Ruined VWs, 240+Cars & Building a Community Without the Judgement Jordan Reece Ep87

0:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Dub Life Diaries. [SPEAKER_01]: The podcast where passion meets the open road. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Joe Parson, your host, and also a lifelong lover. [SPEAKER_01]: Book a love, because this ride is just beginning. [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is sponsored by Volk's Mania Magazine. [SPEAKER_01]: Good times, great cars, awesome Volk's Maniacs. [SPEAKER_01]: Visit Volk'sMania.com to learn more about this class leading VW Magazine. [SPEAKER_01]: All right, welcome back to Wife Diaries. [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to piss some people off today, hopefully. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go and be a good one. [SPEAKER_01]: What happens when you stop giving a damn about what pirous thing?

0:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you end up building whatever the heck you want, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Today's guest is Jordan Reese. [SPEAKER_01]: He's a Volkswagen addict. [SPEAKER_01]: He's a hot rod guy. [SPEAKER_01]: He's a biker. [SPEAKER_01]: He's a tuner. [SPEAKER_01]: He's an author. [SPEAKER_01]: He's a teacher. [SPEAKER_01]: He's even a minister. [SPEAKER_01]: And he's the guy behind Rune VW's Puris not allow. [SPEAKER_01]: This is a Facebook group, guys will over 347,000 members. [SPEAKER_01]: What? [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, you heard that number correctly. [SPEAKER_01]: He's on more than 11 Volkswagen. [SPEAKER_01]: He's currently building a 1965 Beetle, and he quite literally wrote the book on IDF carburetors. [SPEAKER_01]: But Jordan story goes way beyond cars. [SPEAKER_01]: This is going to be about building things, about teaching people, about challenging the rules, and about having the guts to say, hey, this is my car, and I'm going to build it my way.

1:39 [SPEAKER_01]: This is Doug Life Diaries, and this is the life and story of Jordan Reese, Jordan welcome to the podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: and you are so welcome. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's go be fun. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, looking at your past and looking at all your accomplishments. [SPEAKER_01]: So this will be an awesome episode. [SPEAKER_01]: So thank you so much for your time. [SPEAKER_01]: Before we dive in and get into your life and these questions, I want to give a quick shout out to some of my sponsors. [SPEAKER_01]: First up on the list, Volkswagen Magazine, [SPEAKER_01]: want to pause here for a second. [SPEAKER_01]: Many of you have probably seen in the news or the good old news of Facebook. [SPEAKER_01]: Shout out to Paul Cave and the team at Volkswagen. [SPEAKER_01]: This next episode or issue, I'm sorry, that's coming out number 28.

2:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, it's going to be the last magazine issue for the foreseeable future. [SPEAKER_01]: So 28 is the end of Volkswagen Magazine as a magazine print. [SPEAKER_01]: uh... take the four magazines that they produce and turn them into calendars [SPEAKER_01]: So Paul is taking a nice, well-earned break. [SPEAKER_01]: So if you didn't hear it on Facebook or see it in any of the news that the Volkswagen community covers, you're hearing it here, Paul, I just want to say, thank you so much, brother, for taking a chance on me and giving this podcast time or airtime in the magazine and giving me pages and believing in me.

3:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much. [SPEAKER_01]: Next up on the list, salty dub from the beach to the base, salty dub is tearing up the west coast of Florida all over the state, all over the southeast, our fall schedules out for all the events, the swags on the website, saltydub.com. [SPEAKER_01]: You can use dub life 10. [SPEAKER_01]: That's DUB, LIFE, the number one zero at checkout. [SPEAKER_01]: make sure you check these guys out to see what we got going on and the merch and stuff that we have. [SPEAKER_01]: Last shout out my brother and it's back to you is kindness, reality, knowledge, integrity and heart, experience, real estate, the kindest way I can say if you or anybody you know, [SPEAKER_01]: knows anybody that's moving to Florida, contact the fellow VW enthusiast, visit their website kinestrelty.com that's k-i-n-e-s-t-r-e-a-l-t-y-dot-com and check these guys out and see what they can do for you how they can help.

4:02 [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't matter what part of Florida you're moving to, they can help. [SPEAKER_01]: Alright, my friend, back to you, back to you. [SPEAKER_01]: No more shoutouts, no more sponsors, all right? [SPEAKER_01]: You ready? [SPEAKER_01]: Ready. [SPEAKER_01]: All right, man. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's do it. [SPEAKER_01]: You describe yourself as a YouTube author, as a hotrod guy, as a riser, a biker, a Euro tuner guy, a VW guy, man. [SPEAKER_01]: That is a very broad spectrum. [SPEAKER_01]: So if somebody just met you for the very first time and said, [SPEAKER_01]: who the heck is Jordan Reese? [SPEAKER_01]: What exactly would you tell them? [SPEAKER_00]: Probably would start out with anything on wheels. [SPEAKER_00]: I like, I like carvers and bikes and guns and anything that's mechanical that that move.

4:45 [SPEAKER_00]: I've always been into it, even as a kid, my dad's always been a hot robber. [SPEAKER_00]: So I just really love cars and [SPEAKER_00]: I really like all of them. [SPEAKER_00]: There's not much that I don't like, but there's some that I like more than others, but really I'm just an all around car guy, you know, it's it's uh, and I like nerdy stuff too. [SPEAKER_00]: I like Star Wars and all that good stuff too, but I like all of Star Wars, you know, this is something like, oh, this, this is not in a good. [SPEAKER_01]: How old were you when this obsession with, I guess, anything wheels actually started in your life?

5:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I guess, um, like I said, my dad's always been in a hot rods and he kind of started this. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, he, he had the 84 Mustang. [SPEAKER_00]: It was the GT350 at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: And I can remember the day he sold it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was only about three years old, but I can remember it sitting. [SPEAKER_00]: out in the front driveway. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a kind of a weird spot as I kind of remember and the guy was coming to look at it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't remember my sister's crying, but my dad says my older sister is we're crying that he was getting rid of his Mustang. [SPEAKER_00]: And uh... [SPEAKER_00]: He sold it in order to start building his 55 and F-100.

6:16 [SPEAKER_00]: So he's got that and he's got a bunch of hot rods. [SPEAKER_00]: So he still has the F-100 and I've worked with him on it as a kid, just really just hung out with him and handed him tools and got yelled at like everybody else. [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I just really enjoy cars, but when I turned, [SPEAKER_00]: 15, like, you know, I got a truck from my dad and we lowered it a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: I put some headlights in it, but a stereo in it and just started changing some things that up a little bit and that kind of set it off from there I've, you know, got a little Honda that I played with and a few other things and I've had [SPEAKER_00]: a document and there may be some of forgot but I've had over 240 something cars now so dude, that's about one of everything.

7:10 [SPEAKER_01]: I thought I had a lot of cars in my life. [SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy. [SPEAKER_01]: That's a lot. [SPEAKER_01]: How old are you? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm turning 40 this year. [SPEAKER_01]: Dude, that's an accomplishment. [SPEAKER_01]: That's more than a lot of people in life will ever encounter. [SPEAKER_01]: Good for you. [SPEAKER_01]: Was there a moment in your life where cars stop becoming something that we utilized for transportation and actually started becoming something that you personally needed to have a deeper understanding for? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, um, that 85 Honda DX was my second car that was the next one I got and I really want to learn how to drive a 5 speed. [SPEAKER_00]: So we ended up getting this little car for 300 bucks.

7:53 [SPEAKER_00]: and it was a great little cargo. [SPEAKER_00]: I still love it today and it was a hatchback, you know, it was, it was a good feel-looking car and it needed the radiator started leaking on it. [SPEAKER_00]: So I had to replace the radiator, but we'll up until that point and I'm only, you know, 15 or 16, maybe 17. [SPEAKER_00]: My dad pretty much did everything and I was kind of just with him and [SPEAKER_00]: What do you mean? [SPEAKER_00]: He goes, I'm not doing it because if you want the radiator and you have to figure it out, and I remember the overwhelming feeling like how in the world could I do this.

8:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And then he was like, just start, where do you think you should start? [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, well, I got drain the water, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So I started going through pulling things apart and you realize, [SPEAKER_00]: that okay it's it's only two hoses and four bolts and you drain the water I mean it's really not that big of a deal and I remember when I got the radiator the new one back in and it was hooked up [SPEAKER_00]: And I was feeling it with water, how good that feeling fell. [SPEAKER_00]: When we fired it up, and it was like, it worked. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I did this myself. [SPEAKER_00]: I remember telling people, I was like, yeah, I changed the radiator and they're like, okay, cool. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: My dad's older buddies are like, good job.

9:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, and now it does seem insignificant. [SPEAKER_00]: But at the time, that started it off. [SPEAKER_00]: Like understanding [SPEAKER_00]: how a carburetor works, or how the exhaust works, how the transmission works, or how the wiring works. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I just got really interested in it. [SPEAKER_01]: So back to Volkswagen's, because this is a Volkswagen podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: You've had or own more than 11 to date. [SPEAKER_01]: In your opinion, what is it about Volkswagen's that keep pulling you back? [SPEAKER_00]: So, I've always loved Volkswagen. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, when I was a kid, you know, late 80s, they were Volkswagen's everywhere.

9:58 [SPEAKER_00]: So we would see them all the time, you know, and then in the 90s, they started to Peter off a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: But I just really liked them, seeing them on the road. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I can remember, [SPEAKER_00]: I was at my grandma's house and I was probably four or five years old and she turned on the love bug and seeing her be on the screen and seeing that there was a personality to that car. [SPEAKER_00]: that changed everything for me. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, now I feel like every car has a personality. [SPEAKER_00]: I talk to the cars and I feel like, you know, and it's, for me, that really did it.

10:46 [SPEAKER_00]: From that point, I was like, I have to have a whole swag and like I really wanna beatle. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I just gotta get a beatle. [SPEAKER_00]: And it took me a while, I think I was, [SPEAKER_00]: I was probably 19 or 20 before I got my first needle. [SPEAKER_00]: it was the the till one with the flames. [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't have flames on. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a kind of a kind of a bomb like a street bomb. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was pretty good at painting flames. [SPEAKER_00]: That's all spray can. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was putting flames on everything. [SPEAKER_00]: Helmets and the lawn mower. [SPEAKER_00]: Fun.

11:26 [SPEAKER_00]: So we put some flames on it. [SPEAKER_00]: And it was just a cool car. [SPEAKER_00]: I really liked it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I did [SPEAKER_00]: a lot of work to it to clean it up and replace them into your pieces and work to have these all done. [SPEAKER_01]: That was your first Volkswagen? [SPEAKER_00]: That was it. [SPEAKER_00]: What year was it? [SPEAKER_00]: It's 69. [SPEAKER_01]: 69. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: What did that Volkswagen teach you that you maybe couldn't have learned from somebody simply telling you? [SPEAKER_00]: The biggest thing is don't screw something to the bottom of the firewall. [SPEAKER_00]: because the car will catch on fire so I it was super cold and the heaters on that car were not very good at all because it was a baja everything was open and stayed cold in the back so it really didn't get warm and it was middle of winter and I ordered from J.C. Whitney a little 12 volt heater.

12:25 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, to go up and then I was like screwed into the bottom of the dash and didn't think anything about it and I screwed it right into the main harness and within seconds of turning on the key, it started boiling smoke out from under the hood and I was like, oh my gosh, oh my goodness, I'm tearing everything off and I opened it up and it went right into the main hot wire. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a little a little bit of bad luck there probably a little bit of bad looking so I literally every cool down. [SPEAKER_00]: I made sure it wasn't on fire, but I was in college, so I had to hurry up and get the class.

13:07 [SPEAKER_00]: So I just left and then came back and picked up the main harness and you could see where I thought like the screw had penetrated it. [SPEAKER_00]: And it had burned that one wire. [SPEAKER_00]: all the way to the battery. [SPEAKER_00]: So I had to go through and replace just that one wire and then tape it back up and it was fine. [SPEAKER_00]: Everything ran fine from that point, but it was really, really scary. [SPEAKER_00]: So, but [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's just beetles are so much fun in general and not always like Volkswagen and just the jettas and the rabbits and everything, and I just enjoy them, I didn't know anything about them or the history or any of that stuff, and I was a kid, it was just a [SPEAKER_01]: for sure.

14:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, they, they kind of have their own, you know, personality. [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel that and most of the Volkswagen community feels that as well. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, these cars actually, you know, almost feel like they, you know, like you said, they, they talk back to your, when you look back at them, they almost look like they have, you know, emotions and feelings sometimes. [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty cool. [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty amazing. [SPEAKER_01]: Why are cool, though? [SPEAKER_01]: Specifically, you're, you're more of an [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm a, I'm more definitely more of an air cooled guy. [SPEAKER_00]: I just like the, the simplicity of the air cooled engine. [SPEAKER_00]: I always found it because by the time I got my first Volkswagen, already knew a fair amount about cars, but the Volkswagen was something completely different.

14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, in the way the motor was in the back, the transmission is reversed. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the air cooled engine itself and the, and I've always liked car breeders and general, like my dad was always a fuel injection guy because he grew up with car breeders, so he wanted the next thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I always had fuel injection. [SPEAKER_00]: I always liked the old stuff, you know. [SPEAKER_00]: But just the mechanicalness and the way that everything, I mean, Volkswagenians are masterpieces, and the way that they're built, the way that they're put together, the bolts that are used.

15:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, if you want to take apart the whole front end, it's a 19 millimeter. [SPEAKER_00]: And everything's 19 millimeter. [SPEAKER_00]: Everything just starts coming apart. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's just, it's just, [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's really cool on the design and how much thought was put into every piece of the Volkswagen, how easy it is to work on. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, awesome. [SPEAKER_01]: And pretty accurate. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, well said, now there's something pretty interesting about the Volkswagen community because you've got a lot of people that are obsessed with the originality, right, the here is, if you will, and then you've got also the other side of it who are the people that want to cut the roof off, they want to slam it to the ground, they want to put [SPEAKER_01]: You know, big, ridiculous wheels on it and you know, basically completely reinvent this, this perfect design that that we're kind of talking about now.

16:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Where do you land in that spectrum? [SPEAKER_00]: With obviously ruined VW's. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole story there, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So. [SPEAKER_00]: I love Rulind VWs, like I really do, so if they're on the ground and I actually like most I have now is a pretty car and it's the first pretty Volkswagen that I've owned. [SPEAKER_00]: The rest of them have been rat bugs. [SPEAKER_00]: and I really like the rap books. [SPEAKER_00]: I almost want another one now just to have it as a rap book because the car I've got now so nice that I can't drive it any time that I want to drive it. [SPEAKER_00]: All of my other Volkswagen's I could just get in and drive, go wherever I want and not worry about as much.

17:03 [SPEAKER_00]: I can 100% appreciate completely original cars. [SPEAKER_00]: of any time, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I understand it and I can see why we need them. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: We need those guys that have Peter's cars. [SPEAKER_00]: We need for every of what whether you've got a model T or you have a bullswing. [SPEAKER_00]: We need those as original showpiece. [SPEAKER_00]: This is what it would be because I don't want to lose that history. [SPEAKER_00]: I love autumn museums and I love seeing a completely original cars. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: And if that's what you want with your car, that is fantastic.

17:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: And for me, I'm kind of middle of that spectrum personally from my cars. [SPEAKER_00]: I like cars that look completely factory. [SPEAKER_00]: but a little bit of an edge on them. [SPEAKER_00]: So like the 65 I have now, it could almost be a factory car, but it's got a lot of extra bolt-ons that are after market pieces and it's pretty low to the ground, pretty slang to the ground. [SPEAKER_00]: But it still looks like a pretty classic Volkswagen. [SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing crazy done. [SPEAKER_00]: But on the other side, I can completely appreciate somebody wanting to cut one apart and make it into a ba-ha. [SPEAKER_00]: or put it on the ground, make it a bulls rod, whatever you want to do, and I am, [SPEAKER_00]: There's kind of a stigma around that now, which is kind of weird that people went from there's a stigma to have a pure car, but there's a stigma to doing whatever you want with your car.

18:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of odd that there's something on both sides of that, with any car. [SPEAKER_00]: For me personally, the Ruin VWs came from Greg, my buddy and I. [SPEAKER_00]: We're both Volkswagen guys. [SPEAKER_00]: That's how I met him. [SPEAKER_00]: He had his Volkswagen and I was like, who's Volkswagen? [SPEAKER_00]: Is that in the parking lot? [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and we just got, you know, to be buddies from that. [SPEAKER_00]: And the ruined VW thing is the dark blue 77 Volkswagen that's on the ground. [SPEAKER_00]: I had it and I was doing the easiest way to slam a Volkswagen.

19:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And I've got a few videos of that on the YouTube channel. [SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't necessarily the cheapest way to slam one. [SPEAKER_00]: but it was the easiest way. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was looking at what the all-for-ode guys were doing. [SPEAKER_00]: It running through rods, through, you know, it's getting rid of the torsion bars and running, running through rods and raising them up. [SPEAKER_00]: And then using, [SPEAKER_00]: big coolovers to run all of your suspension. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I was like, if they can do that, then why can't I just run through rods and slam it on the ground and use an air shock, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And in doing that, it created a huge [SPEAKER_00]: like so many people were all in there going you can't do that because it won't work like it won't center itself and the the shock mount isn't strong enough to hold the way to the car and just all of these things were coming up and I was like if it's good enough for the off road you guys to be jumping stuff with huge pullovers surely I can just support the weight of the front end of a [SPEAKER_00]: which is not much.

20:41 [SPEAKER_00]: And I did it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I went through and did all these things. [SPEAKER_00]: And then people were like, Oh, you ruined the car, the car's ruined because you did this. [SPEAKER_00]: And we started realizing that Greg's car is a full-bah-ha, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's an off-road ball. [SPEAKER_00]: But it was really at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: It was the nicest Volkswagen that I had ever seen. [SPEAKER_00]: Like he and his dad, his dad builds [SPEAKER_00]: is that is he knows how to build it. [SPEAKER_00]: super expensive cars. [SPEAKER_00]: So his Volkswagen was super nice even though it was a baja. [SPEAKER_00]: And it was just mind blowing to say how good his car looked. [SPEAKER_00]: And that was 20 years ago, which 20 years ago, people weren't worried about Volkswagen's.

21:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Now today, if he buzzed a bit of his car, people were like, oh, you're doing that car because you made it a baja. [SPEAKER_00]: He was like, this is 20 years ago, because you could buy them for a few hundred bucks and do whatever you wanted with. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, [SPEAKER_00]: that so many people have customized Volkswagen's for years and years and years. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they made 21 million of them and most of them are customized. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So he and I were talking one day at lunch and I was like, you know, we really need a group that's just for Volkswagen's that had been customized, but it's a completely positive group. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't say anything negative. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you do, then we'll delete your comment.

22:09 [SPEAKER_00]: If you keep doing it, we just boot you. [SPEAKER_00]: We just get you out of there. [SPEAKER_00]: Because we want to have gods that have complete freedom to ruin their cars as much as they want, right? [SPEAKER_00]: We're a whole set of runers. [SPEAKER_00]: And when we built this thing, we thought, man, if we could have 200 people in here, it would be awesome. [SPEAKER_00]: And then we hit 200 in a matter of weeks, we thought, you know, what if we had a thousand 1,000 car guys, all really cool, all building stuff, that would be awesome. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it was, okay, we're at 5,000 now. [SPEAKER_00]: And now we're at 10,000. [SPEAKER_00]: When I were 15, I were at 20. [SPEAKER_00]: We had 100,000. [SPEAKER_00]: It was just mind-blowing.

22:56 [SPEAKER_00]: it was a hot VW's magazine. [SPEAKER_00]: I actually wrote about our group when it first started about how crazy it was that all of these guys were coming together and we started seeing stuff on our group that you didn't see on any group because people were so afraid to post what they had did. [SPEAKER_00]: online because they didn't want to get the hate. [SPEAKER_00]: Well with us, you can come, you can post whatever you want in the craziest looking vehicle and you're going to get positive comments and if you can't say anything positive, you scroll on, right? [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of cars up up that I don't like, but I can just literally do this on my phone and I'm done.

23:37 [SPEAKER_00]: I just go past it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing how well that works. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you don't have to be hateful on the internet and I'm telling they get the [SPEAKER_00]: to be hateful, but in our group, we're not going to be hateful. [SPEAKER_01]: So good segue, you know, to talk about ruined VWs because we're obviously talking about it now, but now, 347,000 plus followers. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, such a cool place to land, you know, and knowing that, I've posted my own cars, you know, in that community and gotten a ton of [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, so the name alone, you know, ruin VWs is like taking a grenade and throwing it into the VW community.

24:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and that came from, you know, almost. [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, if what it, what it sounds like necessity, right? [SPEAKER_00]: That's where like some of the greatest things are built. [SPEAKER_00]: We, we kept being called ruiners, right? [SPEAKER_00]: This car, right, even my 65. [SPEAKER_00]: as simplistic as it is, being slammed to the ground, I've already been told by somebody that the car is ruined. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, it's only just suspension. [SPEAKER_00]: It could be raised back up, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And but being called a ruin, you know, a ruiner now is a badge of honor. [SPEAKER_00]: right we want to be ruiners we want to tell us that you ruin it so so we've got stickers and everything else that says I know I know it's ruined you know I ruined it you know so it's we've got to just play along with it now it's just it's just it's a badge of honor to be a ruiner yeah and and clearly yeah a lot of people yeah a lot of people look [SPEAKER_00]: People agree.

25:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, out of 21 million Volkswagen's, you know, this our group is growing faster than any Volkswagen group on the internet and I think it's going to continue that way. [SPEAKER_00]: I think we're the second largest membership of any Volkswagen group on the internet. [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's only one more that's higher that's insane. [SPEAKER_00]: Who is it? [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I can't remember it's one of the, one of the earliest paid, I think maybe bugs and buses or one of those guys, one of the groups on there, but it's not far away. [SPEAKER_00]: No, we might have surpassed it now actually. [SPEAKER_01]: I think you guys are probably one of the largest that I can recall and I've seen a lot of groups, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: as a podcast host I go on and I look you know for opportunities to engage with you know the guys that are creating waves in the in the community obviously you know the this this group was built out of necessity interested to hear this though you're take on this what is the word ruined [SPEAKER_01]: actually mean to you.

26:21 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, how far does ruin go? [SPEAKER_00]: Is it just slight modifications or well, for us, like I said, ruin is a badge of honor, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So ruin, when you're in our group, if you say, oh man, this car's just completely ruined. [SPEAKER_00]: That means that it is over the top [SPEAKER_00]: mirrors on there that weren't factory or you put headlights on in the weren't factory or you put different wheels on it that are fake. [SPEAKER_00]: It could be the simplest thing that guys get, you know, they're, oh, you run the car because of.

27:06 [SPEAKER_00]: whatever it is. [SPEAKER_00]: And for us in the group, it's a good thing. [SPEAKER_01]: Why do you think people are so emotionally attached to what somebody else does with their car? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's like, you know, you know, that is always blown my mind, especially on like forums and everything from back in the day is [SPEAKER_00]: there are so many people on the internet that know how to spend your money better than you do. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: And they will let you know in a heartbeat what you should have done. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's so, and I get it to an extent because everybody is passionate about their car. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're not passionate about your car, then you're not a real car guy.

27:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And Greg and I say that [SPEAKER_00]: right it's a guy that just went and bought whatever cool car that he's got he doesn't understand cars not really car guy and that's fine I don't know anything against him but he doesn't have the full passion in my opinion and maybe that's biased I don't know but for me [SPEAKER_00]: the love of cars and motorcycles. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's so deep that I have that deeply emotional connection with my own cars. [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, you really fall in love with them. [SPEAKER_00]: Like you know everything about them, you know, feeling on touching them.

28:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And Washington, like it's there's a deep emotional connection with each car right and I had to lose some of that in order to have 240 something cars You have to lose a little bit of that right so you have to realize that I've made this car Exactly what I wanted to be I've enjoyed it. [SPEAKER_00]: I had to get time with it and I'm going to move it on And I'm going to get something else and I'm going to put all my love into that so [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a little different because I know some guys like fall into deep love with them. [SPEAKER_00]: It's their car. [SPEAKER_00]: They're going to keep it forever. [SPEAKER_00]: They can't even imagine somebody else owning it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like having their wife, you know, like, right, right. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm that way with my wife. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want anybody else, you know, I'm really jealous of my wife.

29:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want anybody that's looking my wife, you know, that's a good thing. [SPEAKER_01]: No, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody's going to watch my wife outside. [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [UNKNOWN]: Right. [UNKNOWN]: Right. [UNKNOWN]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: Back to your question, I think guys get so emotional about other guys cars because they can see their vision for that car they can say I love that car and I would want to see this done it right so they I think that you put and that's everybody does it put your own perspective on what somebody else has done because I do it to I look at some else's car and go. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, man, I'd like to put these seats in that car.

29:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Or I would have painted this differently. [SPEAKER_00]: Or I write, but it's not my car. [SPEAKER_00]: So I usually don't worry about it. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not worried enough to tell anybody online that they need to do something different. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I just keep my opinions to myself. [SPEAKER_00]: But there are many that don't. [SPEAKER_00]: They are thousands that don't. [SPEAKER_01]: You've got this stage. [SPEAKER_01]: You've got this platform. [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, it's your page. [SPEAKER_01]: There's, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: well over a quarter of a million people involved. [SPEAKER_01]: What's one of the most memorable, like, you know, purest style arguments that you can recall. [SPEAKER_00]: We really don't get a lot of those on the page. [SPEAKER_00]: When they do start up, we've had some guys in there, some very prolific.

30:46 [SPEAKER_00]: guys from the VW community that we've had to ban. [SPEAKER_00]: Some guys that, you know, people are like, oh, you can't get rid of him because he's this, this, and this, and the community, and you just got rid of him. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, well, he can share his knowledge somewhere else, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because he's not following by the positive rule of what we've got, and you can [SPEAKER_00]: give criticism in the group as long as it's constructive right if you do it in a nice kind and helpful way and say hey man [SPEAKER_00]: I think what you're doing is unsafe, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's cool and all, but I really think that it's not the safest way to go about it. [SPEAKER_00]: You might want to think about doing this.

31:27 [SPEAKER_00]: That is completely fine. [SPEAKER_00]: But saying you're an idiot because you don't know how breaks work or whatever it is. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the stuff that really gets to mean. [SPEAKER_00]: So when people say whether it's something simple, right? [SPEAKER_00]: You just don't know how to do it, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Until you do something, you don't know how to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: And people are all there, and the group there is for anybody, but when people say, do you not know how to use Google? [SPEAKER_00]: That blows me up when people write, well, if you try Google, because Google is helpful, but usually only if you know what to look for, if you are getting into this and you're trying your best to make your car run, and you don't have the money to take it to mechanic and you're trying to figure stuff out.

32:15 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, asking a group like what we have, hey, how do I go about doing this? [SPEAKER_00]: And then you get somebody on the that's super knowledgeable that says, hey, this is what you need to do. [SPEAKER_00]: You really need to step back and do this, this and this first, then you can get an idea. [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, the purest argument of can you Google it? [SPEAKER_00]: Or have you Google it? [SPEAKER_00]: killed me. [SPEAKER_01]: So that that almost kind of leans, leans us into this next question because this is a big one, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Do you think social media has made car culture more creative or has it really just kind of made everybody chase the same trends?

32:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, that is a good question. [SPEAKER_00]: I think in general, it's made people fall [SPEAKER_00]: And you can see that with every single type of car, whether you're looking at Volkswagen's or trucks or blow riders or jeeps or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody does kind of do that to an extent. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that for the Volkswagen community in, [SPEAKER_00]: of myself. [SPEAKER_00]: I think revolt wagons because they are so personal and are so customizable. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that it's helped the Volkswagen community.

33:40 [SPEAKER_00]: I think social media has made, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: People, I don't think there is a phrase to do something wild and crazy anymore, especially with Volkswagen. [SPEAKER_00]: And what I'm saying, and maybe I might have a bias to venue because that's what I see most of every single day, but then in other car communities, I see guys kind of building the same cars over and over again. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's definitely more welcomed to customize and be, I guess, more of an individual style in the Volkswagen community because everything is accepted. [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't matter if it's Volkswagen or if it's pureest right at the car show, you're all going to sit around and talk about how cool your cars are.

34:24 [SPEAKER_01]: regard this of what the bill is, right? [SPEAKER_01]: I realize there's going to be guys that are on both sides of the fence. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, no, the pierist and it's got to be, you know, that way or no, it's got to be customized and more rat rod type. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's fine. [SPEAKER_01]: We can have those separate difference of opinion. [SPEAKER_01]: But we're together. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's kind of the cool thing in the unique thing about the Volkswagen community in in my personal opinion. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure you probably agree. [SPEAKER_01]: What have you learned though from running a community? [SPEAKER_01]: this large right where your entire philosophy is basically just build whatever the heck you want. [SPEAKER_00]: What I've really learned is you can't make everybody happy.

35:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Amanda that and I stressed about it and worried about it for a long time. [SPEAKER_00]: and talking about my buddy Greg that helps me and helps me run everything and, you know, like, I really want this to be something positive and what's interesting to me that I kind of learned from this was people would send me hate mail through messenger about the [SPEAKER_00]: I've been called a racist just all kinds of stuff because I would not allow somebody to be rude to somebody else.

35:54 [SPEAKER_00]: So I was I was unamerican. [SPEAKER_00]: I have I was going against the constitution that it was their first amendment right if they want to say whatever they want to say and what I have always said back was this is my [SPEAKER_00]: a democracy. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a dictatorship and I want the group to run the way I want it to run and it's so strange to me that people are mad that they can't be rude.

36:38 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, why can't you just say what you have to say and be nice, but because we don't really allow profanity, we don't allow dirty pictures or, you know, and there's some pictures that are just this rude and general and some of them pop up over and over again in the Volkswagen community. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: And we just don't have, we just don't want any of that. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you guys are listening to this and you see anything that looks like that reported to admin please because we will look at it. [SPEAKER_00]: We will get rid of it because we don't want that. [SPEAKER_00]: We wanted to be, I wanted to be a spot where when we started this my oldest son was he's 14 now.

37:24 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, looking at the pictures on there, I wanted him to be able to go to the ruined group and just look at cool Volkswagen's. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what he could do. [SPEAKER_00]: And now I have my youngest son to four year old and he absolutely loves Volkswagen's. [SPEAKER_00]: So I wanna place that they can go to and that you look at cars and they're not gonna see a half naked girl pop up or they're not gonna see cusswords pop up and things like that. [SPEAKER_01]: I love it, man. [SPEAKER_01]: I really do. [SPEAKER_01]: Cool vibe, and I, I'm not alone, right? [SPEAKER_01]: 347,000 people feel the same way, but I want to touch on the dark side of the culture for a second. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think a lot of car guys experience this, but I don't, I don't think they necessarily talk about it, and that is the pressure to kind of keep up.

38:11 [SPEAKER_01]: And now that we're kind of in this social media, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you see somebody else has built online and suddenly your build might not be good enough. [SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever felt that or do you feel like that feeling is in the car culture? [SPEAKER_00]: absolutely deaf the feeling is is definitely in the car culture and I have definitely felt that way myself and that's human nature I mean it really is that's how we were designed we were you know human nature says that we're greedy and we're lost full and you know all those things got to come in [SPEAKER_00]: that that's just how humans are right we're not nobody's a good person right we all have that stuff right i think that we we have to have something else in order to be good but i look at what i've got sometimes you know oh man you know be cool if it was this or this and now i've gotten to a spot in my life where i've got some really neat cars i've got some some stuff that i really like and [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, I was going to go in through car after car and and doing what I like to find what was cool.

39:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And I won't people. [SPEAKER_00]: So look at what I've got and enjoy it. [SPEAKER_00]: I want them to be happy with it. [SPEAKER_00]: I want people to see it and go, man, that's really nice. [SPEAKER_00]: That's really cool, or that's really weird, and I like it. [SPEAKER_00]: And that last one is my favorite one. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've done some, I love theme cars, that kind of think about a theme you start with, and kind of fit it to that. [SPEAKER_00]: I love movie cars. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, like the echo one from Ghostbusters, you know, the lower in from back the future, the 89 Batmobile, those are my three favorite movie cars.

40:16 [SPEAKER_00]: And I just love the theme of those. [SPEAKER_00]: And with my tea bucket, that I built, uh, it's, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: you know really bright green metallic and it's got purple fur all in the interior all on the outside it's it's a wild and crazy car and I'm a really big traditional hotrod guy like I like all hotrods and not much of a streetrod guy but I like traditional stuff and a lot of people see that car and they're like well this isn't traditional right [SPEAKER_00]: but it is traditional if you look at it through the lens of what Ed Roth or George Barrish were doing in the early 60s.

40:59 [SPEAKER_00]: So I built it to be kind of a 62, 63 kind of vibe on what a T-book it was as an experimental show rod. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's got like purple tinted glass for the windshield and it's got a 1920s medicine bottle that's purple for the overflow. [SPEAKER_00]: And the part of the green is kind of works together. [SPEAKER_00]: And even though there are some newer parts on it, I got everything that was still period correct for the early 60s. [SPEAKER_00]: So the people that understand it really understand it, they really get it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've got a really deep story on it. [SPEAKER_00]: The monster that drives the car, you know, he was at a nuclear blast and the car runs on, [SPEAKER_00]: you know, radiation and it gives all radiation.

41:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So there's like this whole war that I've created behind the car and I've got like all this stuff that I've kind of written in my head and what's really neat that some people kind of know about some people don't [SPEAKER_00]: is I've got the the demo style labels, you know what I mean like the punch labels that came out in the 50s and so you think Tesla or nuclear facility, I've got a lot of those little labels all over the car and most of them are hidden, most of them are just for me. [SPEAKER_00]: because there's so many like warning labels and things like that really fit the theme.

42:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And when people look that car and they get excited about it and they start really digging into it, that's what I really like, you know, in that. [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that's that's awesome, man. [SPEAKER_01]: But still interested like to hear how much of car culture today do you think is actually more about enjoying cars like the one you're describing now or more about getting validation from other car [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's probably 80 to 20. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's 80% looking for validation. [SPEAKER_00]: And 20% of having something that's cool. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think from most people, that's what it is.

43:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a millennial thing. [SPEAKER_00]: The elder millennials, like we are, [SPEAKER_00]: we seek out validation because we always have, even since we were in school, like we won't validation. [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that's moved over and the car, my wife told me that was like, she's like, you don't wanna be validated in everything. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yeah, I want you to look at this and go, yeah, that's really cool. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's a validation, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So, let's talk about IDF car before a couple of minutes here. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, you actually wrote a book about IDF carburetors, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Which uh, I guess maybe describe the book or tell us just a little bit about it and yeah, why, why IDFs.

43:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's it's called IDF carburetors says the DIY guide for IDFers. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's on Amazon, so go check it out. [SPEAKER_00]: And that book was written out of spite. [SPEAKER_00]: There is not a book that is dedicated to IDF carburetors before we did this. [SPEAKER_00]: You can find books on carburetors in general. [SPEAKER_00]: You can find books on the webbers. [SPEAKER_00]: You can look at all different generalized ideas of what webbers were. [SPEAKER_00]: IDAs are really the race car. [SPEAKER_00]: car breeders and you find IDAs on some Volkswagen right but they're really the bigger motors IDAs came out on Shelby Cobra's and the Shelby Daytonas and things like that so they're really for racing and a lot of guys saw those and wanted IDAs or IDFs on their car because that's what the race cars have right and back in the 60s and stuff because the IDF actually came out really early [SPEAKER_00]: So, the initial designs were like the thirties and stuff, but it wasn't really into the sixties that people started seeing them on muscle cars, hot rods, and race cars, and they really started coming out.

45:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And then they kind of got to stigma around them because people didn't know how to tune them. [SPEAKER_00]: So, people are like, oh man, all those car riders, you know, it's not going to run right, you'll never get it right. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of the way this stigma [SPEAKER_00]: I like IDF's own everything. [SPEAKER_00]: So I've had like hot sauce. [SPEAKER_00]: They're exactly like that. [SPEAKER_00]: So my 65 has dual IDF's on it. [SPEAKER_00]: And we've done a little work to them. [SPEAKER_00]: I had some IDF's on some other cars that I've had. [SPEAKER_00]: I've had a 79, Fiat, 124 spider.

45:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And we did a dual IDF set on it. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's really where the book came from. [SPEAKER_00]: The Fiat guys are an interesting bunch, because [SPEAKER_00]: they think they have Ferrari's. [SPEAKER_00]: And in a way, it is a Ferrari, but the engine in those was designed by a relio that I'm pretty who was a Ferrari designer for their engines in their house. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's a lot of Ferrari in Fiat and Fiat owns Ferrari. [SPEAKER_00]: So there is a lot of Ferrari in there. [SPEAKER_00]: But those cars were really cheap cars for a long time and now they've got an expensive and the purist have rolled into that, you know, then now you've got purist in there and they're wanting these specific cars.

46:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So when I was doing dual IDFs on there, we had bought everything Greg and I both did and Greg. [SPEAKER_00]: helped me write the book and he had already done a lot of IDF stuff and he wrote a whole section on the book on about blowthrough carburetor designs so for turbos. [SPEAKER_00]: So he helped me set up these dual IDFs and we had a line above make sure everything is going to work out. [SPEAKER_00]: Just figure things out make the floor work and running the fuel lines. [SPEAKER_00]: Well we had already done it. [SPEAKER_00]: We had a running car that was doing pretty good and I had made multiple videos about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, this is a month later, and the first video comes out.

47:25 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody knows how I've been driving this car for a month. [SPEAKER_00]: They just think, oh, I just did this because the video came out, and they're like, oh, that's not going to work. [SPEAKER_00]: You didn't run that right or you didn't do the throttle correctly, or you didn't run the fuel lines correctly. [SPEAKER_00]: And on those, you can run them from one car directly into the next car. [SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, you can't do that. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to run them in the middle so you feed both of them at the same time. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, well, Fiat's came out with IDFs on them. [SPEAKER_00]: IDF actually stands for Invertito, which was the inverted down draft Fiat. [SPEAKER_00]: So they were designed for Fiat, certainly.

48:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, this is how they design the word. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, no, no, no, that's going to starve the last two cylinders of gas. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, it is not. [SPEAKER_00]: It, as if you really think that two carbators in the line, that it's going to starve one of them when the, the, the chilies, they ran all four of them through one line, you know, straight through. [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, sure, too, we're completely fine. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is a lot of little stuff like that. [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of misunderstandings about IDFs and how they work. [SPEAKER_00]: And each component of the IDF and how to change stuff because.

48:49 [SPEAKER_00]: It is kept coming up with people saying that you can't do that, you can't do this or that I didn't understand enough about them that I was talking with Greg every day and I was complaining about, you know, these guys are telling me this, this and I was like, man, somebody should write a book and just write all this stuff out. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I came back to him a few hours later. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, okay, I've started the book and he goes, are you serious? [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, I need you to write me a section on, you know, blow through carbs for, for turboing. [SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, okay, you know, so he started working on that. [SPEAKER_00]: I started right now that history of ideas and kind of working through it and then really started digging into the components.

49:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And another guy that really helped me with the book and a lot of his information is in there is Jim and Glee's. [SPEAKER_00]: Jim and Glee's is kind of a Weber master. [SPEAKER_00]: So he builds the the eight stack in Glee's injection systems. [SPEAKER_00]: So being able to talk to him on the phone was awesome because I remember the first time I called him I was so nervous to be able to talk to him because he's one of the guys that tuned [SPEAKER_00]: that helps Cheryl Shelby tune the Daytonas. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the original one. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this guy is like this big and the, you know, the Weber side and being able to talk to him the phone and go through the book and go through my ideas.

50:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And as I was talking about it, I said, I'd like to use some of your information because he wrote a really great article and I wanted to use that article in the book. [SPEAKER_00]: And he was super kind. [SPEAKER_00]: He was like, do you mind sending me a copy of the book before you print it? [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yeah, I'll email it to you and you can check it out. [SPEAKER_00]: He goes, if I like everything, I'll write the forward. [SPEAKER_00]: for you for the book. [SPEAKER_00]: If you want that, and I was like, absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: So he wrote the forward in the book. [SPEAKER_00]: He wrote out his articles in there. [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's like questions and answers by Jim and Glee's, if I kind of do's and don'ts and things like that.

51:05 [SPEAKER_00]: So there's some really good stuff that he wrote in there also. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm super thankful to him and Anger Egg for helping me do that book. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's done really good. [SPEAKER_00]: We've sold hundreds of copies of it. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure we're at now, but it's done really, really good. [SPEAKER_01]: What would be one thing in the book that you wish somebody would have taught you a long time ago? [SPEAKER_00]: I think the initial understanding of what Mr. Venturi kind of came up with, the Venturi design, to kind of understand the Venturi carburetor, [SPEAKER_00]: And really having an understanding of how it picks up the fuel and how it atomizes, and that liquid fuel doesn't burn.

51:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Only vaporize fuel burns, so you need good atomization. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a really important thing that a lot of people don't get that is kind of in the book, you know? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's awesome, man. [SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome. [SPEAKER_01]: Personal opinion, and then we'll move on into your teaching in technical education background. [SPEAKER_01]: But do you think like the DIY style is disappearing as cars become more technologically advanced, more computerized, et cetera? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: It's something that I'm personally, I think is really sad. [SPEAKER_00]: And in one way cars are getting easier for people to own.

52:32 [SPEAKER_00]: If you have plenty of money, if you don't have plenty of money and you want to do stuff yourself, I think that new cars are crap. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, they're just not good cars anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're not building good stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, if, and I'm a Ford guy, but if you buy, if you buy a Ford truck, and you get water in the tell lightlands, the car won't run, because they have computers and the tell lightlands. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it doesn't make any sense what we're doing. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, there was a friend of mine that's got a, a newer BMW that I was happening with earlier this week. [SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, oh, my, my coolant like came on, you know, we were taking a look at it.

53:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yeah, you're [SPEAKER_00]: Google is really far down. [SPEAKER_00]: We need to top it off and I was like, have you seen any leaks? [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, no, I said, if you haven't seen any leaks, that water's going somewhere here. [SPEAKER_00]: So I said, we really need to check the oil. [SPEAKER_00]: And there wasn't any moisture coming out of the exhaust. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm looking all over. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was a 550i. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm looking all over for a dipstick. [SPEAKER_00]: That car does not have a dipstick. [SPEAKER_00]: You cannot physically look at the oil to see if there's water in it, to see anything about it. [SPEAKER_00]: You can't check it. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to go to the infotainment system and go to oil to look and see if it's lower high and it gives you a percentage on there of where it's at.

54:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And I just think that it just doesn't make any sense to me of how easy it is to install a dipstick. [SPEAKER_00]: and luckily for us we started pulling off plastic covers and the line that led to his turbo that was the water line it was really green and corroded so I was like there's your leak that's exactly what's gone you see what it was dripping down and it was so hot that it wasn't hitting the ground it was just evaporating before it ever got to the ground so this looks as really nasty green scum down through there wow [SPEAKER_00]: And I just think they're I think they're ruining cars and I say that as a runner, but I think they're ruining them in the worst way.

54:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, because what we've got now is a lot of electronics that fail, you know, things that are messing up, they're not building them as well as they should be right and then they're charging 80,000 dollars for a truck. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a or more buck favorite. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I'm just not about to play in genuine, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Right? [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's insane to me that, that anybody, whether you can afford it or not, I don't know how they're [SPEAKER_00]: But whether you can afford it or not, why you would want to pay for that? [SPEAKER_00]: And there's some people getting a 10-year notes that have $1,000 to have another payment, so I can't see it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, man.

55:25 [SPEAKER_01]: I know. [SPEAKER_01]: And I've even seen it with my own eyes. [SPEAKER_01]: Even close people close to my circle that have these $150,000 trucks I'm like, dude. [SPEAKER_00]: Why you talking about appreciating asset like I mean I'd rather buy a brick and barn door bus something that's going to appreciate 100% Yes, yeah, yeah, and that's Greg and I both joke we talk about how terrible cars are new ones all the time and I said I wrote much rather have eight junkie cars that I've got then you know one really fancy new one [SPEAKER_01]: let's touch on education for a minute. [SPEAKER_01]: I know something else that's pretty close to you spent now the last decade involved in technical education for linear technical college.

56:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Tell us why teaching? [SPEAKER_00]: I've always enjoyed teaching even as a kid being able to show somebody else something that I knew and being able to explain it. [SPEAKER_00]: I just really enjoyed that, and I didn't realize that at the time, and it wouldn't hold years later that I was like, yeah, I've kind of been teaching people stuff all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: I do like being the center of attention. [SPEAKER_00]: I was the class clown and everything. [SPEAKER_00]: Being, uh, I always tell my guys that I'm really just a stand up comedian, but this is the only way for me to get a captive audience.

56:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's fine. [SPEAKER_00]: I try to teach and make it as fun as I can. [SPEAKER_00]: I won't be able to come. [SPEAKER_00]: to class and enjoy it and the guys that come and what I teach, I teach industrial refrigeration. [SPEAKER_00]: So, the big freezer buildings that you see, the big chicken plants and bee plants, all those run on ammonia as a refrigerant. [SPEAKER_00]: And it can be hazardous, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It can be dangerous. [SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: That's what we teach on and most of the guys when they come through and they tell me I thought this was going to be a super boring refrigeration class and this is the most fun that I've ever had sitting in class That's what I absolutely love.

57:45 [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to have a good time when you come through and I just I love can I love [SPEAKER_00]: dumbing things down or simplifying it. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's completely simplest term and then building it up. [SPEAKER_00]: And I like doing that with everything that I teach. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's good because that's how a lot of people learn it, that's how I learn. [SPEAKER_00]: And the school system in, you know, learning elementary, middle, high school never worked for me. [SPEAKER_00]: I never had good grades. [SPEAKER_00]: I never did good in school. [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, it wasn't until I started doing college level classes, then I started to excel, because they were directed to exactly what I wanted to learn, right?

58:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And that really helped me, but learning about the Spanish ink position and things like that, like none of that. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember any of that, right, because I didn't learn that way. [SPEAKER_00]: I learned by doing [SPEAKER_00]: I don't learn by hearing, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I need to be physically attached to something, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And seeing what's going on in order to really understand it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a disservice that schools are doing these days. [SPEAKER_00]: So I really enjoy [SPEAKER_00]: you know, doing what I do because it is so physical. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, at Leonard Tech, we have a three live systems that run ammonia. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a hands-on training program. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's one of only, I think, five in the world.

59:14 [SPEAKER_01]: Wow. [SPEAKER_01]: That's pretty awesome, man. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm interested to hear your opinion here. [SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you think that some people naturally gravitate more toward mechanical aspects while other sides of life or more terrified of them? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I've wondered that myself for years and I don't have a good answer for you because I don't know something about the human psyche. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I, I think that everybody can learn it and I think there has to be a passion there. [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody has things that they love and the things that they enjoy and that's great. [SPEAKER_00]: Right, that's why we're all different human beings, but for some people, it really is.

59:55 [SPEAKER_00]: There's an aspect to, [SPEAKER_00]: having your hands on something and really learning it that way. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what helped me. [SPEAKER_00]: And some people don't like some people, and I guess some people's minds were divided. [SPEAKER_00]: They just don't learn that way. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, they just, uh, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I really don't have a good answer for you because I've always wondered that myself of how certain people can not understand. [SPEAKER_00]: So whether it was helping my dad like wire up a home theater system, that's something that came super easy to me and some people are completely scared of it.

1:00:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Like they just cannot do it. [SPEAKER_00]: They can't figure out how the wires work. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's funny is that my mom told me this story a while back that she had noticed this about me and I was four or five. [SPEAKER_00]: She had gotten a fan and she was putting this fan in together out of the box and she's in the middle. [SPEAKER_00]: She's having a hard time. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: She's having a hard time. [SPEAKER_00]: She's trying to figure out [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, I'm like it's what I'm saying you're putting it together wrong. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not right. [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't remember any of this. [SPEAKER_00]: But she's like, you're putting it together wrong.

1:01:18 [SPEAKER_00]: She was like, what do you mean? [SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, it's picked up the pieces and said, it goes like this. [SPEAKER_00]: And I started putting it together. [SPEAKER_00]: And she just goes, she's okay. [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to kind of stood back and was like, holy crap. [SPEAKER_00]: That is exactly how this goes together. [SPEAKER_00]: And she couldn't figure it out. [SPEAKER_00]: But I was four or five and had figured it out from looking at the [SPEAKER_01]: yeah crazy and you know i have a son that's like that too that just is very mechanically gifted i would almost say and i can even talk on that for a second because i spent a lot of time uh... over the last fifteen years of my professional career also being a sales trainer and and somewhat of an educator um... what i learned across time is personality types [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm actually a teach disk profile, a disk trainer.

1:02:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And in personality types, you have, you know, opposite ends of a spectrum of learners, right? [SPEAKER_01]: You have driver-style people who are like me, who are the more of your viewers, your pushers, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the guy that's more of the class clown that's not afraid to stand up in front of a group. [SPEAKER_01]: And then the opposite end of the spectrum is more of the compliant nature type who is afraid, right, who fears embarrassment and those types of things. [SPEAKER_01]: And what I've learned over time is, a lot of time, your technical thinkers, [SPEAKER_01]: You're mechanically inclined gifted type people are more compliant nature than your driver style people, right? [SPEAKER_01]: The driver style people are the ones that are, you know, pushing the envelope who are starting a project because nobody else wants to raise their hand and say, hey, pick me, right?

1:02:51 [SPEAKER_01]: But usually they don't have the patients or the knowledge base to be able to complete that project, right? [SPEAKER_01]: They lean on as a as a driver and more of a task pusher. [SPEAKER_01]: They lean on more of the compliant natured people to finish those tasks, et cetera. [SPEAKER_01]: So in talking about that, [SPEAKER_01]: I've found in my own, you know, my own teachings over time that that's who the mechanical type people typically are, right? [SPEAKER_01]: I can usually say not the right but in the right seat, and I can usually pick that right out of people because I can tell by their personality type that usually has nothing to do with an IQ, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Or a level of thinking.

1:03:33 [SPEAKER_01]: But another interesting question about you spending all this time in education. [SPEAKER_01]: What are your students taught you? [SPEAKER_00]: I can't. [SPEAKER_00]: It's, I learned something new every week. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and we have a different class every week. [SPEAKER_00]: We have new students every single week to come through. [SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's a 40 hour course. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: And most college courses are 40 hours, our 40 hours and four days. [SPEAKER_01]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: So that we get a lot of guys and then there's so much that we go through and so many things that we talk about. [SPEAKER_00]: And I [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you don't, and this is something Einstein said, they said, he said that you don't fully understand anything unless you can explain it to a six-year-old.

1:04:19 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, man. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Think about how simple you have to make something to explain it to a simple, and he said, you're understanding of it in order to do that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, any damn fool can make something complicated. [SPEAKER_00]: It takes a genius to make something [SPEAKER_00]: You have to break it all the way down and it's, I've learned a lot about. [SPEAKER_00]: conveying information about teaching about giving people my knowledge and trying to explain it to them in a way that they can understand it. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I really learned that a lot after becoming an instructor and the questions that I get asked.

1:05:05 [SPEAKER_00]: We get normal questions that we get every single week. [SPEAKER_00]: I know what questions are going to come up as soon as I say this, I know the [SPEAKER_00]: out of this world question is something that's so, like, so big brain that it makes you go, oh man, let me, let me think about that. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I haven't thought about this, and how can I explain this in a way that can make him understand? [SPEAKER_00]: So that is something I really enjoy. [SPEAKER_00]: It's something that it's super, it was intimidating 14 years ago when I started teaching, but now it's something that I really enjoy. [SPEAKER_00]: I want those big questions and something that really makes me think, [SPEAKER_00]: differently than I normally do.

1:05:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, literally I learned so much stuff every single week from these guys. [SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome, man. [SPEAKER_01]: It really is. [SPEAKER_01]: And you can tell you're passionate about it, you know. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah, let's talk about high revs media though. [SPEAKER_01]: I know you and your dad share this automotive passion through high revs media. [SPEAKER_01]: Tell us what high revs media is and and really yeah what what this relationship is what you guys are are getting into. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: So high revs kind of started in like 2007. [SPEAKER_00]: I was doing graphic arts and was really just a t-shirt line.

1:06:29 [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to do designs and put them out there and I got my own little online store really didn't do much, but it was away for me to do designs and it kind of pushed that. [SPEAKER_00]: And then it kind of dropped off. [SPEAKER_00]: It was there. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really do anything with it For a while it wasn't until 2017 is about 10 years later that I really started pushing high revs and [SPEAKER_00]: it was doing the YouTube was added on like I had had a YouTube account for years but I really didn't start pushing videos until the 2017 and I was doing the videos as a way to try to direct people to my store.

1:07:12 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, because the store was the big part, and I'm doing YouTube to kind of support the store, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, now the store supports the YouTube, my YouTube's got large enough that I'm making more money off of YouTube and sponsorships and things like that, that the store is just, yeah, it kind of runs itself and does its own thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's moved into a lot of motorcycle [SPEAKER_00]: anything that I get interested in. [SPEAKER_00]: It's in LLC, so I just call up the company and say, hey, can I add your parts to my store or whatever, and you know, I get interested in it, and I can help sell them, sell parts for them and things like that.

1:07:56 [SPEAKER_00]: So, but I try to get only stuff that I'm passionate about and things that I think are good products. [SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: And then I use some of that stuff and and do different things with the YouTube channel that you know building my stuff my dad stuff and and get new cars and stuff you know we've kind of built on the way we wanted to go and and I show off car shows and we do some gun reviews and motorcycle bills and [SPEAKER_00]: We've done some full builds on there. [SPEAKER_00]: We get a car and we'll do like a tearing all the way apart and do it all the way back together and things like that.

1:08:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's done pretty good. [SPEAKER_00]: What's weird is, [SPEAKER_00]: some of the videos on high revs, there are videos that I thought this is just a space filler. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a video called I like to post every week, at least one video. [SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, I need to make this video just to have one video post this week, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a nothing video, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It's how to put a radio in or how to change a headline. [SPEAKER_00]: And those videos, some of those have done really, really well. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's crazy. [SPEAKER_01]: I can absolutely can can gravitate towards that statement because. [SPEAKER_01]: in coaching and training, you know, my background sales training.

1:09:19 [SPEAKER_01]: I've worked with a lot of plumbing, electrical, HVAC contractors, and I've done a lot of Zoom style calls. [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes I'll put together a training and I'll be like, dude, I know I'm supposed to be breaking things down to the ridiculous, you know, and making it easy and basic, but like, I feel like this is just the stupidest training ever. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like the dumbest one I've ever created. [SPEAKER_01]: There's no way I'm going to get, you know, any type of positive feedback from this one. [SPEAKER_01]: And then the feedback I get from the technicians are, that's the best training I've ever, I've ever, that you've ever done for us. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, like, I don't say anything to them. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, man, I didn't think that you, right? [SPEAKER_01]: I just let it go, but I tell myself, like, man, sometimes the most basic and the easy stuff that you do has the most meaning and the most impactful for people.

1:10:07 [SPEAKER_01]: So I can definitely gravitate towards that. [SPEAKER_01]: I want to touch on working with [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have anything that, I don't know, maybe that you appreciate more now about your dad working together with him in this venture than you did, maybe when you were younger? [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: My dad, he always tell people like he is the nicest person in the world. [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean that, genuinely, like, and everybody knows it. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not just saying something out there. [SPEAKER_00]: People in the community, if he were to murder somebody tomorrow, nobody in the community would believe it.

1:10:48 [SPEAKER_00]: They'd be like, no, they didn't do it. [SPEAKER_00]: Not him. [SPEAKER_00]: It would never happen because he's just that good of a guy. [SPEAKER_00]: He's very meek, he's very mild mannered. [SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't get mad easily, he's easy to talk to and and I've said this before that he's the the the smartest engineer that I've ever met while and he only has a high school diploma [SPEAKER_01]: Oh man, that's interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: But he can take anything apart, he can figure it out. [SPEAKER_00]: My sister's refer to him as my daddy. [SPEAKER_00]: My daddy can do this, my daddy can do that. [SPEAKER_00]: And but it's true, my dad was literally the guy that can do anything.

1:11:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And and now he says that I have surpassed him on a lot of that stuff and understanding it. [SPEAKER_00]: And there's some things that I do teach him every once in a while, but I definitely don't think that I know more than he does. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, because he doesn't know so much about everything and he's just so passionate about cars and stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: So I really just fell into that and other times everything else and, um, I mean, he's my best friend. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, really. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, working with him, uh, we try to work together every Friday and Saturday and stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, whenever we get together on the weekends and stuff, like we just have a good time. [SPEAKER_00]: And when I was a kid, [SPEAKER_00]: we didn't drive as well.

1:12:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I was, uh, I was ran a bunch of this and I'm sure I wasn't listening and things like that. [SPEAKER_00]: And, and I can remember thinking that, you know, I knew he was super smart or I knew he was figuring stuff out, but I didn't think that I was that. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think that I was matching his, you know, personality and as an adult, and especially now that I'm 40, this year has been really rough on me, turning 40, and I've had some realizations and to be honest with you, I went through a full, like, middle breakdown, like weeks back. [SPEAKER_00]: And man, I go to the hospital and everything else, like, wow.

1:12:55 [SPEAKER_00]: my yeah my I sure didn't have panic attacks and and stress and anxiety and stuff that really came on me and a lot of that was turning 40 and life changing and the realizations that come along with getting older and [SPEAKER_00]: knowing that my dad is getting older every single day, it kills me because I have no idea what I'm going to do without him one day and luckily he's doing really good, you know, but he'll [SPEAKER_00]: I think 70, uh, next birthday. [SPEAKER_00]: So wow. [SPEAKER_01]: It's, you know, but I feel feel everything you're saying, brother.

1:13:38 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm I'm 49. [SPEAKER_01]: I turned 50 this next year in the summer time in July. [SPEAKER_01]: And the 40s have kind of been the most. [SPEAKER_01]: kind of spiritual slash like awakening in my life, through my 20s and 30s dude, I was still wild. [SPEAKER_01]: I still didn't really care about an outcome. [SPEAKER_01]: I still didn't really think about things. [SPEAKER_01]: I would just act and it's really more my personality than it is anything, but dude, my dad is turning 80 in January and even though his health is here and he's doing good and all that too, I really feel what you're saying [SPEAKER_01]: It's not gonna go forever.

1:14:19 [SPEAKER_01]: And he's one of my best friends in my life, too. [SPEAKER_01]: And we don't, in a sense, work together, we don't necessarily share a similar interest or passions in automotive or any of that type of stuff, my dad's an antique dealer and he deals in jewelry and that type of stuff where I have an interest and that kind of stuff, you know, clearly. [SPEAKER_01]: The Apple don't fall too far from the tree, but [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I feel just like you do, man. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm, I'm, I'm gonna be lost without him one day and, you know, the older I get and the more I'm starting to kind of slow down. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, man, the more I start to really appreciate and understand and see and feel everything, every decision that I make, you know, it's different.

1:15:01 [SPEAKER_01]: Every, every, every, every time I try to teach my kids something or I try to, you know, my kids are all teens and they're all driving and stuff now and I'm like, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I see on life 360 that you were doing 90 miles an hour on the interstate. [SPEAKER_01]: My son's like, yeah, Dad, I was keeping up with traffic. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, no, man, you don't understand. [SPEAKER_01]: That kind of speed will kill you, you know, and up. [SPEAKER_01]: And I could go back 20 years ago. [SPEAKER_01]: That was nothing, you know. [SPEAKER_01]: So just, you know, I get it, man. [SPEAKER_01]: I get what you're saying. [SPEAKER_01]: And I respect that. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for even, you know, being willing to admit that. [SPEAKER_01]: Because that's men. [SPEAKER_01]: you know, there's a little bit there right of of of of of of a struggle with, you know, kind of not being able to to voice that. [SPEAKER_01]: So thank you for sharing that with me, brother.

1:15:42 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I've gotten that from a lot of people. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, when I first started going through the panic attacks, it's like, I knew I needed prayer. [SPEAKER_00]: So I wrote about everything I was feeling when I was going through my Facebook page. [SPEAKER_00]: And I got in the point where I was stressing about work and a lot of stuff is going on there and we've got things that are coming up and aren't going the way that I want and my home life and my oldest son had just started high school and it seemed like he was getting picked on a little bit my youngest son just started preschool. [SPEAKER_00]: And my wife's health is not great.

1:16:24 [SPEAKER_00]: She's got some autoimmune diseases and stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: And just a lot of things that were coming up all at one time. [SPEAKER_00]: And I wasn't voicing it. [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't talking about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Wouldn't get in it out. [SPEAKER_00]: I was just trying to forget about all of it when I got away from it and talking about it gave me maybe more anxious and And I went through like I said a full blown spell or I went like off the deep end for a little while and I'm laughing at you believe me what I do that. [SPEAKER_01]: No, yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel it man. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel yeah at I [SPEAKER_00]: I got to a point where things I knew was like overwhelming fear of everything.

1:17:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Even stuff that I've done my whole life, it was like starting new. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've just been really, really open about it and I've talked a lot of people about it. [SPEAKER_00]: And the more times that I talk about it, they easier it gets. [SPEAKER_00]: And I hope that everybody goes to this stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody does. [SPEAKER_00]: And there is a huge stigma around mental health. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: That's why I'm ready for bringing it up. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and for me, I've always just been super open about everything, like sometimes too open maybe. [SPEAKER_00]: But I just, [SPEAKER_00]: mainly I knew I needed prayers. [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, this is the easiest way for me to get them.

1:17:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I need people to understand what I'm going through. [SPEAKER_00]: I need this to be out there. [SPEAKER_00]: So I just started writing about it and writing it out, typing it, putting it on a page, rather, help get it out, right? [SPEAKER_00]: It became kind of a journal, but everybody can see it. [SPEAKER_00]: And at a moment when I felt like I was all alone that I didn't have anybody like my I wouldn't make sure of my family would be there for me. [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't sure if anybody was I had hundreds and I mean hundreds of comments, likes, people messaging me, people texting me, people telling me hey man I really care about you. [SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate that you wrote us out there and man it was a huge [SPEAKER_00]: uplifting thing.

1:18:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So for the time that this was going on, and we haven't got into this yet, but it's kind of, we kind of rolled into it. [SPEAKER_00]: I was praying every day for her God to help me with my life, with my home life, with what was going at work, with my wife, helped me understand my wife was going through because she's been through a lot of this, a lot of anxiety and things are going [SPEAKER_00]: And I fell into this deep, you know, anxiety attack and all this stuff going on, and now I'm still not done with it. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still not pass it all.

1:19:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm slowly working through it, but I can already see that it's a blessing in disguise that God gave me exactly what I was praying for. [SPEAKER_00]: And now I understand so much more. [SPEAKER_00]: When you ask God for understanding, he doesn't just give it to you. [SPEAKER_00]: He lets you live it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he shows exactly what I was able to go through and it sucked. [SPEAKER_00]: But I made through it. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's touch on this part of your life because I think it's perfect. [SPEAKER_01]: We're here and we're talking about it now. [SPEAKER_01]: You're also a minister, which adds a completely different dimension to this whole story. [SPEAKER_01]: How did cars and faith end up occupying the same life?

1:20:00 [SPEAKER_00]: I've always been in church and stuff since I was a kid, and I looked at pretty simple life as a kid. [SPEAKER_00]: In my mind, [SPEAKER_00]: I went to a very small school, a living in a really small town and I went to a really small church. [SPEAKER_00]: And to me, I thought everybody lived that way. [SPEAKER_00]: I thought that everybody went to school with the same kids they went to church with and that everybody went to church and that was just how life was and as you get older, you realize everybody has completely different lives in this community. [SPEAKER_00]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: That's the life. [SPEAKER_01]: There's a statement there, right? [SPEAKER_01]: That's called small town thinking. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1:20:42 [SPEAKER_00]: And I just didn't know any better. [SPEAKER_00]: Like we just didn't have any other idea. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, you started doing more and more and I kind of stepped away from the church. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really step away from God, but I, I had told my preacher calling and I was trying to be the preacher that I thought the church wanted me to be. [SPEAKER_00]: But it wasn't who I was. [SPEAKER_00]: I was just filling my it was imposter syndrome. [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I was just feeling a position. [SPEAKER_00]: But I've had a calling. [SPEAKER_00]: But now I've got to do to this this and this for the church. [SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of stepped away from it.

1:21:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And for a long time. [SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't until that was 2005 it wasn't until 2015 that my brother and law. [SPEAKER_00]: came to me and said, we want you to be the deficient at our wedding, and I was like, why would you want me to do that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because I was not in a good spot. [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, we couldn't think of anybody else to do it, but you. [SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, if they believe in me enough that I'm a preacher to do this, even though I've been [SPEAKER_00]: Cucing and drinking and not going to church and not doing what I think that should be doing. [SPEAKER_00]: I know that, right?

1:22:04 [SPEAKER_00]: And I still cuss them and I still drink someone's while I'm not a perfect person. [SPEAKER_00]: None of us are, but I try to be I try to be real, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not anything that I'm not. [SPEAKER_00]: It's okay, and I'm the same person at work as I am a home. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm the same person in church as I am a home. [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes that's a little rough around the edges, no matter where I'm sitting. [SPEAKER_00]: And I just try to be as real as I can. [SPEAKER_00]: And shortly after that, we started a motorcycle ministry. [SPEAKER_00]: So we were going around as a group of us about nine of us doing rides, doing charity rides, [SPEAKER_00]: And we were raising thousands of dollars for kids and for Christmas and people that have been injured and like we were doing a lot of good stuff.

1:22:56 [SPEAKER_00]: And I realized that that was my ministry, that that is where I needed to be being around car shows and bike shows and helping that part of the community, the parts that people don't get to see, the parts that people sitting in a [SPEAKER_00]: aren't getting to preach to, right, they're seeing us out there. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope has helped some of those people, and that's just where I needed to be, and my brother-in-law that he became my brother-in-law when I did the wedding, because he married my sister-in-law. [SPEAKER_00]: He was my vice president in the club, [SPEAKER_00]: and ended up taking his right leg off.

1:23:45 [SPEAKER_01]: Whoa, yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So, it's really hard for me to talk about even today. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's been almost 10 years since that happened. [SPEAKER_00]: And he is such a strong, amazing person. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he really is, [SPEAKER_00]: They told him it would be months for him to walk and within weeks he was already walking and they're like you're doing really really good And he's just he's tough as as can be he's just he's one of my best friends and he's just an awesome guy and he went through that and then I had another buddy that [SPEAKER_00]: My buddy Jimmy had gotten in a couple of wrecks and broke his leg one time and then in the last wreck that he had was just a couple years ago, he ended up getting severe brain trauma and passed away.

1:24:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my goodness man, so yeah, so it's. [SPEAKER_00]: the group that we had. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still running my colors and I'm still supporting the ministry that goes its mind, but we really don't have the same group or passion that we had 10, 10 years ago. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's up. [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of sad to me, but we all have our own lives, we all have small children, we all have things going on and sports, and all these things that everybody's doing. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, man, life, you know, you got to roll a bunch of life changes over time. [SPEAKER_00]: It is life, and I'll see why, even though we were trying to do something really good, I think that the devil was on us left and right, I think that we've tried to turn everything [SPEAKER_00]: that was negative that has happened.

1:25:48 [SPEAKER_00]: We've tried to turn each one of those things into a positive. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Um, we, we've really, that's a gift. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's, it's, it's rough. [SPEAKER_00]: And I, I see what, there, there's a video and it's on my YouTube account, but it says Keith's motorcycle wreck. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what it's under. [SPEAKER_00]: And I try to watch it at least once a year. [SPEAKER_00]: And it is very hard for me to watch. [SPEAKER_00]: I was sitting there in front of him as he's going through the story. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm bawling the whole time because it's such an emotional thing. [SPEAKER_00]: But he... [SPEAKER_00]: As he was going down the road, a kid, not a general kid, an escalated, turned in front of him.

1:26:34 [SPEAKER_00]: And he ended up hitting the back of the escalate. [SPEAKER_00]: And his leg got caught between the bumper and the motorcycle bag, and essentially took it off. [SPEAKER_00]: He was, it was a fairly late night. [SPEAKER_00]: It was no member. [SPEAKER_00]: So I say when that light, I think it was six or seven, but it was already dark. [SPEAKER_00]: it was cold so thank god it was cold because he was wrapped up head to toe and otherwise it could have been way worse but he was left for dead. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a hit and run. [SPEAKER_00]: They got drove off.

1:27:15 [SPEAKER_00]: He woke up laying on the ground and could feel himself getting colder at his heart was pumping out all of his blood. [SPEAKER_00]: Ooh, that is. [SPEAKER_00]: And some flashing lights turned on. [SPEAKER_00]: Moments after he looked up and he thinks, how did the ambulance get here so quick? [SPEAKER_00]: And it was a tow truck driver. [SPEAKER_00]: and he came up and put a turn to get on his leg and that tow truck driver saved Keith's life that night right in. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: And then said nothing about it. [SPEAKER_00]: He went home, didn't tell his wife, didn't tell his dispatch, but he just saved some guy's life.

1:28:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Amazing man, angels are everywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: We had to call and hunt around and find this guy. [SPEAKER_00]: And we finally got a hold of him and it changed his life. [SPEAKER_00]: He came back to Christ. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: Not only did he say he's alive, but he saved his life. [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, man, that's cool. [SPEAKER_01]: That's cool. [SPEAKER_01]: That's full circle right there. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a really good story. [SPEAKER_00]: If you get a chance to go back and watch that, it's really good. [SPEAKER_00]: But, [SPEAKER_01]: And that's on that that's on high ribs and I just want for everybody to know it's H I R E V Z That way there's no miss understanding we we say it.

1:28:44 [SPEAKER_01]: I know this is a podcast it's mostly for audio it's want to make sure I spell it [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, all right, brother, I got some rapid fire questions for you, man. [SPEAKER_01]: These are questions that are going to demand the fast response. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to shy you away from a story for story comes, but these are designed for a gut reaction and a gut response. [SPEAKER_01]: You ready? [SPEAKER_01]: I'll try. [SPEAKER_01]: All right, let's get it. [SPEAKER_00]: Beetle or bus I'm gonna have to say beetle even I've never owned a bus. [SPEAKER_01]: I still want one Awesome meet meet me too. [SPEAKER_01]: I have about this one cow look or patina. [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, patina All right. [SPEAKER_01]: How about this one lowered or lifted?

1:29:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Sland slammed. [SPEAKER_01]: I like it. [SPEAKER_01]: All right. [SPEAKER_01]: I pretty much gonna know the answer to this one. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna ask it anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: uh... manual or automatic manual yeah of course most overrated vw trend in your opinion uh... most overrated vw i think that the junk on top of the roof rack is the most overrated in the night absolutely love it uh... [SPEAKER_00]: As I've got a brand new roof right to go on my car and junk to go on it and and I think it's extremely overrated, but I've done it on every one of my cars and I absolutely love it.

1:30:13 [SPEAKER_00]: How about most underrated VW model? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm wondering if you'd have your model, um, you know, I don't know that there is an underrated redeveloping model because I've heard that before. [SPEAKER_01]: I can fake that as an answer. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because there's so many people that love each version of a, of a Volkswagen. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that there is one. [SPEAKER_01]: How about this one? [SPEAKER_01]: One car that you will one VW that you regret selling. [SPEAKER_00]: Ooh, on that 69, that first one, I definitely regret selling it. [SPEAKER_00]: I was just gonna add it. [SPEAKER_00]: But that blue 77 that I had a few years back, I really regret selling it because it was such a cool patina car and it kind of lived its own life and the things that I did to it.

1:31:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It was, it was a really cool car. [SPEAKER_00]: So I really regretted it too. [SPEAKER_01]: Favorite engine? [SPEAKER_00]: VW engine. [SPEAKER_00]: Favorite VW type one? [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: 1600. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, but built out. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, at least 1776. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, how about favorite wheel? [SPEAKER_00]: Favorite wheel? [SPEAKER_00]: That is a hard one because I think that certain wheels going certain cars, depending on the look, for the longest time, my favorite wheel was that wide five or the fat five, like NBC spoke will.

1:31:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I love those and I've had those on the car for. [SPEAKER_00]: But now I really like the big smoothie wheels that everybody's doing these day with the caps. [SPEAKER_00]: I really like that look and that's kind of getting overrated also because so many people are kind of doing it, but I still want to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: So they look good. [SPEAKER_00]: They look so good. [SPEAKER_01]: They do. [SPEAKER_01]: They really do. [SPEAKER_01]: All right, if you could leave one message with the next generation of VW guys, what would it be? [SPEAKER_00]: Build what you want. [SPEAKER_01]: Ooh, and don't worry about anybody else. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, great one man, great one. [SPEAKER_01]: All right, here's a, here's a deep one for you. [SPEAKER_01]: All right, describe the Volkswagen community for me and just one word.

1:32:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Eclactic. [SPEAKER_01]: Ooh, that's a good word. [SPEAKER_01]: All right. [SPEAKER_01]: And then finally, if nobody could criticize your build and money didn't matter, what would you build personally? [SPEAKER_00]: I would definitely money doesn't matter. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm building the 23 window and I'm slamming it to the ground and it's gonna have a heck of a motor and it just a crazy motor and probably and one of the hidden turbos said something there. [SPEAKER_00]: Cool. [SPEAKER_01]: Heck yeah, I can take that. [SPEAKER_01]: be expensive one, but an awesome one at that. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you said money didn't matter, so I'm going on with it. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's a wrap for this episode of Dub Life Diaries.

1:33:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for riding along with us and diving into these incredible stories of the people in the Dub that drive their dreams. [SPEAKER_01]: If you love today's episode, don't forget to subscribe or hit that follow button, so you never miss an adventure. [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a story to tell or know somebody else who's living the dub life? [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome. [SPEAKER_01]: Reach out to us. [SPEAKER_01]: You can find us on all socials and dub life diaries. [SPEAKER_01]: Or shoot me an email. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not hard to find. [SPEAKER_01]: Double life diaries at gmail.com. [SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, keep the engine tummen and the wheels turning and always follow the road that inspires you. [SPEAKER_01]: This is Joe Person. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm signing off. [SPEAKER_01]: I'll catch you on the next ride.