag,

that's where you'd get it.

You'd buy some spanner for, you know,

$2,000 or something like that.

It's like a high end swap mate, isn't it?

It is, yeah.

And it's a bunch of rare stuff.

And funny things happen in that regard,

like Bruce Meyer, Bruce Meyer who runs

the Peterson Museum here in LA.

And he's got, it's not like the biggest collection,

it's not a Jay Leno collection,

but every car he has is an absolute banger.

Every one of them.

And there's this great vintage Porsche poster

that it's got like an RSR at Daytona, right?

And it's on the bank of Daytona and it's got it's,

and it's a very epic.

If you guys saw it,

if you've ever seen any vintage Porsche posters,

you probably recognize it.

And I'm looking at, I'm over here looking at it

with my buddy, it was right here to my left.

We're checking out this poster and over my left shoulder,

you hear, oh, the car that one day,

Daytona didn't have the round fog lights.

It's got the square ones.

And I go, okay.

And I go, cause he's basically saying the poster's wrong.

That's not the right car, you know?

And my buddy looks over and it's Bruce Meyer.

And he goes, is that because you have the one that won?

He goes, yeah.

All right, that's an only in LA thing right there.

So yeah, I think that the, I don't know how I was going with that,

but oh yeah.

So that week is this incredible week

where it's super Porsche nerds.

Like, and as you guys know,

the nine 14s have been doing super swaps

for years and years and years and years.

But the nine 11 crowd has been very pearl clutching

about their cars.

They're like, no, it's sacred.

And I brought my whole setup to the Toy and Lit Show.

I had a big wrench booth.

I had the Subaru engine there with all the stuff.

Like I had a video thing going.

I had people coming up to me

and talking for five minutes or more,

not realizing that this is a Subaru engine.

So it looks so much the part of a Porsche engine

that they didn't really put it together that,

oh no, this is a Subaru swap.

And they're like, oh, how much is it?

I'm like, you know, 15 grand.

They're like, when can you get it?

I'm like, three months after you give me 15 grand.

Sign me up, you know?

So it was really cool in that respect.

So I think it's coming around.

And it wasn't like that maybe five years ago.

I thought, I'll tell you where I thought

this story was going.

I thought you were gonna need to have one of those

like behind the curtain type situations.

I don't need my,

I don't want my friends knowing

that I'm talking to you about putting

a Subaru motor in my Porsche.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

That's where I thought that was going to be.

On the website, hold on, I have it.

It looks like I used, let me see if it's still there.

I might've taken it off.

But basically I used this older,

distinguished gentleman with a very young woman.

Yeah, okay.

On the website.

And it was like, shh, don't tell anybody.

Classic.

And that was, because I'm a cheeky brander.

That is basically what I did.

Let me see if I can find it.

The thing with the way that you've done it

is if somebody does have an old Porsche

and they want this,

there's nothing to stop them really easily

going back to the original motor, right?

Because they can put a little rubber plug

in the hole if they want to.

Exactly.

So there's going to be use cases

where people bring their engine

to one of these rebuild guys

and just want to drive their car for two years.

Yeah.

And I might even, 100%,

and I might even put a program together

where we'll buy it back or something

over the couple of years.

You made a monthly rental fee.

Something.

That's a good idea.

Who's to say they'll want to go back though?

They might get the engine rebuilt

because they want to retain the value of the car.

Puppy dog, so.

But to drive it around and drive it hard,

they might go, do you know what?

I want to keep this more robust, more durable engine.

Thus the, like, you know, my intention,

I'm telling you right now, I'm telling all of you,

my intention is to put a Porsche 3.6 back in my gray car.

I'm telling you that right now, and I mean that.

But we'll see.

But you're also going to have to sell a ton of kits.

Because how expensive 3.6 motors are now getting?

Yeah, well, like I said earlier,

I think I can do one for about 18K,

but I have to build it.

Yes.

Which would be fun.

Like I'm okay with doing that.

But we'll see.

Well, the journey sounds like it's proceeding well.

And, you know, for the listeners out there

who have got questions,

obviously we'll include your contact details

in the notes below.

The really appreciate your time today, Michael.

The project sounds like it's coming along amazingly.

Like you bring a lot of common sense

to an emotional argument.

Okay, so it's going to be,

I'm really going to be fascinated to follow the journey

and wish you all the successes.

But I can't see why it shouldn't be successful

or won't be successful.

So I'm looking forward to seeing how this proceeds.

Azra, any other questions you'd like to ask Michael?

Well, I mean, I first came across Mike's videos.

I might have been during like COVID and lockdown and stuff

when you were putting air conditioning in.

Oh God, that was like my first six videos I did.

I did a classic retrofit air conditioning.

I used to watch those.

Yeah, and I was watching those

and I was thinking, oh, in my 9-12,

would I want air conditioning?

And then, you know, I thought I should make it work first.

But the great thing is because of the way

that you did it with things like, you know,

how the vent's going to work

or what I can get, you know, take the clock out,

for example.

Yeah, right.

Or I can get something from another car

that fits perfectly in there, but it looks stock.

I really like that kind of find, reuse.

And the same thing that you're doing now

with the Subaru motor, you've found something

that gives you the feeling of this old school 9-11

kind of adrenaline rush,

but it's not with the same anxiety of,

I'm about to blow up $30,000 by blowing up my motor.

Imagine going to a track day at Brands Hatch

and you've got another motor or two

in your trailer, just in case.

And it's unlikely that it's going to break

because it's Subaru.

Brands Hatch, it's a rally engine.

Yeah, it's a rally engine.

Right, that's exactly right.

Well, thank you very much for your time today, Michael.

We didn't even get on to the topic of your other podcasting.

So I think we might need to have another catch-up

in the near future to talk about that.

I was really fascinated to talk to you

about your solopreneur hour show

that you seem to have come to a standstill.

But we can talk about the detail of that at a later time.

Well, I started another podcast for pickleball that went nuts.

So that's between that and wrench

it's taken up all of my bandwidth.

Yep, fantastic.

Anyway, let's talk about that

in another catch-up in the near future.

Love it.

Have a great afternoon in LA.

Ajmal, thank you very much for your time again

and everybody.

If you are interested in following up with any of us,

details are in the show notes below.

Well, you really hope you listen to this show

from behind the wheel.

Thank you very much, guys.

Porsche Talk with Rennch - Michael O'Neal

Porsche 911

Chevrolet Malibu

Porsche 356

Honda Civic

Subaru Outback

Toyota A90

Mercedes-Benz Sclass

BMW 340S

About this episode

Original notes