Oil and Whiskey with Roadster Shop Apr 6, 2026

Trent Lewis of Midwest Metal Works

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Concept

rat rod

A rat rod is a car style where people intentionally keep it looking rough and worn. It’s like a hot rod, but with a “cool, beat-up” look instead of a shiny, restored one.

Concept

invoicing

Invoicing is writing up what the customer owes and sending them the bill. If it’s done right, the shop gets paid faster.

Term

code brown

“Code brown” is a funny way to say the bathroom is a total mess and needs cleaning right away. People use it like an emergency alert, but for poop/cleanup situations.

Term

motorcycle

A motorcycle is a bike you ride that has an engine. Here, the speaker is saying they owned one and later sold it.

Concept

muscle car

A “muscle car” is a type of American performance car known for having a powerful engine. Here, it’s basically the kind of car his friend was working on as a project.

Term

Bondo is a putty used to fill dents and make panels smooth before painting. It can make a car look great, but it can also cover up bigger problems underneath. If you’re fixing a car for real, you usually have to dig past the Bondo to find what’s actually going on.

Term

slammed to the ground

“Slammed” means the car sits extremely low. That look can be awesome, but it can also make the ride rough and cause tires to rub. Getting it right usually takes careful suspension and alignment work.

Concept

hot rod

A hot rod is an older car that someone modifies to look cool and drive better. It’s usually more about fun and style than being stock.

Concept

auto body program

An auto body program is school training for fixing cars after crashes. You learn how to repair damaged metal and prepare surfaces for paint. It’s a common path for people who later build or restore cars.

Concept

collision shop

A collision shop is where cars are repaired after crashes. They fix bent panels, damaged frames, and other accident damage before the car can be driven again.

Company

Scott's Auto Body

Scott's Auto Body is the shop where the guest started working. It’s part of how they gained practical experience before moving into bigger restoration work.

Concept

restorations

A “restoration” is when someone takes an older car and fixes it up to look (and sometimes drive) like it’s supposed to. It’s more than just maintenance—it’s about bringing the car back to a better condition.

Brand

Mopar

“Mopar” is a nickname for Chrysler’s car brands and parts. If someone says they do “Mopar stuff,” they likely work on Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep/Ram vehicles and related parts.

Term

blueprints

Blueprints are detailed plans with measurements. They help someone build parts that fit together the way they’re supposed to.

Concept

restoration work

Restoration work means taking an older car and bringing it back to how it looked or worked when it was new. It usually takes a lot of time, parts hunting, and careful body/metal work.

Part

TIG welding

TIG welding is a careful way to weld metal using a torch and shielding gas. It’s commonly used for car body metal because it can make neat, strong welds without messing up the surrounding metal.

Part

sheet metal breaks

A sheet metal brake is a tool that helps you bend sheet metal cleanly and evenly. It’s used a lot when making or repairing car body parts.

Part

bead rollers

A bead roller makes a raised line (a bead) in sheet metal. That can make the metal stronger and sometimes gives it a custom look.

Concept

chopping tops

“Chopping” a top means lowering a car’s roof by cutting and re-welding the body. It’s a classic hot-rod/custom technique used to change proportions and achieve a lower, more aggressive stance.

Concept

realtor

A realtor is someone who helps people buy or sell a house. Here, they show up with the paperwork for the home deal.

Part

rocker panels

Rocker panels are the metal pieces along the bottom sides of the car, near the doors. They can get damaged from rust or impacts, so shops often replace or fabricate them when building or restoring a car.

Term

English wheel

An English wheel is a machine that helps you shape sheet metal into smooth, accurate curves. It’s commonly used by metalworkers to make body panels look “right” and fit well.

Part

MIG welding

MIG welding is a method of welding where a wire is fed through a gun while gas helps keep the weld clean. People use it a lot in car metal repair because it’s quicker and easier to learn than some other types.

Term

surface rust

Surface rust is the reddish-brown corrosion that forms when metal sits exposed to air and moisture. It can make welding harder and can lead to small pits in the metal.

Term

TIG welder

A TIG welder is a type of welding machine that makes very controlled, clean welds. It’s often used when you’re working with metal panels and want the weld to look neat and strong.

Company

eBay

eBay is a website where people buy and sell items online. Here, it’s where he found the machine and won it at auction.

Term

number one pet and gill

“Pet and gill” appears to be a specific tool or machine model used in metalworking, but the transcript wording is unclear. Because the exact product name isn’t confidently identifiable from the segment alone, it’s worth flagging for listeners as a potentially specialized shop item.

Concept

FIA book

The FIA is the organization that writes the rules for a lot of racing. Teams study the rulebook closely to figure out what they can do legally to make the car faster.

Concept

active suspension

Active suspension is a suspension system that can adjust itself while you’re driving. Instead of just soaking up bumps with fixed springs, it uses sensors and controls to keep the car settled and stable.

Concept

iron carbon diagram

The iron-carbon diagram is a chart that shows what kind of metal structure you get at different temperatures and carbon levels. Welders care because heat from welding can change the metal’s structure and strength.

Concept

Pythagorean theorem

It’s a math rule for right triangles. If you know two side lengths, it helps you calculate the third—useful when you’re measuring and making things fit squarely in a shop.

Concept

survivor build

A “survivor build” usually means you’re keeping the car’s original vibe. You might upgrade it, but you try not to turn it into something totally different.

Term

lift

Here “lift” sounds like raising the truck’s ride height or getting it to rise up when driving. They’re talking about how it behaves when you try to get it up or change its stance.

Company

Netflix

They bring up Netflix as an example of a platform that could carry a car show. The idea is that Netflix-style documentaries can focus on the story and the work, not just quick results.

Concept

SEMA

SEMA is a huge car show in the U.S. where people bring custom cars and aftermarket parts. It’s a place where builders can show off what they made and get noticed.

LIVE

Like, well, I think this is my time to exit.

My second semester, I'm like, yeah,

I don't think this is really for me.

I'm sitting in on like a eight o'clock in the morning

lecture hall with like a hundred some people

talking about art history since 1955.

Guys just up pacing around in the front,

just, you know, want, want, want, want, want.

This sucks.

And so midterm came around and there was like three essay

questions up on the board and I'm looking at it

and I'm looking at like everybody else in the room

and they're all just like busy, just writing stuff down.

So I just got up, turned my blank piece of paper in,

my pen and I was out of there.

I think during that time that I worked there,

I think I figured out like, okay,

I don't really like how this is going

and this is what I would do differently.

And so eventually you start thinking about like,

okay, if I was running the show,

like this is what I would do, you know, kind of stuff.

And then I want to start my own, own shop.

Welcome back, another episode of Oil and Whiskey.

This week we've got Trent Lewis of Midwest Metalworks.

All one word on Instagram, Midwest Metalworks.

Sometimes forget to do that.

So I'm going to do it right there at the beginning.

Good plug.

Yeah. Nicely done.

Give it a little call outs, right?

For various reasons towards the end of some

of these podcasts, we forget to do that.

Lots of, lots of forgetting to do things.

And then we should do all those important shit

at the beginning.

Trent, good to have you, man.

Yeah, thanks.

Appreciate it, guys.

Just a few hours away right there up in Wisconsin.

Yeah, I think it's like about four and a half.

So I'm kind of west central Wisconsin,

about hour and a half straight east of Minneapolis.

I guess that's the best way to just describe it.

So, yep.

Glad to have you.

And you brought, you brought probably one of the,

not one of, you brought the nicest prepared gift bags,

the gift baskets that we've ever seen.

Finally, Curage.

Thank you, man.

Oh yeah.

Wisconsin's got a lot of great stuff going for it.

They do, yeah.

We got some different cheeses in there.

Did you, you did all the layout of that yourself?

I might have had some help with my wife.

Oh, okay.

She's pretty good at charge you a little bit, but stuff, so.

I didn't want to say did your wife do that because,

but yeah.

You know, I got all the stuff, you know, and,

but yeah, I got the basket and I'm like, all right,

help me, help me lay this thing.

Yeah, it's, it's prepared nicely.

It's definitely something that, you know.

I bought more than what's there, you know, but.

He probably kills a little bit of on the right here.

The rest of it's down in the truck, but.

So yeah, I brought a bag of coffee from motivator.

So that's a friend of mine from Appleton, Wisconsin.

Okay.

Perush.

Yeah.

So yeah, he started a coffee company.

And so they donate some of the profits to the trade,

trade schools, trade skills, stuff like that.

So yeah, it's great, great product.

I mean, it's, it's great coffee and then it's going

for a great cause too.

That is cool.

I've been seeing that popping up, I follow him and we did,

we worked together on a project not too long ago.

Great dude, talent guy.

And I've been seeing that it's, it's cool stuff.

Yep.

So I got a snag some to.

Hey, where can you get it?

Can you get another website?

I got a couple more bags down in the truck.

I brought for each one of you guys.

Moto Vader coffee.

That's right up your alley too, Josh.

It's got the whaling wings kind of thing going on for it.

Looks really good.

Great packaging.

It is good packaging.

Yep.

Let's see.

Had to bring some old style, of course.

That's from La Crosse, Wisconsin, and then Schlitz,

the beer that made Milwaukee famous, but made a fool out

of me.

And then our neighbors then to the west is Minnesota.

So I had to bring some hands, of course.

That's a great looking camera.

Great logo.

So I didn't realize that old style hails from Wisconsin.

I figured that was like a Chicago.

It's so like prevalent in Chicago,

but you see it everywhere.

Yep.

We used to call it dog pile.

Old pile.

Yep.

Old vile.

So hams.

So this just seems like something that like,

it's an accessory for your rat rod.

Kind of.

You know, it's got the right look.

Like an overflow?

Well, that.

Yeah, cuff your jeans.

You get a little patina hot rod.

You'd be dreaming.

It's got a great logo.

Well, so PBR used to be that way until the hipsters ruined

PBR.

So I had to stop drinking PBR and, you know,

find some other shitty domestic beers to latch onto.

Well, thanks man.

Cheers.

I appreciate you coming, dude.

I've been following you for a long time.

We've known each other for a long time.

You're one of my go-to Instagram accounts

that I get a lot of inspiration from.

Oh Jesus.

I love watching.

You need to get on the floor.

I love watching metal shape.

And I can live vicariously through guys like you

and be like, oh, that's badass.

That's cool.

Sort of wish I did that.

Man, that'd be fun to do.

Dude's doing some great work.

So it's always cool watching what you do.

You present it well.

Appreciate it.

And always got some cool projects in there.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

No, I appreciate that.

I was telling my wife when you guys sent the invite for me

that you guys either felt sorry for me

or it must be doing something right.

I think you're doing something right.

Yeah, it's an interesting spin that, I guess,

you work by yourself for with a small crew?

Yeah, I've had some employees in the past

and some other people that I've subcontracted.

And currently, as of this week, I am back on my own.

Flying solo.

Yep.

Yeah, I thought that's a, it's an interesting take to get.

And we haven't had anybody on here

that really sort of a one-man band.

So I think you do it well.

And you also, while doing it, have a great image.

So it's cool to just talk through sort of how that started,

what the vision is, how it's going,

do you enjoy that?

Is that your chosen way of working?

Or did it just sort of, did things steer it that way?

That's a lot of questions.

So damn hard to find anybody.

I think a lot of questions.

No, that's, I mean, it's great questions, loaded questions.

But yeah, I think it's definitely important.

And yeah, you guys have had a great variety of people

coming in here from big shops to people that are up and coming,

young talent.

You guys have had people that are influencers in the industry

through the public policy, things like that.

So you guys have done a great job covering all of those bases.

So yeah, I think, yeah, having that small mom and pop one-man

band kind of shop was definitely, I guess,

something that you guys need to do next.

I feel very honored to be a part of that.

And so is it something that I choose?

Yes and no.

I think I'm definitely a control freak by nature.

So I kind of want to do everything and do it my way,

because I feel that's the best way of doing things.

But I also realize that, like, as I'm getting older,

that I don't have the time to devote to certain things.

So that's where I've decided to hire people.

And I've got an interview with a guy on Monday to come

and just do stuff in the office for me, do my invoicing,

do my updating, go and get parts for me, order parts,

you know, run some errands for me because I don't want to fucking do that anymore.

Yeah, takes you away from metal, too, right?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm like 70 percent,

maybe billable, you know, throughout the day.

And like, that's, you know, a 10, 12 hour day, something like that.

My shop is right next to my house, which is a blessing.

And it's a curse at the same time because you just don't know when to quit.

You know, and I'm always out there, you know, into the evening and, you know,

on the weekends, it's about the only time I get a chance to work on my own stuff.

So. So yeah, it's I guess right now it's kind of in limbo, you know,

I've got the feelers out looking for somebody else, you know,

but we've got to be able to to mesh and blend.

And I've got a certain way of how I like to do things.

And if I see something that they're doing that I don't like,

I like to address it right away.

So are they receptive to to that kind of feedback, you know,

because I've had a range of people, you know, where they get pretty upset

or they don't want to hear it or or they're they're open to it.

But then they kind of plateau, they can't rise to the occasion.

So yeah, I'd imagine when you're working sort in that capacity,

anybody that you bring on, I mean, that's like sort of like a marriage.

It's a relationship.

You don't have the like here you bring on.

It's just you and then you bring somebody on here like an individual

can sort of get lost or there can be some personality quarks or things

where you don't mesh and you can make it work when that person's working

alongside you for 12 hours a day.

That's tough. Yeah.

And I've got a very particular way of how I like to do things like.

I like to have my shop clean and orderly, you know,

if you, you know, if you're going to do something, you know, do it

and then pick up after yourself, you know, like find it the way that

or leave it the way that you found it, you know, and if you're going to go

into the bathroom, use the bathroom, clean up after yourself, you know,

don't make it look like a baby elephant washing themselves.

And, you know, that's a difficult one.

Believe it or not, I just call them out.

Like, hey, dude, code brown in the bathroom.

The problem is, you, you know, who did it. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. The problem we have is we try to identify based on

based on the trajectory of the things that are on the back of the wall.

And based on the level of disaster, like, hmm,

that's that's a conversation I have with a lot of shop owners.

Surprisingly, that comes up a lot is the, the don't understand it.

That bathrooms just get destroyed in a shop environment.

And you're like, what the fuck?

I mean, I've seen this look like at home.

I've seen Taco Bell do some damage, right?

But like nothing like that.

I don't know what it's going on.

Yeah, it's a third world country in there sometimes.

Like, how? Where did that small animal come from?

But again, it's a rabbit. Why is there a rabbit in here?

When it's just you and one other guy in there.

That's that makes it all that much.

There's no questioning what the hell happened and who did it.

Hey, yeah. Oh, yeah.

You have something to tell me?

No, no covering that.

Are you OK?

You might run over you might run over to home

deep on getting some new drop ceiling tiles.

Dude, I don't know.

However that happened.

I don't know.

The how did how did all this get started?

And your training, I want to hear some about your background.

So like, how did I get in the industry or how did I? OK.

So I guess like right out of high school,

I had never done like a, you know,

shot class or anything like that.

I was kind of a kind of an art geek

and I like drawing, painting, sculpture,

like all that kind of stuff and and always wanted to go into art school.

And my junior year, I had gotten accepted to

some art schools and things like that.

And then it was like right away fall of senior year.

We had a a guy that had graduated a few years before that,

come into our high school, talk to like our art class and.

And he was going to like the Savannah Art Institute and scared.

Yeah. And great school.

And he was like, yeah, if you guys have like any doubt whatsoever,

don't do it.

I'm like, OK.

So I'm like, well, I think I got some doubts.

So I'm not going to do that.

And so college sent him up there as a recruiter.

Yeah, hell hell of a, you know, special.

Yeah, exactly.

And so I'm like, well, I'm going to hang back.

I'm going to go to UW EC.

So that's University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.

So so I live in Eau Claire now.

My brothers were going to school there at that time.

That's where our family is originally from.

And so I'd move back up there.

My senior year of high school and so I just I took general classes

and some art classes, stuff like that.

Really liked it, you know, first semester.

And then by second semester, I'm like, yeah, I don't think this is really for me.

And, you know, going in and sitting in on like a, you know,

nine o'clock in the morning, eight o'clock in the morning,

you know, lecture hall with like a hundred.

I've heard some people talking about art history since 1955.

And this guy is this old guy is just up, pacing around in the front.

Just, you know, want, want, want, want, want.

And I'm just like, oh, this, this sucks.

And so midterm came around and I walked in, sat down at the table and and it was.

There was like three essay questions up on the up on the board.

And you had a blank blank piece of paper and pencil or pen or whatever.

And I'm looking at it and I'm looking at like everybody else in the room.

And they're all just like busy, just writing stuff down.

Like, well, I think this is my time to exit.

So I just got up, turned my blank piece of paper in my pen and I was out of there.

I never went back to that class.

I didn't go back to any of my other classes, except for my sculpture class

that I had and he was a car guy and I got exposed to doing like some

metal smithing and and things like that.

And and so at that time, I decided I'm going to sell my motorcycle,

which I had gotten brand new when I was a senior in high school.

All my my paychecks from working shitty jobs in high school.

I saved up every paycheck.

And then senior year, I was able to walk into the Harley dealership

and get a brand new 883 Sportster.

And so, yeah, I spent all my graduation money from high school, like buying

with the t-shirts and stuff right to go with the jackets.

I didn't get any of that.

I got, you know, seat and bars and grips and, you know,

and, you know, did about as much as you could to that thing.

And and I kind of outgrew that and started working on cars.

And and my friend Freddie exposed me to, you know,

he had built a muscle car when he was in high school.

And so we'd go over to his parents' house.

And he was he was in the process of kind of revamping that thing.

So I, you know, I was going over there and when I was cutting class

from from the university of helping out there.

And and his dad was just a delegator.

He was just a ball buster.

He, oh, great, glad you're here, you know, here, go do this and do that.

And so, you know, it's kind of a gopher in the beginning.

And then eventually sold my motorcycle and

decided to go to the tech school in in Eau Claire and went for auto body.

And because I wanted to be a painter and realized how much I did not

like doing body work and paint, you know, through that.

But I liked my related welding class.

So I went back to school, went through the welding program.

And at that time I was working on my my own car.

So I had sold my motorcycle and I think it was a month

into auto body school.

I took my instructor over to look at at a car with me.

And it was a 1954 club coupe.

And so he's like, yeah, it's kind of a piece of shit.

It's loaded with Bondo like perfect.

That's what I need.

Yep. So so yeah, I bought that.

And my grandma was kind enough to let me take over her detached

two car garage and had one outlet in that garage.

And it was somewhat insulated.

And but it was it was awesome, you know, to be able to do that.

And and so, yeah, I built my first car there.

That got me into my first you go tail dragger.

It was kind of lowered pretty much evenly all around.

It was slammed to the ground.

So I did like fat man fab front and rear suspension

set up on it, disbrake conversion, 350 small block.

I initially had a turbo 350, but I changed that out to a 700 R for

eight inch Ford rear end.

Yeah, it was a pretty cool car.

The shoeboxes don't get.

A lot of love, you know, you don't see you haven't seen.

Well, for being it's a very simple car yet a very difficult car

to do right. Yeah.

To get the top right and get it to sit right and don't do them

justice that often.

But when they do, they're great.

Yeah. Yeah, I definitely colored outside the lines on that.

Yeah. Yeah.

You're still in the latter category then of the.

Yeah, it was flat black, gloss black flames, red pinstripe outline

and red wheel, red steelies.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Of course.

Hot rod. He said he built a fucking hot rod, dude.

It's a poker classics, you know, about the cheapest, you know,

tires you can get for it.

And but hey, they they worked.

And those jeans probably look a little cuffed, right?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Just a rockabilly starter kit.

Just a social D t-shirt.

Just enough room on those pedals for those Chuck Taylors.

So yeah, went down to a hundred car pile up with it.

Oh, yeah. Yep.

So yeah, we did the I didn't take it out there, but we did the

Viva Las Vegas top of the Gold Coast Casino.

I remember working around all the magazine articles about that.

I never went there to that show.

But our culture. Yeah, it was cool.

Yeah. I mean, Jesus, like taking the escalators going up there.

And then like all of a sudden, like the lights are hitting up there.

It was yeah, it was quite the experience.

This era wise is early 2000s.

Yeah. So this would have been when I went into.

So I graduated high school in 2001.

So I went into the auto body program.

I think it was spring 2003 after my debacle with the university.

And I think I took off a semester because I couldn't get into the auto body

program right away. So it was like, yeah, I think it was like January 2003.

And then when we were out in like Viva, that was

like 2005, six, something like that.

So yeah. So yeah, I took pictures of

of that car like while I was building it.

And while I was going to school to finishing up the welding program,

I got a job working and it was like a collision shop hot rod shop

called Scott's Auto Body.

And they're actually like 15 minutes away from like where I live

and have my shop right now.

And so I got kind of my start like in there.

And I worked there for about like three months,

like full time after I graduated, I think.

And then I got offered a job at muscle car

restorations in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

And so they're kind of like known for their like Mopar muscle car,

like restorations and stuff.

And so my friend, Freddie, was working there at the time.

And and so he arranged a interview at

like a trade show beer garden for me to get interviewed by the general manager.

OK, so always always a good setup for a job interview and a beer garden.

Yeah, they seem like maybe more like a formal sort of company, though, right?

Like it's a big, bigger operation, professional image.

I've seen their stuff out there.

It's yeah, it's high end work.

Like yeah, nice looking restorations.

Yeah. So there I mean, when I work there, it was like 20 some employees,

you know, in there.

They had six buildings.

Um, so I was a metal tech there and I worked there for about three years.

Um, but yeah, they had metal department, body, body department, parts

and then final assembly and stuff, too.

So but yeah, they've been around since, I think, like 89.

Yeah. So yeah, they've I think they they venture out a little bit more

from just the the normal kind of like OE, Mopar stuff.

But I I guess I don't know.

I haven't been out there in quite a while.

How was the the restoration side of, you know, metal tech?

The lack of creativity there where it's just it's it's repair it's welding,

but you're still getting to do metal for a living.

So yeah, I mean, I was I was definitely grateful to get the opportunity to work

there and I worked with some amazing people, people that have been, you know,

in the trade for decades.

And so I just kind of watched what they did and asked them questions

and they were happy to like give me, you know, feedback and and help me and and.

You know, so yeah, I learned a lot from them.

But yeah, it gets to be like when you're doing like the same 68 Road Runner,

you know, charger, you know, it gets to be pretty repetitive.

But I was fortunate enough we were working on a 39 Lincoln Zephyr

a lot of the time that that I was there.

They had Art Morrison chassis for it and they brought in a guy then

to help with chopping the top on it.

And and so he was going to teach me how to do it.

And he had chopped like 40 some cars before that or something like that.

And so they brought him in.

He was this old Vietnam vet and he had, you know,

learned how to take well when he was in Saigon repairing helicopters

and and stuff.

And he was he was just kind of a surly, you know, quick witted guy.

And and so yeah, he was in there for maybe, I don't know,

it was like the first couple of weeks.

And and we we got the car set up on a chassis table and the whole bottom

like six inches of the car was just like completely rotted.

And so we had to repair that stuff and we suicided the doors.

And, you know, we kind of did all this other stuff.

And then after, you know, a couple of weeks of of working on on that stuff

and and getting kind of a foothold on on some of those projects, he's like,

well, so I'm going to give you kind of a list of stuff to do.

And, you know, it's Thursday afternoon.

I think I might just kind of take off and, you know, now.

And I'm not going to be here tomorrow.

So just, you know, do this stuff while I'm gone.

I'll come back on Monday.

And so he came back on Monday and and he's like, yeah, yeah, this looks good.

You know, well, let's do this here this week.

And then like kind of Wednesday after lunch came around, he's like,

well, you think you got it taken care of here the rest of the week?

And I'm like, yeah, I think so.

So I'm going to skate the rest of the week heading up to the VF.

So it just so it just like progress.

I've aggressively got like shorter and shorter weeks until like he would just

call me on like Monday and be like, oh, you think you got it figured out this week?

I'm like, yep. All right.

So I'll check with you next week.

So yeah, he was he's great.

And he's turned into like to be a great mentor over the years.

And I've learned a lot.

He's he's big into like woody wagons.

So he he puts together 33 34 Ford woody wagons and he's got all the blueprints

and stuff and machines them on a bridge port and and everything like that.

So he's a he's a pretty sharp guy.

That's wild.

And those guys are very impactful in the development of a young fabricator.

Either way, good or bad.

Sometimes you get a guy like that that's got a chip on his shoulder.

Isn't willing to offer up any of his years of experience and information.

Yeah, I've been there with that, been there, done that.

And it's yeah.

But that also helps, too, because you do it in spite of them, you know.

Yeah, motivation. Yeah.

Through that, you know, you're wanting to learn the craft.

You want. Do you do you have an idea of what you would what your ideal,

you know, career path would be?

Are you just like, you know what, I'm learning every day I'm working on cars?

I think starting out, I think it was just trying to keep my head above water

and learn as much as I could.

And then I think during that time that I worked there, I think I figured out like,

OK, I don't really like how this is going and this is what I would do differently.

And so eventually you start thinking about like, OK, if I was running the show,

like this is what I would do, you know, kind of stuff.

And then, you know, and then of course, too, like throughout, I guess,

my whole career, you know, even, you know, as late as this last week,

I've always looked at the stuff that I'm doing and, you know, you, you know,

self-critique and think about, OK, how can I do this better?

What are the other processes that I can I can do and learn and grow from here?

And so I guess my plan then after a while was I want to I want to start

my own own shop and I want to I want to be my own boss.

And and I don't really want to do restoration.

But if I do do any sort of restoration work, I want it to be like oddball stuff

that you can't just pick up the phone and call year one like we did there.

And, you know, so.

So yeah, I had to make a change and I left there, you know,

I learned as much as I could and I left there and I went to to work for

another shop that they were like a collision shop.

But then behind the collision shop, they had like a kind of a hot rod shop.

And so they did restoration and and, you know, some street rod stuff

and things like that.

And and there I could be I could do metal, body, paint and assembly.

And so I wanted to get better at my metal work.

So I figured the best way of doing that was, well, I need to be my own body

department to and do the body, body side of it then, too.

So that's where I started getting away from doing a lot of the wire feeds.

Zap, zap, zap, you know, shit, you know, panels in and started, you know,

doing more TIG welding and things like that.

And then so I worked there for about a year and a half.

And so while I was working there, my girlfriend had moved back to to the area.

So he's now my my wife.

So she's from Columbia.

We were dating before.

And and she was here on a visa.

And then she had to leave because her visa was up.

And then she got another one about year, year and a half later.

And so she moved, came back and said, well, you're not, you know, going back

this time. So I'm like, we're, you know, we're going to get married and we're

going to buy a house and this.

And so prior to that, I had started collecting equipment and asked my boss,

the owner of that shop that I was working at, like, hey, is it, is it all right

if I get some, some stuff delivered here, you know, from time to time?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. OK.

So I was getting like sheet metal breaks delivered there.

I was getting bead rollers, slip rollers and stuff like that.

I've been asking some questions at some point.

Yeah. So how long are you going to be here?

Yeah. So.

And so me and like my car club, we had a shop like together that we were renting.

And so I had initially started working on some stuff there,

like chopping tops and and things like that and kind of getting getting ready,

you know, to make the plunge of of having my own shop, my own building and stuff.

And so I got the first call.

It was from a guy that had contacted somebody that I had worked with that at

MCR and he's like, yeah, I initially contacted this guy.

And but he's not interested in doing the car.

But I've got a 34 Ford five window coupe and I'm from New Jersey.

I just moved to the lacrosse area and I've had the car since I was 16.

I'm retired now and I'd like to finally build the car.

You know, and so you came recommended.

I'm like, cool.

I don't have a spot to work on it right now.

You know, we're losing our car club shop.

And I said, full transparency.

My girlfriend's coming back into town.

We're getting married and we're going to buy a house and looking for a shop

and everything like that on the property.

And if you can wait until then, I'd be happy to do your car for you.

He's like, I've waited this long.

I might as well, you know, wait a little bit longer.

So yeah, that was my first first client.

That's wild.

Yep.

So I did marry house shop, start a business.

It was all in one shot.

It was all in the same day, too.

Might as well.

Get them all out of the way.

So we got married.

OK, so yeah, Mr. Romantic.

I took a I took a half day off the day that we got married.

I worked in the morning at the shop and then took the half day off.

Got married at the courthouse.

We had like no money and because, you know, she couldn't work, you know,

legally and I wasn't going to risk any of that stuff.

And so I'm like, here's like $30.

Can you get like a wedding dress with $30?

And and so, yeah, we got married at the courthouse.

Fine. She was she was.

Oh, yeah, she was going to have to not work at that visa thing anymore.

She wasn't thinking about the wedding dress.

Yeah, she she married me for all my money.

So 30 bucks.

Yep. So yeah, we got married at the courthouse and then,

you know, we went out to eat at a local restaurant and then down to a local bar.

Then after that and our realtor shows up with

signed agreement for the place that we had put a

offer in on. So so that, yeah, it basically married offer,

accepted on the house and I knew right away.

All right, well, this is the start of the business then.

So 27 years old, I probably should have had my head examined.

But yeah, if you're going to go into it, go all the way.

So.

So yeah, I think I did that for about six months,

like working full time and then doing my shop full time.

And I'd go into work at about seven o'clock in the morning.

I'd be done at four thirty, be home by like five,

hang out with my wife for maybe hour, hour and a half.

And then I was out in the shop the rest of the night.

And then it'd be like midnight, one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning.

I'm just like, I can't, I can't keep doing this.

So so yeah, saw an opportunity and I had enough kind of clients

banked at that time that I'm like, I approached my boss and

like, I've got an opportunity to do this full time.

And so I did it then and

that worked on some really cool, cool projects after that.

And and then I think it was about a year into

my business at that time where I got

a call then to to be involved with

1938 gram that went out to Detroit in 2016, one of grade eight.

And then it was out at Battle of the Battle of the Builders in SEMA.

Thank you guys were like a dark browns or brown maroon.

It's maroon. Yep.

What's what's the thought process?

So to go off and do this on your own, what drove you to do that?

And why was that the goal?

Was it the freedom of it?

Was that you weren't getting a type of projects or the type of work that you wanted to do?

You just wanted to be by yourself.

What was the driving factor behind that?

Yeah, I think.

Clean shitter, you wanted to clean shitter turns out that doesn't happen.

There's that.

Yeah, sure. That's part of it. Absolutely.

You know, I think like to have the opportunity to,

you know, work, work with the client,

you know, on their project and, you know,

meet their expectations, you know, and even go beyond that

and then push it as far as I could to, you know, not being satisfied with,

you know, doing just just the stuff that I was doing.

But, you know, how far can we take this, you know,

and with the technology that's out there, the skill set that's out there,

being able to, you know, construct a car like completely the chassis,

the the fab work, the metal mechanical mockup, like all that stuff.

I want to be a part of like building an entire car.

And we I just didn't have that the chance to do that, you know,

and then to be able to, all right, let's do this the best that we can do it.

All right, we've completed this one.

What are we going to do differently on the next one?

You know, to make that even better, you know, so it's.

You talked about the gram.

What was that process? Did you do it?

What did you do at your shop?

Did you see your commission to do some stuff on it?

Yes. So initially I was I was just commissioned just to make some parts.

So I had to make rocker panels for it.

And then I came out and did a

like a round bar buck for the quarter panels and the tail panel

and the rear window like back panel.

And at that time, I was I was an English wheel guy,

so I shaped all that stuff on an English wheel and brought out

like the larger blanks of it.

And they had a couple of guys working at the shop

where it was being built at, but they just had.

They didn't have any idea what to do with that stuff.

You know, one didn't have those parts in stock for a gram.

Oh, no, no, yeah, because that was it was a four door

that they turned into a five window coop.

And so, yeah, like

so they're like, well, do you think you could come out

maybe a couple of days a week and just give a hand with doing this stuff?

And like, yeah, that's that sounds good.

I can do that.

And but, you know, you guys know, like a couple of days a week,

like you get into finally get into like a momentum.

And and it's like now we got to stop doing what we're doing.

So then it became like, well, I'll be here a week.

And then I'm going to be in my shop a week

because I had a couple of projects I was working on.

Then I had a 32 two door in there.

And then I had a 41 Willys original steel car that I was

I was rebuilding and and doing like an early 60s gas or with that thing.

That thing turned out really cool.

And so by the time I was done with that one, then it was like, oh,

I kind of cleared the slate with the projects that I had in my shop.

And it's like, well, you know, we're building this car to go to Detroit.

I mean, I'm in my late 20s at the time.

And I'm like, I'm probably never going to have this opportunity again.

So the clients that I had, you know, asking for projects, you know,

then I kind of called them up and just said, like,

it's going to be like a couple more years.

And if you want to wait, you know, great, if you don't, like I understand.

But like this is my opportunity.

So then it was like full time work on the stuff there.

And I was mainly in that shop.

I would bring like some of my equipment over there at the time.

You know, I didn't have like the, you know, like the setup there,

like the power hammers and pole maxes.

And it was like while I was working on that stuff, I'm like,

there's got to be a better way of doing this.

Like I had a power bead roller and everything like that.

And I'm just like this, just isn't cutting it.

Just like doing like pictures and stuff artwork on aluminum.

Is it mostly diamond, tufted panels and things like that?

Yeah.

Some dice.

Nice.

So where did the metal shape and stuff come from?

You said you're an English wheel guy.

Yeah.

That's sort of a big transition in anything that's car building.

I feel like from you touched on it briefly, your MIG welding,

your zap, zap and stuff, you're putting on replacement panels.

And then maybe it's chopping atop.

And then all of a sudden the TIG welder opens your eyes.

But at some point it goes from welding in patch panels to making

more complex shapes.

Some people never get there, have no desire, don't even understand it.

Because even like, you know, some patches are just simple,

two dimensional and even like a little beadwork.

But not a lot of people go that direction or even think that that's possible.

How did that land?

At this point in my career, I would much rather make an entire

quarter panel from scratch than to make a patch quilt out of an original one.

And, you know, but you've got to work your way up to that because you've got

to be able to have the skill set of making said quarter panel within

a reasonable time and not making a career out of, you know, building that panel.

So you've got to work your way up to it.

And I think you have to go through the trenches of doing all the patch

panel and the MIG welding and stuff so that you, you, you understand

why you're progressing through this stuff.

And, you know, like, yeah, MIG welding and, you know, a patch in and I got

pretty good at it and, you know, it can look good, good enough to bodywork

over and stuff like that.

But it's just, it's a fricking mess, you know, like, you know, grinding

all that shit down and, you know, the consumables that you go through,

the time that it takes to do that versus like, you know, if you, you know,

fit everything up and tack it in with a TIG hammer and dolly it.

So everything's, you know, smooth transition.

And then you just start at one end and weld nonstop till you get to the other.

And then you just, you stretch on that weld, you know, localizing right

on that weld to stretch that heat effective zone back.

Like the amount of time that it takes to do that, then it is to go

through all the shenanigans of, of the wire feed shit is it's far less.

And you're going to have something that's going to be able to last, you know,

forever, because we did stuff out of wire feed.

And then you'd send it out to get it like media blasted again, because it'd

been sitting around for a couple of years and getting some surface rust on it.

Well, it'd come back and it'd have all these holes, you know, all over where the,

you know, in between the zaps apps.

Yeah. Yeah. And so then it's, oh, well, now we got to zap it up again.

But the thing, the nice thing about that whole part, like you can eliminate

that whole hammer, dolly and stretch in the heat effective zone.

You get rid of, if you zap, zap, and dude, you just take a little blow gun.

In the other hand, zap, zap, zap.

Yeah, because it does away with it, right?

It doesn't shrink then.

Right. You're cooling it so fast.

It's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Because air is in a quenching.

Yeah. Yeah.

Did I get funny before we go on my first experience with just like work

and some some weld seams on panels with an old man who forced me

to quench everything that I welded.

So I at this point, I was sort of a new fabric here, but I was reading

all the metal shaping books, watching all the videos and was well aware of

like how I knew I needed to work these welded seams out.

But he wouldn't have it.

I had to take there were coffee cans in the shop, old folders, coffee cans

to fill them up with water, throw a shop rag in them.

And the only TIG welder in the shop had a pedal on it

that looked like a Ghostbusters pedal. Oh, yeah.

Big old things with the louvers on the side, and I'm sitting there

welding up some panels and just absolutely forced.

There was no other way to do it, you know, weld about three

eights of an inch, take that soak and wet rag, quench the damn weld

and then move on. I'm sitting there, you know, TIG welder in a fucking puddle

of water, like just want ruining this damn panel.

Yeah, water and electricity go great together.

But interesting theories, a lot of interesting theories on.

But the good part about that is when you're done, it gives some spots for the

filler to go, right? It gives it some some big tooth, right?

You're not having to skim it.

It's mostly low enough.

Right. It's it's excellent.

Assuming it sucked in that direction.

It's given you a spot to put the fill.

You can mix it in there.

Cave and pave.

If you yeah, if you didn't have that, like you would have to put filler everywhere

and then sand it down, you know.

But all that like the training on that, the your experience, you getting comfortable

with it. How did that come into play?

You pick up an English wheel, you realize what's the first

patch or the first panel that you realized you needed to put shape into?

And what was was it a struggle?

Was it where there are a lot of panels thrown around the shop?

Did it just click?

Yeah, no, it was it was a it was a struggle, for sure.

You know, started off like making gas tanks like most people do.

And because when I made my English wheel, so it's a it's a home built English wheel,

like that was at like the height of like the

was it the biker build offs on Discovery Channel?

You know, so it was like, yeah, everybody's getting an English wheel

and some teardrop mallets and, you know, and and everything.

So but there was I didn't have like a basis for it.

So, you know, I I had like a few books and things like that.

And then, yeah, it was just just practicing and new enough to kind of stay out of trouble.

But when I started doing like the stuff for the gram,

like the quarter panels and stuff like that, that was that was a bit of a challenge.

I think I snuck some of those pieces into the trash and wipe my time off.

And even like while we were doing the stuff on that car.

So that that car was a net never like initially like built for the Detroit

Autorama, like they started building that car and Mike wanted wanted that

like just a nice street rod.

And then somebody in his car club said, well, if you want to get some ideas

on building a nice street rod, you know, go out to Detroit Autorama.

And so he went out there and then he came back and and and told the shop owner

like, OK, this is what we're building it for.

And like he had 10 X the budget.

Yeah, he had like no clue like what he was doing.

So that that's how I got I got involved.

And then it so it progressed like they hired Jimmy Smith did the designs on it.

And then so Eva got involved in doing machining a part.

So did greening automotive.

So I got a chance to work with all those guys.

So I kind of took after I'd been there for a while, I kind of took point on

like doing like the delegating scheduling, talking with the the vendors.

And I actually did because I had an art background.

So doing kind of some sketches of my own like for engine bay and things like that.

And and then, you know, working direct with the clients, I brought brought some

people into or a guy into to help out with, you know, the workload of that stuff.

And and because the other guys that were working on it, just they didn't have

the skill level to do it, you know, to do a car like that.

And and it was a learning process for all of us, you know, at that time.

And and, you know, I'm happy with the with the results that we got from it.

And so as I was working on that project, I I started looking at like

Pulmax machines and going further back, that was in the Street Rotter magazine

with Ron Covell, where he had the professor metal section.

And somebody had written in there and they asked him about like Pulmax machines.

He's like, well, you know, here's what I know about Pulmax machines.

And here's what you can expect to pay for them and stuff.

But you really want to know like the ins and outs of like everything about

them like contact Faye Butler.

And so it had a little picture of Faye in front of his one of his Pulmaxes.

And so I remember seeing that and I kept that magazine.

And so I dug that magazine out and I'm like, OK, I need to start looking

for a Pulmax machine.

So I found one.

It was a P5.

It was over in Ohio and came with some tooling, center toolpost holder,

which those are pretty tough to come by.

If you can find one like with it, you know, great.

Had all like the fencing, circled cutting attachments and shit.

And so it was on like a no reserve auction on eBay.

And it ended at like a weird time on like a Tuesday.

And so I got it, got the winning bid shipped to my door for $1950.

And so, yeah, so that was like a game changer machine.

I don't like that term, but definitely a game changer.

And then there was the shop that I worked at before I started my own shop.

I'm like, yeah, I remember they had a planishing hammer in the back corner

that they had there and it was just sitting there collecting dust.

So I'm going to go over and ask them if they want to sell that.

And so they needed like some aluminum welding done.

So I'm like, well, trade you, you know, labor for the hammer.

Like, all right.

So it was like an hour and a half worth of labor.

It was like a hundred and I don't know.

Labor rate went up.

It was like a hundred bucks or something like that.

And so it was a original Milwaukee planishing hammer.

So I got that thing and and I was having some difficulty with the Pulmax machine

and I had bought in Facebook and I'm like, well, I'm just going to email him

out of desperation.

I got nobody else, you know, around by me.

It was anything about these machines.

So so I sent him an email and I think it was like a couple days later.

He called me and I talked to him on the phone for like an hour.

And next thing I know, I'm getting a plane ticket going out to work with him in a shop.

So that was, you know, another like game changer than to, you know, so.

And then one of the guys that was out there at the time, like, were super good friends

right now, and I bought my number one pet and gill from him.

So he he found two of those number one pet and gills on like Craigslist for like

three hundred dollars. Somebody just didn't know what it was.

Yeah, he's like these people that like rummage through old manufacturing

plants and stuff.

And so they had them listed.

Yeah. And they're like, well, yeah, we we're holding them because there's a

there's a guy that is going to come tomorrow.

He's going to make like table legs out of them.

And so my friend's like perfect timing.

Yeah, he's like, I'll double the price.

I'll be out there in like an hour.

So what kind of condition was that thing in?

Oh, it needed total restoration.

It was missing some parts.

The one that he kept for himself, like that was more complete.

But I think he's actually got things lined up.

He's going to go down to North Carolina and and work with Hans that that bought

the rights that the pet and gill name and him and Mike Cleves were doing.

The I think Mike was involved in that.

But they were they were building those machines, the two M's and the number

ones and stuff.

So so yeah, after I got back from phase, I I needed a power hammer.

So I called Steve Powell and he built that the first hammer for me.

And then as you know, with just one hammer, it sucks to have to change out

two links. So you got to have two. Two.

And now I'd like to have one for every die that I have.

But I just I don't have the room for it or I don't I don't think that the

accountant for for the business would would approve go for that far away there.

Yeah. When you look at, you know, like these these big classic sort of what I

would call professional machines are like real deal hammers.

What do you think the difference is in running a hammer like that first,

like a Bailey hammer or, you know, some of the some of the other more like readily available,

maybe more user friendly hammers.

They didn't win the World Wars. I'll tell you that they were on the other side

where they come from. They lost the lost.

So I used the two Yotars that that Faye has in his shop,

and then he's got a metal craft tools one, which they're no longer in business.

And they sold their design to Mittler Brothers, who now is revamped the design.

And that's what they make now. And so I use that that hammer quite a bit.

Actually, while I was out there, the other two guys were they were kind of stealing

the show with the Yotars. So and, you know, Faye, I think, said it best.

He's like, well, it's better than an English wheel.

You know, that's you didn't have, you know, too many other things to say about that machine.

But I've used the Bailey, I think, once when the guy was set up at Road America with it.

And I don't know, I don't really have an opinion on it other than, you know,

it's it's a smaller machine. It's a little bit lighter duty.

I know out there, like when you were running that thing like full throttle,

the thing was like almost like jumping up in the air.

So their bases are pretty light. And I've got a Bailey kick shrinker, and it's kind of the same

thing. But they can't manufacture that stuff like they did back then, like a solid cast iron base,

you know, because logistically, and you're trying to ship that thing, it'd be a freaking nightmare,

you know, so like manufacturing wise, it doesn't make sense. So I understand why they're

the bases are kind of like the lighter duty. And my machine, I've got that anchored right to the

concrete, you know, to and I've got it sitting on like the those big like multi layer like

equipment pads, then to just trying to cut the vibration and stuff down.

You know, I think for like what the Bailey is and like for somebody that's looking at

buying like something, there's a lot of people they they want the the ease of just being able

to pick up the phone and buy buy something, you know, and great thing about Bailey is is that they,

you know, they do leasing options and stuff then to so you don't have to have all that money up

front, you can do that. I'm no way a Bailey spokesperson here, you know, but you know,

having a machine that's, you know, brand new, it's under warranty, you don't have to worry about that

stuff. You know, you can make monthly payments, like I totally get that. And then for the the

MH 19, like this for the size of that footprint wise, and then the fact that it's a multi hammer,

like you can do reciprocate that pull max on it. So you know, if you're cramped for space or you

don't want to buy a power hammer and a pull max machine, like sort of get some bull stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, we've never used, never used that in the reciprocating function, just because we've got

a pull max sitting next to it. But that the MH 19, we've got it sits net right next to a yoder

hammer. And you know, the yoder hammer for for us, you know, we don't have really the metal shaping

a couple guys that do but universally across the board, we don't have the guys with the metal

shaping experience or background. And it's, that's a much more complex machine, as you know,

just set up. So in our shop for the metal shaping, we do that. Those are great tools that MH 19 is

awesome. I guess the reason I'm sort of selfishly asking because I'm, I'm working towards putting

some metal shaping stuff at home to tinker with. So for it at home, having something that reciprocates

and also works as a power hammer is great. I keep looking back and forth between there's this metal

masters, these Australia, which is a neat looking machine. I mean, I've got we had Chris rush on

the podcast who designed and built that. It's a great, it's an awesome machine for probably

every hot rod shop should have one. Yeah, but I'm just I'm sort of thinking through that now as

I'm looking to put some stuff in my garage to tinker. You don't need all that shit.

They cut down some trees already in the front. Just cut that fucker dish that thing out and

just beat and get your teardrops. You'll be fine. You don't remember the ham? Yeah, I think that was

Marcel delays like favorite tool in the shop was the hollowed out stump. Yeah. He's a lot better

than me. Those kids built some amazing stuff. Yeah, still build some amazing stuff, you know,

stomping a planishing hammer. It's all it takes. Yeah. Yeah, there's the shrinking element though.

Yeah. Well, I think the another good thing that Bailey does with their stuff is that I think the

how quick you can change the tooling on that stuff to like versus like my power hammer and

like what your Yoder is, they use the wedge style, you know, and it's a pain in the ass to

change that out. And then when you're having to change out from like radial stretch dies or linear

stretch dies back to like a thumbnail, then you've got to kind of, you know, check to make sure the

thumbnails running true with the upper die and, you know, things like that. And so that's where

having like multiple hammers, you know, comes into play like where you can just have one

always set up with a thumbnail die. The other one you're doing, all you're stretching on.

What would your pull max keep you? What would be your limitations on like with some thumbnails

for shrinking there? Just your throat depth or could it will move in moving the amount of metal

that you need to move? No, it's got plenty of throat on it. You just don't have the hammer. So

if you're wanting to, you know, put like a nice low crown and a panel or something, you don't have

the hammer option on it. It's not going to hit like a hammer does. You know, it's it's dead.

Yeah. And you've got to plan ish a little bit more with if you're doing thumbnail on on a pull

max because it doesn't because it's not like die on die, like contact. It's not like forcing down.

So it doesn't fold it. It doesn't fold it back on itself all the way. It doesn't fully set that

talk. It's always kind of a little lumpy. So we're trying to talk me out of I know you don't

want me to get any you're like, I'm asking questions to remind me I'm not going to use any of that

stuff. You're telling me. Well, no, that's true. But I still want you to have everything. I'm not

no, I was I'm bringing up questions for for you to be an asshole. I was nice. Yeah, let's get into

it. That that metal master stuff I've found very interesting in those. As Bennett coach works,

the guy's Australian shop on Instagram. You follow them at all because yeah, yeah, cool,

really cool stuff. And a great they got a great YouTube channel, but they use all that equipment.

That's part of your Australian listening. I don't know if they listen. I'm a fly follow them. I

don't know. I doubt they follow us, but they use all that metal master stuff. But it has

there's virtually no following in the states. I've never seen or heard anybody

using one. So that yeah, the metal master stuff from what I know is yeah, so it's coming

from Australia and but I think it's made like China, something like that. And then Woodward Fab

is getting the same stuff. They're the same machines are just painting them great,

slapping their sticker on. So you're telling me I think I think back to your comment earlier.

They knocked off the same machines that we invented to build the planes to the fly that

thing over there. I said China, Japan. We had that one regionally ish.

You know, well, most of those. I was I was I was worried about my company.

Most of those number one. They ended up in the Pacific Ocean. They just pitched them. Yeah,

they're on aircraft carriers and since artificial reef. Yep.

Yeah, a lot of interesting stuff out there. And I knew when you flip through that,

thank you, that metal masters their catalog. It's wild. The amount of

cool metal tools you can get for like virtually nothing. If you go in there with like a $10,000

budget, you can outfit an entire shop. Yeah. I mean, slip rolls and press brakes and you name it.

Like it's it's crazy. Now Grizzly's got a power hammer. Grizzly tools. Have you seen that?

Grizzly stuff is which isn't bad. Like they're woodworking tools. That's pretty good. It's pretty

good. You used to be able to get a miter bandsaw horizontal miter bandsaw from them for like

700 bucks. Yeah, I would cut up to I think like eight inch round, which I mean, I never cut

anything. Yeah, but it's good. You just want to know you can. Yeah, in case you need to. Yeah,

what are those hem spots going for nowadays? About 7500 bucks. You can get the XL version on

trick tools. It's in stock. Yeah, I've looked into it. What about the gold plated commemorative

edition that they joke with me? So every year we go every year, we go to a PRI and at PRI,

I have always I'm like infatuated by I like these hem sauce. It's a cool brand. It's quality stuff.

Have you seen them? Yeah. The horizontal bandsaws. Yeah. So every year I go and I'm like, I'm always

getting ready to get my garage, get a garage set up to put some equipment in it. I just haven't

gotten there. I'm now finally almost there. So every year for the past probably decade,

like I'm going to get one of those saws and that thing's going to be awesome at home because the

demo is just them cutting these little slivers of like solid inch and a half bar stock. So

Josh and Phil bust my balls that they're going to come over. I'm just going to be sitting. That's

what I'm going to do. I'm going to sit in the garage and I'm going to just be dicing an inch and

a half bar stock just to show that I don't have this. That was my point. That was what I was going

to say. So he's, he's, I'm going to put, you know, a lathe here and do this stuff. And

this is my vision. It's going to be like, Hey man, come on over. I'm hanging out in the garage

and doing stuff. I'm going to walk in and there's going to be, there's going to be the hem

saw proud right in the center, right? You know, with, with, with the light on it, with, with the,

like the wooden display case glass, like lifted off of it. So now it's working time. And then

there's like the old school, like back in the thirties, like wicker basket underneath it,

right? And he's just, he's filled that thing up with the little coins. I pictured vintage

wooden coke, wooden coke, right? Then he's going to have the, then he's going to have his nice,

brand new TIG welder and bench welder set up in his rotary, right? He's going to weld,

weld him back and then it turns it on the lathe back to a solid bar and then right back over again.

And it's just each day is a different operation. Oh, I got to, I'm sorry. No, why? I can't take

you to the dirt bike track. I got to cut these, no, these dishing and to cut themselves.

On some days, I would be perfectly happy doing that circle. So you have,

do you have a shop at home? I'm just building a garage space to put some equipment at home to

be able to like have a project at home to tinker with. So I'm at the phase now, we're like, it's,

it's up there and we're starting to run electrical. So I'm thinking through the equipment. So I've

been sort of putting my wish list together, starting to plan for where things are getting wired and

where things are going. So I'm going to get some sheet metal equipment and stuff and just, yeah,

picking some people's brain about what's the welder you got picked out. I'm sort of torn between,

I love having the dynasty for the aluminum, you know, the inverter for the aluminum stuff, but

I much prefer the way like the sinker wave performs on mild steel. Like if you're welding

thicker mild steel, there's no comparison in my opinion. So I'll probably, I'm probably treat

myself, get both. Got a lot of fucking slivers to weld. Those little coins ain't going to weld.

What are you using? What's your, I've got an old arrow wave. Okay. Miller arrow wave.

So I found that. So this is wallet was, so after the gram,

I got offered a position at technical college teaching welding and fab. And so I went

and did that for about five years. And so while I was there, I found a Miller arrow wave

that was in Northern Alabama. Was that like a rocket, rocket manufacturing plant?

Huntsville. Yep. It was their backup welder for their like hydrogen tank division came with a

120 foot long torch. And the guy that I got it from, he must have been kind of higher up.

Maybe like management because he sent me pictures of like this thing sitting in his garage and I'm

like, oh, that's garage is all like trimmed out and, you know, beautiful. And, and so I was able

to arrange like transport and stuff. He's like, yeah, I don't even think it's probably got 40

hours on it. So I had an old Lincoln precision TIG 225 that I had converted to water cooler.

And I love that welder. Yeah, great welder. And we ran those for a little while here.

Yeah, I just wanted to have something that I could do some thicker material for at a better

duty cycle and, and, you know, getting more into doing like aluminum and aluminum alloys and,

you know, cast aluminum stuff like that cast housings and stuff. And that that is the welder

to do it with. So it's like a hybrid. It's part transformer part inverter. Okay,

the weird kind of mix before they came out with the dynasty. So everything you can do on the dynasty,

you can do on the on the arrow wave, except it's not like a arrow arrow select enter. Yeah, you

know, it's all dials and switches and which is better than just keeps the board from going out.

You know, yeah. And it's got that big like T handle cart. You got to cruise around the shop

and you need like a five foot radius to just to maneuver it like a NASCAR pit cart. Yeah. So

that one pretty much is like stationary now. And then we bought 120 foot torches should be.

I changed that one out because I fired that thing up and it had leaks everywhere. It looked like

fucking like a sprinkler. And so no, I got rid of that and put like a, I think it's got like a

12 12 foot torch on it. And then so our little portable welder that we've got, we got a Everlast

200 and it's been great so far, you know, and I think that thing with the water cooler and

cart was like two grand versus like 12,000 for the dynasty. There's some crazy good budgeted products

out there. Now you see there. It's a red. They're all red. It can't be that good for that long.

That Austin prophecy. What does that well that he runs? I've seen it before. I think doesn't

arc arc arc something. BBT uses the Fronius. Okay. That's like aristocrat shit.

They're expensive. Are they really? Oh, yeah. Maybe they're better. When they when they first

came out, they were they were pretty high dollar because they were pushing like that stuff on

us at the tech school. Yeah. And it was like, I don't know, we can get, you know,

the Lincoln's were better for educational. Like they were

lucky if they were breaking even. It's like haze, like haze machining equipment and shit.

Like they've got great partnerships with the schools and everything. They pretty much

make no money. I'm guessing on their leasing options. But the smart thing about that is

all those people that are graduating, they want that coming out of there. They're buying that.

Yep. And they're interviewing. And okay, what systems are you used to? What machines do you

know? I know haze and Lincoln. Okay. Well, hey, we need to order some new machines. Let's get these

no dummy. And he's all that's why you can go F one and that's right. And it's been a lot of

loss leaders in the old house. They got a little bit in the minus category.

So it plays in that sweet zone there. I don't I don't know how their winter testing did. I think

there's some I don't know if you can really put too much stock in that stuff. But

I know the Aston Martin definitely fell short from what they were trying to go for.

Have you guys I haven't followed it. Okay. No, I've just seen the Ferrari flipping wing thing

all over Instagram. And then Cadillacs entry into that. Yeah, yep. Yep. Yeah. So they've got

his audio getting into it as well. Yes, teaser for that not too long ago. Yep. Yeah. So they took

over. I think they're in the Sauber kick Audi. So that used to be a Sauber

Elfa Romeo. Yep. Used to pay attention to it a little bit more than the last like couple years.

I just haven't had the time for it. But I'm so casual. I enjoy when I can watch it and do,

you know, especially the Netflix shows, I've just don't know enough about, you know, some of the

little things and on the racing side, I've just never been able to understand, like the car build

side of things, you know, where it's, we can pretty much build whatever we want, as long as it falls

within these boxes. And then it's, you know, start the season out like, oh, shit, turns out we built

a bad car. It's like, this one, this one, this one's no good, you know, this is just until next

year. Yeah. I can send you a, I found this Instagram account where it's one guy and he plays like

two different manufacturers and the governing body. And it's like Ferrari and Red Bull. And he's

like, you guys are cheating. You're cheating. Like he switches to Red Bull. He's like, nope,

the rule clearly says this. Yeah. And then they just go back and forth and he kind of shows what

they did. And it's pretty cool way of showing it and like interpretation of seeing like all the

things they do to like just get by the rules and the problem solving. And then, oh yeah,

I think they've got like a whole team of people that are probably reading the whole FIA book

and finding ways of getting around to all of that. Oh, it had to be, I mean, legal too. I mean,

you're just like, yeah, if they were to use this word, then we absolutely couldn't have done this,

but they use this word. So guess what we can do? Well, that's how like Williams was able to get

around and do like the whole active suspension stuff that like, I mean, because they were a losing

team in like the 60s and 70s. And then all of a sudden the 80s, they turned it on and they had

Adrian Newey. Was there like designer and they built the car that had the active suspension in

it, which eventually got banned by the FIA, you know, and on the loophole, though, for a while.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's a bunch of crazy ones. This guy goes through. I forgot. I think it was

Aston Martin. They put a third pedal in the car. That's a brake pedal that just does one rear wheel

to help them around corners. Oh, good. Yeah, basically, yeah, cutting brake, like sand car stuff.

That's awesome. And they went through all the rules and they're like, nope, it's a brake. And

they're arguing back and forth and they end up, it was legal for a year and they changed the rules

and they killed it the next year. And then Aston Martin had the their rear spoiler that wasn't

strong enough. So at high speeds, it would bend and give them a more aerodynamic advantage.

Yeah, it goes back up. We can't help it. We screwed up. We made it make it strong enough.

We'll look into it. We'll fix it. Yeah, I think Mercedes had like something to where their

steering column was like telescoping. So yeah, they were pushing it and it was doing something

with a brake bias or something like that. Going into the corners, they were adjusting that thing.

Mercedes had last year didn't they had their front their front splitter was doing the same

thing as that rear right bending. Yeah, the downforce or the arrow would would fold it backwards.

You know, what is it with them? They're all chasing like ride height too, right? You see

certain cars are constantly bottoming out, throwing sparks and they're all just playing with like

millimeters of ride height. Yeah, you're on you're on the you want it to be

on the ground but not scrubbing. Yeah. And you're they say they beat you to death. I mean, because

you're slapping the ground because they're pounding, you know, 180. That's a wild sport.

All right, next. So you went to the trade school. How long did you do that?

So the the auto body program that was that was like a year long. So two semesters eight

weeks. I'm talking about when you're teaching when you're teaching. Oh, okay. Sorry.

I did that for about five years. How did that? How does that

when you started this out, you started explaining about employees, you know, and you like to do

things a certain way, right? And you students now you got students in your prison. How does that?

What's the what's the difference there when you're training somebody? Students can't quit.

I've got it. I've got to either really be careful about how I answer this or just go full go full

and statute of limitations. Jeremy always says just go for it. Yeah, I usually tip toe into these

things. As long as I don't name names, I'll be fine. But

yeah, so what's lefty? We're gonna find out. Go ahead. Keep going. That's it's called left. So

that's that's Norwegian. So like up where I'm at, like, we're all like Scandinavian. I'm

left says like, it's made out of potato. It's like the Scandinavian tortilla.

Okay, they were we're not too far off from Wisconsin tacos here.

I think we should get after it. So I've never had that brand. So I don't I don't know. But

yeah, my mom bakes it like all the time. So

that you assaulted a student is what happened.

No, never did that. Maybe, maybe came kind of close. But

so yeah, I thought, you know, going into it, you know, okay, we're teaching

college level, you know, like these people want to be here. No, not all of them did.

We had a group of our typical class would be like 25 students. And I would say out of the 25,

five of them were like rock stars, you know, they're going to do great. They've got great skill.

They listen. They're self starters. It's like everything that you'd want from an employee,

you know, and then you would have these two.

Then you would have like another another five that you wish that you could just go up to them

and write their tuition checks like back to them and just be like, stop wasting your time, stop

wasting my time, stop wasting these other people's time, like, you know, you don't want to be here,

you don't give a shit, you know, like you haven't bought any of the books, like you're showing up

late, you know, you just don't care, you know, like, and with the the welding machines that we

had, like we could go into the classroom right off the lab and we could dial up and look at the arc

time. And in a four hour lab class, this one student had like four minutes of arc time.

And so, you know, you confront them about it and he's like, he's piss, well, I could do whatever

I want while I'm in this class. Okay, well, you know, you know what happens after you graduate

here, like, you look for a job, you know, and what are they going to think when you don't know

how to do the processes that you supposedly have to be able to do upon graduating here. So,

so yeah, it was it was a big eye opener. I think in my first semester, I kicked out more students

from class than I did in all of the other semesters combined after that. And, you know,

I don't know if that was a good thing or not. But did you try to change their thought process at all?

Or is it if they don't want to be here, then I ain't got the time for it.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I was towards towards the end of it. And I realized that at that point,

you know, when I hit the five year mark that like, I just, if they don't care, why should I care

about them? And I'm not even going to make an attempt to try to care. I knew that. Okay, well,

this probably isn't for me then. But in between, you know, after the first semester, and I apologize

to students that had me first semester, because I had no idea what I was doing. And I was just

bringing home books, you know, every night with me and putting in way more time than what

I saw any other instructor do, you know, when I was out there and trying to be effective and

coming up with different things. And I was given like classes to teach like blueprint reading and

metallurgy. And I became like the metallurgy like go to. And so when I went through the program,

like the metallurgy class was like, transparencies on an overhead of the iron carbon diagram.

And you're writing on them like, that's fucking boring as hell. Like, like, we need to change

some things. It's a two hour lecture class. Like, you know, I don't care about the iron carbon

diagram, you know, but I need to need to find out like the stuff that is important of it and

teach it and then figure out like some activities to do, you know, get up there and yak and give

instructions for like the first 1520 minutes and then we're going out to the lab and like doing

shit. So like, I had our guy like water jet cut out like aluminum, and I showed them how to anneal

aluminum and then work harden it by hammering it into a stump, just like what you're going to get

for your home. You know, and, and then so we do all these little activities doing, you know,

stuff for mechanical properties and hardness ductility, you know, thermal properties, you know,

aluminum versus stainless stuff like that. So showing them, you know, exhaust work versus

aluminum radiator, you know, like the pros and cons to all that kind of stuff. And, and then you

do all these little activities and then at the end of it, we would do, you know, kind of combine it

all into like one big capstone lab class. So, you know, changing things up there and getting the

students a little bit more active and, and I saw a better response from that and, and I had more

fun doing it then too, you know, so, and then, you know, I had access to all that other stuff then

too, you know, where I could, I had to go back to school and, and, you know, get a degree as part

of my contract. So I had one elective class left to take and the guys like, well, what do you want

to do? And I'm like, well, I want to learn solid works because I want to teach solid modeling to

the students for the two year program. He's like, okay, so I took solid modeling one and went through

all that stuff, did all the projects that were part of the book, and then we had like a capstone

project to do there. And the instructors like, so what do you want to do for your final project?

And he's like, so some of these other guys are, they're making like a, you know, like a

desk, like pen holder envelope, you know, tape dispenser, like, you know, stuff like that. And

I'm like, I want to build a chassis. So my friend Freddie had bought a 65 Corvair,

and he wanted to build like a race car out of it, but didn't really know the direction that he

wanted to go with it. So is this Freddie of fast Freddy's? Yep. Yep. So I've known Freddie since

I was 16. So he graduated with my oldest brother. And so yeah, we worked at muscle car restorations

together. And we were in a car club together. And yeah, we've been good friends for a long time.

And so yeah, he had bought this Corvair. And I'm like, well, what are you, what are you

planning to do with it? And it's like, well, I know I want to LS swap it, you know, build kind of

like a vintage race car with it. Like, why don't you let me build the chassis for it? I need a

project for my solid works class and this and that. And so I bullshitted them, you know, told

them I could do this. I had no idea what I was doing. So happens a lot in the industry. Yep. So

dove into that thing. And it was a struggle like the the first set of front frame rails that I

designed for it was just a disaster. And I think they're on like design three or four is what we

ended up going with on that thing. But so yeah, it's based off of a C five Corvette front rear

suspension. Use the LS engine mounts and then bowler T 56 in it. And then it's a Dutch,

it's a Dutchman's axle nine inch center section motors up front. Yep.

So yeah, and it was like an old, like dirt track car. And the thing was just beat the

shit dirt track Corvette. Yeah. Never seen anything like it. Northern Wisconsin. Yeah,

we're a little different. Wow. So so yeah, I ended up building a chassis table for that,

that thing over winter break. And it was me and like one of my other like co workers up there,

he helped me do it. And and so we use the overhead crane to like flip this thing around because of

that chassis table weighs like 5,000 pounds. It's like fucking serious, some serious iron.

And then I designed like all the the tooling and stuff modular tooling for it. And so we cut that

stuff out on the plasma bent it up on the press break, fixtures it welded it and we had blue

code tables there at the school. So I got to use all that stuff and convince the school. Oh,

yeah, like I need to know how to use this stuff. Anyways, why don't you just let me build a project

on it? Like, yeah, that's cool, because the program director had done all of his tile work

for his bathroom remodel on the flow jet. So like, you know, first full access to it.

So yeah, we built built that that project. And then that just got me kind of like back into it.

And I was itch again. Yeah, I was going in, you know, to the school into the lab on the weekends

and working on it on like building the chassis table and stuff. And then bending up, you know,

cutting out the flat sections, bending up the straight bends on the chassis,

fixturing everything. And I just I'm like, man, I really missed like doing this stuff. I have like

no creative outlet right now, you know, teaching and I just really, really miss being in the shop

and building cool shit. And so I took my wife out to dinner one weekend, and she knew it was coming.

And I said, I can't do this anymore. I need to go back and be in my shop.

Sounds like you have a very supportive wife. She's great. I mean, I have I have no idea how I'm

still married. You know, but I've heard you guys talk about on the podcast, like how wrong you

guys have done everything. And you're right there. Yeah, I mean, Jesus, I took it. I only took a half

day off of work on my wedding day for Christ's sake. Yeah, that's about what I took for my first

born. I did it for both. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing you can do the second one. I just got

it. We FaceTimed. Yeah, that's when I saw the first one was like, can you just shoot me some picks?

I slept I slept there at night. I did go to the hospital and sleep at the hospital both nights.

But there's no sense in you being there all day long. There's nothing you can do.

I don't have like, especially they they were to listen to like, we both went to the answer center

and geared up for learning. There's no there's no business we have. It could be of no help. Yeah.

I got I got put into like a academic probation thing at when I was in the university, kind of

like that. Okay, sweet. geared up for learning. Hell yeah. I don't remember what this is. He

fills the fucking outcast. He laughs. He laughs. He jokes. He's over there in his own fucking world.

Yeah. A big 10 university grad, only guy that wasn't in some sort of borderline special ed.

Basically, we're basically picked the wrong industry. Because I feel like 98% of the high

school wasn't in that class. No, but look at him now. I think I've done better than probably

98%. That's how fucking that's how exclusive the club is. How many people were in your sorority?

A shit ton more than we're in our special club. I promise you that. What was the college that you

went to? Yeah, you're an Indiana. Okay, turn it in. Yeah. So you were among some of the

high performers like Josh and I. Yeah, the mind just works different. Yeah, it's I've heard you

guys talk about this like, I think it was when you had Vinny on where he was talking about how

he just hated high school. Stop going. Quit. Just quit. It's cool. But then as soon as he gets

into doing something that he likes, he's like all in. Right. And so that's how it was for me. I had

like a go into the tech school. I mean, granted, it's not like super hard, you know, but as long

as you show up and you put forth a good effort and you're turning in like decent work, like you're

gonna do well. And I had like a 3.96, you know, versus like, I had four F's and an A at the end

of my university career, you know, well, that's where I was. I don't want to get too deep, but

you want to gear up your gear up? No. He mentioned earlier, we were talking about your teaching,

right? And you said, rightfully so, you kind of get the thing of like, Hey, I'm here. I'm here to

teach. You need to learn, right? If you don't have any interest in it, then that's that's fine.

I don't have any time for you, right? So teachers, for the most part, right, I would have to assume

there's a lot of people that get into it and probably stay into it for all the right reasons,

right? We're gonna change lives. We're gonna do all the cool, nice things that good people say,

right? However, it's human nature. After a certain amount of time, you got paid to do a job and your

job is to teach. Well, teaching is a 50-50 partnership. To be able to teach, you have to

have the other person willing to learn, right? And you have to do your job and they have to

willing to learn. However, there also is a portion you could say that a teacher teacher's job is

also to get the students willing to learn because generally, not all students come in

just ready to learn, right? And there's a lot of kids out there that that are going to fight it

for whatever reason, lack of interest for whatever things they've got. And I don't,

I wouldn't want anything to be different the way I grew up and the way things were. I'm happy with

everything the way it was. However, I wonder if a teacher was incentivized or things were different.

And instead of 10 years in looking at it like, you know, I got tenure, I'm just going to get to

this point. If I get 50% of the class to learn, I'm at least doing my job. I didn't, they should

have been raised different. It's not my job to teach, to get them to want to learn. It's my job

to teach them. If that mentality was a little different and you were incentivized, like based on

graduation numbers or grades or how many, you know, passing and stuff like that, if how many

more you could turn to be like, find the thing that you are interested in, because you just mentioned

like, you know, talking about Vinnie, talking about us, you went to school in the thing, you were

fucking straight A student when it was something that you gave a shit about. Yeah. Once I got into

a technical school, I was like, well, this is weird. This feels like what all those other kids

felt like that were getting straight A. This is easy. So how different would it be, you know,

in normal high school if, and I'm sure there is out there. I'm not saying there's no, but

it's like a contingency plan based on how successful your students are in the future.

Yeah. That you get, you get a kickback off of that.

Yeah. It would be a different, I think it would be a different thing when, and I mean,

obviously there's, I'm, we're not teachers and there's so much probably teachers probably listen

now you're like, you're fucking stupid. You don't realize what we have to do. We've got a very strict

we've got this very strict curriculum. We can only teach what, you know, we need to teach,

but yeah, I got it. I just blew right past it.

That's how many times we've been called stupid. It doesn't even, it doesn't even bother me.

But it's, you know, if you can find the thing that I mean, because you think about it more

now and we were parents, right? My kids are a little bit older and you try to teach them things

and you've seen it, trying to teach your kids something or just get them to listen to something

that they have no interest in versus how attentive they are in something they want to do.

When it's time, when it's something that we're going to go do this, it's just different.

Yeah. So finding the ways that make that connection and make them understand.

Yeah. How do you connect math to dirt bikes? How do you come at, you know, do this to that?

That's the best way. I do that with, so my son is like a chip off the old block,

spitting image of me when it comes to that. I mean, we are not doing well in high school. He's

a freshman. My daughter is a freak, like straight A's and if she's, if she so much as gets an A

minus, it's devastating to her. Right. And my son, he's got the mentality like I did that,

what the fuck am I going to use this for? Like this is useless information. So I try to convert it

to like, dude, like here, think about fractions and like pull a tape measure out and start doing

the math on the tape measure. Cause to me, it also never made, like fractions. Most of them are

completely useless until you cut it down to tape measure math. Like the tape measure is the only

fractions that I'll ever need. If you would have done it to there, I would have paid attention.

And then it's like, dude, that makes perfect sense. Like why didn't somebody,

you guys are going to be carpenters. You're going to be hot rod builders. Oh shit. Okay. Yep.

And then it's like, I could do some pretty advanced quick fractional math, but like,

I'm not sitting there reading a tape measure trying to figure out what the fucking common

denominator is and start figuring out some advanced, you know, equations. It's like, dude,

some people, great. Other people to your point, identify what, you know, what their interest is.

And I also identify like who the fuck is going to use this information

for what in their career. Right. You know, I remember getting into

a somewhat of a heated debate with my geometry teacher in high school when I was living in

Woodstock, Illinois. And because we were talking about the Pythagorean theorem,

when in the hell am I ever going to need to know this? It's not like I'm going to go to the grocery

store and bust out the Pythagorean theorem. Yeah. Guess what? I use a lot of those formulas

every single day in the shop, you know, so, but I think you have to have like an application,

you know, so like what you guys were talking about, like, it's great to just, sure, just

here's the formula plug in the info. Yeah, I should learn it. This is just boring. Why do we

need to know this? All right. So, you know, for like the, the two year program, they had like

associate's degree, like math class they had to take. So they, they brought in a gen ed teacher

from like the main campus to like teach the math class to the welders, and they couldn't stand it

because that's what it was. It was just all these fucking formulas that there's no application. Why

do we need to know this? Why can't you give us like a formula that we can use for it? And so

I'm like, all right, I came in and I'm like here, we're going to, I'm going to show you guys how

to make a tunnel for a transmission cover, you know, and all you need to know is the

circumference formula and then we're just going to go from there, you know, break it down into

sections. But even geometry made sense to me because geometry, it was applicable to something.

Sure. You know, so I told my daughter yesterday, she's like, when am I going to use the Pythagorean

theorem? Like, if you're an architect, if you're building a car, if you're building anything,

go after geometry, probably nothing is going to be useful in your life in the math world.

But even in 2026, here's my chat GTP that that's what I'm going to go. It's probably,

you know, obviously a little controversial. But in 2026, right, short of basic addition and

subtraction and, you know, multiplication. Why do you even need to learn that type of math in

in high school when everything is at the tip of your fingers, right? Computers aren't, if

you'll excel, maybe you'll excel at something else if you if you yes, if you took that time that

you were trying to force theories and learning algebra and learning calculus and learning all

of this stuff, that it would it's nice to know the backside of it. However, if you go down the path

as a career, as a professional, you can always go back and dig into that. But the doing of the

job on a day to day basis, your calculator, your computer, Google, chat, GPT, all of that is going

to get you to where you need to go faster anyway. Now, if you're going to be a teacher of it,

but at the same time, like, why do you need to know it? There's more important that everybody

misses like the problem solving portion of that to figure out what you need to do to get to it.

Yes. If you have like, looking at the kids math problems are blown away by like, no, it's

you get into the problem solving portion of it, then the math is easy. Yeah, why? What are you

trying to get that number for? Yeah. Or how to get the number? What's the question actually

asking? It sounds like Phil does a lot of homework help. No, I do minimal.

But I mean, I would, there's so many other things that is completely blown past. I mean,

throw out all algebra and calculus for basic high school. You know, if you want to take an AP,

if you want to take that as an elective, do that, throw all that out and do life skills there.

Talk about investments, talk about taxes, talk about what you're going to do.

Talk about how you're going to make a wall square.

Yeah. Hanging pictures should be a class. There's all kinds of things like that. I mean,

that you should be learning. And then based on based on your career path, you can take

secondary schooling if you would like, or if you want to dig in at your leisure on the side,

on the, you know, on your free time to learn more about. But

some all that stuff, I'm not saying, you know, it's going to sound like you want

stupider people, right? And you're just going to live off of Google. But

if you taught them more life skills and more, more reasoning, you're going to be able to get

way cooler things done way fucking faster because who the guy that can do the math in his head or

even on paper and then show his work to get to this answer versus the guy that knows that we

just need to get to the answer and move the fuck on and that did it by Google. But let's get to

the, let's get to what we're doing. We need to build this fucking bridge, right? So what's,

what's this, you know, equation going to be? If you were to sit down, if you want to shrink a

piece of sheet metal and you want to put some, you've got, you made a template, put a bunch

of pie cuts in it, you figured out how you want that panel to come together. Would you rather

sit down and figure out some equation for every one of those little triangles that you laid out

over this whole panel to try to measure what precisely that is going to be and formulate

an equation so that the next time you do something like that, you measure this, you measure this,

you've got some elaborate equation or just make a fucking paper template,

transfer it over to piece of sheet metal, shrink it and be done. Like, I mean, maybe you do it that

way. So that's what I usually do is, and then, you know, if it's something that's kind of perfectly

like half circle, then, you know, you divide it, divide it down the middle, divide it down the

middle again, and then just keep going like that, you know, and then, and then you can stagger

those, you know, go all the way back to your highlight line and, you know, things like that.

So, but, but there needs to be like some sort of symmetry involved with it, you know, equal

measurements between that stuff. So, but yeah, I mean, I guess going back to what you guys were

talking about before is like, yeah, is there a place for that stuff? Well, you know, there used

to be a place for a slide ruler. Well, that's all done. So you've got to, you got to pick the

technology that makes sense and, and can take you to the next kind of level, you know, to

that T 2000 was key. Yeah, if you're playing drug wars to get into getting through high school,

and that was the last time you use that thing. Do you actually use the calculator? Did you put

it in? I put messages in it. Yeah. And then pass it down. So that are the three by five no card

I just played. Fantastic. Yeah, I've heard that's interesting that you brought that because I've

honestly, I've never had it, but I've heard so much good stuff about the brand and it's phenomenal.

Have you had any of the J Henry stuff? We had, we had one at the very beginning, but it was a

different, it was a different one. This is great. It's really good. Cool. Yeah. The yeah, I know,

I mean, again, back to, to reiterate Phil's point that, you know, there's, there's teachers out there

or husbands that are married to teachers that are cringing of our stupidity of the stuff,

but I think that it's, it's key to finding the way that somebody understands what you're saying

for the next time to get a little bit better versus it just being a memorization, you know,

like, okay, if I'm going to get this, I'm just going to memorize this to get through it and

then forget about it. If you can figure out a way to, to even if it's a little bit

interesting, there's a lot of things that I'm very mildly interested in, if at all,

but if there's a something that's small enough to peak my interest, I'll at least pay attention

long enough to learn the thing I need to learn about that, you know, and that's it's

no, I had some amazing instructors when I went to tech school, like life changing instructors.

So when I went through the auto body program, a month in, I pulled the senior instructor who had

been there since the beginning of the program since like the early seventies. And I'm like,

Hey, I want you to come with me and look at this car. And that's when I bought my 54 and

and then so afterwards and I went into the welding program, the welding instructor,

the main welding instructor was one of my dad's good friends growing up and they worked on dirt

track cars together. And we're like where I was building my 54 to my grandma's garage,

they used to work on the car in that garage to get it like prepped for Sunday racing.

And this guy, like his first car he ever painted was in that garage and there was like

some cool residue on the floor and stuff. Some Fordite. Yeah. And this dude, he was super cool

because like I had some welding experience from taking the related class beforehand and just,

I guess, being a quick learner with that, like the hand-eye coordination stuff like that. And so I

was able to really breeze through like the first semester curriculum. So by second semester,

he's like, Well, you've got all this stuff done. You got all this time. Like what do you want to

do? I'm like, I want to learn like TIG welding, like put me on the TIG welding. And so he's like,

All right, I'm gonna run you through your paces. So he had me doing like stainless exhaust work,

stuff like that. And then every once in a while, you come back, throw the curtain back and you

it's like, Hey, I need your help with something. And so he put me to work on this. He was like a

street rod guy. So he's like, I've got a 37 Ford and I'm suiciding my doors and I need all this

stuff filled in. He's like, I want you to do it. So I did that. And then he had another friend bring

in like a 37 Chevy, like chassis. And he's like, We're gonna plate this stuff up and we're gonna

reinforce this and that. And so he's like, you he's like, you're all caught up on everything

right now, right? Like, Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm all caught up. So he like put me to work on that.

And then I was ready to build the floors in my 54. Because they were all rusted out. And

I did an engine transmission swap. So next door was the the old cheat metal lab. And they had

all the Pexto like, you know, army green like painted shit, you know, brakes, slip rollers and

bead rollers and stuff. And he's like, All right, he's like, if you're all caught up, I'll let you

for this week, I'll let you build your floors and your tunnel system and stuff. But I want you to

come on Monday with a blueprint. I want to see how you're going to make this stuff. I want to see

measurements. How are you going to figure all this stuff out? Because as soon as you get in here,

and you start working with the sheet metal, the clocks ticking, you know, you get one week to

do it. So I'm like, All right, cool. So drew up a, you know, blueprint and everything. And

he's like, Yeah, this looks good. All right, go to it. So I built my floors and stuff in there.

And then I got all the floors in it, all the metal work done. And and he's like, Now, he's like,

Where are you at with your car? I'm like, Oh, I'm getting close for primer, you know, poxy primer.

He's like, All right. How soon do you think you're going to be ready for it? I'm like, Oh,

probably beginning a next month. So he goes over and talks to the, the auto body guys. And he's

like, All right, I squared it away with Terry. You've got the entire week over there for the booth.

He's like, Bring it over here. Do all your final prep on the bare metal. Do your seam sealing and

everything and get into epoxy primer. He's like, You can have the week off of

the week. So he was super cool guy. And then

it was shortly after that, my grandma moved into assisted living. So I no longer had the

the garage there. And so he's like, Well, what are you gonna? Where are you going with that?

Like, I have no idea, Scott, you know, I might have to put it up for sale. And he's like, Well,

why don't you bring it down to my shop? He's like, You can have a spot down there. He's like,

you're working just down the road at that, that body shop. So it's like, you can come here

after work. And he's like, Plus, I need a hand working on, you know, my own car and everything.

So, you know, yeah, that was, it was huge, you know, I don't think I would be where I'm at right

now without, without that instructor and family friend. And yeah, he's great. I've been trying

to get him down to my shop for a while. And hopefully, if you if you listen to this, it'll,

it'll get him down there quicker. It's awesome.

It's a good example of how an instructor can change somebody's outlook on something or

somebody's trajectory. I briefly went to a tech school and the instructor was a complete

fucking moron, like complete fucking moron. I went, I mean, I'll never forget how fucking

stupid this guy was. Just the fourth gen Camaro door. Yeah. The auto body class that I went to.

And I'm I've been a body man for a long time, like I was doing pretty high level fucking

shit that was auto body related. And we go in and like sort of you described some of your

students, there's a handful of people who really wanted to be there. The rest of them,

it was kind of like just, I don't know, I'm going to do it myself. This is something to do.

So the most antiquated, this kind of ties it all together, because like the most antiquated

things that you would never need to learn how to do or should do. So you were required to use

cheese graders to take your filler work done. Oh, yeah. And he would call it cheesing it to contour,

cheesing it to contour and technical term. Right. So I had a mudhog and you took it down on the

mudhog and I, you know, you take a dent, you knew exactly how many hours that dent was and how

quick to fix it in order to be able to make money on it because I'd already done all this.

Like this is easy fucking crap. This is rudimentary shit. And he would argue with me over and over

again that you cannot make something straight with a round tool because it's round this way.

Yeah. No, I, you know, and I'm like, dude, I don't know. Are you using it? Like this is an old ass

guy. I'm like, I don't know where you've been for the past 30 years, but like step into a body

shop. And would you use a jitterbug? There's some pneumatic tools being used. Don't the cheese

graders have a small age character? Yeah, they've got a little crown to them. So you've got to rock

it up on its little tiny flat edge in order to, so he wouldn't let me, I kept doing it and doing it.

I'd knock a dent out in like 15, 20 minutes. Other kids would be on it for weeks at a time,

whether you make me redo it because he would argue with me that you can't do it that way.

I need to do it how the curriculum shows, you know, and every fucking thing was like that.

We moved on to we were brazing patch panels under the hoods of they would just get all

these old scrap hoods that were donated. So like a Dodge neon hood, you would take a little piece

of like 18 gauge and braze it onto the hood for your whatever that fundamental test was.

I'm just on the top of it. Went in the fuck with a torch with a torch.

What scenario am I going to find myself in any body shop? I cover this hole where I am using

a torch to braze a patch panel under a thin gauge, flat ass piece of metal. We had a wedding

demonstration. You're going to win through the auto body school. The hood's 80 bucks. They're

just going to replace them. Like, do you guys have got to like kick this up a notch as far as

this curriculum goes here? You know, unbelievable. Every single thing was like that. And I would

just tell it. Yeah. Yeah. And they hated me for it. But I still I finished the whole create

like the whole semester's curriculum in like under a month or something. You're asking

asking what was wrong with him? No, I never did. I just kind of kept to myself, but he just

had an attitude about me because yeah. But do you guys work with any of the local tech schools

on anything? You guys part of the advisory committee or anything for welding or

no, not that, you know, not that I wouldn't be interested in it. Nobody's ever reached out.

It's tough. I've I've tried. I've I've had the instructors in and I've I've emailed the deans

and stuff. And let's let's call it space, but they don't give a shit. No, yeah, it's I think

that's what it is. It's like the they got to get the tuition. We got to run the business like a

business. And it is what it is. The people that want that are part of the advisory committee

that are hiring the graduates from what I've been told is they just want people that that can

say in bumper covers, yeah, plastic bumper covers. So I think the coolest thing I ever

learned in school, the only teacher that was like inspirational to me that and I clicked with this

guy was graphic design in high school, because the dude sort of did it as almost like like he

was giving back like this was a guy who genuinely just wanted to like do something for the students

give ponytail. No, he was but he was a full time he was a builder and an architect outside of school

and had a full like thriving business and sort of just did this. And in class, he would always be

maybe not that thriving, right? But it was he had a business, right? And in class, he'd always be on

like the cell phone and you'd like be eavesdropping and listen to that was cool. And I'm like, this

dude's like making shit happen. This is cool. You know, and you'd hear and you'd have blueprints

out and he's working on his own stuff. And I'm like, check and I'm like, that's that's kind of cool.

Like, just seeing the guy operate was funny was he was a guy that would like, you know,

genuinely wanted you to learn something and would help you succeed. And that was something

that resonated with me. But just seeing him, you know, do his thing was like it was motivational.

We had not this completely different. We had a I was always big into history.

And I was the only really Moonland classes that classes that I really wanted to pay attention

to. And I always wanted to learn more. Like, you know, if you go through if you're into history,

and they're telling history, you know, you breeze past a lot of stuff in high school, you know,

you're jumping to war as quickly, you know, it's like, well, hold on, like, they were allies.

And then now they're bombing, like, we got to go back, like you're missing some stuff. It was

only time I was always like, we had Mr. Mr. Creveling. So Mr. Creveling drove a K car. Nice.

Yes, true story. Rooney's K car. This is a this is Maroon four door K car.

The Krav mobile, right. So we had been teaching for 40 something years, right.

And had memorized basically every class of every day, right. There was that's just come in today's

no prep time. No, today's Tuesday. And we're we're on this chapter of this book. And boom,

just right there. And he had this. We were kids, but thinking back about it.

This hair that would grow out of his ears, right at you've never seen hair that long,

like come out of his ears. And so of course, you know, as you know, 14, 15 years old,

he drives the K car and, you know, Mr. Creveling with the ear. He did not like us at all.

Because you just you fucked with him constantly and he couldn't hear probably because all the

hair in his ears will muffled. Yeah. Yeah. So you could always just it was the what who, huh?

You get him off of his memorization. Huh? What? Huh? That was like all our teacher.

Our we caught the tail and we rode that we were like riding that last wave that was all those

teachers that had been 200 years old. Yeah. I mean, just all of them 70s did not care.

They're on their way out. Yeah. I wish you'd had the I should have taught you darts back then.

The little pin darts. Yeah. I mean, we think that was there was school is sort of like prison

when it came to fashioning little weapons, you know, you would create interesting little things.

Yeah. With different resources you had. Remember the tiny M&M little flip top case? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. What'd you do with them? You put all your little rubber darts in there.

The M&M case. Like little cylinders of the flip. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Everybody has like three of those full of little folded paper. You put in a rubber band and we

had we had Altoid Tins for our little blow darts or whatever. I've never heard we did this thing

in the south. I don't know if you all ever did blow darts, but you make you take the round big

pin, right? You take the stuff out of there. So you just got the clear tube, the white tube.

Yeah. Well, then you take like ends of shoelaces, right? The little plastic part.

Mm-hmm. Snip those off. Go ahead and do all your mom, dad, and your sisters. All of theirs.

And one time just run to the house because you have to have those shoelaces. And you leave

like a quarter inch of the shoelace left. And then fray that. Oh, geez. Fray that, right? Wow.

And then you just do a sewing needle down the middle of it. It's tight. I'm telling you what.

Did this in high school? Yeah. Oh, geez. Yeah. When the seniors taught us that like we were like

15 or whatever. Man, I thought I saw some shit. And you just, you would do, you would do all weekend

long. You would do all weekend long and fill your Altoids tins, right? Of these things. Be ready.

And it, I'm going to have to, I haven't done one since then. I want to do one again because

they'd stick in a dark, in a chalkboard. So there'd be like this one teacher.

I still feel bad for Miss Sanford. She had polio as a kid. So she had the, she had the thing.

You know, the, the walking thing. And so it took her a bit to get up and out. And then

once she did get turned around and braced to do on the chalkboard, you knew that it was going to be

a slow turnaround. So you, you and like three of your buddies could just pepper that.

But yeah, you catch. Did you blow them or you put, it was a rubber band. No, blow. Okay.

That thing, you got to me leave, you'll get good at it. You leave the right amount of

shoelace on the end, fray it and it's that thing will stick right in there and just put,

I mean, again, the mini blow dart, you put one of those in the back of the arm right there

or in the back of the neck of somebody. Oh man. Oh wow. And you don't, there's not a lot of needle

sticking out because it's the, the length of it or whatever. You've probably only got a quarter

inch of, of needle just enough to stick in there and it's hanging out the back. And it's not like

it bleeds. It's a little bit of needle, but man, the absolute most fun short of a potato gun.

I've never had more fun with just a little dart and you get, because you could be walking down

the hallway, right? And even maybe it wasn't even meant for you, but catch one. Oh, damn it.

We never had that. Oh yeah. No, I've never, never heard of that. Had to be terrified of taking

somebody's eye out. Like even at that age, when I was always like, what's the worst that could

happen? I knew that the worst could happen when you blind some kid and then it was going to be a

bad day. So you always tried to be, you know, definitely a risk. Yeah. I think we need to

bring them back. Yeah. Well, what, what, what is happening currently at your shop? We're going

to go there next. We've covered some great topics, important topics. Sure. Sure. Yeah. So

right now it's in the shop. So yeah, I mean, we're super small operation. You know, we're only

2,500 square feet. So I think you guys have more showroom space than, than we've got like full

shop. So, but yeah, nice clean shitter. We don't have that. But yeah, we've got, currently we've

got three projects that we're working on right now, full time. And then we've got one that's out

at paint that's coming back. Cool. So one of the projects that we're doing, you know, it's, we,

it's being, you know, done in secrecy. So we can't talk about that one. But yeah, we've got the,

the Challenger project there. We've got the Mustang fastback and then we've got the Mustang

coop. Yeah, that one that's coming back from paint that we're going to be doing some final assembly

on. So that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, this, that client's been awesome to work with. Super

great. I mean, he's very precise, like what he wanted. So he sent us like a full like PDF file

of like all these different images, like I like this, you know, like this style hood,

you know, things like that. So

were you planning on taking that car when it's done?

We haven't really decided yet. Kind of wanted to see, you know, as things progress, like when

we're going to finish it up. But I would love to talk him into doing like Columbus good guys with

it. I think it'd be really cool. A great car for that. Yeah, you know, I mean,

I don't really, you know, winning awards or whatever doesn't, it's not like a huge, you know,

thing for us, but like, I think just to debut it there and place to show it. Yeah, throw our,

our hat in the ring and, and, you know, stuff like that and, and, you know, show what we can do.

I think that would be a great, great spot to do that. And then, but yeah, we'll see what happens.

We're still waiting to hear back from the client body shop and how things are progressing there

and then get it worked into our schedule then too. And, you know, so yeah, that one. And then

so the 65 fastback there that's got all the, the chassis stuff. So that's one that I'm doing for

myself right now. Nice. And so that's kind of the night and weekends project. And

Oh my God, you put it, is that an LS motor or is it a Godzilla? No, it's a Godzilla.

I was going to say, because if you put an LS motor in it, Jesus.

You know, I was going to do a coyote until I heard the, the infamous George Poteet.

If a coyote, a coyote.

We're doing a Godzilla and that there's a 71 Mustang out there that we're

doing as a survivor build. It's getting a Godzilla. That's the, the marked for death

Mustang that's down there, right? Well, I didn't know that was a, that's in Mark's for death.

He's got like a, like a third generation. Yeah. He gets like totally crushed by like a

garbage truck and like a semi truck and somehow able to come out unscathed ponytail.

He can run down the road like this.

No, it's a, yeah, Godzilla. And then it's a bowler.

T 56 Magnum. Sweet. So good, good hardware in there.

How do you, how do you, nights and weekends on your own car? Where do you find that?

Yeah. I mean, when I had, when I had like more of a workforce, like helping out, I was, I was taking,

taking like a, you know, Fridays or like a day or two, like during the week, you know, like,

if I was working on it over the weekend, it wasn't, I wasn't quite finishing

what I wanted to get done. I'd be working on, on Monday morning, but

yeah, that's kind of, I think, I think we're going to have to rearrange the schedule there, but

what do you, what do you do? You, new guy comes in, you hire a guy,

you ask him to clicko those floor pans in and he just randomly places every clicko. How do you

deal with them out the door? You have to get the basics down. Like I harp on that so much. Like

if you can't cut a straight line, if you can't measure things out, make things symmetrical, like

so everything that you're, that we're doing, like on that one specifically, I guess we'll use

that as an example, like the, the chassis, the floor pans, everything like that. I measured out

just one side of the front floors, one side of the, of the rear floor, and then you just flip it,

you know, and if they're not lining up, then you've got some major issues, but if they're not

lining up and you have those major issues, like why do you have those major issues? Because now

it's all in the, in the chassis, you know, so like cross measuring, making sure things are plumb,

symmetrical level, like if it's not a hundred percent or within like an industry standard,

you know, dimension, which for me is like plus or minus a 32nd of an inch, which is way better than

what, you know, most metal manufacturing is like plus or minus one 16th, or that's like what we

taught in fab class, but it depends on where you're going. If you're getting a, you know,

trailer hitch welded up, like the guy that's, yeah, he's the final inspector, he's got,

he's got a big like, you know, sledgehammer at the end, and he's just banging shit out to,

you know, get it, get it to dimension. So, so yeah, just measure up one side,

build it, prove it, and then duplicate it for the other side. But yeah, it, for Clicos, those are

all going to get replaced with, you know, welds or, you know, the tunnel in the front will be

removable. So those are all, you know, those have to be, you know, within dimension. But

if you're going to drill a hole anyways, you've got to lay out some kind of line. Why not just lay

it out symmetrically? Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah, the finished product certainly reflects when you

take a little bit of time, a little bit of time, a little bit of effort, a little neater. Yeah. Well,

and like, you know, the, the people that I've read about and watched, you know, shows on TV,

you know, with and whether giving interviews and stuff like that, like, you know, Rad Rides by

Troy, and then I just saw one on YouTube of, of Alan Johnson, and they're like, we want everything,

like where if a client walked into the shop and they're looking at the progress right now, like,

it can be shown as is, like there's, we're not hiding anything, you know, so yeah, there's no

random Clicos anywhere, a bunch of random holes drilled and then circled, oh, we got to fill

this and fill that, you know, like you've got to have a purpose to everything that you're doing.

Did you have anything to do with that, the duster that Fast Freddy's did? Yeah. That's a cool car.

Yeah. Yep. So yeah, I build, I set that car up on the chassis and I, I sectioned the chassis to

narrow it up because it was originally built for that road runner that he was building the

hell runner. And so we put it together on that chassis table that, that my Mustang is on right

now. And then yeah, I built the floors and the firewall transmission, driveshaft tunnel, trunk

floor, stuff like that. And then, and then I got busy doing like the stuff that I was doing and I,

you know, subcontracted for a few other shops and doing some buildouts on some projects there.

And then Freddy called me back in because they had bought a power hammer from Woodward Fab.

And he had hired one of my former students and some other, you know, Fab guys that needed

some training on the power hammer. So he's like, like, we built like a foam buck of like this whole

wide body of the of the duster now. And, but we need somebody to like show us how to use the

equipment and everything like that. So I came out and, you know, broke everything down into

sections for the fender, the quarters and stuff like that. And then put together a little,

you know, I don't know, brochure book or something like that on how we're going to go about it.

And then, you know, figured out everybody's skill level. And, you know, the guys that had

the zero skill level, okay, put them on the easiest sections. The guys that have the better skill

level put them on the harder stuff. And none of those sections were easy because they're all

some tricky shapes there. Oh yeah, there are multiple body lines on those things. And they're

low crown, reverse curves. So they are about the hardest panels to make. But his guys came through

like his one one guy that's his does his upholstery and does a lot of his final assembly and stuff.

And he had like a background in doing like some metal stamping and stuff like that. Like,

you know, I put him on like some medium stuff on the quarters. I'm like, we're gonna

wait on the on the front fenders. Yeah, that that dude. I'm like, we're gonna wait on the front

fenders, you know, and we'll see how the quarters go. And so he got his section done and just went

ahead and start building shit on the on the front fenders, like the hardest section. And I'm like,

holy shit. All right, well, you graduated. I don't need to show you anything more. Like,

you can help me, you know, like show the other guys. So this is all on a woodward fab hammer.

Yeah. Okay, so there's a point for the woodward fab hammer. So this is the large woodward fab

hammer, which you'll see the large metal master hammer. I think Freddy's got the only one in

the country of the large one, because I don't know if there's some copyright infringements or what.

So yeah, I don't want to know. I can't say there's an asterisk on that one. So yeah, yeah,

this thing was modeled after like a model, correct? There's a model car that from the

70s that was really bitching. Yeah, it's mad Max dirt. It's mean looking. It's fucking definitely

tough looking. It's cool. Yeah. Yeah, they did a great job on it.

Yep, we reached the point that it's standard questions time standard questions. It's the

best part. This is everybody's favorite standard questions fell short last night on the we didn't

fell short. We just yeah, we weren't hours long. I never ain't the guests weren't exactly in a head

space where they were still prepared great. Great. Great. Listen, people absolutely should go back

and listen to it. But yes, it's a good group of guys that one.

It's a record book. I've never I've never in the 330 whatever these been been like,

all right, you know what? This has been fucking real. We probably should just call it right now.

And that was buddy. He did. Yeah. Buddy Hill was like, I'm done. It's over with. I'm done.

We were having a great time. There was no problems. It was just like,

it's just now we're just hanging out, right? You know, we're not getting any answers.

Sure. Fun time though. First and foremost, everybody's favorite standard questions.

Pretty good little Wisconsin tacos that we did.

Let's first we're going to go to we'll go to car first. So you what year did you graduate high

school? 2001. Okay. This is the air that no good. It's the same area. It's like two years,

three years off your head. Yeah, what I graduated in 97. Okay, that was that was my oldest brother.

It was 97 year old one. Okay. 99. 99. Good year. Last one. You your first vehicle was it a gift

or did you purchase it? It was the old family car hand me to hand me down. Yep. Dad's car, mom's car.

Sister's car, brother's car. It was kind of both. But I think more so my mom's, I guess,

because my dad had like a company vehicle. Okay. This was tooth. This was 98 that you got your

driver's license. Yes. Okay. Mom's car. How many how many brothers and sisters do you have? I have

two older brothers, two older brothers. Key bit of information. Families from the Euclair area or

was this down? You said you were in Woodstock. Yeah. So, so I got my license in Woodstock.

He already told you Euclair. You're pronouncing it wrong. I learned that today. Sorry to

everybody calls it Euclair or Euclair. So, I live in a Liva outside of Euclair. Okay.

Big battle leave is like 400 people. But you this was in when you get your license,

you were in Woodstock, right? I was in Woodstock. Yep. George H. Ryan DMV. Yeah, it's close to that.

Not too far from here. Two older brothers.

That era.

I'm going to go with a Midwest selection from that that era.

Tahoe. Now, if you look back, a lot of people forget this era of the four door blazer.

Which was very small. S10 blazer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. S10 blazer, but like towards the tail end of

its S10 ish, you know, you're like late 90s, you know, late 90s. The rounded one. Yeah. Not the

square body. Yep. Rounded S10 blazer. And as the four door, they optioned about later on to the

envoy, you know, on the trailblazer. The trailblazer. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking of. You're

thinking of the trailblazer, not the blazer. Yes. I'm thinking of the, here's the trailblazer was

that, that was new in late 90s. Great call on the trailblazer. Yes. It's the trailblazer. That's

where I'm at. Right. Trailblazer four door. That was in a similar wheelhouse. I was going to take

a little poll from our era and go with the first gen Ford Explorer. First gen or first

gen square. The rounded one is, okay, then the second gen. Second gen. Second gen. Eddie Bauer.

I don't know who's Eddie Bauer. I'm going Eddie Bauer. That's a pretty good poll.

Green with the, with the tan. Yeah. I'd have gone maroon if it wasn't with you on the expo.

Yes. Okay. It was an SUV. Those cars have gone from the face of the earth. No,

the trailblazer is really good call. I'm feeling strong about the, the, the, the, uh, Explorer.

Yeah. Yeah. Not even close. No. 1990 Honda Accord four door. Oh,

shit. Wow. I got too comfortable. Feel like it was close to home. I was going to go Maxima.

I wasn't going to need some Maxima, but when he said two older brothers, it threw me off

because you're talking about, you got to haul around kids, right? So I was going with the bigger.

No, we had that. We took it down to Florida, I think twice, you know,

throw three deep in the back, three deep in the back. Worst experience traveling ever.

I'll bet no fights on that one. I would rather circumnavigate the globe in economy class on

I'm sure it was. Frontiers. I'm sure it was the ride in the back seat of a Honda Accord down to

fucking Florida ever again. I'm sure your parents weren't exactly having the time of

their fucking lives either in the front. Stop touching him. My dad drove like nonstop through

the middle of the night. Just get there. Yep. Fucking get there. What age were you and your

brothers at that point? Oh, Jesus. Just imagine what that car smelled like. I think the last

time we did it, I think I was like in fifth grade. So my other brother was in,

he was in seventh grade and my oldest brother was a freshman in high school. That'd be a we

have Florida at home situation. We did a Florida drive with a square body suburban. It was the last

year the square body suburban 91 with a U-Haul trailer with the Chrysler Sebring convertible

on the trailer. That's a lot of iron. I guess Chrysler Sebring. What was this infatuation

with these convertible Chrysler products? I didn't realize there was a Sebring. I didn't

realize there was a Sebring in there too. Gold package. No, it was white with the tan top. Those

Lebarons were in Northern Illinois in the late 90s, early 2000s. Everybody had one. Oh, yeah.

Thunderbird was there in there too, right? Yeah. What's the deal with these? My mom had the Thunderbird.

Infatuation with these. I don't think it was me. Those were all on my dad's side. I know what you

told over in somewhere in Tennessee for potential DUI because the fucking tongue weight on that

trailer and I missed the trailer. The cop pulls, I'm 16. I just got my license and he pulls me.

He made me get out of the car. My whole family is in the car. Do you remember that? Yeah. He's

like, good news is I don't smell any alcohol in your breath. I'm like, fuck. With my family. Yeah.

This thing needs ball joints. Ground effects on the suburban? No, it was two wheel drive.

But just like the silver with the blue two tone. How was four wheel drive? No, it was two wheel.

Two wheel drive. You sure? Yeah. 100%. The old blue is a four by four. This was the.

The old blue was eight lug, wasn't it? Would have been. Yeah, this was two wheel drive.

Two wheel drive because I rocked it for a little bit early on and I was always trying to.

I was looking at lift in it. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So when we. Do you ever get go around the corner and get that thing lifted up with

the light on the right? I know what you're talking about.

You know what it would do. Anybody has ever driven one of those and knows exactly what it'll do.

There's no fear of it like. That's not going over. No, that's not going out. No, it's just

you just got to get it offloaded enough to haze it.

No. So when we landed in Woodstock, Illinois, that Honda Accord got designated for me and my

brothers and then my parents went and got like a brand new, said Dodge Grand Caravan at Joe Gentile

in Barrington. Is he still around? Or that dealership? That feels like the woods. Not around.

Joe Gentile sounds like he'd get arrested. Oh, yeah. He was like this tall and smoked a cigar.

I think that was twice as long as him. Yeah. Joe Gentile. Next up. All right. We were way off

on the on the on the car. It's 100 percent. Just I got I got too cocky, too confident with the midwest.

Yeah. I got I got thrown off by the kids. I didn't realize anybody would haul three kids in the

back of an accord all the way down to Florida. All right. Next. That's a character. Most most

memorable law enforcement interaction story. God. All right. Yep. So

while Freddie and I were working at MCR together, muscle car restorations together.

Jumped on the snow machines.

No, we never called them snow machines. That's a brandy. That's that's a little bit

north. Yeah. But and then so working with that guy that that helped me chop the Lincoln Zephyr,

we met this other friend of ours who he was big into traditional hot rods. He was building

Model A. So we got to be really good friends with him. And then he introduced us to another one of

his like high school friends who was building a 49 Merck that wanted it chopped. I'm like,

hey, I can I can chop that for you. So like, we're like, we should just like pool our resources

together and rent a shop. So we rented a shop down on Water Street in Eau Claire, which is just off

of the campus. And so Water Street slash the Street of Dreams, they call it, it's just lined

with fucking bars, you know, from one end to the other, just perfect place for people in their

early 20s and underage to go and just make a fool of themselves. So we had a shop on Water

Street for our hot rod shop. And we had like so we had that Merck down there. We had my 54.

We had my friend, Chad Lee, his Model A was down there. He had shop door up lights on drinking

PBRs. Yep. Yep. I landed chicks pulling me off the streets. Yep. Yep. Yep. Playing some,

you know, punk music and, you know, yeah, Operation Ivy rancid, like social distortion,

like all that shit. New album coming up. Yep. Social D's got a new album. You see that? No. Yeah,

they just they just hung it out there. I saw it on Spotify. Come new album coming up. Man. Keep

it up. All right. Yeah. I'm still a fan. So yeah. And then we had a front engine dragster

down there too that we didn't know what to do with it. So we kind of like put it up against the

wall like it was climbing the wall and ratchet it down. And so I was working on my car in there,

my 54. And I was doing final assembly on it. And I had it running, wasn't quite driving.

I hadn't had it on the road yet. And we would have like notorious like parties down there.

All the old time hot rod guys would start coming down there. So Gordy that helped me chop the

tops. You know, we got introduced to his whole friend group. So they just they would come down

Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights. And like our front parking lot would just be fucking lined

with living lives. It was just it was awesome. And they're like, this reminds us of like the

70s. Like this is like American graffiti, you know, kind of stuff. And so yeah, like they would

come down, you know, and and it was it was a blast. And so we were down there. I think this was

like a Friday or Saturday night and and pre party at the shop, go down to, you know, the street of

dreams, drink at the bar bar clothes. All right, we're going to have after bar at the shop.

And we had a full horseshoe shaped bar in there that we got out of the VFW in, you know, Claire,

and because we VFW references the guy that we bought the the front engine dragster from or no,

we sold him the front engine dragster, but he was an old hot rod from back in like the 60s. And so

he had a transmission shop in town. And he's like, he was kind of like the the manager overseer of

the VFW or one of the VFWs. He's like, we're remodeling, we're getting rid of this bar. Do

you guys want it? Fuck yeah, we'll take it. So we had that in there. And so anyways,

we come back from from bar clothes. It's like 233 o'clock in the morning, we're having an after

bar. And so somebody is like telling me like, Hey, your car is running right now, you got brand new

tires on there. Get in your car and do do a brake stand burnout. All right, it sounds great. You know,

no judgment. And that's so Freddie's waiting for a reason. Yeah, Freddie's. Freddie's in the back

room. He had just finished like going through his motorcycle. So he fucking hops on that thing,

puts it into a corner. And we're both doing break stands with this thing. And there's a smoke

billowing out of the shop. And it's going out on the water street, the winds carrying it's out on

the water street. Next thing I know, because my my car is like right facing out towards the water

street. Next thing I know, here comes a fucking cop car just blazing in there like as fast as

possible, lights on spotlights on like, you know, you can see him scanning through the smoke.

And he hops out of his squad car. And he just starts shouting out who lives here, who lives here

your mom. And I'm like, Oh, my fucking god. It'll be you. I've got a I've got a beer in my hand,

and I'm in my car. And it's running. And I'm like, this thing's not fucking license. It's not insured

like fucking trouble stuck. I'm I'm I'm fucking screwed. So like somebody runs back to the back

room tells Freddie like, Hey, like knock it off. The cops are here. So like as you know, as things

are starting to like progress, like the smoke's coming out, this guy's fucking coming in. He's

coming in hot this cop and he's got his flashlight. And as soon as like the smoke breaks and I can

can make a visual on him, I'm like, Oh, fuck, it's a problem. I know I know who this guy is. Oh,

okay. So time out little character developments here, little jump cut like Quentin Tarantino jump

cut. He's always good. So we've had a history. I realized this. I'm like, I know who this guy

the worst one. So this happened in like the late spring, you know, nice weather out.

So going back into the fall was like the the homecoming for the university. And so they've

got you know, the parade down Water Street and this and that it's called the doll and pet parade

in in the right away in the mornings for like all the kids and shit, you know, the later stuff

happens for the college kids. So so this is like on a Saturday back in the fall. And I'm trying to

get down to the shop to like work on my car because I've I've got like a unabomber apartment

downtown. I don't hang around, you know, this is all pre kind of social media, you know, smartphones,

you know, this is like Ring Brothers flip phone era. Oh, yeah. You know, so this is like yesterday.

Yeah. And so like, I'm trying to get down to the shop and they got fucking all these,

you know, side streets are like cordoned off, they're like blocked off. So

get out and move the fucking barricade, you know, like this isn't the road that the parade comes

down. Why is this blocked up? So I move a barricade and I get around. And then I come to this one

and I can like I got to take this small right hand turn and there's the alley to get into the

back of the shop. And but they've got like a full fortress set up. And I'm stuck there. And here

are these two cops on bicycles. And one guy comes over and he's like, you can't come through here.

I'm like, yeah, I know. But like I'm trying to get like trying to get into work here. You know,

this is my shop. And so like I'm talking to this guy and this other bike cop comes like pedaling

up, you know, I hear the ding, ding, you know, bell. Yeah. Yeah. Let me know that he's coming.

And he's just like, well, why don't you fucking move the barricades? Like you did the rest of the

ones. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, well, you obviously had to move

the barricades in order to get in here. I can do it again. And so I'm like trying to figure out

what this dude's deal is. I you know, I don't know if he's all pissed off inside because he's on

like a bicycle, third road detail, you know, he's not on the main, he's not on the like the upfront

action at the Dollar Pet Parade on Water Street. He's like back like two, two blocks, you know,

like handling a barricade, you know, and so he's all like worked up about that. And so that's who

I recognize. Like, and so yeah, we had gotten into a little bit of a verbal tradition. Yeah. He

did discussion about about me being able to get in there. So like, I recognize that guy like right

away. Yep. That's the guy that's barking orders right now out in front of the smoke. See, you got

yourself a car. Yeah, got off that bike, huh? Yeah, good for you, buddy. And he's solo. And I'm

just like, Jesus Christ, this isn't going to go well. And so I'm stuffing like the can of beer

underneath the driver's seat. And I get out like right away because I don't want him to get into

the vehicle. And and like I take him outside. I'm like, Hey, hey, hey, like, you know, let's you

because the guy's like, you know, who lives here? And he's like, Nobody lives here, man. This is a

shop, man. And and he said something else about like, you know, well, I don't know, I could haul

all you guys in or something like that. And and he's like, Well, you can't do that. Like, or you

can't come in here. This isn't a this is a private residence or something like that. He's like, Oh,

I think I know the law better than you. And so I'm like taking this guy out and because all these

other people are like cocking off to him and they're talking about running. I'm like, Don't

fucking go anywhere. Don't run anywhere. And so I take the guy outside and and I'm like calming

him down. He didn't recognize me, thankfully. And I'm like, All right, like, he's like, Well,

I'm, I'm, I'm either taking you to jail or I'm writing you a ticket. I'm like, Well, I'll take

the ticket. I don't want to go to jail. And he's, Well, you, you seem like you're good and sober.

And, you know, like the rest of these guys seem like they're, they're, they're pretty agitated.

And they've been out drinking and everything. I'm like, Yeah, they have, they have, I'm,

I'm listening to reason here. Let's, you know, I'll just take the ticket. You know, so I was able

to calm him down. He gave me a ticket for it was like disorderly conduct or something like that.

It was a hundred ninety eight sixty. I still know the value of it. Go on the driving record.

Or is that just no, we all just doled out money. Yeah, everybody else that was down there already

had like the money together. They're like, Oh, this is the most entertaining thing we've seen

all night. So that was good call though. Like you could, you should have in that situation,

pull a shoe off or something and try to wedge it into the gas pedal. However you help me,

Oh my God, this thing is stuck. It's starting to burn out in the Challenger.

Throttle stuck. Foot slipped off the clutch and then just luckily had like mud on the side of my

shoes and just like the side of my shoe all over the clutch pedal. I'm like, Look, it's filthy.

Got off. It happens. Oh man. All right. Next up, old faithful favorite car movie.

God, there's so many good ones. I feel like you're American graffiti guy. There's just something

that I do like American graffiti. It's a great movie. I like bullet.

Big fan of bullets. Steve McQueen, King of Cool.

Rebel without a cause. James Dean, the Merc. Fantastic movie. Dennis Hopper, great cameo in that.

I like Ford versus Ferrari. I would say that's probably one of the best car movies to come around

in many decades. But I would have to say from my youth, like what made me like recognize cars would

have to be dazed and confused. Hell yeah. Yeah, that's the one. I like, I really like Days of

Thunder. Awesome movie. Those are my two. But considering the fact that they're both Tony

Scott movies and Top Gun came before Days of Thunder and that. I saw Top Gun in a theater.

Did you? Yeah. I saw Days of Thunder in the theater. Oh, really? Something. I didn't. I didn't.

I saw, yeah, Top Gun in the theater. Days of Thunder. I remember coming back. I remember

seeing the signs. I saw Rocky V in the theaters. Yeah. Dear Brook Mall. I think you were one of the

only people. Did you know the end of Rocky V? Stallone wrote that where he was going to run

up the steps and die. Did he really? Up at the top. Yep. Thank God he didn't go with that script.

Because we've got another century of just goodness. Well, now you've got. He wouldn't

die in real life. It would have ended this series. You've got the whole. What came after

five that was worth watching. It was worth watching. This is the best speech in the history.

It is the worst movie. Rocky Balboa. Josh, just stop. Everybody knows that.

Days and Confused. Let's go back to Days and Confused. O'Banion's Duster. Woodford's 70 Chevelle.

Or Pickford's 70 GTO judge. If you could have one. Which one is it? Which one is it? And what would

you do to it? Well, if I got them after the movie, I'd know that I'd have to put in a clutch

into O'Banion's car. That clutch burn out. Toast at that thing. Jesus. Good call. Good call.

I mean, talk about a low budget movie that anyone were able to show the guys how to drive those

cars. But O'Banion is like he's a character. Yeah. Pickford. Yeah. I mean, well, no, let's see.

Yeah. He had the judge. Yeah. That thing was pretty badass with the his and hers shifter in it.

I'd have to go with the judge. The judge would be that's mine too. Yeah. The judge was the I mean,

Wooderson's car is nasty. It's right behind us. Yeah. But the judge that all day long. The judge

was cool. Yeah. The opening scene, dude, with Aerosmith, Sweet Emotions. That's probably rolling

in, dude. Probably the best opening to any car movie, I would say. Hands down. Yeah. Two lane

black tops a close second. If you ever thunder. Come on. Well, yeah. If you wanted to, if you ever

wanted to see that with surround sound and then just watch the first minute of two lane black

top and then you don't have to watch the rest. I can over the hands. I'm over the pants under the

Yeah. What surround sound days of thunder. Oh, you have an experience infinity,

infinity, new brand new infinity speakers and the parents are out. Not my house. This is a girlfriend's

house. Yeah. And yeah. Laser discs, something else. Days of Thunder is a that's a mega movie.

I love. I watch Days of Thunder at least once a year, if not more. Yeah. It's that and Tombstone

are on heavy rotation. Yeah. Fantastic. Tombstone I reserve for special. I don't want to overdo it.

Oh, yeah, I can. Hey, that's a good flick. Yeah. I'll watch. I'll watch Days of Thunder way more

than Top Gun and I like Top Gun. But. Tombstone, you want quick and the dead over

with the Gene Hackman. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's another good cowboy flick. I like

the era. Yeah. I like another Gene Hackman and Clint Eastwood. I like

unforgiven unforgiven. Yeah. Great movie. It's probably one of the best westerns that's been

made in like our generation. That's a great one. And what's it's got? Clint Eastwood and

Morgan Freeman. Yep. The that dynamic through the thing is fucking amazing. Great movie.

Yep. Gene Hackman plays a rare, like rare character for him in that.

He played such a hard ass in that movie. Yeah. Kind of the same character in like Crimson Tide

with Denzel. Yeah. Fucking Denzel. Denzel's the man. Did you ever watch Deadwood? Oh, yeah.

Great. That's great. Great show. Shit. That's good. They should have kept that one going. Yeah.

What is it about westerns, though, like western movies for something that's so popular

that they just can't do it? Like it always presents as such a low budget film. Any new western?

Like what was the last? I mean, I don't know. The hateful eight was amazing. That's not recent.

You know, you're 10 years ago, probably. No. Well, when's the when's the last western?

What's the reference one that you're talking about? Well, all of them like think of there's

westerns that come out dozens of them every year and they're all like these ridiculous.

You'll see some decent actors in them and they're like they appear as the most low budget,

cheesy ass movies. And there's only like once every decade one comes out that hits, you know.

Yeah. But it's like an easy topic to about one from our generation. Young guns. Young guns,

Emilio. Young guns, too. Yeah. What's better? I don't really remember. Young guns was good.

I saw young guns, too, in the theater. Really? Yep. Young guns. One was a that's a banger. It was a

Charlie's brother, right? Well, Charlie was in the first one. He was in the first one. I liked

I like young guns. Yep. I remember I was young, young. Oh, yeah. Watching that. Yeah. And I think

that came out and like my dad loved it. 89. He was yeah. 88, 89, something like that. Yep.

How I'm going down movies. Next up, the newest edition. It's probably our best edition. Best

edition. Any, any car? What car would you have built? Who would build it? No budget.

Don't just please don't say Troy.

Done. I'm done with it. Other than no budget disqualifies him. Yeah. Well, right. Yeah. Troy

can break no budget. He's the only guy that can break the no budget. Troy has since retired. I think

I'm definitely going to put together a dream team. Okay. This one. But I like oddball cars,

you know, with the the Graham and the Corvair. But now everybody, everybody and their mothers

are doing Corvair's now. Yeah. We talked a lot about it. Fieros last night. Fieros. Yeah.

That could be cool. So consider it. That could be cool. All right. But I'm going to go even

further outside the box and that I'm going to go 1990 Chevy Beretta. Oh, you're fucking speaking

my language. Finally, somebody want to hear with some fucking taste. Hell yeah. Tell me about this

build. All right. Now I'm excited. So here's hang on, Melinda, which hair salon do you work at?

Oh, yeah. Okay. So I'm picturing her right now. Here's the dream team. I'm going to get

Andreas Winnevold designer to design exterior. Yeah. But I also want to have Sean Smith to be

a designer to help out with exterior and do interior. Can you make it better than the original?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It is a good car. This is something we actually we're legitimate going to be pitching

in. What's this going to take to make happen? So I'm going to have Rob Ida be the chief engineer

because I want to I want to gullwing it. Yes. So it's going to be you guys are going to do the

chassis and it's going to be based on a C8 because I want to do mid engine. Okay.

And a Beretta. It's a trunk car. It can be done. It can be done. It's going to be done. Just remove

the back. Anything's possible with no budget. Yeah. Yeah. Keeping that red and tear that fuzzy

red interior some spin on it. So I love like what you guys did on that grand national down there

with the interior gray in that braid off that original shit but like made it you know just

elevated it. What do we got to do to make this happen? Well, let's keep going. We're not done yet.

We're not done yet. We got to get the interior. There's there's more. There's wheels. There's we

got to build this whole car. So I think HRE wheels probably have

you know machining done you know maybe EVOD or you know ring brothers as well like get involved

with that stuff. And I would like to have Fab wise

BBT Fab. So Troy Gudgel. Yeah. Right. His mirrors already look like a Beretta mirror. So that fit

right in Troy light and and and Troy heavy but but maybe maybe we could bypass Troy heavy and

just go direct to I think Troy Troy heavy will just come in and pulse back over Troy lights welds.

Yes. That's what that's his sole job. He'll just come in and I'll just pulse back.

So you said C8 and transaxle. What's the power but the motor you're like the

we stick with that. What do they call that? You're going to do v6.

You're going to get you're going to have to get the space. I mean you think about center line of

the wheel and where that thing is going to be at. Think about center line of the rear wheel to

where the back of the front seat is. Yeah. But you so we're ditching the back seats gone.

Oh yeah. But that's not even the problem. He's just got distance to the where that car was

maybe front pull one up. Let's look at it because that car was maybe front heavy.

Oh it was way front heavy. Yeah. But you're going to do what you're going to do cap forward.

You're going to do a little no I don't think you could probably put the doors were long. I think

you could put some meat in like the quarter window area. Maybe let's take let's take a look at one.

Let's see a side profile. What are you rethinking 92.

Yeah. 90. 92. They did a Z. Z. 26. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. 24. 26. 26. And I like the Cavalier

with the 24. So they had like a blue with a purple Z. Yeah. Z. 26. I like that. Oh yeah.

Look at that. The sunroof. Oh yeah. That was a pace car. Proportions are good dude.

That's the highest end. That's the GTZ. That's the that's the shit. It doesn't get any ground

effects and everything. You could shrink. You could probably shrink up. You could push the

quarter window back. Drag the wheel base back a little bit. It's short. The quarter window

area is decent but behind behind the front door. You could behind the back of the door.

You could put some there. You put a little there. You could extend the back.

What's hanging over behind the wheel. Kind of drag that out. I don't know. That's what makes it.

It's what makes it what it is. I wouldn't touch the door. You could like the door looks good

and you're right. That's got it. It's already got BBT mirrors.

Go to that black one. That's a good looking whip. Oh with the red bowtie badge. Oh yeah.

There's a lot of Camaro. There's a lot of Camaro in the front of that. I've never noticed until

that particular picture. That is a hot car. It is. I mean I would just daily it as is. I would.

There was one that came up local. Yeah. The one they had a yellow one at Volo Auto Museum for

$90,000. That was like 60. Yeah. It was insane. Yeah. It was 1800 miles or something stupid.

The Krasny's. Fucking Keith Krasny. What? Legendary Deerfield family. Buddy of mine I grew up with.

They had a Beretta that went through like six generations of Krasny's and then got handed

down to get another buddy. Matt Oster drove it. Car had like fucking 975,000 miles on it.

It just bulletproof machine. That's pretty good looking. I mean I would even do like a paint scheme

like the City Chevrolet, you know, the multi black badging would be cool.

I'm going to start seeing some engineering conceptions on this. I don't think a V8 fits.

I think this is good enough and we recently had Sean Smith on the podcast. I wonder if Sean Smith

would be willing to sketch something up for us. That would be badass. Just for the podcast.

Just a line drawing. Yeah. We need to see what a Beretta could look like.

He's been called out now. Yeah. Sean, if you're listening, we're expecting

something. Concepts on the Beretta. Yeah. Give us like a silhouette, something.

And Rob Ida, if you're listening, we need that engineering figured out from the goal wings.

I don't see the goal wing. I think anything's possible with it. It's a blank canvas this car.

Yeah. I don't want Lambo door before I'd goal wing it. But

either that or what about I think I'd go for GT door. GT. Yeah. Yeah.

I kind of bring the roof in. You're giving it sure. You're giving it the goal wing look.

Yeah. Without hinging the door that way. Gotcha. Yeah. Given the right height because you could afford

to compromise. I'm willing to. Yep. If you could bring the belt line up to sort of match the windshield

line. I don't know. I think you're gonna hear me out. Let's hear me out. Like all these are great

ideas. That thing's coming down, right? You're gonna have to fuck with the back a little bit.

We're still we're stuck on the mid engine, right? Yeah. But Targa. Targa makes sense. Targa,

where you can then you can start seeing that engine back in the back. Click on the red one,

the bottom left. That shows you. Yeah. Look how big the glass we've got to bring. It's got to bring

that lineup. Yes. Even with the top of the trunk. You can find the real base. Yes. Yeah.

Bring that up and then hammer. Yeah. I'm still I'm still saying like we're centerline and then

where like where the front of that C8. Yeah. We'll put a V drive in accessory drive is. I think

you're going to have to go. You're going to go exotic v6 or something like that, which is fine.

It fits the era. How about a transverse? The v6 helps. I wish, you know, the EcoBoost,

Ford's EcoBoost would have been great if Chevy had a comparable load here, but I don't know what

there are those. We can still do front engine where this is in the infancy. No,

but I like where you're at on the transaxle. Yeah. I think you do that v6, that six cylinder

LS thing. Have you seen that guys have been playing with? No. Been at PRI. Yeah. No shit.

Yeah. There's a six and then four. Four is the modus. The modus one that they didn't. Oh, there's

the half modus is a v4. And their sprint car company was doing them as a inline for. Oh,

I didn't know the inline for. Yeah, they're just taking one ahead. Yes. And the left half of the

block, but you still have the length. Yeah, the length still there. Put it sideways. But yeah,

I go with the transaxle. You have to do a different. Yeah. Different. I think we used to that car had

such a sound about it. Like the initials. Start up holes in the muffler. Yeah. They had like this

high idle. Remember them? Like that? Yeah, I know exactly. I know. I know the shifter. I know. Yeah.

Do you handle? Oh, that's a good poll, dude. Really good. That's the first time I think you

gained serious fans on this one. Yeah. Yeah. Now we're doing something. Let's let's make it happen.

Yep. There's going to be, I'm telling you, this will be the, this will be the time that a customer

is listening like, Hey, I heard you guys talking about that build up. Let's gather the team. Let's

for those guys. So I had a chance to meet Joe from Detroit metal, metal shaping out last weekend

at that was those dudes. That's all theirs. Oh, is it? Well, we didn't have anything to do with

that. I've been, no, I've been following for it. I've been following those guys. That's

holy shit, dude. That's doing it. That's very impressive school. But and then the one that

you guys are doing for for Andy. Yeah, it is wild. Yeah. You you guys don't have that here.

Just left. Yeah. And he just took it. He's got it in his shop. He's he's rocking and making progress

on it. Yeah. He's rocking and rolling. Yeah. That guy is unbelievable. I remember seeing him on

you guys remember the show rides, of course, on TLC. He was a choice. One of the best

car shows ever. But there was no drama. So it didn't didn't make it too long. Yeah.

But that's where they did Rogan's. Yeah, the Cuda on there. And then, yeah,

down at Troy's. Yeah, they had Andy and then and and then, yep, Levi. Yep.

So I wonder why Bud doesn't just fucking get off his ass and bring that show back.

I don't know. I'd love to see it at least on like a streaming platform where we could watch like

somebody's gonna fund it. Somebody's gonna fund it. Have you talked to Bud about why the fuck

hasn't Bud done the podcast? He's supposed to have done it probably five times. Bud's a busy man.

We probably have to go out to his place and I'm sure probably have to fly out there. And

yeah, Bud Bruttsman produced it pretty tight with him. He's a good dude. He does the battle

of the builders now. Oh, nice. And produces that. Okay. But I yeah, I wonder why, obviously, for

there's, you know, the production of like everybody wants to fucking drama crap. And there's the same

recipe that goes over and over again. But I feel like that would do so well to bring it bring it

back. Perfect for Netflix. Yeah, great deal for Netflix. That's really chef's table style and do

that for rides. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. There's what car show? Why is that get wildly

off track from this awesome Beretta build? But what car shows are there that are on the street

like street Netflix, specifically Netflix and prime? Is there anything that's

any different than sort of the standard recipe that's landing on those two? I don't search car

stuff on I'll be honest. I don't know what's on there. It would land on you would think I don't

think anybody's got the patience to stay in the saddle for the year or two before you can even

go to air with the show. So you gotta follow a build along for that entire length of time. And

if you're doing multiple builds, the ones so like I remember watching American hot rod, which when

that first came out was it was a great show. And it would take them like two or three episodes to

like build a car. And they're actually like showing how to build the car, you know, but then as the

seasons progressed, it was like, stay tuned for next week. See who doesn't make it, you know,

and they started bringing in characters, you know, they brought in Lee, Lee, Blue Bear.

I like the hilarious Lee Roy. That was a great era. But you could do it with

without, I think, capturing a full start to finish. There's enough craftsmanship out there. I

think I agree. Somebody could curate like a good show. Yeah, you know, I think you do it like

chef's table where you can tell the story of why and I mean, it's shot well and done well.

Somebody got to pay for it. I mean, that's the thing. You gotta somebody's got to pay for it.

You got to pitch it well enough and somebody's got to pay for it. And then it goes speaking of

paying for it. The Beretta's happening. Beretta's happening. Beretta's happening. A lot of good

ideas. But as I'm looking at the side profile of the car, what, what are we doing with the

sheet metal in the car? How are we altering the body of that car? What's the vision?

Wide body. So fenders. Box players are pro street like pro street vision. What's the

what's now is box like we're we're doing like full on. Like what you guys did with like the

rampage road rage, like something like that. Yeah, big ass. Yeah, I want to see yeah, like

minimum three 15s all four corners. Yeah, I would like to see like a balance like that. So

that it's more of that race car kind of style look to it. Hell yeah. That fourth gen I sent you

the other day. That was a pretty damn cool. Phil didn't like like reply about it.

These these exchanges are great. Like Phil, there's so many cool AI rendering. So he sends me

this rendering that was actually pretty damn cool. It's a fourth gen Camaro that had some box flares

on it. Oh, cool. And he said this would be a great like production car. So this late night,

I think this was after the podcast. I don't know if you read this, you're not going to get any more

fans. I go ahead and read it. You go ahead and read it. Looks cool. Pretty sure most of the guys

who own those are still servers at the same restaurant they worked at when they bought the car

slightly used. Not sure the money's there, but it does look cool. Oh, that's a great comment

in the Oh, Charlie's parking lot. You know what I'm talking about? 100% no great pull. So the Beretta,

there's been a lot of customers I know that have ponied up for builds on on a lot of the

and a lot of the car shows, whether it be a kindig, a bitch and rides. There's there's some

customers that like oddball. Well, they like oddball and they like being a part of the publicity

and the process of building something that's heavily marketed and heavily televised. Yeah.

Dude, I think we could get behind this if if anybody's listening that wants to

pool all these people together. Yeah, and we're and build a Beretta. We're we're not far apart.

Apart. We're four and a half hours away. It could work so easy. It could work easily work. Yeah.

Somebody's just got to pay for it. That's everything. Same thing with rides.

Yep. Somebody has the balls enough to do YouTube series. Let's go. Somebody fucking needs to pony

up. Oh, yeah, it could be. Take it out to SEMA. Take it out to street machine of the year. Like

if we're if you're going if you're showing up for street machine of the year with something like

that, fuck, go into a show. Let's just drive it. Go to dinner. Take it to road America. Hell yeah.

Take it to Saburo.

That's what I'm talking about. Get you an orange Julius. Maybe a missus fields cookie.

See what new super Nintendo games have dropped.

Anybody that is willing to pony up to bring the super team together is going to be a legend

a legendary customer. I wouldn't be like something. Do you think Saxon's cool enough to ride that?

No, Saxon's cool, but not that cool. He's not that cool. No, I think he's he probably needs to open

about seven or eight hundred more locations before he's ready for that type of build. I'm telling

you what the the misty that drove that with, you know, talking about that hair that LA looks.

Oh, man. Spray tan.

That's everybody laughs and look at the fresh ass pair of Keds. Yes. What's the gene shorts hemmed?

Scott Scott. What's his name? That does all the cool ass pro street 80s 90s stuff. Scott Sullivan.

Scott Sullivan did. He did a Beretta back in the day. Did he Google it?

It's this is not a joke. Like this car has potential.

Oh, I sent you another one. It was a grandam.

There it is on the left. Oh, yeah, the thing was a thing was way right. Yeah.

Yeah, that's fucking awesome. But at least I mean, it shows you just bringing the car down.

You got to chop the shit out of the car and work with the roof line and stuff. But yeah,

because that can be done. Yeah, there is some but look at the lower weeks that need to be.

Yeah, look at the lower half of the body. The cars got it's got some good lines there. It's got some

great lines, some great potential. Those cars always look tough as shit. And they were pro

stock cars, a lot of pro stock cars. Yeah. They had arrow. I mean, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

there's that rear wheel that rear wheelbase wants to go back. It does, which helps it wants to go

back to here, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. At least three three inches you could you could gain there easily.

You might be able to if you could if you could get somebody to build CVs,

you might be able to get that thing back. We can. We did the Pantera. We fudged those quite a bit.

There's some wiggle room there. That thing might this is a call to action.

Yep. Something that one company was doing almost like portals that came off the Transaxle.

Yeah, you could do that too. Call to action.

Trent, it's been amazing. It's been a really good time. Love it. We can go through stories. We can

hear about the shop. We can hear about everything and then we can just hang out. That's makes it

all that much more fun. And we've built probably what will go down in history as the greatest

vehicle of all time. I think so. You're in the number one spot by far for builds for dream builds.

Awesome. It's a tough match. You win there. Appreciate it, guys. We'll see you again next week.

Yep. Thank you. You're going to say something? No, I'm here. Check you later. You screwed it all.

About this episode

Trent Lewis of Midwest Metalworks shares his winding path from art school burnout to welding, metal shaping, and eventually running his own shop in west-central Wisconsin. He talks about building hot rods from scratch, mentoring and hiring in a one-man operation, and why he prefers TIG and full-panel fabrication over patchwork. Big highlights include his work on a 1938 Ford “Gram” project headed to Detroit Autorama/SEMA, plus his obsession with power hammers, English wheels, and upgrading tools for home projects. The episode also covers teaching welding at a technical college and a wild cop-invades-the-shop story.

active suspension auto body program bead rollers blueprints bondo chopping tops code brown collision shop eBay English wheel

Original notes

Trent Lewis of Midwest Metal Works joins the guys to talk about the path from walking out of college mid-exam… to building a full blown hot rod shop from the ground up.Based out of Wisconsin, Trent shares how he got his start in auto body and metal shaping, working through various shops before eventually branching out and starting his own thing. From early fabrication days to building real-world experience in high-end restoration shops, this episode dives into what it actually takes to develop the skills and mindset to run your own shop.There’s a lot in here for builders and anyone thinking about getting into the trade. Metal shaping, shop growth, learning on the job, and figuring it out as you go.

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