Raby Aircooled Technology - The One - The Only - Jake Raby Part 1- Ep42

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To learn more about this class-leading VW magazine.

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All right, welcome back to Dub Life Diaries.

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We are sitting down tonight with one of the most fascinating minds in the entire air-cooled world.

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The man behind the myth, the inventor, the engine whisperer himself, Mr.

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Jake Raby. From a teenage kid wrenching engines in a tiny Georgia shop to becoming

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the guy who literally saved an entire generation of Porsche Motors with his patented IMS solution.

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Jake's story is one of obsession, precision, and pure American grit.

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He's a Marine. He's a trained perfectionist who builds every single engine by

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hand deep in the North Georgia mountains with no clocks, no deadlines, just mastery.

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He's the national tech director for the Vintage Volkswagen Club of America.

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This dude is so Awesome guys, buckle up because today we are not just talking

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horsepower We're talking legacy purpose and what it really means to dare to be different.

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Jake Raby, welcome to Dublack Diaries. Thank you.

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I'm glad to be on here. I like what you're doing with the podcast.

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Thank you, man. Thank you so much. Before we get going tonight,

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I do want to just give a quick shout out to some of my sponsors.

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But before any of that, I got to do this. I got to thank you for your service.

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I noticed that you're a Marine. I know it comes with, you know,

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but I really appreciate my freedom.

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So thank you so much for your service to this country.

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And, you know, that's always as a Marine and just as a service member,

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you know, it's always hard to answer that, you know, like we really appreciate

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it. But what's our answer?

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Is it like, you know, my pleasure?

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I mean, even though a lot of it wasn't fun, but a lot of it was.

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And I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now if it wasn't for being a Marine.

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But the United States Marine Corps will celebrate its 250th birthday on November

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10th. So yeah, just a few days from now.

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So actually Marine Corps balls tomorrow night.

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So yeah. So yeah, my pleasure, I guess, is the way that I can answer that best. Well, yeah.

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Thank you. Thank you. So also quick shout out to Volksmania magazine.

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I feel these guys are the flyest VW magazine on the face of the planet.

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Shout out to issue number 24 hitting the shelves here real soon.

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The podcast has a couple features in it where we feature some previous guests.

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Volksmania.com use dub life 10 at

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checkout shout out to salty dub from the beach to

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applies dub life 10 if you use that you'll get 10 off of your merch purchase

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i'm super excited because this is gonna be dub life diaries first two-part podcast.

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When I had reached out to Jake and, you know, we started talking some details,

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I told him, you know, we could take 90 minutes.

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He said, dude, 90 minutes ain't going to be enough for this and sent me all

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kinds of really cool stuff.

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So I'll touch on what the second one, the second part, what we'll touch on.

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But this time, I'm just, I'm super excited, man. We got so much to talk about.

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So back to you, back to you, man. And your story sounds like something that

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comes straight out of a movie.

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You know, I'm just, I'm grateful that you're taking the time to do this. I know you're a busy guy.

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Let's talk about growing up in Cleveland, Georgia. What was it like,

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I guess, growing up in a town where there's only two traffic lights?

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Well, yeah, it's changed a lot, obviously.

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I mean, back then, you know, it was just Appalachia. You know, it just was.

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And, you know, basically you did three things.

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You either worked at or lived on a chicken farm, you worked at a textile mill,

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or your family made moonshine.

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That was it, right? And so...

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My family ended up with the moonshine and the textile mill.

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Chicken farm was a little bit later because my original shop property,

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which is at Raby Drive, was my grandfather's poultry farm.

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So I got all three of those. I got the chicken farm, which actually he raised turkeys.

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I got the textile because my mom worked there for 20 years. And then my grandfather never had a job.

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Everything he did was basically illegal. and

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you know but he he started the very first drive-in theater

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in the state of georgia named after my mom he started

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the the first skating rink in the

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state of georgia named after my both of which were money laundering efforts

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so hey man but but he everything was about getting the money back into circulation

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but he he was never you know it talks about in this in this area in the northeast

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georgia mountains and all over the south pretty much but especially in the mountains,

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you know, people run in liquor, you know, the guys driving the cars.

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So Dawsonville, Georgia is just down the road where the Elliotts were from and

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all that. And everybody was all linked together.

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The Dixie Mafia was a few miles away and all the bad stuff that happened with

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that. But my grandfather, you know, he never, he didn't run the liquor.

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He was the chemist. You know, he was a guy that the University of Georgia came

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to in the sixties and said, we can't make an ethanol still work.

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So we need you to show us how to do it. So he charged him $10,000 back at,

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I think it was 68 to make an ethanol still.

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And when they give him a check, he said, what's that? And they said,

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well, we're paying you. Nope.

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I work for cash because he couldn't take it to the bank.

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But that's what it was like. I mean, it was totally Appalachia.

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The only plumber in town was a drunk.

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He didn't have a phone number. There was no phone. He didn't have a driver's license.

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So if you need to do a plumbing fixed, you better be at his house at daylight

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to pick him up before anybody else.

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And then you took him, he did your plumbing work. Usually you give him a six pack of beer as payment.

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And then when you go to take him home, there's somebody else waiting in the

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front yard that needs their plumbing work done because they had to wait on him to get home.

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So when people ask me, they're like, how in the world do you learn all the stuff

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that you've learned? I said, I didn't have a choice, right?

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I mean, totally. There was nobody to call.

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If wiring needed to be done, you did it. The car broke. You needed to fix it yourself.

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When you pay a guy to take your tractor apart, rebuild the engine,

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he can't put it back together. So I had to do it when I was 15 with no book

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and no torque specs. So that's what it was like.

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I mean, basically it was, but you didn't know that it was kind of rough like

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that, you know, not when you're a kid, you know, for, for sure.

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We had, we had wood heat, you know, we had wood heat and I had this old pot

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belly heater in my, in my shop, which we'll talk a little bit about that,

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but it would take you all your time, you know,

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cutting and splitting firewood to make a fire in the shop. and then there's

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no insulation in the shop.

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So basically the fire is just, you've got a heater in there and you're constantly

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walking over, warming your hands and your feet up because you're freezing while

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you're working. So it was always a crazy thing.

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Like, especially having old Volkswagens, the heat always sucked,

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right? So it still amazes me today when I get in a car and it has good heat.

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Well, I saw something in your background and in your past that was kind of like mine.

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And that was that you had your first paying job around 13.

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And I did too. Mine wasn't building engines though. It was Winn-Dixie.

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I got a job at the beef people bagging groceries when I was 13,

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but I noticed that you did too.

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What do you remember about the first engines that you worked on at such a young age?

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Well, you know, and that was my first paying customer for an engine.

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So that wasn't your first. Okay. No. And honestly, really, I've never had an

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official job. It really in my life, you know, because I've always worked for myself.

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I like to say I've always signed the paycheck on the front side,

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but you know, I worked at a local import shop where we did all kinds of stuff,

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you know, Volvos and Volkswagens and Porsches.

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And, you know, back then in the eighties, you know, every town had its own little

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import shop a lot of times.

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And that import shop would have their own parts store because,

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you know, they had to, right.

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There was no, there was no mail order or anything that if they were going to

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work on those cars, they had to have parts.

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So I went to this local place and I worked there for several years,

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but I'd never collected a paycheck because I told my boss, I just want parts.

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So I would trade my labor for parts, and I would take the parts home and use

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them to build my own engines and work on customers' cars. So.

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13 years old in this barn, Porsche 914.

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I'd done some engines before that. And we can go into the, how I started this

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really when I was like eight years old and my dad was not a mechanic,

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but, but basically I had this situation where this guy needed a 914 engine put back together.

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Somebody had taken a part and I'm like, well, that looks just like a Volkswagen engine.

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So I took it apart and put it back together again and charged the guy a hundred

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bucks, you know, and I thought that was a big deal.

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And I thought it was a big deal when I had like a milk crate full of extra parts,

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you know, like ignition coil and this and that.

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And then I ended up with like 80 cars, you know, when I was 18.

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So, but, but how far back do you want to go?

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Because the story, it progresses, but yeah, that was my first paying job for an engine.

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I won't call it a build, even though it kind of was, but it was what we call

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a trunk job where the whole engine comes to you in the trunk of the car,

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right? And you got to put it back together again. Right on.

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Somebody took it apart. They couldn't put it back together again.

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A guy couldn't find anybody to do it.

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The import shop didn't want to do it because they didn't want to build engines.

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So I took it home with me. And that's pretty much what started all of it.

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And at that time, my dad, my dad was a banker.

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So he, you know, he wanted to teach me about business.

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You're in business now, son. And I'm like, what? He goes, yeah,

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you've had your first paying job.

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So we go down to the bank and we open up a business checking account.

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He's on there with me because I'm only 13 years old. And believe it or not,

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I still had the same account number.

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Until two years ago, the same account, the bank has changed hands all these times. Wow.

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My account existed and they sold out again and they finally changed the account number.

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But that was literally there for, you know, since 1990, before 1990, actually.

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How far back do you want to go? Because I can, I can tell you all kinds of crazy

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stuff about lawnmowers that led to Volkswagens being purchased.

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So let's talk about the role of maybe the small town life, shaping your focus and your discipline.

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Obviously, the Marines did a lot here, too. But do you attest any of this focus

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of this discipline in your life to growing up in a small town like that?

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Yeah, a lot. Most everything, because that discipline of there's no calling for help.

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You know, there's nobody who you're going to call.

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So you get this type of atmosphere when you're in that type of atmosphere.

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Everything, it's all on you.

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You know, in the 80s in Appalachia, there was nothing around.

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I mean, the doctor that we had, the last time I saw him, I went to see him in

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the tack room of his barn, and he had all the records in shoeboxes,

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a 20-gauge shotgun sitting in the corner.

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And when you get an immunization from him, he pulls out his desk drawer and

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draws it out of a – that's what I'm talking – that's the level that I'm talking about.

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Like it would be – and it was funny. I had a friend here from Australia one

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time, and he – I had to go to the doctor, and I took him with me.

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He goes, this looks like something out of a Western movie. You've got to be

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kidding me. The doctor's working in a horse barn. There's horses in the barn, right?

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But yeah, that small town, everybody takes care of each other.

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Everybody knows each other.

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Everybody supports each other. Everybody helps each other.

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That is what formed me. And that's really still, that's why I still stay here, right?

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I mean, as a Marine, I was in Southern California. And I met a lot of people

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and a lot of the people that I met, I still interface with today,

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you know, and the connections that I got 30 years ago, I still use those.

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But yeah, I would say the discipline of having to do things yourself,

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not having a lifeline, not having anybody else to do anything.

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And realistically, that's just the way you think life's supposed to be. Right.

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You don't you don't realize that there's people that have other people do things for them.

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You don't realize that you can call and order something or you can call and

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get something. You just don't know that.

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So so I think that people today look at it like it's ignorance.

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I mean, to me, I really appreciate that. Right. I really appreciate just having

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to learn how to do everything yourself.

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And in that way, you know what to do, you know, and I use it every day.

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The things that I learned as a kid, I mean, I was using skills today that I

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remember learning the first time in seventh grade.

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So that's crazy. But let's fast forward a little bit then.

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Shea, talk to me about how the Marines influenced not just your discipline or

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your focus, but really the mechanical mindset as well. Because you said your

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dad wasn't even a mechanic, right? Yeah.

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No, but like we're going to talk about, my grandfather on my dad's side was

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kind of the mastermind of that.

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He was literally an electrical engineer at the turn of the 20th century.

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But then my grandfather on my mom's side, he was the one that made moonshine.

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He was basically a chemist with what the guy learned how to do and how he was

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able to do all these different things. He could do anything.

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He didn't do anything well. He did everything okay. Yeah, but he was everything

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from a farmer to making moonshine.

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I mean, you know, owning businesses, you know, I can sit here and have a whole

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podcast about the crazy stuff he did.

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But but I mean, ultimately, the Marine Corps took all that brought it together. And I will tell you.

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The night that I graduated from high school, everybody else is going off on

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a trip or whatever. My recruiter's in the parking lot. Okay.

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I got my diploma. I didn't even go back to my seat.

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I walked straight out, shook my dad's hand at the field house on the football

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field, got in the recruiter's car.

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He took me to Athens, Georgia. I got on a regional plane, flew to Savannah.

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And went straight to Parris Island.

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They were waiting on you, brother. They were waiting on you.

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Well, they were because I was going to be, I got a guarantee contract for aviation

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maintenance, but those schools are only set up at certain times.

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And that's the thing about being a Marine.

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There's not a lot of us, right? So it's not like there's big cycles of this

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stuff. So I literally had to leave that day and start boot camp the next day,

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or I was going to miss it for like eight months till they did another cycle.

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So, so that's what I did. So everybody's going on senior trips and I'm at Parris Island, right?

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And knowing how I grew up, that was, that was to be expected.

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But pretty much my dad was really the driving factor behind that.

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My mom passed away in 1990.

00:16:13.701 --> 00:16:17.261
She had lung cancer, and I was just a kid.

00:16:18.021 --> 00:16:22.141
And so he had worked at a prison after he retired from the banking world,

00:16:22.161 --> 00:16:23.601
and he's like, I don't want you going to jail.

00:16:23.941 --> 00:16:27.821
I don't want you to be a convict like all these people that don't have any direction in their life.

00:16:28.001 --> 00:16:32.401
So the first day of my senior year, I came home from school,

00:16:32.501 --> 00:16:36.321
and I sat down, and he sat down and he's like, so what are you going to do?

00:16:36.878 --> 00:16:40.518
I said, what are you talking about? He's like, I'm the one asking the questions here.

00:16:40.718 --> 00:16:46.198
What are you going to do? And I said, well, about what? He said, what are you going to do?

00:16:46.418 --> 00:16:49.918
And then he followed that up with, I'll tell you what you're not going to do.

00:16:50.018 --> 00:16:52.198
You're not going to lay up in my house and be lazy.

00:16:52.838 --> 00:16:56.558
If you stay here after you get out of school, you're going to be in college

00:16:56.558 --> 00:16:58.518
full-time, tech school full-time.

00:16:58.778 --> 00:17:01.898
You're going to be working full-time. Whatever you're going to do is going to be full-time.

00:17:02.238 --> 00:17:10.098
And if you stay in your bedroom, it's going to be a $5,000 deposit and $1,000

00:17:10.098 --> 00:17:12.378
a month just to rent the bedroom.

00:17:13.018 --> 00:17:17.718
And I said, okay, because my dad was drafted in Korea. And I said,

00:17:17.878 --> 00:17:20.998
well, maybe I'll join the Marine Corps. He says, you can't do it.

00:17:21.979 --> 00:17:26.859
So he knew the quickest way to make sure that I would do it was to say that I couldn't do it.

00:17:27.699 --> 00:17:32.819
So I said, okay, well, ironically, two days later, the recruiter is standing

00:17:32.819 --> 00:17:37.159
right next to the library as everybody's walking by going to lunch.

00:17:37.659 --> 00:17:42.679
And he picks me out. He's like, hey, because I had shop classes almost all day long.

00:17:42.779 --> 00:17:44.179
The school system gave up on me,

00:17:44.299 --> 00:17:46.399
right? I was in special ed because they didn't know what to do with me.

00:17:46.639 --> 00:17:48.819
And they just put me in shop classes all day.

00:17:49.779 --> 00:17:53.079
So they don't even have those anymore oh

00:17:53.079 --> 00:17:56.139
no i if i was in school today i'd be completely screwed

00:17:56.139 --> 00:17:59.579
but at the end of the day you know i was walking

00:17:59.579 --> 00:18:03.799
by and i've been in machining class i've got chips all over me i mean i've been

00:18:03.799 --> 00:18:08.459
working in a shop all day he picked me out he's like hey i see you want like

00:18:08.459 --> 00:18:13.299
to work on stuff i'm like yeah how'd you guess uh you want to work on helicopters

00:18:13.299 --> 00:18:16.179
i said yeah i said i was already talking about going to the marine corps anyway

00:18:16.179 --> 00:18:18.279
i met him after school And he's like, hey,

00:18:18.399 --> 00:18:20.979
this is what we can do. We can put you in this and blah, blah, blah.

00:18:21.219 --> 00:18:24.579
And your ASFAB scores are great. And you aced this and you aced that.

00:18:24.759 --> 00:18:27.679
You can do anything in the Marine Corps you want, except for be an interpreter

00:18:27.679 --> 00:18:30.079
or be an air traffic controller.

00:18:30.239 --> 00:18:32.359
I'm like, well, that's fine. I don't want to do either one of those.

00:18:32.499 --> 00:18:34.419
I said, I want to be an aircraft mechanic.

00:18:35.019 --> 00:18:38.759
So that's how that all ended up. So I went home and I told my dad,

00:18:38.879 --> 00:18:42.039
I was like, hey, I'm going to Atlanta, going down to MEPS to,

00:18:42.039 --> 00:18:45.319
you know, have my exam or whatever to go in the Marine Corps.

00:18:45.459 --> 00:18:47.739
He's like, okay, I'll bloop when I see it. Right.

00:18:48.179 --> 00:18:51.339
So I went down and got sworn in and brought the packet back.

00:18:51.359 --> 00:18:53.499
He's like, OK, I guess we'll see if this works out.

00:18:53.999 --> 00:18:58.139
And so I packed up that day and left and went straight to Parris Island.

00:18:58.419 --> 00:19:02.619
And but but to get back to your question, what the Marine Corps did was bring

00:19:02.619 --> 00:19:04.019
all that together. Right.

00:19:04.319 --> 00:19:09.259
It took all the stuff that I had learned and the disciplines that that my my

00:19:09.259 --> 00:19:12.339
grandparents, my my dad instilled into me.

00:19:12.479 --> 00:19:14.799
And my mom had incredible work ethic.

00:19:15.079 --> 00:19:20.699
Just incredible. She ran dry cleaners in a tailor shop at a military academy, and she worked.

00:19:21.376 --> 00:19:27.356
Non-stop. So it's always been in my blood, but ultimately it just brought all that together.

00:19:27.576 --> 00:19:34.076
And if I had to say the main thing that it did is it gave me more pride in what I did,

00:19:34.676 --> 00:19:38.436
because, you know, if you look back at me when I was 15, 16,

00:19:38.656 --> 00:19:42.496
18 years old, the shop that I had, which was just a chicken house,

00:19:42.636 --> 00:19:45.976
but, you know, my dad gave me a concrete floor for it when I was 14,

00:19:46.896 --> 00:19:48.196
But it was a disaster.

00:19:48.376 --> 00:19:52.816
There was tools and piles of stuff laying everywhere and car batteries and gas

00:19:52.816 --> 00:19:55.356
in the corner. And it was just it was destroyed.

00:19:55.676 --> 00:19:58.416
I've even got some pictures of it. It was just a destroyed shop.

00:19:59.496 --> 00:20:05.296
Now, as a Marine, you learn everything has got to be absolutely perfect all

00:20:05.296 --> 00:20:09.416
the time. I can't function if I don't know where things are.

00:20:09.576 --> 00:20:13.716
Like, it drives me crazy if I don't have it memorized where every tool is loaded

00:20:13.716 --> 00:20:15.516
in the tool changer of my Haas machine.

00:20:15.516 --> 00:20:21.076
You know, I just and that is what I never would have had had it not been for

00:20:21.076 --> 00:20:25.376
what the Marine Corps taught me that that crazy level of attention to detail

00:20:25.376 --> 00:20:30.476
through rifle inspections and uniform inspections and and all that sort of thing.

00:20:30.656 --> 00:20:36.036
And I'll say, you know, after I graduated from boot camp, I've never done anything hard in my life.

00:20:36.336 --> 00:20:40.696
I mean, that's that's the hardest thing you can do. So after I passed that company

00:20:40.696 --> 00:20:46.096
commander's inspection and got an Eagle Globe and Anchor put in my hand, I mean—,

00:20:46.556 --> 00:20:51.136
Nothing's a challenge after that anymore, ultimately. Everything else,

00:20:51.216 --> 00:20:54.416
when you look at an adversary or something, or somebody decides they want to

00:20:54.416 --> 00:20:57.536
be a competitor, you look at them like, are you kidding me?

00:20:58.096 --> 00:21:00.996
You want to fight? You really want to fight? Okay.

00:21:01.636 --> 00:21:03.816
I don't think you do, but we'll see.

00:21:06.036 --> 00:21:11.696
Now, on this note, right where we're at, I know you talk a lot about getting in the zone.

00:21:12.476 --> 00:21:16.476
And I want to know what that really looks like for you. What is getting in the zone?

00:21:16.556 --> 00:21:23.176
Because combat trained, Marine, obviously very accomplished in what you do professionally.

00:21:23.416 --> 00:21:25.656
What is getting in the zone to Jake Raby?

00:21:26.176 --> 00:21:30.036
Man, I tell you, it means you don't take a lunch break.

00:21:30.416 --> 00:21:35.516
It means that you don't go home when you're tired. You go home when you're done.

00:21:36.056 --> 00:21:39.996
It means if you stay up for two days straight, you stay up for two days straight.

00:21:40.316 --> 00:21:44.636
It means that when you've got a long-term employee that you can trust to go

00:21:44.636 --> 00:21:47.896
buy your groceries and you don't want to leave the shop compound,

00:21:47.896 --> 00:21:51.636
that you send her down and say, here's my list, go buy my groceries.

00:21:52.416 --> 00:21:57.076
So that is the zone, right? And people are like, I want to stop by your shop.

00:21:57.636 --> 00:22:02.396
Sorry. I mean, no offense, but I don't want to see you. I'm in the zone, right?

00:22:03.216 --> 00:22:09.176
So I mean, that to me is what it is. My wife knows when I'm in the zone, I'm in the zone.

00:22:09.296 --> 00:22:12.036
You may as well not even tell me to do anything, ask me to do anything.

00:22:12.496 --> 00:22:14.816
And I've been in the zone a lot in the last couple of years,

00:22:15.056 --> 00:22:20.296
but more than any other time is I've had to learn to make my own stuff and run

00:22:20.296 --> 00:22:23.976
this other equipment that I've never ran before and learn a lot of disciplines

00:22:23.976 --> 00:22:26.536
and things that are a little different than I ever needed.

00:22:26.696 --> 00:22:30.816
But to me, that's the zone. It truly is working with no radio,

00:22:31.336 --> 00:22:32.376
working with no television.

00:22:33.376 --> 00:22:38.516
I see people that have a television in their engine build room. I said.

00:22:39.714 --> 00:22:42.374
No, that better not get turned on. Right.

00:22:42.794 --> 00:22:49.414
Because I've got to be in that world. But some people can't work without background noise.

00:22:49.594 --> 00:22:52.994
You know, they got to have a radio or whatever. So everybody gets in the zone

00:22:52.994 --> 00:22:56.754
differently. But to me, it's just complete quietness.

00:22:56.874 --> 00:23:01.274
But I will say sometimes I want a little bit of background noise because one

00:23:01.274 --> 00:23:06.414
thing the Marine Corps did leave me with is this crazy ringing in my ears for too many jet engines.

00:23:06.734 --> 00:23:12.894
Right. So too many jet engines, machine guns, race cars, and grenades, as I like to say.

00:23:13.454 --> 00:23:18.914
Yeah. Wow. That's dang, man. Now, something I noticed on your website that I

00:23:18.914 --> 00:23:25.754
thought was such a kind of a quality vibe to possess, but also how do you do it?

00:23:25.894 --> 00:23:31.754
And that is no clocks, no calendars, only creation in the shop.

00:23:31.994 --> 00:23:37.414
Talk to me about that for a second. Why does slow craftsmanship beat speed every time?

00:23:38.265 --> 00:23:42.565
Well, you know, haste makes waste every time. And I tell people,

00:23:42.825 --> 00:23:45.585
you know, you can't rush success. You can only rush failure.

00:23:45.865 --> 00:23:50.885
And I see this all the time in people that are out there that have a show car or a race car.

00:23:51.025 --> 00:23:54.105
Listen to what I'm about to say. when we used to race my

00:23:54.105 --> 00:23:56.845
rule was and my wife's got five land speed records that

00:23:56.845 --> 00:24:00.585
still stand today she's set in a Porsche 996 my rule

00:24:00.585 --> 00:24:03.645
was that we did not go race unless that car

00:24:03.645 --> 00:24:06.645
was in that trailer and the door was closed the

00:24:06.645 --> 00:24:12.745
Saturday before we were supposed to leave for the race so it to me if we didn't

00:24:12.745 --> 00:24:17.485
do that we had already beaten ourselves so the people that show up and they're

00:24:17.485 --> 00:24:20.525
working all night long and they're thrashing and all this they forget and leave

00:24:20.525 --> 00:24:23.825
something loose That's where some of those disciplines from the Marine Corps

00:24:23.825 --> 00:24:25.345
comes in from the aviation side.

00:24:25.345 --> 00:24:29.525
And I'm like, I've seen people die because of a loose bolt. We're not going there.

00:24:30.265 --> 00:24:35.205
So that's where that whole discipline comes from of, nope, we're not going to

00:24:35.205 --> 00:24:38.485
the track unless this thing was done. Otherwise, we're going to beat ourselves.

00:24:38.965 --> 00:24:43.885
So, you know, no clocks and no calendars is completely kind of,

00:24:44.405 --> 00:24:47.745
for lack of a better term, ass backwards from the rest of the world. Right.

00:24:47.945 --> 00:24:51.825
Well, I'm bringing it up. Because today, everything's about how quick can I

00:24:51.825 --> 00:24:54.145
get it done? That's right. How long does this take?

00:24:55.009 --> 00:24:59.029
I don't even know. Today, like the trash comes on Thursdays.

00:24:59.109 --> 00:25:04.669
I had asked my wife this morning, hey, what day is it? I don't even know because I'm in the zone.

00:25:05.269 --> 00:25:10.189
So ultimately, I think that to me, that's what drives quality.

00:25:10.189 --> 00:25:15.009
And the thing is, you know, there's very few craftsmen left.

00:25:15.569 --> 00:25:20.109
And I think most of them are like in the custom cabinetry world.

00:25:20.309 --> 00:25:25.969
And anybody that I know that possesses my same level of kind of craziness is

00:25:25.969 --> 00:25:31.009
usually a custom cabinet guy because they do things from scratch.

00:25:31.009 --> 00:25:33.569
And I like to do things from scratch. And they have that discipline.

00:25:33.709 --> 00:25:37.389
And you never get them in a rush. The other people that do that are taxidermists.

00:25:38.089 --> 00:25:41.969
Taxidermist, I like to hunt, and I've got like eight animals and a taxidermist

00:25:41.969 --> 00:25:43.989
right now. And I never rush the guy.

00:25:44.149 --> 00:25:46.669
It doesn't do any good because he's an artist.

00:25:47.049 --> 00:25:56.029
This is where artistry comes into and meshes with and mixes with the mechanical

00:25:56.029 --> 00:25:58.869
side of things because it truly is art. I mean –.

00:25:59.627 --> 00:26:03.087
And so I don't even keep track of how long it takes me to build an engine.

00:26:03.267 --> 00:26:06.087
I think it's about 130 hours. I don't even know. I don't care.

00:26:06.447 --> 00:26:10.547
Yeah. I saw that on your company's website.

00:26:10.567 --> 00:26:15.927
I saw that, you know, don't try to, you know, give a time constraint or something

00:26:15.927 --> 00:26:18.287
because we're going to work until it's finished.

00:26:18.327 --> 00:26:20.687
And whatever time that takes, it is what it is.

00:26:21.267 --> 00:26:25.347
Yeah. And that's where one thing I'll say the Marine Corps instilled in me,

00:26:25.467 --> 00:26:30.427
too, and my dad also, is if you have a standard, it's uncompromising.

00:26:31.907 --> 00:26:35.467
People will say, well, so-and-so has – they do this cheaper.

00:26:35.547 --> 00:26:36.587
Okay, fine. Go over there.

00:26:36.847 --> 00:26:40.867
I got plenty of work. I don't need every job.

00:26:40.907 --> 00:26:45.107
I don't want every job. If they want to say that they have a confusingly similar

00:26:45.107 --> 00:26:48.207
thing that they kind of copied from me or whatever at some point or copied from

00:26:48.207 --> 00:26:53.367
other people and they can do it quicker, well, maybe they'll be better for you.

00:26:53.727 --> 00:26:59.947
I truly believe that all of us – there's enough work for everybody out there and other people.

00:27:00.187 --> 00:27:04.787
And as you get further in this industry, people will target you.

00:27:04.887 --> 00:27:07.907
So I walk around every day with a target on my back, but I love it because that

00:27:07.907 --> 00:27:11.927
means I'm in the other guy's mind 24-7, 365. I'm living there rent-free.

00:27:13.307 --> 00:27:17.147
Because, of course, as a Marine, it's my job to create stress for everybody

00:27:17.147 --> 00:27:19.587
else around me. That's what eliminates my stress.

00:27:20.187 --> 00:27:27.227
But no, ultimately, I think that that's the no clock to no calendars thing. And I will say...

00:27:28.066 --> 00:27:31.746
Every now and then somebody will say, well, why is it taking so long?

00:27:32.346 --> 00:27:36.326
And, you know, even though I don't give people an absolute time I'm going to

00:27:36.326 --> 00:27:40.306
be done, I give myself a bit of a guidance point and I'm like,

00:27:40.426 --> 00:27:42.786
okay, you know, I'm going to have it done in this window.

00:27:43.126 --> 00:27:46.586
And I get it done in that window because even in COVID, I only missed a couple

00:27:46.586 --> 00:27:50.146
of dates while everybody else is a year off and they're making excuses.

00:27:50.306 --> 00:27:52.546
We only missed things by maybe a couple of weeks.

00:27:52.966 --> 00:27:58.846
But, you know, As I do more and more specialized work and the jobs get more

00:27:58.846 --> 00:28:03.706
and more crazy and I make more and more of my parts and I'm able to share that

00:28:03.706 --> 00:28:04.706
with somebody, I'm like, hey,

00:28:05.126 --> 00:28:08.226
I'm literally making your oil sump right now.

00:28:08.366 --> 00:28:12.106
Here's your oil sump. It's in my machine. This is yours. I put your name in it.

00:28:12.646 --> 00:28:18.866
And they're blown away because nobody else is going to do that because I like it to be mine.

00:28:18.866 --> 00:28:22.726
I like to say, you know, I programmed, I modeled the part,

00:28:22.966 --> 00:28:27.006
I programmed the part, I put the tools in the machine, I hit go,

00:28:27.246 --> 00:28:31.446
I cleaned the burrs off the pieces, and then I put those pieces together,

00:28:31.446 --> 00:28:34.466
and then I put the engine together, and then I put it on the dyno,

00:28:34.526 --> 00:28:37.246
and then I tune it, and I did every part of it from A to Z.

00:28:37.606 --> 00:28:40.906
And that is what I've been going for for 35 years.

00:28:41.929 --> 00:28:44.749
Dang, man. I mean, well, that's how you do it.

00:28:45.309 --> 00:28:50.949
So when did the Type 4 obsession start for you in your life?

00:28:51.969 --> 00:28:57.249
Well, if you go back, you remember what I said about putting that engine together when I was 13 for a 914.

00:28:57.429 --> 00:29:01.769
Now, I will be very honest with you and say, and a lot of people that have known

00:29:01.769 --> 00:29:04.209
me for a long time will absolutely say this is true.

00:29:04.709 --> 00:29:09.049
I did not used to like the Type for. I didn't. When I first started this stuff,

00:29:09.109 --> 00:29:10.529
it was all type one based.

00:29:10.829 --> 00:29:14.969
The first performance engines I built were type ones. I did a ton of them.

00:29:15.209 --> 00:29:19.129
When I, we can talk about me building engines in a barracks room when I was

00:29:19.129 --> 00:29:21.989
a Marine in California and selling them at the Pomona swap meet.

00:29:22.089 --> 00:29:26.169
I mean, I've got crazy stories about working inside dumpsters and wild stuff,

00:29:26.549 --> 00:29:29.429
building engines and laundry rooms in the barracks.

00:29:29.529 --> 00:29:32.949
I was a barracks manager, so I knew where all the empty rooms were,

00:29:32.969 --> 00:29:37.649
so I had a couple of extra rooms that I turned into engine shops in a Marine Corps barracks.

00:29:38.149 --> 00:29:40.669
I'd probably still be in Leavenworth if I got caught doing that.

00:29:41.209 --> 00:29:44.209
Luckily, the statute of limitations are up so I could talk about it,

00:29:44.269 --> 00:29:46.069
but at the end of the day...

00:29:46.539 --> 00:29:50.499
You know, the type four came along really after I got out of the Marine Corps.

00:29:50.679 --> 00:29:53.219
So it was a funny thing. So I get out of the Marine Corps.

00:29:53.539 --> 00:29:58.999
I start the shop back up while I was in. I didn't spend any money. I worked my tail off.

00:29:59.139 --> 00:30:02.219
I got all my food for free. I got free housing.

00:30:02.379 --> 00:30:04.539
I had a pickup truck and a sand rail.

00:30:04.759 --> 00:30:08.079
I worked on cars in the parking lot. I built engines in the barracks room.

00:30:08.379 --> 00:30:12.719
Sometimes I go to the Pomona swap meet and make $15,000 in a single day.

00:30:12.719 --> 00:30:14.139
I saved every bit of that.

00:30:14.179 --> 00:30:16.779
I came home with a hundred grand or whatever in cash.

00:30:16.819 --> 00:30:21.439
And I started the shop or started the shop back up and did it better than I

00:30:21.439 --> 00:30:25.499
ever could have had I not went in the Marine Corps because I didn't have to spend any money. Right.

00:30:25.659 --> 00:30:31.739
I started up and my roommate who I had in the Marine Corps, he also was a Volkswagen guy.

00:30:32.339 --> 00:30:39.219
And so he actually got into the type four stuff, hot and heavy in the conversion stuff before I did.

00:30:39.879 --> 00:30:45.379
And he had met up with a guy named Joe LeCicero, okay, at Oregon Performance Products.

00:30:45.559 --> 00:30:49.139
Now, Joe is the guy that created my DTM cooling system.

00:30:49.339 --> 00:30:52.539
So, this is where part of the history kind of really starts.

00:30:52.739 --> 00:30:57.759
So, my ex-roommate, Adam, he was doing the Type 4 thing. I was already building

00:30:57.759 --> 00:31:00.259
a lot of engines. I got out of the Marine Corps before he did.

00:31:00.439 --> 00:31:04.659
And when he got out, he was also from Georgia. So he came and he actually,

00:31:04.839 --> 00:31:11.819
we were roommates at my house that was on the shop property while he was getting

00:31:11.819 --> 00:31:13.379
back on his feet type thing.

00:31:13.519 --> 00:31:18.039
So he was working for me and he built a couple of type fours and I built,

00:31:18.079 --> 00:31:20.419
I'd done some bus motors and stuff like that.

00:31:20.679 --> 00:31:25.439
So I'd also built a few performance type fours while I was in the Marine Corps,

00:31:25.579 --> 00:31:29.459
quite a few actually for sand dragsters, off-road guys, that sort of thing.

00:31:29.639 --> 00:31:34.659
And I knew the guys at Kimco really well, back when Chemco was huge, and I love those guys.

00:31:34.799 --> 00:31:39.159
Ron Silva and Danny, all those guys were freaking epic. I'm still friends with

00:31:39.159 --> 00:31:41.839
them today, and they taught me a lot.

00:31:42.259 --> 00:31:46.259
They're older than I am, and they taught me a lot. I mean, Ron taught me how

00:31:46.259 --> 00:31:50.139
to do valve train geometry when I was a Marine, and so...

00:31:51.328 --> 00:31:55.368
The Type 4 thing, I had to get warmed up to it a little bit.

00:31:55.448 --> 00:31:59.188
I had to see what some of these big ones would do, and then I built a 2270,

00:31:59.388 --> 00:32:00.328
and it was really awesome.

00:32:00.968 --> 00:32:05.948
And then I started talking to Joe LeCicero, and this is about the time the internet

00:32:05.948 --> 00:32:07.768
actually came along. This is like 97.

00:32:08.368 --> 00:32:12.008
So that's when WWW was like, what the hell is that?

00:32:13.448 --> 00:32:17.908
Dial up. Yeah, exactly. And it takes you forever to send an email,

00:32:18.168 --> 00:32:21.528
especially where we were. Somebody pick up the phone, you lose your connection.

00:32:22.068 --> 00:32:28.448
Exactly. Yeah. So anyway, I started emailing with Joe and he kind of took me

00:32:28.448 --> 00:32:30.448
under his wing because he did,

00:32:30.668 --> 00:32:36.128
he hand built all the DTM cooling systems and he had it all worked out and it

00:32:36.128 --> 00:32:38.728
was easy and straightforward. It looked pretty cool.

00:32:38.808 --> 00:32:44.228
It worked really well. And he had never put them on huge engines, but I did.

00:32:44.328 --> 00:32:47.468
I started putting them on huge three liters and stuff like that.

00:32:47.468 --> 00:32:52.068
And so this is, again, the Internet's just starting up Shop Talk forums,

00:32:52.228 --> 00:32:53.888
which is still around, just started up.

00:32:54.713 --> 00:32:57.893
And so Joe got on there. I got on there.

00:32:58.553 --> 00:33:03.213
And that's really when the Type 4 thing just flourished. And at that time,

00:33:03.373 --> 00:33:05.853
I pretty much stopped building Type 1s.

00:33:06.253 --> 00:33:10.913
I would still build a couple, but I really, until I built the engine for Eric,

00:33:11.133 --> 00:33:15.613
the president of the Vintage Volkswagen Club, I had not built a Type 1 in two

00:33:15.613 --> 00:33:19.773
decades, other than one for myself. because I just said, I'm going to do type

00:33:19.773 --> 00:33:20.753
four stuff and that's it.

00:33:20.813 --> 00:33:23.393
And I specialized in it. I came up with my own combinations.

00:33:23.673 --> 00:33:27.973
And sometimes that would mean that I'm going to take apart an engine every day

00:33:27.973 --> 00:33:31.413
and put it back together again for a whole month and change 30 cams and put

00:33:31.413 --> 00:33:36.633
it on the dyno every day and see what cams do what, change the heads and all that sort of thing.

00:33:36.713 --> 00:33:42.413
And so I did that and I just had crazy results from sometimes just a cam change.

00:33:42.653 --> 00:33:47.473
So, but that's really what got that going. And then we can talk about this a

00:33:47.473 --> 00:33:53.913
little later, but Joe also knew a guy named Shad Laws, and he was at the time

00:33:53.913 --> 00:33:57.573
the L in LN Engineering before that was a company.

00:33:57.893 --> 00:34:04.393
So that was when it was two kids, two college kids that were a few years younger

00:34:04.393 --> 00:34:06.853
than me, Shad Laws and Charles Navarro.

00:34:06.973 --> 00:34:09.233
That's the L and the N in LN.

00:34:09.493 --> 00:34:13.673
Shad left and went to work with F1 teams and stood up in Europe for a while.

00:34:14.073 --> 00:34:17.893
But long story short, that's kind of what started that, because Shad had been

00:34:17.893 --> 00:34:24.113
talking to Joe at Oregon Performance, and Joe was like, hey, you guys need to link up.

00:34:24.233 --> 00:34:28.813
So they had the idea to do the Nicosil cylinders for their college project at

00:34:28.813 --> 00:34:33.473
Northwestern, and I'm like, hey, those Nicosil cylinders don't just need to

00:34:33.473 --> 00:34:36.133
be a college project. they need to be a product.

00:34:36.173 --> 00:34:40.413
I will be your first customer, and I was. And the first set of cylinders they

00:34:40.413 --> 00:34:46.313
made are still alive on my 356 engine, which is a Type 4, and a 64C 356.

00:34:46.613 --> 00:34:48.633
Wow. So that's kind of the...

00:34:49.105 --> 00:34:52.985
You know, the whole tie together there. And then Joe passed away in 2003.

00:34:53.705 --> 00:34:56.165
Sorry, 2002, July 4th, 2002.

00:34:56.665 --> 00:35:01.645
And then it took me a year to get the DTM cooling system stuff from his family.

00:35:01.725 --> 00:35:03.405
And I've been building them ever since.

00:35:03.845 --> 00:35:08.205
Actually, David Wiley at Creative Car Craft makes the fiberglass pieces.

00:35:08.365 --> 00:35:13.105
And he's done that since he purchased Creative Car Craft from Skip way back in the day.

00:35:13.265 --> 00:35:16.805
So there's just tons and tons and tons of history with all this stuff.

00:35:16.965 --> 00:35:18.845
It's all linked together, you know?

00:35:19.285 --> 00:35:24.985
So cool. And I was so like, just interested looking at everything on your website

00:35:24.985 --> 00:35:28.645
and just looking at all the history and then talking to you a few times, I'm like, man,

00:35:28.805 --> 00:35:34.425
this is going to make such an amazing episode for this community to just kind

00:35:34.425 --> 00:35:36.885
of, you know, sit back and listen to this.

00:35:37.185 --> 00:35:41.385
Let's talk about this IMS bearing flaw. Cause I know, you know,

00:35:41.585 --> 00:35:47.405
you obviously found the, the, the fix for this, but when did you realize that

00:35:47.525 --> 00:35:50.585
this bearing flaw needed a real fix.

00:35:51.165 --> 00:35:57.525
My time with water-cooled Porsches, like forever, like I didn't own a car with a radiator.

00:35:57.685 --> 00:36:00.885
I had a 85 Chevy pickup truck that I used to tow trailers with.

00:36:01.085 --> 00:36:03.765
Other than that, everything I owned was air-cooled, single cabs,

00:36:03.825 --> 00:36:07.825
double cabs, you know, Beetles, a 912, a 914.

00:36:08.505 --> 00:36:11.785
Everything was air-cooled, strictly air-cooled. I didn't even know about working

00:36:11.785 --> 00:36:13.625
on a car with a radiator for a long time.

00:36:14.485 --> 00:36:20.325
And then go back to 1997, I met a guy at a golf course where I had a part-time

00:36:20.325 --> 00:36:23.085
job, Coto de Caza down at Mission Viejo, California.

00:36:23.645 --> 00:36:28.305
And he was the inventor of ABS plastic. And he bought one of the first Boxsters

00:36:28.305 --> 00:36:33.925
ever come into the country. And I was able to see that car and be around it.

00:36:34.145 --> 00:36:36.745
He was like one of the first ones ever brought in.

00:36:37.845 --> 00:36:41.885
And at that point, I was like, okay, water-cooled, six-cylinder,

00:36:42.065 --> 00:36:43.825
don't sound right to me, but whatever.

00:36:44.145 --> 00:36:46.645
So little did I know where this would go. So...

00:36:47.089 --> 00:36:51.449
For several years after that, after I got things going, after Charles at LN

00:36:51.449 --> 00:36:55.609
Engineering was doing what he was doing, he would travel to a lot of the Porsche

00:36:55.609 --> 00:36:58.349
shows and stuff like that. I'm one that stays home.

00:36:58.469 --> 00:37:01.229
I stay in the zone. I don't care about events. I just stay in the zone.

00:37:01.429 --> 00:37:07.949
So there's a guy by the name of Bruce Anderson, and Bruce wrote the 9-11 Performance Handbook.

00:37:08.169 --> 00:37:12.049
He was the tech editor for Excellence Magazine, Panorama.

00:37:12.669 --> 00:37:16.289
Bruce was just endless levels of knowledge. He's passed away now,

00:37:16.409 --> 00:37:18.929
but it was just endless, and he was also a Marine.

00:37:19.569 --> 00:37:23.749
And so one day, Charles was at the literature meet, the Porsche literature meet

00:37:23.749 --> 00:37:27.909
in L.A., huge event every year. Everybody goes there except for me.

00:37:28.309 --> 00:37:33.089
And so Charles was there, and Bruce walked up to him, and he said,

00:37:33.129 --> 00:37:36.889
look, there's a problem that you and Jake need to know about.

00:37:37.089 --> 00:37:40.749
He said, what's that? He was like, there's a bearing in these modern engines

00:37:40.749 --> 00:37:45.849
that's failing. I get letters all the time written to me, letter to the tech

00:37:45.849 --> 00:37:51.949
editor, my 911 engine blew up, this bearing failed, my Boxster engine blew up, this bearing failed.

00:37:52.189 --> 00:37:56.209
He couldn't publicize them because of his clout, what he was doing.

00:37:56.369 --> 00:38:00.389
He couldn't say anything about it. But he said, look, there's a major problem

00:38:00.389 --> 00:38:02.549
and nobody knows about it.

00:38:02.569 --> 00:38:06.429
But it's going to be huge. and you guys need to figure out what's causing it,

00:38:06.529 --> 00:38:09.869
and you need to be at the ground level with it because you're young enough to

00:38:09.869 --> 00:38:12.949
be able to live this out and have a good return from it.

00:38:13.269 --> 00:38:17.889
So that was true insider information, and that's what Marines do for each other, right?

00:38:17.949 --> 00:38:22.149
We do that no matter what. So we listened.

00:38:22.509 --> 00:38:26.189
I immediately bought a Boxster. Charles immediately bought a Boxster,

00:38:26.249 --> 00:38:28.249
and we started taking it apart and learning about it.

00:38:28.329 --> 00:38:30.869
So the very first night that I took one of those engines apart,

00:38:31.069 --> 00:38:34.889
I looked at the bearing, which is a 6204 game.

00:38:35.476 --> 00:38:38.516
Gm alternator ball bearing basically that fails

00:38:38.516 --> 00:38:41.496
in a gm alternator and it's sealed i looked

00:38:41.496 --> 00:38:44.176
at it and i said anybody that would believe this is going to

00:38:44.176 --> 00:38:47.096
work is an idiot i mean why do you put a sealed

00:38:47.096 --> 00:38:52.516
ball bearing inside of an engine where it's where it has hot engine oil around

00:38:52.516 --> 00:38:55.716
it it's just going to wick by the seal and wash the grease out which is what

00:38:55.716 --> 00:39:00.936
it does so that very night the first night that i did it i invented the ims

00:39:00.936 --> 00:39:06.336
solution which is a plane bearing that works like the Metzger air-cooled Porsche engine,

00:39:06.516 --> 00:39:10.516
the engine that was the predecessor to this water-cooled engine, the M96.

00:39:11.096 --> 00:39:15.116
And basically, all we did was rob the geometry from what Porsche had done with

00:39:15.116 --> 00:39:19.136
the predecessor engine, and then spent a lot of time developing materials,

00:39:19.336 --> 00:39:22.536
oil flow, dynamics, all that sort of thing.

00:39:22.676 --> 00:39:26.816
Total trial and error done in Appalachia, made on manual machines,

00:39:27.056 --> 00:39:28.256
one of which I still have.

00:39:28.696 --> 00:39:32.596
And we made the prototypes, started the patent process.

00:39:33.356 --> 00:39:37.016
And so the whole thing was not just making a part because people don't realize

00:39:37.016 --> 00:39:41.596
that a patent is not for a product. A patent is for this.

00:39:41.796 --> 00:39:44.756
It's this real estate right here. It's the intellectual property.

00:39:44.936 --> 00:39:46.816
It's the novel concepts.

00:39:47.876 --> 00:39:52.096
So a product, well, you could have 100 products originate from one patent.

00:39:52.396 --> 00:39:57.176
So we were able to secure five patents for this tooling and all the stuff that

00:39:57.176 --> 00:40:01.696
we used to do this with, the process, the tooling, the method of oil flow, the method of support.

00:40:01.696 --> 00:40:07.416
But basically, I came up with several ways to get rid of that bearing problem,

00:40:07.416 --> 00:40:11.436
because what you learn as an inventor, and that's what I always wanted to be

00:40:11.436 --> 00:40:13.916
my entire life. People are like, what did you want to do?

00:40:14.056 --> 00:40:16.476
I want to be an inventor. My grandfather was an inventor.

00:40:16.676 --> 00:40:20.776
To me, that's what I always wanted to be. It's what I wanted to do,

00:40:20.816 --> 00:40:23.416
and having that title trumps anything to me.

00:40:23.696 --> 00:40:30.556
I would rather be an inventor of something than be a PhD or a doctor in something. That's just me. So...

00:40:31.227 --> 00:40:37.287
We were able to patent the good ideas, and one thing that I learned was you

00:40:37.287 --> 00:40:41.027
also need to patent the bad ideas, because if you don't, somebody's going to

00:40:41.027 --> 00:40:44.487
come up with that idea and think that it's an okay idea, and they're going to

00:40:44.487 --> 00:40:45.347
become your competitor.

00:40:45.567 --> 00:40:48.667
So anybody out there listening, if you have an invention idea,

00:40:49.087 --> 00:40:50.587
don't stop with your invention.

00:40:51.287 --> 00:40:55.407
You need to go on, and you need to cover your tracks, and you need to invent

00:40:55.407 --> 00:40:58.447
the thing that might be your competition later down the road.

00:40:58.447 --> 00:41:01.047
So keep those novel concepts in the back of your mind.

00:41:02.167 --> 00:41:04.927
So ultimately, there's different price points on all that.

00:41:05.087 --> 00:41:11.907
But literally, 11 years of Boxster, Cayman, 911, except for the GT cars,

00:41:12.047 --> 00:41:16.387
the GT cars and the turbo cars kept the predecessor engine. They kept the Metzger engine.

00:41:16.567 --> 00:41:21.567
It was a water-cooled version of the air-cooled flat six, and it had a plain

00:41:21.567 --> 00:41:24.287
bearing in it still. My bearing was plain.

00:41:24.667 --> 00:41:30.187
So ultimately, people can say, well, you robbed that idea. I robbed the diameter of something.

00:41:30.527 --> 00:41:35.207
The diameter of my solution bushing is the same as what the factory used.

00:41:35.407 --> 00:41:39.667
Other than that, it's not the same thing. And the U.S. Patent Office says that

00:41:39.667 --> 00:41:41.947
it was an infringement on what had been done before.

00:41:42.127 --> 00:41:45.647
Otherwise, they would not have issued my patents. And that's a pain in the neck

00:41:45.647 --> 00:41:48.247
to do that. It takes years and it costs a lot of money.

00:41:49.067 --> 00:41:53.387
So ultimately, we omit that bearing. We get that bearing out of the equation

00:41:53.387 --> 00:41:55.747
and we do it with the engine still in the car.

00:41:55.967 --> 00:41:58.067
So I had to create a process and the tools.

00:41:58.427 --> 00:42:03.907
I made the first tools out of a pile of junk and $12 worth of stuff from the

00:42:03.907 --> 00:42:05.667
Ace Hardware store in Cleveland, Georgia.

00:42:06.627 --> 00:42:11.607
You know, so, and it's just funny how, you know, I'm a proud American.

00:42:11.747 --> 00:42:15.427
I'm a Marine at the end of the day. And I'm like, you know, this is remade in America.

00:42:15.667 --> 00:42:19.807
The Germans created this and the Germans created the problem and the Americans solved it.

00:42:20.047 --> 00:42:27.807
Speaking of solved it, how's it feel knowing that you saved an entire generation of Porsche engines?

00:42:28.347 --> 00:42:32.587
Well, I mean, you know, I think that, I don't think about it.

00:42:32.827 --> 00:42:35.747
You know, to me, I was just doing what,

00:42:36.287 --> 00:42:41.827
what I was put on this planet to do. I think if people hold themselves in a

00:42:41.827 --> 00:42:45.607
certain kind of regard, they get on cruise control and they stop doing other things.

00:42:45.727 --> 00:42:49.907
To me, I was like, okay, I did this. I did that. I got the patent.

00:42:50.187 --> 00:42:53.367
Okay, that's done. Turning that off. Next thing. Next thing.

00:42:53.547 --> 00:42:57.187
Next thing. That's that laser hyper-focus that we learn as Marines.

00:42:58.087 --> 00:43:01.167
So, I mean, yeah, it makes me feel good, but at the end of the day,

00:43:01.367 --> 00:43:04.007
that's why I was put here. I was put here to solve problems.

00:43:04.367 --> 00:43:08.107
We've talked a couple of times and just through regular conversation,

00:43:08.107 --> 00:43:13.387
I've kind of unpacked that you're never leaving Georgia. You don't care about

00:43:13.387 --> 00:43:15.227
the shows and the, right?

00:43:15.387 --> 00:43:21.507
That's not your life. You'll never move to California, but why is that a non-negotiable?

00:43:21.727 --> 00:43:24.687
Well, I'm way too Southern for one.

00:43:25.127 --> 00:43:31.107
So I own 120 acres in the middle of nowhere, five miles down a dirt road.

00:43:31.107 --> 00:43:34.147
I can go there and stay for a week and never see or hear a human.

00:43:34.347 --> 00:43:39.007
I might hear a helicopter, maybe going to the army basis, not that far away.

00:43:39.887 --> 00:43:44.007
I mean, as a Marine, I was in Southern California and trust me as a Marine,

00:43:44.287 --> 00:43:46.307
you know, when you're 18, 19 years old.

00:43:46.627 --> 00:43:50.627
Oh my goodness. Southern California for a Volkswagen or Porsche person is the

00:43:50.627 --> 00:43:53.947
Mecca, especially back then in the early nineties. Right. Right.

00:43:54.207 --> 00:43:58.227
But man, I just, I couldn't get out of there quick enough as a Marine.

00:43:58.567 --> 00:44:00.647
You know, once I got, once I was done. Yeah.

00:44:00.836 --> 00:44:04.556
I stopped at the state line. I looked back and I said, I'm not ever coming back

00:44:04.556 --> 00:44:07.176
to this place. And I didn't go back for like 18 years.

00:44:07.376 --> 00:44:13.676
I just don't like all the people. I don't like the hustle and bustle and how fast everything is.

00:44:14.496 --> 00:44:17.676
I mean, but there are parts of California that are beautiful.

00:44:17.676 --> 00:44:21.176
And, you know, you grew up to Eureka in the mountains and it's just like it is here.

00:44:21.556 --> 00:44:24.396
But still, that's that state's just way too regulated for me.

00:44:24.496 --> 00:44:28.836
I'm way too rogue for regulations like that, you know, because I grew up in

00:44:28.836 --> 00:44:32.636
Appalachia. So we just do, we're on our own program. We take care of ourselves.

00:44:32.976 --> 00:44:36.176
You know, we do what we want to do. We don't care about regulation.

00:44:36.696 --> 00:44:40.096
Leave me alone. I'll leave you alone, you know, type thing. But no,

00:44:40.236 --> 00:44:42.556
I mean, I don't need to be in California.

00:44:42.596 --> 00:44:47.716
When I came home, I had a moving truck that had two Carmanguillas in it. Okay.

00:44:47.876 --> 00:44:50.916
They were sitting on mattresses that were thrown away out of the barracks.

00:44:51.016 --> 00:44:54.296
And I had, I had to give a couple of six packs of beer to some Marines to help

00:44:54.296 --> 00:44:59.036
me load all this stuff in my U-Haul truck. But I had two, two carbon gears setting

00:44:59.036 --> 00:45:02.796
in this U-Haul truck and I had mattresses between them of all things.

00:45:03.176 --> 00:45:06.316
One was flipped upside down and was on its roof setting on mattresses.

00:45:06.536 --> 00:45:09.056
So I come home and I'm unloading all my stuff.

00:45:09.256 --> 00:45:14.936
And my dad, of course, in his infinite wisdom, he comes walking up and it's

00:45:14.936 --> 00:45:16.056
like two o'clock in the morning.

00:45:16.636 --> 00:45:20.076
And again, he comes at me. So what are you going to do? Well,

00:45:20.196 --> 00:45:21.876
we had this rental house on the property.

00:45:21.996 --> 00:45:24.056
It was right next to the shop and there was nobody living in it.

00:45:24.136 --> 00:45:25.336
That's where I was going to move into.

00:45:25.956 --> 00:45:30.136
And he gave me the whole spiel about, you know, you better not be late on your rent, blah, blah, blah.

00:45:30.856 --> 00:45:34.656
This is going to be hard for you. The Marine Corps is not nearly as hard as I am.

00:45:35.316 --> 00:45:38.276
Totally, I agree with that. And then he says, so what are you going to do?

00:45:38.716 --> 00:45:40.996
And I said, well, you know, there's this thing called the Internet.

00:45:41.296 --> 00:45:43.656
I think that I can take what I've learned.

00:45:43.836 --> 00:45:49.216
I can build some engines, and I can do it right here, and I can sell these things on the Internet.

00:45:50.150 --> 00:45:55.850
And he says, you mean to tell me that somebody in some other state or some other

00:45:55.850 --> 00:46:02.830
country or whatever is going to buy a motor for their car from a kid working

00:46:02.830 --> 00:46:05.050
in a barn in Cleveland, Georgia?

00:46:05.850 --> 00:46:11.050
I said, well, I think so. Well, two years later, he is working for me,

00:46:11.290 --> 00:46:16.650
answering telephones and talking to people ordering engines in Australia. Dang.

00:46:18.110 --> 00:46:21.350
And Singapore. The first one I sold internationally was in Singapore.

00:46:21.790 --> 00:46:24.610
That was the very first one I sold internationally. Now I've got,

00:46:24.810 --> 00:46:26.850
I think, about 300 international.

00:46:27.410 --> 00:46:32.350
And today, actually, I do more international work with air-cooled stuff than I do domestic work.

00:46:32.470 --> 00:46:36.170
Sitting here looking at nine builds that are on the board, and of those nine,

00:46:36.370 --> 00:46:37.910
four of them actually go out of the country.

00:46:38.610 --> 00:46:43.070
Dang, man. That's almost half. Yeah. And sometimes it's actually more than half

00:46:43.070 --> 00:46:46.710
that go out of the country. So fast forward a little bit, let's talk about this

00:46:46.710 --> 00:46:49.510
experience that you had on the Speed Channel.

00:46:49.710 --> 00:46:52.390
Was that the blow it up?

00:46:53.350 --> 00:46:57.210
That's one of the few times I've lost in my life, and it was great because I

00:46:57.210 --> 00:46:59.050
was able to lose to another Marine.

00:46:59.890 --> 00:47:02.110
Let's talk about what went wrong.

00:47:03.130 --> 00:47:06.150
So, well, it didn't go wrong. It went the way it was supposed to go.

00:47:06.150 --> 00:47:12.450
And so I met a guy that did podcasting stuff.

00:47:12.570 --> 00:47:15.270
This was like 06, 07 before podcasts were a thing.

00:47:15.350 --> 00:47:18.610
I actually had the Fourth Dimension radio show going back to 07,

00:47:18.630 --> 00:47:21.470
which was when iTunes first came out.

00:47:21.570 --> 00:47:24.710
We were like in the iTunes top 100 when it first came out.

00:47:25.030 --> 00:47:30.070
Kind of crazy stuff, but I loved doing that podcast before a podcast was a podcast.

00:47:31.230 --> 00:47:37.570
And so I met a guy who ended up getting a job working for Rich Christians and the guy that did Pink's.

00:47:38.350 --> 00:47:42.450
So Pink's ended up, you know, he wanted to do more shows through Speed Channel

00:47:42.450 --> 00:47:43.730
and Speed Channel was a thing.

00:47:43.830 --> 00:47:47.270
And they said, hey, we're going to do some pilots. And one of them is called Blow It Up.

00:47:47.729 --> 00:47:50.749
And I'm like, well, this sounds good because I used to do engine blow contests

00:47:50.749 --> 00:47:54.329
at car shows, and I would do it for charity, and we would blow things up on

00:47:54.329 --> 00:47:56.489
purpose to see how long it would take for them to blow up.

00:47:56.549 --> 00:48:00.489
And, you know, in Sevierville, Tennessee, one time I built an engine blindfolded

00:48:00.489 --> 00:48:04.749
in front of the crowd, a whole engine, we blew it up, built one with just a

00:48:04.749 --> 00:48:07.109
pair of pliers, no tools, just pliers.

00:48:07.389 --> 00:48:10.309
And it lasted for five minutes at wide open throttle.

00:48:10.589 --> 00:48:14.489
So that was right up my alley. So I'm like, okay, who am I going up against?

00:48:14.489 --> 00:48:20.149
So he goes, well, you know, there's different people, but some of them decided they're going to bail.

00:48:20.429 --> 00:48:23.389
And he goes, I don't know who you can go up against. I said,

00:48:23.469 --> 00:48:25.649
well, how about Art Thrain from Air Cooled Engineering?

00:48:25.949 --> 00:48:28.869
Art without Salt Lake City. And he was also a Marine.

00:48:29.269 --> 00:48:31.329
And I said, look, you know, I

00:48:31.329 --> 00:48:34.749
would love to go up against Art because it's going to be he's super sharp.

00:48:35.009 --> 00:48:38.049
He's a super good guy. He and I shot some video stuff together.

00:48:38.469 --> 00:48:43.569
He's also a Marine. He also worked on and flew in the same helicopters I did,

00:48:43.689 --> 00:48:45.909
just about 12 years older than me.

00:48:46.529 --> 00:48:53.829
So it was very much a big competition between two very good friends that are wired the same.

00:48:54.129 --> 00:48:59.909
So we show up at this event, and the organization level was horrible.

00:49:00.129 --> 00:49:03.929
Anytime somebody asks you to be on TV, slap them. Don't do it.

00:49:04.269 --> 00:49:08.169
Slap them. Because you'll be on TV and blah, blah, blah. I know what you have

00:49:08.169 --> 00:49:12.869
to realize is you're giving them your content for free. They should be paying you to go on television.

00:49:13.949 --> 00:49:19.429
So, you know, we show up there and the rules were basically you got to run the car till it blows up.

00:49:19.549 --> 00:49:22.949
It can't have a rev limiter. It's got to run on pump gas.

00:49:23.249 --> 00:49:26.949
Basically, those are the biggest rules. So we build our car to the rules.

00:49:27.469 --> 00:49:29.769
Okay. Art builds his car to the rules. Okay.

00:49:30.193 --> 00:49:33.773
Then we show up, and since nobody else built their car to the rules,

00:49:34.093 --> 00:49:38.473
then they changed the rules because otherwise they weren't going to have a show.

00:49:39.133 --> 00:49:44.833
So we only had pump gas with us, but then they said, well, now you can turn

00:49:44.833 --> 00:49:48.033
a rev limiter on and blah, blah, blah.

00:49:48.213 --> 00:49:52.333
So muffler Mike Sheldon was the driver of the car. He was obviously a great

00:49:52.333 --> 00:49:54.093
drag racer. I'm not a drag racer.

00:49:54.173 --> 00:50:00.273
So we flew Mike in to come drive the car. He knew Art also, but Mike had never

00:50:00.273 --> 00:50:05.373
driven the car, and it was a 550 Spyder replica, of all things, for the drag strip.

00:50:05.633 --> 00:50:09.593
And so we built the whole car in like a month, which is what they want you to do.

00:50:09.653 --> 00:50:11.853
They want you to thrash and build this thing against the clock,

00:50:11.853 --> 00:50:14.573
and that was really what turned me against the clock, right?

00:50:14.973 --> 00:50:18.033
And so we end up doing this thing.

00:50:18.073 --> 00:50:23.093
They changed all the rules, and I don't want to be a sore loser because we lost.

00:50:23.513 --> 00:50:27.493
Art kicked our ass i'll tell you right now and i would love i love to learn lose to a marine,

00:50:28.086 --> 00:50:32.426
But we were a victim of ourselves because we listened to what they said.

00:50:32.546 --> 00:50:35.506
And I was not smart enough at the time to think that things could change.

00:50:35.506 --> 00:50:38.086
If I could have thought it was going to change, if I would have thought ahead

00:50:38.086 --> 00:50:41.306
and didn't have to drive to Iowa, I would have been like, OK,

00:50:41.586 --> 00:50:42.786
let's take some race gas.

00:50:42.926 --> 00:50:45.246
Let's do this. Let's do that. Let's get a different tune.

00:50:45.406 --> 00:50:47.846
It was fuel injected to programmable fuel injection.

00:50:48.066 --> 00:50:51.786
Let me make another map. It's a safe map that I can throw in this thing really quick.

00:50:51.946 --> 00:50:54.946
I didn't do any of that because I was thought I was going up against art.

00:50:55.086 --> 00:50:59.726
But when we get there, we end up racing other people, too. with other kinds of cars.

00:51:00.626 --> 00:51:04.826
So I learned a lot, but we lost. I mean, hands down, we lost,

00:51:04.966 --> 00:51:08.946
but Art and I laugh about it now, but, you know, anytime you're,

00:51:09.026 --> 00:51:13.526
anytime the television or some, some level of media like that's involved in

00:51:13.526 --> 00:51:14.846
something, it's going to be a disaster.

00:51:15.086 --> 00:51:19.366
They're, they're a total disorganization. It makes me laugh every time I see

00:51:19.366 --> 00:51:24.626
somebody message me, Hey, I'm with so-and-so show. I'm like, delete, delete.

00:51:24.826 --> 00:51:29.906
I'm not even talking to you. I have only a tiny thing that I can say about that

00:51:29.906 --> 00:51:38.606
from the late 90s, early 2000, when reality TV shows like first really kind of started to come out.

00:51:38.886 --> 00:51:44.866
There was a show on Fox called Paradise Hotel, early 2000, 2001.

00:51:45.546 --> 00:51:51.446
I remember that. Yeah, I made the lead cast and I got flown out to Vegas and

00:51:51.446 --> 00:51:56.246
then LA and it was a total shit show.

00:51:56.876 --> 00:52:00.776
I thought it was going to be what they, what they said, you know,

00:52:00.916 --> 00:52:04.816
you're going to go out to this, you know, hotel location and it's going to be

00:52:04.816 --> 00:52:08.596
all this, you know, this crazy hooking up and all this party in and all this stuff.

00:52:09.196 --> 00:52:14.856
And you get there and it's this total production and there's lines and there's,

00:52:14.936 --> 00:52:18.176
you know, who can act crazy camera and all that. And I'm like,

00:52:18.256 --> 00:52:19.596
man, this is all fake stuff.

00:52:19.776 --> 00:52:23.316
But anyway, I'm not taking away from you. I'm just saying I relate to that.

00:52:23.456 --> 00:52:28.976
And I've since then I've always felt forget that. Like being on TV and stuff is overrated.

00:52:29.725 --> 00:52:34.565
Especially now, I mean, to me, TV's just washed away with all the podcasts and

00:52:34.565 --> 00:52:36.625
all the YouTube stuff and the

00:52:36.625 --> 00:52:41.605
social media people that have more followers than television shows have.

00:52:42.245 --> 00:52:46.565
TV's, it's gone. It may as well be the, it's like the Polaroid camera, you know?

00:52:47.985 --> 00:52:53.745
So you've designed the Technical Learning Center now for middle schoolers at

00:52:53.745 --> 00:52:55.765
Prince Avenue Christian School.

00:52:55.865 --> 00:52:59.625
And I know you've been working with your daughter on this since she was six.

00:53:00.345 --> 00:53:03.765
What an absolutely cool thing to do, because we were talking a few minutes ago

00:53:03.765 --> 00:53:06.205
about how schools really don't even have shop class anymore.

00:53:06.625 --> 00:53:10.885
So now there's a technical learning center for middle schoolers.

00:53:11.025 --> 00:53:12.865
Tell me what sparked that idea.

00:53:13.185 --> 00:53:19.185
Well, so my daughter got years ago, my wife and I bought an old go cart for

00:53:19.185 --> 00:53:22.925
all of my daughter's cousins before my daughter was born.

00:53:23.365 --> 00:53:28.585
So we were the last of my wife's siblings to have have a, you know, have a kid.

00:53:29.725 --> 00:53:32.925
So they we bought them all this go-kart and everybody drove

00:53:32.925 --> 00:53:35.725
it the oil was never changed it was just ran into the

00:53:35.725 --> 00:53:38.405
ground and by the time it got passed down to my

00:53:38.405 --> 00:53:44.005
daughter the motor was shot so for christmas when she was five i said look you

00:53:44.005 --> 00:53:47.765
know i bought her like a harbor freight motor and and i said we'll put that

00:53:47.765 --> 00:53:50.565
on the go-kart because we live in the country i mean we got i got a 20 acre

00:53:50.565 --> 00:53:55.765
field out here we can ride around in and stuff and it's awesome so i said there's a caveat.

00:53:56.185 --> 00:53:58.945
For you to put this on the go-kart, you've got to take it apart.

00:53:59.165 --> 00:54:00.465
You've got to put it back together again.

00:54:00.605 --> 00:54:03.485
And we're going to name all the parts and we're going to learn what it is and

00:54:03.485 --> 00:54:06.085
how it works. And she said, okay. So we do it.

00:54:06.616 --> 00:54:10.296
And she was into it. I've got videos of her five years old, just,

00:54:10.296 --> 00:54:13.476
just into it. And she was all about the organization of it.

00:54:13.696 --> 00:54:20.116
You know, every tool labeled, every part labeled, she would bag and tag everything. It was epic.

00:54:20.916 --> 00:54:24.136
So, so it was like, it's like, you can tell she's my offspring.

00:54:24.396 --> 00:54:27.676
So that night, like she gets out of the bath or whatever.

00:54:27.996 --> 00:54:31.856
And I, she's like, I had an idea. I was like, what's that? She goes,

00:54:32.016 --> 00:54:33.996
why don't we do this for other kids?

00:54:34.236 --> 00:54:38.536
And I was like, ding, ding, ding. okay so we

00:54:38.536 --> 00:54:41.276
had put the engine back together again and we cranked it up

00:54:41.276 --> 00:54:44.636
I said okay so what we need to do if you want to do that is

00:54:44.636 --> 00:54:49.436
we need to take it back apart make a list of everything that we need and we

00:54:49.436 --> 00:54:54.836
will make a kit that's a learning experience so a kid can do this at home with

00:54:54.836 --> 00:54:58.656
their parents so they can do it at school and that's what we did so we we put

00:54:58.656 --> 00:55:02.016
all the tools in one room and we put the engine in another room,

00:55:02.176 --> 00:55:03.416
which is now my machine shop.

00:55:03.896 --> 00:55:09.416
And we basically put that engine back together again and she would go get tools

00:55:09.416 --> 00:55:12.836
as we needed them, but they stayed in that room and she would take them and

00:55:12.836 --> 00:55:15.776
put them on the stainless steel tabletop and label what they were.

00:55:16.016 --> 00:55:20.336
So that way, every tool we needed to take this thing apart, put it back together again was known.

00:55:20.576 --> 00:55:25.376
So we did that, made the parts list, made the tool list, made the spare parts list.

00:55:25.576 --> 00:55:30.016
And then And we did an instructional video about how to do it.

00:55:30.456 --> 00:55:36.916
And then her school was ran by also a Marine colonel and it's a private Christian school.

00:55:37.076 --> 00:55:39.396
And so I brought the idea up to him.

00:55:39.636 --> 00:55:43.116
I said, hey, Colonel Hathaway, what do you think about what Ava and I were able to do?

00:55:43.556 --> 00:55:46.396
He's like, can you come meet with my...

00:55:47.235 --> 00:55:51.915
With my team in a couple of weeks and bring one of these engines with you. And I said, yeah.

00:55:52.155 --> 00:55:55.615
So we go meet with a few teachers and him. And one of the teachers there was

00:55:55.615 --> 00:55:59.115
actually a retired Air Force test pilot.

00:55:59.135 --> 00:56:02.815
He was the B the B-1 bomber test pilot.

00:56:02.975 --> 00:56:05.875
He is also a test pilot of the SR-71 Blackbird.

00:56:06.375 --> 00:56:10.435
And he retired. This guy's over 70 years old at the time.

00:56:10.555 --> 00:56:16.395
And he's teaching high school kids and his degree was an astrophysicism, right?

00:56:16.615 --> 00:56:22.075
I mean, literally the dude was flying SR-71s and he's teaching high school and middle school kids.

00:56:22.335 --> 00:56:27.115
So you can't say to him, you know, come on, man, what is this rocket science?

00:56:27.895 --> 00:56:33.135
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, he was, he was so humble, but he was just super,

00:56:33.355 --> 00:56:35.575
the things a man has seen are just unbelievable.

00:56:35.895 --> 00:56:40.595
So, so he was blown away by it. So the school adopted it and they said,

00:56:40.775 --> 00:56:43.635
we'll buy some of these kits from you. I gave them a good deal.

00:56:43.855 --> 00:56:50.335
Then COVID hit and that threw everything off. So it was just like no school or whatever.

00:56:50.635 --> 00:56:57.635
Everything was, was jacked up. So finally in 2023, actually the summer of 22, he got ahold of me.

00:56:57.715 --> 00:57:00.175
The Colonel did and said, Hey, we want to pick this back up.

00:57:00.195 --> 00:57:01.955
We've added a life skills class.

00:57:01.975 --> 00:57:06.275
And we think this is an essential life skill for people to learn how to use tools and things.

00:57:06.575 --> 00:57:09.975
So it'll be a seventh grade class. We want to pick this back up.

00:57:10.075 --> 00:57:14.515
So they bought eight of the technical learning centers, and then I instructed the class.

00:57:14.815 --> 00:57:18.995
And originally I was going to teach another teacher how to do it. But then we learned that,

00:57:19.526 --> 00:57:23.906
That's probably not going to work. So every year I volunteered my time to go

00:57:23.906 --> 00:57:26.506
teach this class for a month and I love doing it.

00:57:27.046 --> 00:57:30.766
And I tell people all the time, I'm like, look, you know, you talk about these

00:57:30.766 --> 00:57:34.506
kids today and how they're not learning and they're not doing this or not doing that.

00:57:34.946 --> 00:57:38.066
I'm here to tell you, I'm probably going to piss people off by saying this.

00:57:38.646 --> 00:57:42.186
It is the parent's fault. Hey, you ain't going to piss nobody off.

00:57:42.546 --> 00:57:45.366
They better be able to take that. This is the thing. I'll tell you right now,

00:57:45.566 --> 00:57:48.546
these kids are absolutely hungry for this.

00:57:49.026 --> 00:57:55.166
They get addicted to this. I had kids in my class that went home and took their bicycle apart.

00:57:55.926 --> 00:57:59.506
They never would have done it, right? I had parents walk up to me in the parking

00:57:59.506 --> 00:58:02.606
lot and just blown away. I can't believe you did this.

00:58:02.706 --> 00:58:06.566
I can't believe you're giving your time for this. I can't believe my kid's so into this.

00:58:06.746 --> 00:58:10.586
My kid don't want to go play golf anymore. my kid wants to build a go-kart.

00:58:11.046 --> 00:58:16.506
I mean, so I'm telling you, the kids are hungry for this. You know why?

00:58:16.586 --> 00:58:18.206
Because it's so different for them now.

00:58:18.486 --> 00:58:21.306
This is different. It's challenging. People don't know about it.

00:58:21.566 --> 00:58:27.766
And I think that the generation of parents we have right now are basically a

00:58:27.766 --> 00:58:30.466
result of their parents not teaching them anything.

00:58:30.666 --> 00:58:36.246
And I think that that generation is the one that's really leading the big problem of this.

00:58:36.406 --> 00:58:42.666
But the kids that are now middle school age, high school age, they're dying for this.

00:58:42.806 --> 00:58:45.006
I've got a kid that's working for me right now as an intern.

00:58:45.186 --> 00:58:48.806
He's second year in engineering school. He's never touched a CNC machine.

00:58:48.806 --> 00:58:51.606
He's never modeled anything. He's never programmed anything.

00:58:51.606 --> 00:58:55.706
But he's downstairs with me working with a five-axis Hodge UMC.

00:58:56.746 --> 00:59:01.926
And literally, he knows more than his teachers do. The teachers never touched

00:59:01.926 --> 00:59:04.186
a CNC steam machine before. Incredible.

00:59:04.666 --> 00:59:06.426
So, so, so ultimately that's what

00:59:06.426 --> 00:59:09.466
I'm getting at, but that's what the mechanical classroom is all about.

00:59:09.626 --> 00:59:13.886
So basically you, we talked about, you know, there's no shop classes anymore.

00:59:14.046 --> 00:59:17.886
Well, you pulled all of it out there. You know, everybody's forced to go to college.

00:59:18.186 --> 00:59:21.766
You know, you get, you get, you're a peon if you don't go to college. Right.

00:59:22.425 --> 00:59:25.245
You know, you're never going to be amount to anything if you don't go to college.

00:59:25.405 --> 00:59:28.025
Well, I'll tell you, I've had a lot of people with degrees work for me.

00:59:28.725 --> 00:59:32.705
And I graduated from special ed in high school. I'm lucky to have graduated.

00:59:33.225 --> 00:59:35.885
If I hadn't had shop classes, I never would have graduated.

00:59:36.445 --> 00:59:41.625
So, you know, ultimately what I'm getting at is this mechanical classroom rolls

00:59:41.625 --> 00:59:44.445
eight of these kits or however many into a classroom.

00:59:44.565 --> 00:59:51.345
You put two or three students at this. We can literally transfer a science classroom

00:59:51.345 --> 00:59:56.185
or a math classroom into a mechanical classroom in 15 minutes.

00:59:56.886 --> 01:00:01.626
Every part of it. You roll in with the kits. The kits are 100% self-contained.

01:00:01.746 --> 01:00:04.846
They have a hydraulic lift that lifts the engine up. So if the kid's short,

01:00:04.966 --> 01:00:06.866
no big deal. If the kid's tall, no big deal.

01:00:07.546 --> 01:00:11.786
Everything is labeled. Every tool is etched. Everything has a location,

01:00:11.786 --> 01:00:14.026
just like it does as a Marine when you're working on aircraft.

01:00:14.426 --> 01:00:17.806
Yeah, yeah. And I could say, take the tool out of location B3.

01:00:18.006 --> 01:00:21.586
We don't have to say what the tool is. Pull that tool out of location B3.

01:00:21.746 --> 01:00:25.266
They all end up with a tool in their hand. Now, let's learn what this tool is.

01:00:25.506 --> 01:00:28.866
Okay. Now, tomorrow, you don't know it, but when you come in,

01:00:28.986 --> 01:00:31.726
we're going to have a test over what tools are in this box.

01:00:31.866 --> 01:00:35.486
I want you to memorize the location and the size of everything in the box.

01:00:35.506 --> 01:00:37.606
Because it's not about putting an engine together.

01:00:37.866 --> 01:00:44.546
It's about being a student of your craft. Whatever that is, you are a student of that craft.

01:00:44.906 --> 01:00:47.726
If you know how to use a tool, if you know how things go together,

01:00:47.886 --> 01:00:51.106
if you learn how to diagnose things, that's what it's all about.

01:00:51.206 --> 01:00:53.866
It's not about being an engine builder. It's not about being a mechanic.

01:00:53.866 --> 01:00:57.626
It's about being a student of whatever craft that you're going to work with.

01:00:57.786 --> 01:01:02.806
So when we took these engines apart, I used different methods of doing this.

01:01:02.906 --> 01:01:03.846
Sometimes it was a video.

01:01:04.066 --> 01:01:08.466
A lot of times it was me in front of the class with my own engine with a video

01:01:08.466 --> 01:01:11.046
camera on it that was being displayed big on a screen.

01:01:11.266 --> 01:01:15.146
And it was me doing the work. And I'm walking the kid through. This is the camshaft.

01:01:15.286 --> 01:01:16.766
The purpose of the camshaft is

01:01:16.766 --> 01:01:20.146
to actuate the valves at certain times and certain amounts of valve lift.

01:01:20.246 --> 01:01:25.986
Valve lift is defined as blah, blah, blah. And then we would put that engine

01:01:25.986 --> 01:01:27.046
all back together again.

01:01:27.186 --> 01:01:29.866
And then they got to fire that engine up.

01:01:30.482 --> 01:01:34.522
And we rolled them right outside of a literature room and fired these things

01:01:34.522 --> 01:01:36.602
up right outside and made the teacher mad.

01:01:37.082 --> 01:01:42.302
So cool, though, man. So cool. Tell me, are there any consistencies in what

01:01:42.302 --> 01:01:46.162
these kids are maybe talking about or learning?

01:01:46.342 --> 01:01:51.662
Like, what's the first thing that these kids in middle school realize when they tear an engine down?

01:01:51.842 --> 01:01:55.522
They realize, one, that it's complex and two, that it's simple.

01:01:55.682 --> 01:02:00.162
But I'm telling you that the look on these kids' faces, and I got some video.

01:02:00.162 --> 01:02:04.022
I can share with you the look on their faces when this thing cranks up because

01:02:04.022 --> 01:02:05.442
you took it all apart, right?

01:02:05.542 --> 01:02:09.602
You took it all apart and you crank it up and then we learn what propels a car.

01:02:10.122 --> 01:02:14.502
I mean, these kids were able to go home and tell their parent how the car that

01:02:14.502 --> 01:02:17.362
they drove to school in worked. The parent doesn't know.

01:02:17.582 --> 01:02:20.642
The grandparent doesn't know. But this kid knows.

01:02:21.122 --> 01:02:27.302
And so they learn this very enthusiastically also. So, but you know,

01:02:27.482 --> 01:02:32.222
we, we crank it up and even I taught them, look, there's no second chances here.

01:02:32.402 --> 01:02:34.642
Either your engine runs or it doesn't. If you do it, everything,

01:02:34.782 --> 01:02:36.602
the way that I show you, your engine will run.

01:02:36.722 --> 01:02:41.182
If it doesn't run, you fail and there's no do-overs. There's no second chances.

01:02:41.582 --> 01:02:43.502
This is very much so real.

01:02:43.982 --> 01:02:47.002
And then that's to me what the cool thing about it was is because it was no

01:02:47.002 --> 01:02:49.482
simulation. There was no button pushing.

01:02:49.842 --> 01:02:53.202
It was like, we're going to crank this thing up. If you did what you're supposed

01:02:53.202 --> 01:02:57.902
to do, it'll run. So I cheated a little bit in the day we were going to crank them all up.

01:02:58.082 --> 01:03:01.202
I pushed them out the back door and tried to fire them all up.

01:03:01.382 --> 01:03:02.222
One of them wouldn't run.

01:03:02.782 --> 01:03:06.362
Well, of course, those were my troublemaker kids, but those troublemaker kids,

01:03:06.922 --> 01:03:11.542
you know, one of them is going to end up ruling the whole, the whole lot of

01:03:11.542 --> 01:03:15.322
everybody else because he don't want to be there, but he'll,

01:03:15.382 --> 01:03:18.102
he, when he gets out in the real world, he'll just take it by the horns.

01:03:19.002 --> 01:03:20.402
So at the end of the day,

01:03:21.480 --> 01:03:25.140
They had dropped a spark plug and it closed the gap up on it.

01:03:25.380 --> 01:03:28.120
So I'm trying to crank it up. It wouldn't crank. I hit it with a little bit

01:03:28.120 --> 01:03:30.520
of ether, still didn't crank. I said, okay, it's got to be ignition.

01:03:30.860 --> 01:03:34.100
I checked it. It had spark. I said, okay, it must be the spark plug.

01:03:34.200 --> 01:03:36.380
I pulled the spark plug out, gaps closed. Okay.

01:03:36.660 --> 01:03:39.700
So I always had a bunch of spare parts. I put another spark plug in it,

01:03:39.840 --> 01:03:41.400
cranked it up, made sure it ran.

01:03:42.040 --> 01:03:44.400
Then I put their spark plug back in it.

01:03:45.300 --> 01:03:48.360
So everybody goes down through the line. They're cranking their motors up.

01:03:48.460 --> 01:03:51.380
They're all cranking up, all cranking up. And I saved those guys for last.

01:03:51.480 --> 01:03:52.920
Knowing theirs was not going to crank.

01:03:54.560 --> 01:03:57.440
Everybody's cheering, blah, blah, blah. You know, all of a sudden they start

01:03:57.440 --> 01:04:01.320
pulling it. Everybody else has cranked on like the first pull because I would cheat a little bit.

01:04:01.480 --> 01:04:05.040
I put a little bit of gas in the spark plug hole so it would bust right off on the first pull.

01:04:05.740 --> 01:04:08.800
So we get to these guys that won't run. And they're like, what's going on?

01:04:08.860 --> 01:04:11.360
I said, okay, now it's time to learn.

01:04:12.010 --> 01:04:15.210
Let's think about how this thing operates. It's intake, compression,

01:04:15.350 --> 01:04:17.650
power, and exhaust, right? We learned this, okay?

01:04:18.090 --> 01:04:21.210
So, we crank it up, we turn it, yep, it's got good compression,

01:04:21.510 --> 01:04:25.170
it's got spark, okay, what's it not got? It's not running.

01:04:25.290 --> 01:04:28.490
We got spark to the plug, but we know it's not running. Maybe the plug's bad.

01:04:28.630 --> 01:04:32.750
We pull it out, and I was like, oh, who here dropped the spark plug and did

01:04:32.750 --> 01:04:35.950
not have the integrity to tell me, right?

01:04:36.710 --> 01:04:40.490
Well, nobody ever told me. So I had a spark plug in my back pocket,

01:04:40.770 --> 01:04:42.250
threw it in there, and it cranked up.

01:04:42.710 --> 01:04:48.590
But that is how real I made it for these kids, and they absolutely loved it.

01:04:48.770 --> 01:04:55.590
And so I'm doing it again. I'll be teaching that class in March of 26 to 24 more seventh graders.

01:04:56.290 --> 01:05:02.790
Awesome, man. That really is so cool that you do that, bring that back into the youth.

01:05:02.790 --> 01:05:08.030
You know, we talk about the Volkswagen community as a whole,

01:05:08.430 --> 01:05:13.470
you know, these master craftsmen, master technician, master mechanic guys that

01:05:13.470 --> 01:05:17.590
worked on air-cooled engines for a long time are either too old now,

01:05:17.950 --> 01:05:19.770
you know, or they're dying off.

01:05:20.190 --> 01:05:26.050
And, you know, it sucks because there's not a lot of youth that seems like they're

01:05:26.050 --> 01:05:30.470
interested until something like this, right? some innovative type thing,

01:05:30.590 --> 01:05:33.910
we go back, you know, history always repeats itself. I feel.

01:05:34.524 --> 01:05:37.964
Awesome knowing that these kids are excited about

01:05:37.964 --> 01:05:40.864
this and you know man that's just cool but it

01:05:40.864 --> 01:05:44.184
really is well i look around the industry and

01:05:44.184 --> 01:05:46.984
i look at i mean i just turned 50 but i look around and

01:05:46.984 --> 01:05:50.404
i'm like i'm one of the youngest people in this industry yeah

01:05:50.404 --> 01:05:53.144
that's a that's a leader right i mean there's there's some

01:05:53.144 --> 01:05:56.424
people that are up and coming but most everybody is

01:05:56.424 --> 01:05:59.724
65 70 75 80 you

01:05:59.724 --> 01:06:02.444
know and they're still out there getting it you know

01:06:02.444 --> 01:06:06.184
right a lot of them are still building stuff and but ultimately

01:06:06.184 --> 01:06:09.244
there's just not a lot of new fresh blood

01:06:09.244 --> 01:06:12.664
coming into it and you see it at events too you know

01:06:12.664 --> 01:06:17.104
and you almost look at it like sometimes you know you almost wonder where cars

01:06:17.104 --> 01:06:22.644
are going to go and you look at it like i mean i'm a i'm a 356 guy and i look

01:06:22.644 --> 01:06:27.804
at a 356 and i've got one but i'm the youngest person i know that has a 356

01:06:27.804 --> 01:06:29.584
everybody's got gray hair right.

01:06:30.184 --> 01:06:34.984
And I look at that like, is a 356 going to end up being a Model T or a Model

01:06:34.984 --> 01:06:39.204
A, where it's old and it's cool, but it has no following, really.

01:06:39.484 --> 01:06:42.024
You know, younger people just aren't going to go for it.

01:06:42.404 --> 01:06:47.244
And to your point about people getting older and all that, so I literally have

01:06:47.244 --> 01:06:52.884
a 57 Pre-A 356 sitting downstairs right now that was bought by a customer of

01:06:52.884 --> 01:06:54.564
mine, a longtime customer of mine.

01:06:55.144 --> 01:06:58.924
And I was building an engine for him for the car. He bought it at one of the

01:06:58.924 --> 01:07:00.564
Monterey auctions with no engine.

01:07:00.924 --> 01:07:04.024
He commissioned me to build an engine for it. I've done many for him.

01:07:04.284 --> 01:07:07.464
And he called me up and he was just disgusted. Jake, I'm done.

01:07:07.664 --> 01:07:10.564
Don't bother finishing the motor. If I owe you some money, I'll pay you.

01:07:10.744 --> 01:07:14.044
But I can't find anybody to do anything to this car.

01:07:14.184 --> 01:07:18.604
Everybody has always done my mechanic work or my transmission work or my paint

01:07:18.604 --> 01:07:20.464
work. They've all retired. They're sick.

01:07:20.784 --> 01:07:26.044
They don't want to work. I can't. I'm fed up. I'm not doing anything with it. So I...

01:07:26.459 --> 01:07:30.499
I helped him sell that car to another one of my customers, who's my daughter's

01:07:30.499 --> 01:07:33.639
surgeon, who saved her foot last year because she's born with spina bifida,

01:07:33.839 --> 01:07:36.099
and he's been her surgeon for 13 years.

01:07:36.759 --> 01:07:40.859
So I hooked him up with this car, and now we're building a 2.8 liter Type 4 for it.

01:07:41.339 --> 01:07:45.839
But literally, there's cars, there's projects that are not getting done because

01:07:45.839 --> 01:07:48.399
you can't find anybody to do the work.

01:07:48.759 --> 01:07:52.959
I feel that. I understand. And then on the flip side of things,

01:07:53.219 --> 01:07:56.559
and this is probably going to – you may have some sponsors out there or people

01:07:56.559 --> 01:07:59.839
that are deep in this industry that are not going to like what I've got to say about this.

01:07:59.959 --> 01:08:02.579
I don't really care. Last time I checked, I'm still a Marine.

01:08:02.579 --> 01:08:03.799
We don't care what people think.

01:08:04.119 --> 01:08:09.119
But at the end of the day, what's killing this industry now is private equity.

01:08:09.652 --> 01:08:15.412
The entire automotive aftermarket industry is being killed day by day by private

01:08:15.412 --> 01:08:18.952
equity groups that are buying out what's left of the good guys.

01:08:19.132 --> 01:08:23.192
And what they do is they come in like a shop like mine's perfect,

01:08:23.392 --> 01:08:26.872
right? They come in. It's got a great reputation. You can't find anything bad about them.

01:08:27.212 --> 01:08:31.052
True craftsmanship has run this place. They built an awesome reputation.

01:08:31.052 --> 01:08:33.992
They have awesome character. They have awesome customers.

01:08:34.432 --> 01:08:37.332
And I would be a target. And I've had them contact me before,

01:08:37.432 --> 01:08:42.052
but I won't talk to them. And so ultimately they come in, they want to buy that reputation.

01:08:42.092 --> 01:08:46.912
They want to pay you a lot of money to stay there for a while and be the face of it.

01:08:47.052 --> 01:08:51.032
They come in and they optimize your books and they kill your business.

01:08:51.232 --> 01:08:54.092
They come in, they bring other people. You get rid of your good people.

01:08:54.192 --> 01:08:57.312
They cost too much to be there. They would rather hire somebody that doesn't have a clue.

01:08:57.592 --> 01:09:01.352
And then they start learning how to make the numbers look better.

01:09:01.352 --> 01:09:05.872
And the sad part about it that sucks the most is they believe that they are

01:09:05.872 --> 01:09:09.892
coming in and they are making that company better because it looks better on

01:09:09.892 --> 01:09:12.012
paper. They dissolve the culture.

01:09:12.272 --> 01:09:19.792
They have absolutely killed it. So it's happened to almost all of your well-known brands, right?

01:09:19.992 --> 01:09:25.032
It's happened to well-known auction sites. It's happened to all these grassroots

01:09:25.032 --> 01:09:29.452
endeavors where people truly build things and these people with big wallets

01:09:29.452 --> 01:09:33.132
and small minds come in and they want a piece of it.

01:09:33.292 --> 01:09:36.992
And a lot of them are car guys. That's the reason why they target car people

01:09:36.992 --> 01:09:41.432
is because they want to be able to, you know, own a company or be invested in

01:09:41.432 --> 01:09:44.952
a company that makes this because they like Porsches or they like Volkswagens.

01:09:45.372 --> 01:09:49.352
And it's absolutely ruined it. If you look around, like the Holley route,

01:09:49.572 --> 01:09:53.232
you know, people that own Holley, I mean, look at how many brands that owns. So what they do...

01:09:53.754 --> 01:09:56.834
Is they go in, they buy up a bunch of different brands, and then they put them

01:09:56.834 --> 01:09:59.694
all together, and they sell all that. So I met a guy.

01:09:59.934 --> 01:10:05.074
My daughter was at a drag race school, Roy Hill's Drag Race School,

01:10:05.234 --> 01:10:09.154
before her spina bifida started giving her a hard time. She was racing a junior dragster.

01:10:09.294 --> 01:10:18.074
So we're there at a class, and a guy's there who is the head of a major private equity group.

01:10:18.414 --> 01:10:22.774
And let me tell you about the audacity of this guy. We're sitting in a room...

01:10:23.498 --> 01:10:28.118
With all these drag racers, one of which is Big Daddy Don Garlitz.

01:10:28.338 --> 01:10:32.558
He is in there to have his license renewed.

01:10:32.698 --> 01:10:36.938
My daughter has staged next to Big Daddy in her junior dragster.

01:10:37.058 --> 01:10:41.018
He signed her dragster. He's an awesome guy. That museum's here in Florida.

01:10:41.378 --> 01:10:44.058
Oh, yeah. We're sitting in that room.

01:10:44.438 --> 01:10:46.918
Everybody goes around telling who they are, whatever.

01:10:47.318 --> 01:10:50.338
It comes up to this guy that's head of a private equity group.

01:10:50.358 --> 01:10:53.298
He does not know how a four-stroke engine operates. Okay?

01:10:53.498 --> 01:10:59.698
He has the audacity to say, I have won more races than anybody in this room

01:10:59.698 --> 01:11:04.518
because I own all of these companies that make all the parts for the cars that win races.

01:11:04.958 --> 01:11:08.758
And the guy's in a room with Don Garland. Not how it works, pal.

01:11:09.038 --> 01:11:12.978
I wanted to get up and go slap this dude. Yeah. Right. I really did.

01:11:13.258 --> 01:11:16.518
So after that, I was like, I want to get in this guy's brain a little bit.

01:11:16.678 --> 01:11:20.438
So between rounds, I start talking to him and he was having problems with bearings

01:11:20.438 --> 01:11:22.018
and his blower going bad.

01:11:22.158 --> 01:11:24.938
And I'm like, I know about bearings. I could create a fix for that.

01:11:25.118 --> 01:11:27.478
And of course, he says, how expensive are they? Right.

01:11:27.858 --> 01:11:33.498
He has 800 employees across 40 different companies that he's bought up.

01:11:33.978 --> 01:11:36.558
But he's worried about how much I want to charge him for a blower bearing.

01:11:36.778 --> 01:11:40.818
And I'm like, dude, you better be telling me that you don't care what it costs. Right.

01:11:42.498 --> 01:11:46.518
So so anyway, he's he had just sold all these companies at that time.

01:11:46.538 --> 01:11:48.438
And he's like, I could tell the economy is going to go down.

01:11:48.558 --> 01:11:51.838
I've been doing this a long time. I just sold all of this. No telling how much

01:11:51.838 --> 01:11:53.918
money he made, no more power to him.

01:11:53.998 --> 01:11:57.838
But he bought these companies piece by piece, one by one by one.

01:11:57.978 --> 01:12:00.018
And he would buy competing companies. Right.

01:12:00.198 --> 01:12:02.918
And we've seen that with tire stores like my local tire store.

01:12:03.078 --> 01:12:04.878
They all ended up being tire discounters.

01:12:05.018 --> 01:12:08.378
You know, they would go to the hometown tire company. They go to this other tire company.

01:12:08.478 --> 01:12:10.858
They buy both of them and then they make the prices all the same.

01:12:10.978 --> 01:12:13.158
They eliminate all the competition.

01:12:13.358 --> 01:12:15.218
And that's what they want to do. So

01:12:15.218 --> 01:12:21.558
ultimately, it is working to kill this industry, and they make it very –.

01:12:22.247 --> 01:12:25.267
It tastes good to people like me. You work your ass off.

01:12:25.507 --> 01:12:28.507
The main thing that you don't want to deal with is you don't want to deal with

01:12:28.507 --> 01:12:32.047
humans. You don't want complaints. You don't want to deal with the public.

01:12:32.227 --> 01:12:36.587
So they come in and say, hey, you sit back. You make the parts. You make the engines.

01:12:36.787 --> 01:12:41.807
We'll handle a business. We'll pay you a few million bucks and you can retire. It sounds wonderful.

01:12:42.347 --> 01:12:46.507
And then they ruin everything you created. The next conversation,

01:12:46.507 --> 01:12:49.107
we're going to get into your grandfather.

01:12:49.407 --> 01:12:55.467
We're going to get into inventing the oscillating gas engine. That was in 1912.

01:12:55.867 --> 01:13:01.087
We're going to get into the association he had with Ford, with Firestone,

01:13:01.307 --> 01:13:05.147
with Edison, how he worked alongside George Kingston on the Kingston carburetor.

01:13:05.147 --> 01:13:09.767
I think there was even something I remember about in the early 1900s,

01:13:09.827 --> 01:13:14.647
he created the first mass teletext messaging type thing.

01:13:15.147 --> 01:13:18.587
Yeah, the rabies potentiophone, the wireless potentiophone.

01:13:18.887 --> 01:13:26.007
So we'll get into all of that on the next episode. But you guys stay locked

01:13:26.007 --> 01:13:28.567
in because this is going to be awesome.

01:13:28.767 --> 01:13:31.727
That's a wrap for this episode of Dub Life Diaries.

01:13:32.287 --> 01:13:35.787
Thanks for riding along with us and diving into these incredible stories of

01:13:35.787 --> 01:13:37.827
the people in the Dove that drive their dreams.

01:13:38.107 --> 01:13:42.647
If you loved today's episode, don't forget to subscribe or hit that follow button

01:13:42.647 --> 01:13:43.967
so you never miss an adventure.

01:13:44.447 --> 01:13:48.927
Do you have a story to tell or know somebody else who's living the Dove life? Awesome.

01:13:49.247 --> 01:13:53.107
Reach out to us. You can find us on all socials at Dove Life Diaries.

01:13:53.267 --> 01:13:56.027
Or shoot me an email. I'm not hard to find.

01:13:56.907 --> 01:14:01.967
DoveLifeDiaries at gmail.com. until next time keep the engines humming and the

01:14:01.967 --> 01:14:06.567
wheels turning and always follow the road that inspires you this is joe person

01:14:06.567 --> 01:14:08.827
i'm signing off i'll catch you on the.