Season 2, Episode 100 - Rebuilding Engines with Miles Bell from Dave’s Auto Center

 

 

The following transcription of The Truck Show Podcast was generated using a speech recognition software, and will contain errors. Please review the timestamp and listen to the corresponding audio for accuracy. 

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Jay “Lightning” Tilles (0s):

So first thing’s first. Holman. I wanted to show you my awesome scar. Look at that. Right there on my arm.

Sean P. Holman (4s):

Look at, oh, so you and my dad are arm buddies. Is

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6s):

That pretty gross, isn’t it? No.

Sean P. Holman (8s):

You, you wanna

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9s):

Say gross, so, no, no, I don’t. So I’m at the dermatologist and he’s, he’s like, ah, you need to, you need to come back because something found on you. It’s got some cancer. and I’m like, okay. So it’s like basal cell or whatever. It’s in the middle of my forearm on my right arm. and I. Go to the dermatologist. I’m, before you show me, lemme tell you a freaking story. Oh, that’s

Sean P. Holman (25s):

Gross. That’s my dad. So my dad goes, that’s gross. Yeah. You guys have matching arms. Yeah, we sure do. And he sends me pictures whenever he gets it cut off and goes, check this out. and I don’t know. My mom said something about it and I go, yeah, he sent me the picture. She’s like, he did. I’m like, yeah, they’re right here. She’s like, no, don don’t wanna see that.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42s):

Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (42s):

So I’ve got pictures of my dad with like holes in his head. Oh

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45s):

Geez.

Sean P. Holman (46s):

Holes in his nose.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (47s):

I don’t wanna see any of that stuff. Yeah, no, that’s awful. I it, so I’m sitting there and it’s pretty cool office in this surgery center, whatever. and I, I’m, they put on some music. She’s got Coldplay going doctors to my right. He’s working on my arm, shooting it up. And then I’ve got the nurse to my left. I’m talking to the nurse. We’re talking about like you two at the sphere in Las Vegas. Yeah. Having a conversation. And then I start him, I, I feel the doctor on my right kind of tugging on my arm. Yeah. So I figured it’s numb. I can’t, I don’t know what he’s doing, but he is tugging and you’re gonna, I know he is. Well, I’m not gonna look, but then I go, but you did. I need to go. Ah, I’ll look. So I look over and I’m thinking, it’s, and

Sean P. Holman (1m 18s):

You puked in your open

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 19s):

Wound? No. So then I, I’m thinking to myself, the spot of cancer was like the size of a mole. It was like smaller than a pencil eraser. So I think, okay. He’s just digging it out with some like spoon like thing I look over and my arm is wide open. Yeah. Three inches in each direction and it’s splayed open. I look down And, I can see like the fat and muscle. Yeah. And I’m like, oh, and I just look away. I I was like, that’s

Sean P. Holman (1m 42s):

Gross. They put oxygen mask on your face or anything?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 45s):

No, I didn’t, I didn’t get queasy. But I have been queasy in doctor’s offices before. So anyway, here were my awesome stitches and I’m supposed to be wearing a bandage right now, but it doesn’t stick with all my hair. So like, I’m just like, I just got,

Sean P. Holman (1m 55s):

That wouldn’t be off. Awful. You put a bandage on and then you rip the bandage off and it ripped your stitches open too with your arm hair.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 1s):

Well, I gotta go back. You can see the blue stitches poking out right here. I gotta go back in a couple days and get this removed. So anyway, that’s, I get some scars. ’cause chicks dig scars.

Sean P. Holman (2m 8s):

Alright. Just remember when they ask you what happened, just so you should see the other guy. Yeah. It’s always, always the answer. Yeah. Well, I, I’m, I’m glad that you caught that early enough and I’m still alive. Well,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 18s):

You know, another Lightning update. I bought four bollards for the Lightning estate. I will be placing four stainless steel Question

Sean P. Holman (2m 26s):

For you

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 26s):

Bollards in the right, in the driveway. Quick question for you. Yes sir.

Sean P. Holman (2m 31s):

Did Rich respond,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 33s):

Rich will be down in a week to install them. I’m not even joking. All the way construction will be down in about a week, week and a half to install four ballers and he’s coming down in a borrowed truck with a coring drill.

Sean P. Holman (2m 48s):

Oh. You know,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 49s):

So that’ll be fun.

Sean P. Holman (2m 50s):

Rich is the man. All right. Well I’m glad that he’s, he’s coming to rescue you. I have a funny story. Sure. So you know the world’s tallest thermometer in Baker. Yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 59s):

Next to the Bun Boy.

Sean P. Holman (3m 0s):

And every time I drive by, I always take a picture and I say, still working because for don don’t know, like a decade it didn’t work. Yeah. And then years ago they refurbished it. So then I say,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 9s):

And by the way, for you in other parts of the country, it literally is the world’s tallest thermometer. It’s kind cheesy. Its outside.

Sean P. Holman (3m 15s):

Not cheesy. Shut up. It’s cheesy. No it’s not. It’s outside Death Valley. No, it’s a giant thermometer on the side of the 15.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 20s):

But it’s digital. It’s not a real thermometer with mercury in it.

Sean P. Holman (3m 23s):

Oh. yeah. Because you’re gonna have 4,000 gallons of mercury.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 26s):

I’m just saying it’s not a real thermometer, it’s just LEDs in the shape.

Sean P. Holman (3m 29s):

Thermometer. All right. Would you, would you stop? Sure. Go ahead. Anyway, I used to, hashtags still broken all the time until one day they fixed it and I was like, whoa, they fixed it. So then I started hashtagging still working, still working. And so I, somebody might’ve been my friend Chris, somebody forwarded me this thing online where somebody in like one of the Facebook groups who does desert exploring and stuff brings up, I stopped at the gift shop, which by the way is always closed when I go. and

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 55s):

I didn’t even know they had a gift shop

Sean P. Holman (3m 56s):

And they found

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 57s):

The gift Shop of the Bun

Sean P. Holman (3m 58s):

Boy. No, the gift shop of the world’s tall therm thermometer. I’m not talking about the Bun Boy. Okay.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 3s):

And but aren’t they connected? Isn’t the same thing. No, they’re not. No.

Sean P. Holman (4m 5s):

Oh, the Bun Boy ceases to exist. It hasn’t existed in a long time. I didn’t know that. The thermometer on the other hand does. Anyway, getting back to my story, Lightning, they have this little wooden plaque that has one of the original light bulbs on it. And it was like 25, 30 bucks at the gift shop. And it has a little memorial plaque thing that says, oh, world’s Halls thermometer. So it’s from pre-renovation. I’m thinking, well that’s kind of cool.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 27s):

Sure, that is cool.

Sean P. Holman (4m 28s):

So I passed there four times since I saw that each time the gift shop’s been closed. So I’m like, damnit. So I don don’t know on a whim, went online and it’s on their website. So I ordered it and then a lady emails me back and she goes, Sean, we’re traveling right now. We won’t be back till August if you don’t mind, we can make it. My husband and I make these, and if you don’t mind waiting, we will include both a red and white original light bulb for you. And I’m like, yeah, no problem. I’m good with it. Right. and I go, by the way, I’m the guy that always tags on social, you guys with still working. She’s like, oh my God, thank you for the support. Yeah, we’ll have this. I’m make this for you as soon as we get this. So I thought that was cool. That

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 7s):

Is kind of cool.

Sean P. Holman (5m 8s):

Meanwhile, on our desk right now, is

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 11s):

You like that? Do

Sean P. Holman (5m 12s):

You talking about LEDs? This has gotta be the cheapest piece of plastic. It’s a box.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 18s):

So this is the device I was talking about a couple weeks back. If you’re listening on waves, to secure the Lightning estate from would be Thieves trying to steal my truck. Now I have, I told you I got the IR sensors. So when You walk into my driveway, you break the light like a, you know, on a garage door and goes,

Sean P. Holman (5m 36s):

You back up to the river and people are just gonna come in from the back. Now they

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 39s):

Can’t, you can’t get in that way. Anyway, you, you, you go in that way. And in my house, by

Sean P. Holman (5m 42s):

River I mean a big giant concrete, just Gul Gulch that has homeless people walking in

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 46s):

With it. and I, mine doesn’t. But there a couple blocks over, there are some homelessness living in it. So it is a driveway driveway every time you walk in. Right. But that’s not this box. This box on the top, you’ll see it’s got a power button. A photovoltaic sensor on the top right?

Sean P. Holman (6m 1s):

No, it’s a solar panel for the battery

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 2s):

Solar panel. That’s photovoltaic. That’s what it’s called. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (6m 6s):

We charge the battery. Yes.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 8s):

It’s battery charging. Correct. So it can work out. don don’t need to plug it in. All right. And then on then on the front, it’s got two speakers. Oh, there it is. You turned it on. It got a couple buttons on the face and a remote control, which I didn’t bring now so,

2 (6m 20s):

Oh

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 20s):

Geez, that’s loud.

Sean P. Holman (6m 21s):

Alright. Gunshots and dogs.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 25s):

Yep.

Sean P. Holman (6m 27s):

A Halloween. Okay. So that’ll be what you do in Halloween. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 29s):

Proximity, sensing

Sean P. Holman (6m 32s):

A gong I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 33s):

Guess. So it’s Chinese. Everything’s rated Chinese. All the instructions.

2 (6m 39s):

Fireworks,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 39s):

Missiles.

Sean P. Holman (6m 40s):

Fireworks. Missiles hitting. Oh, tiger I. don

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 45s):

Dunno. Red alert.

Sean P. Holman (6m 50s):

Are we sinking?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 52s):

Don? Don’t know.

Sean P. Holman (6m 56s):

Your neighbors must love you.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 58s):

That one could do it. The the police siren. The foghorn

Sean P. Holman (7m 4s):

By the way, the quality of the speaker it’s awful. Is is horrible.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 7s):

Yeah, very. It’s, it’s every bit as tinny and real life as it is that you’re hearing Now

Sean P. Holman (7m 13s):

I cease to be impressed.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 14s):

That’s, it’s awful. But it is loud. And we can record audio if you’d like. So that’s yeah, that box cost me 40 bucks.

Sean P. Holman (7m 23s):

You paid 40 bucks for this?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 24s):

Yeah, 40 bucks for that thing.

Sean P. Holman (7m 25s):

I’d rather have the world’s tallest thermometer, original light bulb.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 29s):

Well this could maybe scare someone away. Maybe You don’t think so?

Sean P. Holman (7m 33s):

All right, well we’ve got quite the show for you.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 35s):

I can tell you that I’m very excited about Miles. Bell Miles is son of Dave Bell and Dave owns Dave’s Auto Center up there in Centerville, Utah.

Sean P. Holman (7m 44s):

You mean Dave’s auto center on YouTube?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 46s):

Yes. That do

Sean P. Holman (7m 47s):

They actually have a real shop?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 48s):

Massive shop

Sean P. Holman (7m 50s):

And miles overseas. A bunch of like engine

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 52s):

Builds. He builds the engine. So we’re gonna talk to him about all things engine and mechanics. All

Sean P. Holman (7m 57s):

Right, so before we get to that, we have to thank the presenting sponsor of The Truck Show Podcast. And that is our friends over at Nissan. So if you are in the market for a new truck and you want something that’s rugged, dependable, reliable, and chock full of features and value, you’re not gonna find a better truck than the Nissan Frontier. So head on down to your local dealership where you can check out the Nissan Frontier in person. You can see the utility track rails and the zero gravity seats and the Fender audio system and the Nissan Frontier comes standard with one engine. That’s the 310 horsepower, 3.8 liter V six backed by Nissan’s nine speed automatic transmission. And if you wanna know more about how to outfit the frontier for your needs, head over to Nissan usa dot com where you use the build and price tool and also connect with the local dealership Holman.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 39s):

I’m over here on Facebook on the 2020 to 2024 G-M-C-A-T four and a T four X Sierra HD 2500, 3500 owners group. Jason Smith writes, I know there are a lot of guys running the Dinger and or I dash, but is anyone running the full bundle? Is it worth it? Just looking for reliable, fun power with no side effects. And he’s got a picture here of the power pack bundle for the 20 to 23 derm X 6.6 liter. It’s got RAM air intake, monster Exhaust, new Monster Ram Dinger tuner id dash ID dash stealth pod boost tubes and RAM air diff cover. So below that are the comments.

Sean P. Holman (9m 15s):

Okay,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 16s):

Cory White is the first one to comment. He says, I’ve got the full kit, makes it what it should have been from the factory. Cory ran. Says I did the full kit. It’s Badass Banks is the real deal. Russell Baker chimes in says, got the tuner, the intake pedal monster and exhaust. Huge difference according to the ID dash. I’m making 1,019 foot pound of torque, 556 horsepower. So look, if you’ve got a 20 to 23 duramax, head over to banks power dot com, type in your year, make and model and find the Power pack bundle. That’ll put a smile on your face.

Sean P. Holman (9m 49s):

Okay, so do you have anything for a 24 version of that truck?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 53s):

Hmm? Why do you know someone?

Sean P. Holman (9m 54s):

My buddy Todd just bought a completely loaded full tilt. GMC damn A four X AV edition HD Sierra

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 2s):

Damn six figures.

Sean P. Holman (10m 3s):

He already hit me up. He is like, Hey, do You know what anybody gimme a deal on? ID dash and I. So he’ll be reaching into your deal. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 9s):

ID dash and I dash stealth pod got ’em on it. Just hit up the Well yeah, hit me for it.

Sean P. Holman (10m 13s):

You got that? Yeah. Gimme your info.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 14s):

Okay. We also have the Ram air rear differential cover. We’ve got high flow boost tubes, we’ve got a couple other things for the 24. We’re still waiting on the exhaust and the intake should be out soon. And the new dinger tuner drops in the end of summer, somewhere around there. All right, but for the electronics, let’s start lacing ’em up with the I dash. Yeah. So head to banks power dot com to get yours.

Sean P. Holman (10m 36s):

Hey, did you know that AMS oil is one of the few independently owned oil companies right here

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 40s):

In America? Yeah. Yes, I actually did know that. Yes. Oh, okay. Did you know that sios

Sean P. Holman (10m 44s):

Did you know they make a full line of synthetic lubricants and also a ton of car care and detailing

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 49s):

Supplies? I mean, you know that. I know this right?

Sean P. Holman (10m 52s):

Well then why don’t you, you

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 53s):

Just asking him

Sean P. Holman (10m 53s):

Rhetorically don’t you tell me why don’t asking

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 55s):

Said rhetorically.

Sean P. Holman (10m 56s):

Whatcha doing here? Hey, by the way, I used the AMS oil glass cleaner. Oh, that stuff’s awesome. You thought it

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 0s):

Was totally bs?

Sean P. Holman (11m 1s):

No, I didn’t. I just don’t trust anything you say. But I’m like, I’m like Ronald Reagan over here. It’s trust but verify. Okay, that’s fine. And I’m just telling you, I have used

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 10s):

The glass.

Sean P. Holman (11m 10s):

Did it streak? No. See it’s awesome. You’ve

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 13s):

Used aerosol glass cleaner before and you’re like, this blows. Yeah, there’s doesn’t don don’t know what. It’s got some magic in it. I don’t.

Sean P. Holman (11m 20s):

Whatever that magic is. Right. And of course they’ve got a full line of motor oils for gas, diesel, European high mileage hybrid racing, high zinc for those old cars. Natural gas, two stroke, four stroke. I mean everything you can think of if you choose AM o, you’re also getting guaranteed performance because AM O builds all of their synthetics with an extra measure of protection. While some oil companies guarantee their products only until you reach a specified mileage, Amsel does not place restrictions on warranty coverage based on total vehicle miles. And that’s something unique to amsel. And type in amsel dot com where you can get your truck car, UTV motorcycle or

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 53s):

Anything else hooked up today. AM Oil the first in synthetics

3 (11m 58s):

The truck show? We’re gonna show you what we know. We’re gonna answer What The truck. Truck rode with The truck show? We have the lifted We have the lowered and everything in between. We talk about trucks that run on diesel and the ones that run on gasoline. The truck show, The truck show, The truck show.

4 (12m 29s):

It’s The truck show with your hosts Lightning and Holman.

3 (12m 37s):

Alright,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 37s):

Holman, you got your ice cold Dr. Pepper chilling over there. I think you are ready to call Miles Bell up there at Dave’s Auto Center in Centerville, Utah. You feeling good about it? Let’s do it. Hi.

Miles (12m 54s):

Hey Lightning.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 55s):

What’s happening? Miles Lightning and Holman Truck Show podcast here. Well, what’s going on?

Miles (12m 60s):

Hey guys, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 2s):

Fantastic. Hey, before we can talk to you Miles, we have a quick Intro, so don’t say anything hang tight.

3 (13m 19s):

It’s used to share what,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 23s):

I guess we kind of know what Miles does. So he doesn’t really have to share. We kind of know that he’s up there at Dave’s Auto Center running the engine and performance department Miles. Do all of our listeners know that? No, I guess they do now. You should probably tell them. Well, I just did. All right. Miles, before we, before we dig into this, I wanna find out how you got started. So fans of your father’s YouTube channel and fans of Dave’s Auto Center up there in Centerville, I guess you guys are what, 20, 30 minutes north of Salt Lake City? Correct?

Miles (13m 53s):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not even that. About a 10 to 15 minute drive even. Oh wow,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 58s):

Okay. But yeah,

Miles (13m 59s):

Very

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 59s):

Cool. Okay, so your father started Dave’s Auto Center like 30 some odd years ago, and then you come along and do you see yourself as a, as a youth like someday running the engine division, making high performance engines at Dave’s? Or are you thinking like, nah, my dad’s, that’s a, that’s whack what he does. I want to like do my own thing.

Miles (14m 24s):

So I, I grew up right next to the shop actually. We lived in a house literally right behind our shop. So I grew up learning how to ride my bike in the parking lot, working around shop with my dad, mopping floors, cleaning toilets, working on cars, doing all that stuff growing up. But got old enough. He told me, he’s like, you can’t work here unless you go get other jobs. He said, don, don’t want you making this big decision unless you go out in the world and, and then if you want to circle back here, do it. So I did a few other jobs for about six years before I circled back and ended up here full-time, about 13 years full-time with my dad.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 9s):

So wait miles, you were a milkman and a pool guy or No? What did you do in that time off?

Miles (15m 14s):

So, so I did a variety of different things. I, I actually, I served a religious mission for two years in the Philippines. Then I worked at Fast Food Restaurant right outta high school. I worked two years at a rehabilitation facility here locally for youth. And so I did that for two years and then I did a few other odds and ends outside sales, you know, door to door sales, things like that and ended up coming back here.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 47s):

So it sounds like those extraneous jobs that you had in that off time was learning your people skills. Am I wrong? I mean, it sounds like from, from your mission to work in like a cer a community oriented job, that’s how you became kind of the people pleaser is my guess. What would, what would you say?

Miles (16m 8s):

You know, there’s no doubt that my dad is, and he’ll still test some of the guys in the shop here and pulling an engine or something. He is a mechanic in his DNA, like in every breath that he has. He loves being a mechanic and I love it as well. But I’m just, I don’t have that aptitude and talent. Like he was just naturally born with. I loved interacting with people, doing the sales side of it, the business side of it. That’s really where I found my niche in the automotive world. I just liked the business sales interaction side more so, so we, we ended up being a good team in that sense that he’s, he’s the hands and a lot of the brain and I’m more of the interacts with people kind of person.

Miles (16m 58s):

So are

Sean P. Holman (16m 58s):

You thinking about one day when your dad retires, how to hire somebody like your dad in there to fill that gap?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 5s):

Don don’t think he has to

Miles (17m 6s):

Though. So we have, I don’t think that guy is ever gonna quit and leave the shop. It’s so much of his passion and who he is that until we throw dirt on his face, he is gonna be here. Now we do, we do have, we actually have two shop foremans ’cause we have two different buildings and they’ve been with us. We have one guy that’s been with us for 30 years. His name is Tyson. And then we have another guy named Jason that’s been with us for 13 years. And they are, they’re fantastic. They’re like family and so they’ll become the Dave brain, so to say, if hopefully a long time to come, if he ever passes.

Sean P. Holman (17m 47s):

But I, I was just gonna say one of the, the things that you brought up is how your dad basically kicked you outta the family business in order to come back to the family business. And there’s other family businesses in automotive that I know of where they’re three generations. Grandpa’s still there, dad’s still there now it’s the kids who are there. And each one of the kids, you said you have to go to college and you have to get another job and then you have to apply for your job back here.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 11s):

That blows

Sean P. Holman (18m 12s):

Because they wanted to make sure that they weren’t, it was something they wanted to do. Be so

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 17s):

Funny if they rejected ’em. Glad I saw you fail.

Sean P. Holman (18m 19s):

I mean, that’s not the degree we thought we you, you’re

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 22s):

Not right for this job. Yeah, we’ve got another opposition over,

Sean P. Holman (18m 25s):

But all the, all the kids end up coming back to the job. But the, the, the part of it is, is like nobody got it handed to them on a, on a silver platter. It was go out, do all the things you would do to go get a career. And if by then you, you feel like you wanna be a part of the family business, then we’ll talk. But you have to go out in the world before you come back and I. I I I always think that’s good because, you know, you get a more rounded, well-rounded experience and stuff.

Miles (18m 47s):

Yeah, it, it, I think this is really an industry. It’s, you know, I’m speaking to two guys that obviously get the passion side of it is, is this is an industry that can be tough and some days just suck as, as is in every job, but it’s really an industry of passion. And so he wanted us to, to go out and see the world and try and do our own thing and if this was the right fit, then he would welcome us back. But if it wasn’t and we thought a different path was better for us, he wanted us to do that. And so we, I have five brothers. I’ve actually got, I’m the middle child, I’ve got two older brothers and then two younger brothers.

Miles (19m 28s):

So out of that five rambunctious crew that we were, me and, and my older brother Joey are the only ones that decided that this was, this is what we wanted

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (19m 38s):

Miles lay out the land force up there, both the property and then how the business is broken up.

Miles (19m 45s):

So we’re a five acre facility. We just expanded in last year in August of 23. So when my dad first started the business, it was out of a storage unit and he got a piece of plywood and he spray painted Dave’s auto on it. No way. Yeah, he, he, they, they had me, him and my mom had me. Then a few months later, they ended up getting married. He finally convinced her, they went on just a weekend honeymoon, just working at a dodge dealership here locally. And when he got back from the honeymoon, he went into work Monday morning and they sat him down first thing and They said, you’re fired.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 26s):

Oh.

Miles (20m 27s):

And so he did dirty. He he didn’t know what to Yeah, he, he didn’t know what to do. And so, so he, he, he, he said, I’m, I’m tired of working for people. I have my own pace. I wanna do my own thing. And so he had the, we’ll keep it, we’ll keep it g rated, but he had the gumption here to, to just go start his own place. And so he, he rented out a storage unit spray painted Dave’s auto on it. And, and just because of his quality of work and his ability to figure things out that other shops couldn’t, he grew from there. And so that was, we just hit 35 years this year.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (21m 8s):

And what was he known for at that point? At that point? Just pause for one second here. Miles, what was he known for, of course. Was he doing diesel? Was he doing like turbo cars naturally aspirated American muscle? Like was there one thing that, because usually like we talked to a lady in northern California, she’s a diesel mechanic and her thing was like Fords, like she really rose to notoriety in northern California in her area for like Ford, was it six Os or seven threes? Do you remember Holman? One of the two six Os? Yeah. Okay. Was there something like that for your dad?

Miles (21m 39s):

So he actually started the business as an import shop. So he was working on Volkswagens. that was really his big thing was

Sean P. Holman (21m 48s):

Doesn’t everybody start on Volkswagens? I feel like all these, all these great shops are like, you know, I first started on a Volkswagen. Everybody we talked to, it’s like either

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (21m 56s):

Too much air cool, just you can’t break it.

Sean P. Holman (21m 57s):

It’s like mini trucks. And Volkswagens is where the whole industry is sprouted from,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (22m 2s):

By the way, that sounds like a, that sounds like either a concert or a, or a band name mini trucks and Volkswagens to

Sean P. Holman (22m 6s):

Be an event. The, Truck, Show Podcast.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (22m 8s):

I think I’ve lived through that. A couple of those events.

Miles (22m 11s):

He built the building that we’re currently in 28 years ago. And, and we added onto it throughout the years. And then we just expanded here and bought a tire shop that was actually right next door to us, which ended up being just perfect timing. Everything just fell in place. But then we expanded and now we’re, the square footage of the shop itself is 33,000 square feet. About August of last year, just a little bit before that. ’cause August we moved into this new building and, and doubled our size essentially. Him and I were, were scrambling. We had just purchased a new building. We had a new mortgage and we were a busy shop, but we were more of just a local shop.

Miles (22m 53s):

And we had gone from imports. And when he originally started, we didn’t even do diesel until, I’d have to, I don’t, I couldn’t put a date on it, but maybe six or seven years ago. Okay. So it hasn’t been very long. And, and he changed the name maybe, maybe 20 years ago from Import Auto to just complete auto. Anyway, so we, we had had this new building. We were, we were worried about filling the new space, getting new mechanics to fill the bays, the new mortgage, all this stuff. And he came to me and he said, figure it out.

Sean P. Holman (23m 33s):

Ouch. He, he of course he coddled you with big kitten sweater and a hug. Right?

Miles (23m 39s):

That’s not quite his style. He just more figure it out. We got this new mortgage. His thing for, for a lot of years has been I have my slice of pie and I’m not giving you any of it unless you create more

Sean P. Holman (23m 55s):

And I mean. I, that’s, he’s like, that’s fair, respectable. I’ve, I’ve got a family member. I,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 60s):

I mean if you’re, if you’re spoiled, Brad, it sucks. Well that’s what I say. But if you’re

Sean P. Holman (24m 4s):

Not, I’ve got a family member and I won’t out, which one of them this person is. But he, he once told me with his kids, he said, I put ’em through college and I told them when I die, don’t expect anything from me.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (24m 15s):

Yeah. He’s gotta spend it all right.

Sean P. Holman (24m 17s):

Like, wow.

Miles (24m 18s):

I found real value in it. ’cause a lot of times my dad has said the biggest motivator to somebody is an empty stomach. Yeah, yeah,

Sean P. Holman (24m 26s):

Yeah. I was gonna say exactly.

Miles (24m 27s):

And, and, and so he, he, he said, you know, if, if you want this, which I did, I wanted to expand ’cause I needed, I needed to create my own slice of the pie, so to say. He said, figure it out. And so you, we, we tried a bunch of different things and we’ve tried a bunch of different marketing strategies and things and, and our, what we’ve done for so many years is, is quality. We just hammer that. And, and our team, we have, we’re surrounded by great mechanics and just brilliant minds. And so we’ve been really lucky that way to, to create that foundation. But we needed more of it. And, and so this was June or July of last year, and I said, dad, we, we haven’t tried social media.

Miles (25m 14s):

And I’m like, you’re, you’re a great mechanic, but your personality is, is even better. And people like that. And people like your, your candor and your ability to preach. So to say about the value of a mechanic and the value of being in this industry and your knowledge. I said, just let’s give it a shot. We’ve never really tried it. And at that point we had, I think we had a hundred, maybe 200 followers on all the social media platforms. But the secret of that was most of those people were my in-laws and friends that I forced

Sean P. Holman (25m 49s):

To

Miles (25m 49s):

Hit the like

Sean P. Holman (25m 50s):

Button. Right. Right, right. So

Miles (25m 51s):

That, that, that was my, that was my social media strategy at that point, was to force people to hit that follow button. When he, when he got on board, he, he said to me at that point, as we were trying to do this and I wanted to, to take our, our, our quality of, of engines that we were building that point. and I wanted to expand that to the world. He, he replied to me at first, he said, and and he’ll tell the story, but he said, son, keep your eye on the ball. Just fix cars and that’s all you need to do. And, and we battled with that for months. And finally he was like, okay, whatever. Let’s try it. And right after he said that, not within two weeks, we had some couple here that were washing our windows and they did the best freaking job that we’ve ever seen.

Miles (26m 41s):

Our windows were transparent, they came to us and They said, your guys’ social media sucks. We can do better. And we kinda laughed and we thought, you guys are washing our windows. Yeah. Be rude. But we’ve already, we’ve hired these companies that know this and know that. And we spend, there’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (27m 1s):

Like, so what you’re telling us thousand you guys are editors, you know, SEO you know, like Yeah. Videographers. Yeah. Equipment. There’s no way guys, guys, you guys carry a, you know, a red camera around with you. What are you doing? You got a, you got a bucket and a and then you and a watch. No, no. Then you realize they had the number one followed window washing YouTube channel called Clear windows and they had 2 billion followers. The thing is, and before you, before you tell us a story, I’m gonna pause you right there. ’cause I’m excited to, to see how this comes out. I, I follow this guy. It’s like, oh shoot, I should know this now. ’cause I follow him. It’s like SoCal windows. And it’s one dude in, in Orange County, California, and he installs windshields and glass and he has the most entertaining channel.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (27m 44s):

I you’d never expect to watch a guy change windshields. Like, of all things. You’re like, no, he’s, he’s chopping out the old glue and he’s putting in a windshield, but he dresses up and he tuxedo in a suit and tie and he’s got like 300,000 followers on Instagram. People are just watching him put in windshields. It’s wild. So back to your story. This couple is washing your windows.

Miles (28m 8s):

Yeah. And, and so here’s, here’s an even more odd twist. They had nothing. They, they had moved here and their social media had kind of died, but they were actually doing a cooking channel and they had tons of followers on their cooking channel. But then, then they had moved and they were just trying to pick up some extra money and they were doing this to get, just get things going and to get integrated here in Utah. So we said, okay, what the heck? We’ll give it a shot then here we are within 10 months I think is about the time they, they took us from nothing, you know, a hundred to 200 followers. And, and now I think on all the platforms, we’re at three, I think we just hit 3.3 million across, oh my gosh.

Miles (28m 50s):

The

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (28m 50s):

Platforms, right. Share some of the love, man, send people our way. The the thing is so, and be before you continue because Miles, this is fascinating for anyone that has a YouTube channel or Instagram feed or whatever, TikTok is that the hardest thing is repetition. And, and Holman and I talk about this in podcasting all the time guys. You mean the two days a week we meet to record the podcast? Well, every week, week. Well it’s of the most week after week. That’s month after month, year after year. Well, ’cause we say that in, in over six years of doing this podcast, we have only missed one week as far as I know it. Two, one or two. So I think it’s two, it still’s pretty good, but it wasn’t missed. It was, we took it off for vacation and we recorded and we recorded it double up. So nobody, you guys weren’t allowed, been alert.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (29m 31s):

The point though is, is Holman more, more so than Ike gets a question all the time. It’s like, Hey, I’m gonna steward a podcast, Sean, what do we do? Like what’s the, what do I need to know? Don’t quit. You’re like, don’t quit. He’s like, what do you mean don’t quit? It’s like you have to do, are you prepared to do something every single week for the next 10 years? They’re like, what do you mean I have to do it every single week? And so anyway, getting back to your channel is that you guys are putting out multiple episodes per week and they’re all interesting. Tell me about when You first shot the couple videos or what was first, what did you do and how did they get the mix? Right off the bat,

Miles (30m 6s):

They really taught us. And so it’s, it’s great as me and my dad think we are, they really taught us like content is everything. And when we first started doing some of the videos, we, yeah, we, we kind of mentally signed up for, okay, we’ll do some social media, hopefully it takes off and hopefully we, we can grow the business. And so we went in with an attitude that was not very committed. and

Sean P. Holman (30m 33s):

I love the honesty.

Miles (30m 35s):

Kinda like you guys say, we’ll, we’ll like you guys say, I mean, and which by the way, I, everybody here loves your podcast. I I think everybody in the shop is like drooling. Like, you guys, you guys get to do this podcast. That’s

Sean P. Holman (30m 49s):

My favorite, was a

Miles (30m 50s):

Favorite thing that we listened to. Man.

Sean P. Holman (30m 51s):

I was just a Salt Lake City. What, two weeks ago? I should have made time to come up and see you guys.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (30m 56s):

What were you doing up there? Were you task

Miles (30m 57s):

Driving? You always be welcome.

Sean P. Holman (30m 58s):

No, that was when I went to the Brooks and Dun concert. Oh,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (31m 0s):

That’s right. Yeah. We were just there

Sean P. Holman (31m 1s):

Just hanging out. that was, that was in Salt Lake. Yeah, salt Lake. You

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (31m 3s):

Were right there. 10 minutes

Sean P. Holman (31m 5s):

From him. I know, I know now, now I’m mad. I didn’t shop. Yeah, I know. Well I go to Salt Lake a lot, so I, I’ll just have to see you guys next time I go out there. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (31m 12s):

Then Miles, they, so you had this weird kind of non-committal, no, not weird, but I guess that’s what would be realistic. Realistic non-committal. And then what happens?

Miles (31m 23s):

So, so yeah, a lot of our videos at first were, were just nothing. But hey, you know, this couple, we were like, Hey, just go film the guys in the shop. Just figure it out. We’re I, we’re too busy, don’t bother us kind of thing. And they, they, they eventually told us, they, they came to my dad and They said, no Dave, this isn’t right. Like, you have to be on this. You have to commit to it. And they’re like, your shop has so much valuable content and, and They said, which is in your brain is so valuable that they’re like, you need to get in front of the camera and you need to do this. And so me and my dad sat down and we thought, gosh, we’ve never really done anything in our life that we haven’t just fully committed to.

Miles (32m 6s):

So why not this? If this is gonna be the answer, let’s do it. Like, let’s get on board and just do it. Kinda like you guys have said it, it’s one of those things that mentally you have to be committed for the grind. And so we, we did, we just were like, let’s do it. And so a lot of our days, I mean the videos that we’re doing are mostly shorts and stuff, but the, the amount of time that it takes in our day to do those is a lot. And, but they just They said, it’ll work, it’ll work, it’ll work. Just commit to it. Just do it. And so we did, we put, we were putting a lot of time into it and we’re just trying to make it fun and have fun with it and really provide valuable information, is really our goal.

Miles (32m 52s):

And they, they work with us to, to optimize it. I mean we probably post out of all the videos that we do, only maybe 30%, 40% of them actually get posted. And how many retakes we do. I’d stopped counting because my, my dad’s, my dad’s a natural. He’s so, he, he’s perfect for camera me. My my percentage is a pro, like a ton lower because it’s, it’s just, he’s great on camera and I’m not as much so it, we do a lot of videos that don’t get posted because they

Sean P. Holman (33m 25s):

Suck miles. I can tell you you’re great on podcasts though.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 27s):

So phenomenal. He’s attractive. Yeah. Best he looks, he comes across great. So I I I can, we know we, we edit this show quite a bit as well. You know, like we do a bunch

Sean P. Holman (33m 38s):

Of mostly ’cause we suck at podcasting.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 39s):

Yeah, we suck. We’re not good. That’s the joke. Someday we’ll be professionals. We won’t. But I don’t know when that’ll be. No, never. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (33m 44s):

That’s possible. I mean we, we’ve we’ve been doing this almost seven years. It hasn’t gotten better. So I mean, just being honest. Yeah, we

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 51s):

Actually, we accidentally get good ratings.

Sean P. Holman (33m 53s):

Yeah. People stumble on us and we’re just not the worst.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (33m 56s):

We’re just not

Sean P. Holman (33m 56s):

Worst. That’s actually our new catchphrase. The Truck, Show, Podcast, Lightning Holman. We’re not the worst.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (34m 1s):

We’re, or no, we’re just not worse. We’re not getting worse. We are worse. No, we’ll

Sean P. Holman (34m 5s):

Come up with

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (34m 6s):

Those things. T-shirts slogan later. So then you’re doing this stuff. So for those of you guys that don’t know, the channels are monstrous. YouTube is where I fell in love with as your dad calls longs. But that’s long form video, more than 10 minutes. And the guys, you do a lot of these 62nd shorts both on Instagram and on and on YouTube shorts. Just look up Dave’s auto center or just Dave’s Auto, it’ll be the first thing that pops up. You don’t have to go look at Hartford. It’s, it’s right there. and I love. You do pack a lot of information in 60 seconds. So if you’re the kind of person that’s got the TikTok, like a DD, that’s for you. But if you want to sink your teeth into something you want to see, you know, an engine being sleeved or you want to see, would

Sean P. Holman (34m 48s):

You say it’s the TikTok, don’t stop

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (34m 50s):

Speed of air piston, you know, analysis or like all these things that you guys do in long form. You got, you have both avenues covered.

Miles (35m 0s):

Well, thank you. We, you know, we, we we, like I said, we, we put a lot of effort and time into it. But our real, what is most important to us is that people know throughout the whole world that being a mechanic is the coolest thing. And we like the, the value the a mechanic is that the, they’re how intelligent they are, how adaptable they are. Just the craftsman that a true mechanic is, is so amazing that we really want to, to show off to the world that it’s a great thing to do and we love it.

Miles (35m 43s):

And that working with your hands, fixing stuff like whether it’s a car, whatever trade it is that that has so much value and that there’s so many life lessons that come from that, that that’s really our platform is not necessarily just advertisement of our business, but but showing that fixing stuff is great and, and that we love it.

Sean P. Holman (36m 9s):

Well and clearly it, it hasn’t done much for your business because I’m looking on your website and let’s see, Duramax, LLY availability, 13 to 16 weeks. Oh, let’s look at Powerstroke. Oh 6 7, 13 to 16 weeks should take

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (36m 25s):

Back order. No, not that they’re not slow. They’re

Sean P. Holman (36m 27s):

Back order powerstroke 6, 4, 10 to 13 weeks. Right. I I mean I wish you guys were, had a busy shop.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (36m 33s):

So it’s insane. It’s done. and I, I wanna find out what it’s done to for your business. I assume like, well, and

Sean P. Holman (36m 38s):

I wanna talk about the business. I I’m curious to find out you guys are, are, you know, building these engines, all three of the common platforms plus some other kind of oddball stuff like the five cylinder Mercedes Turbo diesel, which has an issue with blowing things up itself. And I’m kind of curious, I mean we don’t have to dive into it now, maybe do it as we finish the course of this, but what are you seeing in each of those engines? What are things people have to look out for? I mean yeah, yeah. You you have so much experience with doing a deep dive on, on these diesels. It’s, it’s, you know, that’s just a wealth of, of information for the average guy. I mean,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 10s):

You’re tempting me to go deep. I know. Do you want me to do a deep dive? Do you want to go? Sure. Do you want to go there? All hold on. We’re doing a deep dive.

7 (37m 16s):

Prepare to dive. Prepare

Sean P. Holman (37m 18s):

To dive.

8 (37m 19s):

Hi Captain. Captain. We’re too

7 (37m 21s):

Deep. There’s no such thing as too deep. Okay. that was too deep.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 42s):

In order to build all of these engines, Holman and I, don’t know if you’ve seen the inside ’cause I watch more of these episodes probably than you do. ’cause I’m addicted to YouTube. when You think of a mechanic shop, they’ve got a hunter tire, a machine that puts the tires on, balances ’em, they’ve got maybe some basic machines around the shop that you’ve seen everywhere. But Dave’s is not that shop. Dave and Miles have assembled all of the best machines. The the machines that are in there are like manufacturing level. Tell us a little bit about that and let’s, then let’s get into engines.

Miles (38m 13s):

So the, the story goes back a little bit since we’re deep diving here. The story goes back to when my, my dad was working in a dealership. This is really what ignited this in him with equipment and tools to do the job, right. But he was at a dealership and he bought an old school welder because he, you know, they were repairing a lot of exhaust back then. And so he bought a welder because at the time the shop between all the mechanics would, you know, when they would have to do exhaust repair, they would share the welder. And he’s like, that’s killing my time. I gotta make money here so I, if I need a tool, I’m gonna buy it. And he said he bought that it was expensive for him at the time and everybody in the shop made fun of him.

Miles (38m 59s):

’cause they’re like, oh, that’s such a waste of money. You can just borrow it when we’re done with it. That that kind of is his, his origin story, so to say with tools is he learned at that point. And within a quick timeframe, he was, he was fixing a bunch of stuff a lot quicker than anybody else because he had the tool that he needed. So it ended up his investment gave him great return. When, when he started the shop, he was sending things out to machine shops locally and he just, you know, he would pull off a sonar head, have a valve job done, get it back, and it just wasn’t quite how he wanted it. And he didn’t like that. So our first piece of equipment was an old sun and sonar head machine.

Miles (39m 43s):

And, and so that’s how our machine shop started. But that’s how really everything has spawned here, is if we need a tool, we’re gonna figure out how to get it. We’re gonna make the right investment and then get on our knees and pray after that we can actually make it make money for us. Right? Yeah. And, and it, it, it’s, it always hasn’t paid off right away, but we at least have the tools so that we can grow as, as our business. We just put in the grind to make it work. And and that’s why when we did social media and, and these, the window washers, we’ll call ’em, that’s, that’s why when they saw this, they’re like, oh my gosh, this is not your regular oil change and tire busting shop.

Miles (40m 30s):

These guys are total nerds for tools. Yeah. And, and so we just really, that’s we, we like our tools, but, and that brought us seven or so years ago to working on, on diesel because we really saw the industry moving to that me more so than my dad. I was kind of a diesel nut. And so I loved that, that world and that that community of diesel people and I just was fascinated by it. And so we, we started doing diesel and we, we just really love building diesel engines. So we do, we do plenty of Ls Hemi. We do really, one of our flaws is we like to do so many different engines.

Miles (41m 12s):

We’ll do a es we do Four, Wheeler engines, small engines. I mean we do a lot of things just because we like to know how to fix it. And so we’re not a huge production shop, but we stick to, when it comes to engines, we stick to the big three and we really like to focus on those because we feel like there can be a lot of improvements on those.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (41m 37s):

So then you have a

Sean P. Holman (41m 38s):

Question? No, I was just gonna say, let, let’s, let’s walk through the, the various engine platforms. ’cause obviously you’ve got Cummins, five nines and six sevens, and they’re a little bit different through the years. So let’s start with Cummins. What, what are the things that, that you guys see? And then the other thing is, are you building stock engines? I noticed online that there’s some options for tow monsters. I also saw there’s something called a juggernaut. So let’s talk about the weaknesses of the engines that need to be fixed and then what you do at each level to make that engine perform the way the users,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42m 8s):

I’m also home and trying to figure out where they draw the line between repair and then like a full blown like

Sean P. Holman (42m 13s):

Performance bill. Performance

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42m 14s):

Bill. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (42m 15s):

Well we got the man on the phone who can’t answer for it. For us

Miles (42m 18s):

Again, we, we just love fixing anything. So we also, we’re a 32 bay shop and we’ll, we’ll still change people’s oil. Damn.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42m 25s):

Hold on. Wait, wait, stop right there.

Sean P. Holman (42m 27s):

That’s big

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42m 27s):

32 bays.

Miles (42m 30s):

Damn.

Sean P. Holman (42m 31s):

Don. Don’t even think our local dealership has that many. Holy

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42m 33s):

Man. Okay. Okay. I’ll say sorry. Keep going.

Miles (42m 36s):

So, so we, yeah, I mean I, I look outside the window here. I’m here at the shop. I mean we’re, we’re fixing a Subaru, a Ford Explorer, then we’ve got, you know, vans in here, big trucks, lifted trucks. I mean, we, again, we, we like to do it all. We just, we like being mechanics and to us that means fixing anything. But if, if we go back to the Cummins, I’m a cumins owner, so I would like to say that they’re flawless. But

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (43m 5s):

You put, you can’t,

Miles (43m 8s):

We, we can’t How

Sean P. Holman (43m 9s):

Many, how many cylinder number sixes have you had to replace an engine over with that little bolt bouncing around

Miles (43m 17s):

Too, too many. And that’s so, so we, we do, yeah. And the cylinder six. So my brother Joey is the real, he’s, he runs our machine shop. He’s got a lot of machining background, so he’s really good at that. But yeah, in cylinder six we sleeve a lot of those, especially in the five nines because they have porosity issues in the cylinder walls. If you, if you bo ’em out too much, they’ll actually leak cool it through, especially that number six cylinder. But that’s, that six cylinder can get hot, it can grab a piston or the skirt of a piston and cause damage there. So,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (43m 54s):

Well, so you’re talking about, you’re talking about two different issues, right? So you got the five nine with a cylinder six, and then you have like the modern oh seven and to current 6.7 liter Cummins that has the grid heater bolt failure. I think that you’re talking about Holman where, where that the grid heater falls apart. I think you guys were talking about on one of your recent videos.

Miles (44m 13s):

Yeah, so the, so like the oh seven and a half with the, the six seven where they, they have that grid heater and that nut comes off or melts off basically and gets sucked into that cylinder. Yeah, we see that all the time. Which is unfortunate again, because I, I own a six seven Cummins and just, you know, we don’t, a lot of people say, why are you guys beating up the manufacturers and, and this and that. We’re, that does not fit with our platform. We’re not trying to beat up or or this any manufacturer we’re just saying they, you know, they engineered it at the time seemed like it would work.

Miles (44m 54s):

Unfortunately it didn’t. There’s some designs that didn’t hold up like the grid heater and the six seven and there’s a solution for it. But that’s, that’s the beauty of, of the world we live in is somebody makes a mistake. There’s, there’s other people that can bring the solution.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 12s):

Yeah, I mean there’s, there’s equal number of, I mean, look at the Ford six Oh right, the head studs or you know, you have to stud the engine and all

Sean P. Holman (45m 18s):

That. How dare you, how dare you, how dare you like

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 23s):

Compare it to a

Sean P. Holman (45m 23s):

Cummins, listen, the the six oh guys know that after you spend $15,000 in aftermarket parts, those things are bulletproof. So just, just hold yourself back. Okay. All right. All right. We don’t need this kind of vial and vitriol against the six liter guys. Yeah, those guys, they have a lot of pride and it hurts them, it hurts their hearts breaks.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 43s):

They know they’re sold just a little bit, but they know that’s

Sean P. Holman (45m 46s):

Why I you remind, remind

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 47s):

Them. Yeah, I know, I know. On those five nines and six sevens, are you doing some performance or are you just basically building those because everyone in Utah’s got a trailer and they need to tow

Miles (45m 58s):

Yes to both questions, but mo even our like stock or standard build has something that is better than stock e especially, you know, on, on the five nine, there’s not too much that we do different five nine or six seven I should say. There’s not too much that we do in the stock build. Our most popular platform, especially right now is what we call our tow monster plus. And that has on, on all of the platforms, you know, Powerstroke, Cummins and Durmax. We do cylinder head bolts, we do heavy duty main and rod bearings. We do some sort of upgraded towing cam shaft.

Miles (46m 39s):

But then our, our plus series incorporates the speed of air pistons with the total seal gapless second ring. And we typically o-ring the sonar heads as well. So we’re, we’re doing a lot of things. All of our engines are torque plate honed, a line honed and blueprinted. We’re again, when, when it comes to the, the nerds and that’s that love fixing stuff and especially engines, we, we put a lot of pride and, and attention into each build that we do. So, so our, our lead times are longer and a lot of people say, well why the crap just build me an engine really quick. Our core of us is not about quick and just get it out the door and make sure it works decent enough.

Miles (47m 24s):

No, we, we like to, to really make sure each clearance, everything we do is as good as we can get it.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (47m 32s):

Well, I mean, so two, two thoughts is that one, it’s not just x, y, z auto center. It’s got your family’s name on it, you know your father’s name on it. And it’s literally his reputation. No different than Gail Banks who I work for. If he lets something crappy out the door, people curse his name. They don’t curse x, y, z diesel shop in Salt Lake City, right? They go, Dave screwed me over with this thing. Or conversely they say, this is the best my truck’s ever run thanks to Dave’s or

Sean P. Holman (48m 1s):

I’m never listening to that podcast again because of Lightning.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48m 4s):

Oh, that’s possible. That’s, that probably happens a lot

Miles (48m 9s):

When, when people, when somebody comes in here mad, which is is we, we often say on the front of the building it does say Dave’s auto, it does not say God’s auto repairs. So we, We, we Have we have been known to make mistakes and it’s, it’s good as we are. Sometimes we have a bad day or we have a part that goes bad or whatever, but when they come in, if they’re upset, they’re, they’re, they, Dave may not have been involved at all in, in one tiny ounce of a project, but if they come in and they’re upset, they’re, they, they want Dave. So yes, our, our name is on it, his name is on it. So it’s very important to us that it’s Right.

Miles (48m 49s):

Same thing with banks and,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48m 50s):

And it’s no different than when You go to a, you get a bad burger and you’re like, I wanna see the manager, the cheese was falling off the side of my burger. You know, like it’s the same deal, right? Show me the management. Right.

Sean P. Holman (48m 60s):

Here’s a cockroach in my dura Max

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (49m 2s):

Go going, oh, gross. So what? Go, go going back miles for a second to nine. Oh, what I wanted to say about the machining is that most, not all, but most shops, smaller shops, they send out the machining, the head work and all that stuff to be done out of house. You’re

Sean P. Holman (49m 19s):

At the mercy of your supplier as far as quality control,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (49m 21s):

Eac, you’re doing that in-house, correct.

Miles (49m 23s):

Everything. Correct.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (49m 25s):

I mean that’s amazing. That’s, that’s huge there, there’s so much work in that’s type, the type of machinery that I was referring to. Typically that gets sent out to guys who just do heads. He’s like, well we just do heads in our head department right here, let me show you under that roof. I think that’s super impressive.

Sean P. Holman (49m 41s):

So going back to yeah, the, the platforms real quick, I’m still curious, like what are the failure points? What are the things that you’re, that you’re seeing and why do people get a rebuild? Is it because they put half a million miles on their pickup truck and they love The truck so much? Or is it because there’s some failure at a certain time?

Miles (49m 59s):

A lot of our customers, and we’re getting trucks in from all across the country, but they, you know, they’ve got, whether it’s, you know, in, in early like LB seven Duramax or an early Cummins in a ton of six oh and six four power strokes, those trucks to people are affordable. And if it, if the engine goes bad, then their options are very few. They either go out and buy a 30 to $50,000 gamble on a truck that then they still have to maintain. They still have to pray that nothing’s gonna go wrong with it.

Miles (50m 39s):

And then they have all the issues with, you know, not knowing who, who maintained it prior, but if they just fixed their truck, yeah, there’s still an investment into it, but then they have a warranty on it. The engine is better than what came from the factory. 30 to $50,000 is, is fairly, you know, conservative, especially here in the Utah market. And that gets you a, a decent truck. But if you go out and buy a brand new truck, I mean, some of these trucks are over a hundred thousand dollars. And for somebody to, to either invest that amount and have a huge car payment or just invest into their truck that might be paid off or pretty close to it, and then they get something that’s an engine that’s better than it was from the factory, that a lot of people see value in that.

Miles (51m 26s):

And The truck still, the, the overall condition may be just fine. The engine may have just had, you know, three, 400, 500,000 miles on it and it just gave up

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (51m 35s):

Miles. How many trucks do you see come in that where they, they’ve got engine damage failure because they have been improperly tuned, let’s say, and, and maybe it comes in with a bad tune. The guy tried to add way too much horsepower or it was tuned and then he put back the stock and then the guy claims, oh, it’s never been tuned. And you look at it and go, this had someone’s crappy tune. And I can tell, right? That has to happen.

Miles (52m 2s):

So the two main reasons that we see engines fail is probably number one, lack of maintenance. Sometimes an engine’s just high mileage, but a lot of the engines that we’re seeing are on trucks that have, you know, maybe 200,000 miles on it, sometimes not even a hundred thousand miles on it. And people don’t maintain it. And so my dad has this term, we actually made a T-shirt about it, but it says, do your maintenance thing it, I’m busy because tell me

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 33s):

You sell that.

Miles (52m 34s):

He’s, he’s like, we do, we do. Okay, good. And, and, and, but, but our, our thing about that is as an engine builder and as somebody that their business is, is based off of people breaking down and trying to fix their car. Like we preach maintenance because if, if people just did that, that would eliminate the number one reason that we see of engines failing. If you just did your oil change, I mean, and, and other fluids and things like that, we would see so many less engines fail. And we, we might have to figure out a different business, but Well, don’t, don’t tell

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 14s):

People your secret. No miles. Let, let him, they’ve already got a six month wait. He doesn’t need anymore. He’s like, couldn’t stop it.

Miles (53m 22s):

No, we, we, we do. I mean, we wanna tell people I, it, it’s, we’re here because we like to do it, but if people just did that, we would, we might have to fix more boats. I don don’t know. We might have to do something else to stay busy. But yes, num probably the number two thing, which is a very close second, is improper tuning. And a lot of people think that, you know, just, just throwing on a tuner there and running it at the fifth stage or whatever performance stage. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve ran a truck and hopped it up on a tune before. There’s no doubt about it, but it’s fun. But it, most of those are, and, and a lot of third party tunes that they get from some random person online is not maintainable.

Miles (54m 9s):

And pretty shortly after that tune, who would’ve thought it blows The truck up. Yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 14s):

It’s, I love the, I love the discussion, and we don’t have to go into this here, this is for a whole nother conversation, but I can’t tell you how many times I see this online every single day in all in the GM groups, the Ford groups and the RAM groups, and the guy’s like, I got a custom tune. I got it from diesel bros this dude dot com or you know, the, the diesel dudes or whatever, like all these semi quasi legitimate sites, but they always use the term custom tune. And I’m like, you don’t understand. It’s like a, a Metallica, inner Sandman, right? It’s the same, it’s the same MP three Sean gives homey gives it to me, then I email it to you. Then you, you email it to your buddy and each time we move it, I make a buck.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 56s):

He makes a buck. The the next guy makes a bug. It’s the same tune. There’s nothing custom about it.

Miles (55m 3s):

It, it’s a dangerous thing to play around with that we see a lot of people that don’t have the education or don’t know how to do it properly. You know, part of us is thankful for it because it does keep us busy, but we wish people at the same time, just like maintenance would just do it, right? But there’s so many people that say, Hey, I’m, I know how to do this. And we see that with mechanics people that people that might buy a toolbox and have, have fixed a thing or two think, oh, I, I can, I can do that. Just like the people I see on YouTube, I, you know, I, I can be a mechanic. It’s, it’s a fun thing to do and we want a ton of people to do it and value it, but it’s also a really hard thing to do.

Miles (55m 45s):

Right. And there’s a lot of jokers out there doing tunes like you’re saying, and they’re far from right. And it’s so, I mean, within a few thousand miles even or, or sooner, we’re seeing trucks pull up and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s too costly to the customer.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 5s):

Yeah. Let’s talk about Ford and, and, and like the Derm X product in the diesel world anyway, what are you seeing there? Failure points or are you not?

Miles (56m 17s):

Yeah, so you brought up the six liter power stroke, that’s, that’s the six liter and the 6.4 liter are probably our favorite to build for the sense that, like you mentioned earlier, once you put some money into it, there were so many flaws, unfortunately from the factory that once you fix those, you have a fantastic engine. So the, usually what we do, especially on the six oh and the six four are fairly similar, but you know, they only have four bolts per cylinder and that’s just not enough distributed clamping force on that cylinder head to help prevent from a cylinder head gasket failure.

Miles (56m 60s):

So the most common thing that we do, even on our stock engine, is put in sonar head studs, which provides a better or even clamping force along that cylinder head. Our, our most popular package for the six oh and six four is doing our tow monster. ’cause then we, we o-ring the sonar heads, we put in the sonar head studs and then we do do an upgraded camshaft. We, we do heavy duty bearings, but then the way that we, the way that we hone those, the way that we align, hone ’em because they have a, a girdle, a main girdle that, so basically the engine block and, and a big girdle holding the crank crankshaft, that’s all precision machines and, and a line honed.

Miles (57m 41s):

Then we also can put hardened valve seats. ’cause the, the, the sonar heads are really prone. I don’t think there’s a sonar head that we’ve pulled off. Well, I shouldn’t say that. It’s a very low percentage of sonar heads that we remove on those that aren’t cracked at some area of the cylinder head. Interesting. So they have a lot of issues with dissipating heat properly. So we try and do hardened seats, bronze valve guides and a few different things to just make those cylinder heads breathe and dissipate heat better.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 13s):

Are you seeing much in the way of the new generation of six sevens, four, six sevens coming in? Or are they relatively problem free or are you not seeing because they’re still under warranty?

Miles (58m 25s):

So that’s probably the six seven is probably the most common engine that we’re doing right now because it’s, it’s plagued with a lot of, a lot of failures and it’s still a nice truck and so people are investing in it. But

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 39s):

Are you seeing, are you seeing the miles, are you seeing the earlier ones? Like the, what’s it 11 to 11 to 16 in that range?

Miles (58m 46s):

Yeah, so, so 11 to 16, especially the 2011 to 12, they used really weak still in the valves. So we’re seeing valves break off in the 2011 and 12 models just because it’s, it’s weak still. And sometimes they’ll just get, they’ll either get really thin and cause drivability issues or they’ll just break off and then grenade the engine. So, so those, we see a lot for that issue. But the 11 to 16 they use really, they use smaller connecting rods. The wrist pins on the rods are smaller. So the 11 to 16 on, on, what we’re doing now is we’re putting in the larger, basically like 16 and a half on up, we’re putting in the larger connecting rods in the earlier models for more beefy, strong connecting rod.

Miles (59m 39s):

We’re balancing the engine. But a lot of the failure that we’re seeing on these is the main bearings with all the engines that we’ve worked on. It’s very rare for us to see, we see connecting rod bearings spin all the time, but a main bearing on a six seven is spinning at just a mind ball going rate. It’s, it’s crazy to us. But that’s, that is, I’d have to recall the oiling diagram, but there’s a few flaws with that. Six seven is, and we’ve done a test on it, but the main bearings are not the first thing like most engines to be oiled. So it usually gets the oiling through the camshaft and then it eventually goes to the main bearings so they’re not getting oiled quick enough.

Miles (1h 0m 23s):

But then the, the tolerance or the clearance on ’em is like a half thousand. So it’s really, really tight. And so we try and open that up a little bit so that there’s better oil penetration there. But we’ve actually ran in our simulated run stand, the 6.7 liter and it takes, I’d have to recall the video exactly that we did in the test that we did, but I think it takes about seven to eight seconds for like the turbo pedestal area to get oil in the valve train area to get oil once the engine is cranking so that that area is not getting oil for seven seconds.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 1m 2s):

That’s crazy though. Still time. So, miles, don don’t know if you saw this. This is interesting because I wanna, I wanna pause here because, so should we

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 10s):

Just do a quick experiment? Seven, seven seconds of Lightning saying nothing, just so you can see how long it is. You think that’s what you want,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 1m 19s):

But get, get out your phone and time it, but

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 20s):

It’s it’s longer

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 1m 21s):

Than you think. You tell me when to stay. I’m gonna keep talking until you start, until you tell me to stop. All right. Are you ready? So I wanna tell you, a couple weeks ago we shot a damn Damn. that was long time. Long time, wasn’t it?

Miles (1h 1m 39s):

That’s a long time. That’s a

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 1m 40s):

Long time. So, okay, so Miles I, don Dunno if you saw it, Gale’s gonna be doing, Gale Banks is gonna be doing some stuff with the, with the six seven. I can’t say what yet because we haven’t disclosed it. But he says, Hey, let’s, let’s tear apart one of these engines. ’cause they’re, they’re winning the horsepower war, right? They’ve got the most horsepower of any of the diesels today in 2024. And the most torque, how did they get here? Well, I happen to have a 2011 engine that Ford gave me in 2010. It’s been sitting on the same engine stand untouched with no lubricants in it for other than just like the original assembly lubricants since 2010. So we tore it apart and we did a video about it and it was fascinating how innovative some of that stuff was.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 2m 22s):

And turns out years later, of course a lot of the stuff failed. But at the time it was really unique, like the oiling system Holman that didn’t use external hoses for the oiling system. It’s all in the casting in the, the oil pan casting. It’s really wild. We’ll talk about the turbo in a second, but a lot of guys were saying that when they were timing it on cold starts, oil wasn’t getting up to the turbo, just like miles said for eight seconds. That’s nuts time. That’s a lot of bearing sets that are going un oiled for eight seconds

Miles (1h 2m 53s):

Time now. Now let keep in mind with this testing that we’ve done, this was in our simulated run stand that warms the, the oil up to about I think a hundred degrees. So that’s already warm oil and it’s already, you know, we have the, the pickup tube submerged in oil, but that, that’s an engine that we already ran. It’s already been fully lubricated and then we let it completely drain out. Then we put the, the pickup tube back, we leave it submerged the whole time and then we crank it again after like 30 minutes of sitting crank it again. And that’s where that we got that seven seconds from it.

Miles (1h 3m 35s):

That’s,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 3m 35s):

That’s even worse because

Miles (1h 3m 36s):

It’s even

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 3m 36s):

Worse because yeah, because you imagine a cold start in Alaska that Oh,

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 40s):

Ooh, no. Could you imagine? Oh, that’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 3m 41s):

Bad news. And then yeah, you have the, you have the twin terrible compressor

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 45s):

That’s tur that’s why those guys don’t turn it off in the wintertime.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 3m 46s):

Have you seen that Holman? I didn’t even know that that thing existed until Gail pulled apart the engine. I didn’t know that there was a, a twin compressor turbo. Yeah, I guess it was Garrett made it back in the day. Yeah, well you, you were a journalist back then, but I, I wasn’t following this stuff. I’m

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 59s):

A journalist now, pal.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 3m 60s):

I’m just saying I I wasn’t even this in this world back then. Right. And here they are. And Gail pul it across and I said, wait a minute, it’s got a dual-sided compressor Wheel. Obviously all the Ford guys listening who are they’re Ford fans. They, they’re like Lightning era moron. I, what do you want me to say? I didn’t know that this existed, but it’s fascinating tech. However, it only lasted a couple years, apparently it was so problematic. It didn’t, you know, it, they they ejected ’em all and they people replaced those turbo systems. Were you fighting the failures as well?

Miles (1h 4m 27s):

Yeah, yeah, we were with the turbos. Yeah. The, the six seven, the way that they’ve done that with the exhaust at the center of the engine. Yeah, there’s, there’s some different designs that they did. I, the the engineering behind it is, is a good concept. But yeah, just, just poorly executed.

Sean P. Holman (1h 4m 48s):

Okay. He kinda just gave up on that. The, he lost, he lost, you know why? Because he’s explained it to so many people just decided to halfway through it, coming outta his mouth. That I’m just blanket statement. I’m not going into it. We don’t have enough time left.

Miles (1h 5m 1s):

It was, it was almost good, but not enough.

Sean P. Holman (1h 5m 4s):

Not

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 5m 4s):

Enough. Okay. So then skipping over to Duramax, what are your feelings there from all the way from oh one to current?

Miles (1h 5m 11s):

That’s probably our most controversial platform is the Duramax. Really? Yes. Now we do. I I love, I’m Cummins owner, but I love the durmax. I I think it’s a, I think it’s a great engine. They really have not changed it a whole lot throughout basically 2001 to now. And so it, it’s, it’s a good design. But the, the thing that we’re seeing the most common on those besides just lack of maintenance and the engine failing because somebody who didn’t maintain it well enough on the camshaft and crankshaft, there’s, on the crankshaft particularly, there’s three dow pins for a timing guide pin and on the camshaft as well, so that it can, the timing can all be lined up properly.

Miles (1h 5m 58s):

We’re seeing a lot of those dow pins sheer off and then the engine will get outta time. And then when that happens, we have, you know, piston valve collision and everything goes sideways from there.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 6m 11s):

I’m not saying I know and I I’m not saying that I know about this because I wouldn’t know about this unless I did this to a very expensive supercharge durmax recently. Huh? Hmm. I remember that thing. Yes. Yes. Alright, sorry.

Miles (1h 6m 24s):

So, and the rea the reason it’s so known and the reason it’s so controversial is because on all of our duramax is we don’t rebuild it without machining out that da pin and putting in a keyway. And, and we a a lot of people on the internet who will remain nameless, but they say, and and we tell people, you know, it, it’s a big issue on a lot of the engines that we’re tearing down. We see that as part of the cause of failure. And a lot of people are saying that’s because, you know, if a mechanic shop took off the water pump at one point, and then when You remove the haunted harmonic balancer, if they didn’t put it on properly and torque it up properly, that looseness there is what holds in the harmonic balancer and the other timing gears.

Miles (1h 7m 14s):

And that’s what causes the failure, is just somebody that’s messed with it essentially and torqued it improperly. And that probably is a reason for the failure, but that can’t be the reason for all of the failures that we see. And and that’s something that we wanted to make clear is that a lot of people are, are, are scared because they’re like, oh my gosh, my truck’s gonna blow up now and I’ve, I’ve put 300,000 miles on it and I’m never worried about this and now I’m worried about it Again, our, our platform is not to scare people, just to educate people that it can happen to be careful, but there are trucks that we see that have, have blown up or because of a Dow pin failure that have never had a water pump removed or never had had the harmonic balancer removed.

Miles (1h 8m 0s):

So the explanation there as to why that, you know, the timing gear slipped and shared the da pin, you know, there’s, I think there’s a number of different reasons for speculation. We don’t have a firm answer. Could it be, because, you know, some people say it’s because of the firing order of the durmax and it causes a lot of load on the front of that crankshaft, which can cause them to break, which is another issue with the Derm maxes. Is it because of that? You know, is it because somebody tuned it and that that put it out of the, the stock design? There’s, there’s a number of different things, but that is, we get a lot of

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 8m 42s):

Speculation talk, a lot of theories talk. Sure, sure.

Miles (1h 8m 44s):

The durmax, there’s really, there’s a few things that we do, but it’s a pretty well-built platform in our opinion, besides the Dow pin thing, which we, so we key way the, the camshaft and crankshaft, there are some upgrades that we do. I mean there’s, there’s plenty of stuff to do those and tons of money to invest in them, but I think overall pretty solid build.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 9m 6s):

Let’s flip the script a minute. Nope.

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 8s):

Nope. Why I wanna know about the Sprinter and the reason I’m asking about the sprinter is he has it listed with his diesel stuff. I saw that is my aunt and uncle had a sprinter five cylinder go, go buy buy in their motor home. Okay. And the cost

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 9m 20s):

To fix with those now this is the diesel five cylinder. Yeah. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 23s):

The, the cost to replace those things and the parts are like unobtainium and there’s barely any support in the US for those things. So all these people have that generation of sprinter van as like a motor home chassis and they’re stuck because I think a new motor is like, or a new engine is something like $25,000 new or something and you can’t really rebuild ’em. ’cause so I saw it was listed on there. I’m like, oh, that’s one of the first times I’ve heard of somebody actually going through those engines. So what say you Miles,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 9m 52s):

What say you

Miles (1h 9m 55s):

Y you know, that that’s something that we got involved in right about the time that we started doing a lot of diesels. So, you know, seven give or take years ago, that I would say is probably one of the favorite things that we do here at our shop is because we, we found at the time we really, I, I took in a job or two of these sprinter vans that we’ve never really seen before. We started to market online a little bit different and we, we did one or two and man, they kicked our butt. They were the, the wiring diagrams, you know, Whether, it was translated from, from German to English the way that it, like the wiring diagrams we found really quickly and the repair information online was trash.

Miles (1h 10m 41s):

It was incorrect. Inaccurate. It was just plagued with issues. And so usually when we go to something that’s fairly new or that we’re unfamiliar with, we can at least refer to repair manuals or, you know, online information through different sources. And, and

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 10m 60s):

You guys use, probably use like all data or something like that, right? And you’re saying that was wacky? Yeah,

Miles (1h 11m 4s):

We, yeah, so, so we actually have all data. We have Phi Mitchell, we’ve got, we, we subscribe to a bunch of different things because some of our mechanics are very particular about their information. And so we subscribed to all of that and all of that information we were finding, some of it was fine, but a lot of it wasn’t. And so it made it really difficult for us to diagnose it. And we were having a lot of dealerships, whether they were, you know, it was a Dodge dealership when they were badged a dodge in like the early, yeah, two thousands for the sprinters or even, you know, the Mercedes or Freightliner badge as newer stuff. We have local dealerships turning people away because they’re like, we’ll work on a Mercedes or we’ll work on a Dodge as long as it’s not a van.

Miles (1h 11m 49s):

So we, we were like, what the heck? Let’s get our butt kicks for a little bit and figure these out. And now as far as our repair business goes, that’s probably 40% of our repair business.

Sean P. Holman (1h 12m 1s):

What? Yeah. See when I saw that on your website, I was thinking to myself, man, that makes sense because I haven’t seen anybody willing to tackle those things and tackle all these people. They’ve got motor homes and chassis cabs or, or fleet trucks and they’re just kinda left out in the cold. ’cause the dealer just shrugs their, it goes. So then,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 12m 17s):

Sorry, what I’m hearing is people are flat bidding these to you from all around the country.

Miles (1h 12m 22s):

We, we have And, and, and ask my wife. I’m pretty dramatic, but I won’t BS you. But we, it’s all flex here for a little bit. We Have we have consistent customers that we’ve had people, we have a handful of customers that actually come from Alaska, from Canada and they’ll bring us their van once a year for service. I love Sprinter vans because it’s one of those things where the, the mechanic pride in me likes to to talk. Not a lot of places will do those because they are such a unique animal. If like the Mercedes dealerships, they only have select people that only work on Sprinter vans.

Miles (1h 13m 7s):

And that’s a very few, like sometimes it’s only one mechanic, maybe two mechanics. And not every Mercedes dealership has

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 15s):

’em. Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. They aren’t at every location because I think you have to be a Sprinter certified.

Miles (1h 13m 21s):

Yep. Yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 13m 22s):

It was a really big deal, the one by me in Long Beach when they brought in the sprinter vans, they advertised very heavily that they had a couple dedicated mechanics and I that is rare.

Miles (1h 13m 32s):

I’ll, I’ll, I’ll boast about our, our team here. Everybody’s got their butt kicks by ’em because there’s just, that’s how you learn unfortunately with Sprinter vans is just the school hard knocks. But we have at least six mechanics in our shop that can do ’em in their sleep. They are so good at ’em and we repair so many of ’em. We just, we, we do, we love ’em because we figured ’em out. We figured out the secret love language for a sprinter van and, and we like ’em.

Sean P. Holman (1h 14m 4s):

And it’s one of those things where the van itself is really well built. I mean, you know, German engineering and if you can get past the issues that those engines have, the the van, the chassis itself will go for a long time. Well,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 14m 16s):

What is the main thing that is going wrong with these miles? Is it an engine or is it a wiring issue?

Miles (1h 14m 22s):

Like So the 2.7 liter five cylinder ones, so basically from like 2002 to 2006, seven a little bit. It, it’s mostly a lot of people are doing the Van Life thing now. And so Covid really took off for us because a lot of people were living in vans and that was a lifestyle. So we, we picked up a lot of that community. They, they do have some electrical issues, but a lot of times it’s because these vans are 500 plus thousand miles and things just start wearing out. I I think they’re really solid vans if maintained properly. I I think Mercedes did a great job on those.

Miles (1h 15m 4s):

I think the biggest obstacle with those vans really is not the, the design side of it, but the lack of valuable information that’s out there and people that know how to work on ’em.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 15m 15s):

Okay, so I’m dying to flip it and talk about gas for a minute. We’ve been talking a lot about diesel, widge is You know what you guys know I love, but let’s talk gas. Tell me Miles what your favorite gas truck is right now. Gasser gm. Is it the Ford seven three gas? Is it like, what is it that you think is you ha you see so few of ’em, you’re like, this is the one that I would buy if I were gonna buy a gas pickup.

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 41s):

Definitely a hundred percent Ford. 2.3 liter eco boosts.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 15m 45s):

Do you think so? don? Don’t think so.

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 48s):

No, I don’t,

Miles (1h 15m 51s):

I was gonna say wow there for a second, the, the 7.3 liter.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 15m 59s):

I like it. He’s got a lot of thoughts on this, right? He’s just taking a big old

Miles (1h 16m 2s):

Breath. We, I I I, I would love to say that we don’t really have that much experience with it in all honesty because it’s just, it’s so new and we’re at least our particular world that we’re in and, and what we’re doing, we do get some people that ask us to do it. We’re, we’re still so busy repairing, you know, things that are five plus years old that we don’t really get into those too much to be honest.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 16m 32s):

Okay, so then let’s just, then Miles, let’s, let’s scrap that and just, I

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 35s):

Was gonna say, how about a, a specific question because my, my buddy Josh was recently looking for a diesel, right? And so he said, since you’re testing all this stuff, what’s the better truck and a one ton four by four diesel, the Ram or the Silverado and I said, do You know what my answer was? Yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 16m 54s):

The Ford seven three.

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 55s):

No, my, well my answer was do you need a diesel? Ah, so he asked, well I like diesel, they’re nicer towing. and I said, unless you’re towing regularly, the new diesels have a lot of problems in daily driving, especially with the short trips. That being said, the Chevy has the nicer drive, train the ram a little nicer interior, but if unless you’re totally monthly, I would stay away from a new diesel, sadly. And he said thank you. So then he asked me this and I haven’t answered him yet. Oh, wait a minute though. But you, you, you didn’t talk about the three liters, you know? Well he’s talking about a, a bigger truck. Okay. Alright. So he then said, if I were to get something used, and so this is perfect for miles, if I were to get something used, how far would I need to go back to get what you would consider a good diesel? Mm wait. A good diesel or good gas?

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 36s):

Well, like from a reliable No, no, no. He, I told him, don’t buy a new diesel ’cause you’re not working The truck enough to clear out your DPF. Okay, consider gas. So he’s like, but I really want diesel. How far back would I have to go? Well then are you talking pre DPF scr, all that stuff? Well, that’s the conversation. No, no, no, not necessarily. Just how far back it could have SER it could have a dp, A DPF. I’m just saying the, the, the ones from the last few years, like maybe the last four or five or they, they’re not good with short trips. The older diesels that have the early DPFs Yes. and I seem like they’re better at that. The ram that I have, we’re acting as if miles isn’t on the phone. I know like the ram that I have that I drove to your house today, that’s the, the 6.7 liter oh seven, right.

Sean P. Holman (1h 18m 19s):

Never any DP F issues. Never. It’s amazing. You don’t even know the damn thing’s on there. So, so the question miles is, if there was somebody looking for a diesel heavy duty truck, where would you point them new or used and what year range for something that’s gonna be reliable. They’re not doing a bunch of tuning and stuff to it. They want a reliable truck that, that will do their daily driver thing, it’ll tow a trailer to the river or whatever, or or, or camping or whatever. What is that truck that, that you would recommend?

Miles (1h 18m 51s):

Here’s, here’s maybe a, a politician type answer. That’s fine, that’s fine. You know, pre, pre DPF would be my advice, but I, I think, you know, 2007 and a half to like 2010 before they started introducing death and into a lot of these diesels, not the Ford 6.4 liter, unless you’re gonna buy it to build it. Because that seems that’s, that’s a great engine to build. Not if you plan on just having a great truck without putting money into, but, you know, Dodge is good.

Miles (1h 19m 32s):

GM or Chevy is good in that, that range from like seven and a half to 10. But I, I think it, i, I really think it comes down to an education thing. If, if somebody, if they’re gonna be using it consistently for highway driving, long trips, stuff like that, and they’re gonna get that exhaust hot enough to totally agree to burn out, then, then yeah, 2011 to to newer can be a great option. But if you’re just using it as a grocery getter and you want to show people off in your neighborhood how cool your truck is, but you’re never getting it really hot, you’re gonna hate The truck

Sean P. Holman (1h 20m 10s):

That we call that diesel inappropriateness here on The, Truck, Show Podcast.

Miles (1h 20m 15s):

What we tell all of our customers is if you’re gonna buy something that’s any older than really two or three years old, get it inspected before you buy it. Because there’s so many pros and cons. I mean, you know, Dodge is notorious for a great engine, but the suspension and then everything else seems to suck on it. And, and GM seems to be great all around, but they, you know, that has their flaws. Same with Ford. But we, we tell our customers, bring it into our shop or take it to whoever you want. Get a throw inspection from a shop. Because even though there, there’s pros and cons and this and that, you know, generally with The truck, if you’re buying something that somebody else has beat the crap out of and not maintained, even if it’s shiny on the outside, you could be walking in to somebody else’s nightmare.

Miles (1h 21m 3s):

Not knowing it. If you don’t get a used car or pre-purchase inspection and, and

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 21m 9s):

Man, you’re describing Miles, that’s a guy that I talked to in outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, one of our customers at work, he bought this bone stock truck and he thought it was a 17 or 18 duramax and it was gorgeous on the outside, really well maintained. And he bought it and he started having these weird issues, intermittent problems. And he started our, he became our customer because he was trying to solve the issues with aftermarket parts, which of course you don’t ever want to do. But he didn’t know that he was new to Diesel. And this guy about six, four to six months in owning it, someone hit him on Facebook and says, oh, you have my old truck, you’re screwed buddy.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 21m 52s):

It is haunted. He’s like, it’s haunted. And then he’s, and then the guy started harassing me. He’s like, it’s a piece of crap. You need to get rid of it. He’s like, You know what? I’m kind of enjoying watching you having problems with my old truck. The guy became like, cra it was so weird. He was sharing, our customer was sharing screenshots with me. The former owner when

Sean P. Holman (1h 22m 10s):

You went, a single white female on him.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 22m 11s):

Yeah, the former owner hated The truck so much. Somehow he unloaded it to the dealership. This guy bought it, it had a warranty, but he was constantly having problems with it. It’s always in regen. It’s all like the pig pigtail number four is going out on this thing. Like everybody complains about like everything that could go wrong in The truck going wrong. Holy moly. Like he should have had an inspection. Although I don’t know if an inspection would’ve turned stuff up hard to say, miles, if I go to you with my truck and you’re doing an inspection, what should I expect to pay? And what are you looking at

Miles (1h 22m 46s):

The best 250 bucks that you’ve ever spent before buying a truck? And, and sometimes we have. So, so typically it’s around, depending on the condition of The truck, if, you know, if it’s, they got a bunch of crap and accessories and stuff on it, then we might charge a little bit more. But typically around 250 bucks is what we charge. And what we tell our customers is what they get is a full digital inspection. That’s bumper to bumper, top to bottom. You get, you have pictures of your brakes, fluids, steering on a diesel. We check for blow by, we check for any fault codes or errors in any of the computers on the vehicle.

Miles (1h 23m 26s):

It, it’s a really thorough inspection. We check lights, door handles, interior trim function, blah blah. Like the list goes on and on. We try and be really thorough because we, we see it don don’t have a how often we do, but way too often, at least once a week might be pushing it. But we see it pretty often where somebody buys a truck, it’s beautiful and then they’ve owned it for a week or two and they are now sinking tons of money into it. And a lot of the things, not everything, ’cause we tell people we, you know, if we had a crystal ball, we would, we would be in a different industry and you know, just making millions upon millions of dollars.

Miles (1h 24m 12s):

But we don’t have a crystal ball, but we can be thorough. And most of the time that tells people one of three things typically. One of those being buy The truck cash, it’s a great deal. There you go. Two, it’s stop, drop and roll. The things a flaming pile of crap.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 24m 29s):

Stop,

Miles (1h 24m 30s):

Drop and roll. Just run away from it. Yeah. And, and sometimes that happens, but a lot of times it gives people a third option and that option is instead of them just kicking the tires and having their dad look under it and it looks okay and it’s been freshly under coated and hiding all the stuff, if that, the third thing that it gives people is a legitimate independent party report saying here’s what’s good, here’s what’s bad, here’s what’s borderline and may need some future service so that they can go back to the dealership or independent seller or whoever it may be and say, Hey, here’s the legitimate list. It was this much. And, and they can negotiate instead of just kicking tires and say, Hey, what will you do on the price?

Miles (1h 25m 11s):

They can say, Hey, I’ve got this amount that I’ll need to invest into it right away. Are you willing to negotiate? And it’s either a yes or no from there. That’s the biggest thing. All the trucks, there’s pros and cons to ’em is really my my politician answer. I wish I had something better. But we see so many that there’s so many pros and cons to ’em all. I, we just tell people, get it inspected, know and educate yourself on what you’re getting, what it should be used for. And if you buy something that you haven’t properly educated yourself, like if it has a, a, a diesel exhaust fluid system and all that emission stuff, you, you need to know what you’re getting into and the potential cost for that if you don’t drive The truck properly.

Miles (1h 25m 55s):

So,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 25m 57s):

Good answers. Double bell. that was a weird one. Do it, do that again. You had a kind of a strange, I don’t like the blue belt. It’s two bell. No, you brought the blue, the blue bells. I know, but I don’t like it. I think we’re gonna have to reject that one. Do ’em independently. Oh. yeah, the blue one’s weird. Yeah, your original bell’s much better. Yeah, it’s

Sean P. Holman (1h 26m 10s):

Like

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 26m 10s):

Very strange. There you go. There you go. These are actual bells. They’re not sound effects. No, these are the bells that you find like the of a cheesy motel. Yeah. Or

Sean P. Holman (1h 26m 17s):

No, not a desk cheesy motel. Yes. How do I come up with teacher’s desk and you come up with cheesy motel. I spent

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 26m 23s):

A lot of time in cheesy motels. I guess so You know what kind of guy I am, unfortunately. Miles, Miles Bell of Dave’s Auto Center in Centerville, Utah, just north of Salt Lake City. If you’re not in the area or you don’t have a five cylinder sprinter worth driving down from Alaska to go visit him for, I highly recommend you go to the YouTube channel. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. They’re everywhere. And the content is, it’s funny, you will laugh out loud and you will learn something. So,

Sean P. Holman (1h 26m 53s):

And you’ll wish his dad was your dad.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 26m 54s):

Maybe so. Maybe so. Maybe. So he’s got five, he’s got five kids. He, he’s got million, millions of

Sean P. Holman (1h 27m 0s):

Another. He’s got millions of kids. Right? They, they all love watching him.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 4s):

Miles, thank you so much for spending time with us. This has seriously been awesome.

Miles (1h 27m 8s):

Well, you guys are awesome. I I love what you do. Respect you both. So this has been an honor to chat with you. Oh,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 14s):

That’s, that’s cool. That’s nice. I don know what say

Sean P. Holman (1h 27m 16s):

Is literally nice thing I’ve heard all day. Maybe, maybe all month.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 18s):

We should sign off now. Not to get any better than

Sean P. Holman (1h 27m 20s):

This. Alright, well we, we gotta have you back on. We’d love to have your dad on and let’s keep the conversation going because I feel like we only scratched the surface of all the things we could talk about.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 29s):

Well, I happen to know Holman. You don’t know this later this year. Yeah. Miles and his dad are gonna be out in the LA area. Well,

Sean P. Holman (1h 27m 35s):

They should come in studio with us and hang out. The

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 37s):

Podcast might be able to arrange that. All right. Yes. So,

Sean P. Holman (1h 27m 39s):

All right, well hopefully we’ll see you guys later this year.

Miles (1h 27m 41s):

My, my dad, he, he would love to be on the podcast. He’s got a, he’s pretty hardcore about his bedtime, so, oh,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 49s):

Well if you’re here, if you’re

Miles (1h 27m 51s):

Here this past eight o’clock

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 52s):

No, no, no. If you’re here, we’ll do it at the, we’ll do it whenever. We’ll,

Sean P. Holman (1h 27m 55s):

We’ll, yeah. We’ll, we’ll make, we’ll make a special session for you.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 27m 57s):

That’s easy.

Miles (1h 27m 58s):

He, he, he would love to be a part of this. That I,

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 1s):

That’d be great.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 1s):

All right, well, and Miles, thank your family for letting you off the hook and talking to us tonight. So I thought you

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 6s):

Were gonna say thank your family for having you. No,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 9s):

That

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 9s):

Would’ve been weird. That’s why I thought you were going

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 11s):

For allowing him to spend like, dude, it’s nighttime where Oh,

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 13s):

That’s really weird that you would reach back that far. Yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 16s):

I, okay.

Miles (1h 28m 17s):

Whatever.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 17s):

Alright, you’re the best Miles. Thank you.

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 19s):

Have a good one, man. Thank you.

Miles (1h 28m 20s):

Likewise. All right, talk to you. Take care. Bye.

10 (1h 28m 25s):

Holman. There’s so much email that I buried in it. I can’t breathe. Just it’s piling up. Oh man.

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 34s):

Wow. It’s weird. I can’t even hear Lightning anymore. Oh, there he is. There he is. He took, took the pile of papers from his mouth. that was

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 28m 41s):

Ridiculous. Sorry about that. And here we go.

3 (1h 28m 44s):

You email? Yeah, I email. Do it. We email. That’s right. Everybody email type it up. You email proofread. I email send it. We email. Click it. Everybody email.

11 (1h 29m 1s):

Alright.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 29m 2s):

Who’s gonna go first? You want me to go

Sean P. Holman (1h 29m 3s):

Or you? Yes, go.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 29m 4s):

Alright, let’s see here. This one from Peter Conte, new gas, gm, new gas job, GM trucks. Wow, that’s a weird subject line. Hey, Lightning at Holman. My name is, Pete’s been listening for a few years now. I don’t remember when I started listening, but anyway, I wanted to let you guys know, by

Sean P. Holman (1h 29m 23s):

The way. I love that it’s a, a prerequisite of any new emailer to say how long they’ve been listening. I love it. It’s kind of cool. It is cool.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 29m 30s):

It’s like Tom, Mike. It’s

Sean P. Holman (1h 29m 32s):

First list ever. Everybody call stop. Everybody’s like, I gotta be legit with these guys. I gotta let ’em know I’m a long time, but I don’t remember when. So I find that story suspect, but I’m so glad you

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 29m 43s):

Included it. Long time listener. Two

Sean P. Holman (1h 29m 44s):

Weeks. Yeah, exactly right.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 29m 46s):

I don’t know where I left on. I wanna let you guys know that you haven’t talked much about the newer six six gas job motors. Yes, I have In GM trucks. My brother and I ran a run a landscape company and we now have three of the 20, 21 ton dump. Let’s see, a 20, 21, 2500, a 20 24, 2500 with the 10 speed they tow. Great. And take a beating. We do. There’s no punctuation in this email by the way, Peter. You gotta, I need a period or a comma somewhere. He says they take a beating. We do a lot of snowplowing and towing everything for equipment to materials for our jobs. and I also have a 6.2 liter F two 50. Dude guys got a lot of trucks.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 30m 26s):

Yeah. I hate to admit it, but the GM trucks have a ton of power. Just wanted to see if you guys could do an episode on the 6.6 liter GM gas motors to get some more info on it. I’ve also been looking at getting a paddle monster for my six two. I would recommend that that’s one of our, our most popular applications, which I never would’ve guessed, but I guess for reasons that Holman’s talked about, The truck does feel a little mushy because it’s now getting up there in miles and towing my 24 enclosed race trailer around the mountain in New Hampshire. It gets a little bit lazy. Looking forward to seeing you guys read this and get more info on it. Five stars and Finnegan. Yeah buddy. Five

12 (1h 31m 3s):

Star review. Five star.

Sean P. Holman (1h 31m 6s):

Yeah buddy. Well, we’ve talked about it. It’s not my favorite of the Gassers.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 31m 12s):

It’s not crap. Just not,

Sean P. Holman (1h 31m 15s):

Not great. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Seven three all the way. I actually like the old GM eight one big block. I wish they would’ve bring that back. that was such a fricking awesome gas guzzler. Who cares? Yeah, I guess sir. A big block gas engine, whatever

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 31m 28s):

The, the eight one with a, like a vortex supercharger Woo dude.

Sean P. Holman (1h 31m 32s):

Or a Whipple. Those things were cool. I I I think they killed that platform too fast. I mean it’s basically a, you know, a bigger 4 54 with fuel injection, more modern, all that good stuff. It was great in, doesn’t Gail have a suburban with one of those things in it? Yeah. Green one. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Yep. Dude,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 31m 45s):

That’s the one. Do you recall where we did a video where we drove up, where we drove up to Mount Wilson and in order to get the shot of him, it was about the ash and altitude density. Anyway, long story short, it’s a windy road up into the mountains right above Los Angeles, if you’ve ever been there, guys on the way to Mount Wilson, which is all where all the transmitters are above la. And so to get the shot of Gail, I’m holding this big camera. I have to sit with my right hip against the dashboard in the passenger seat. So the buckle is like, I’ve buckled it so it doesn’t ding. I’m not in the buckle at all. And Gail, for those of you that don’t know, drives like a bat outta hell. Here we are in an 8.1 liter suburban. And the goal for this is that Gail has to floor it as part of the video.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 32m 25s):

So he’s hammering these hairpin turns in a freaking suburban and, and I am just like swinging all around. And if you see that video, you can see the camera’s like in his face and not in his face. That’s me like trying to hold on for dear life. Alright,

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 39s):

I got this one from Eric Davis. Says, what a donut hole in light beer.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 32m 46s):

Not the first person to call us that.

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 49s):

Not my favorite. He says, I want to thank you guys, your great discussion on diesel inappropriateness. In February, I purchased a new to me travel trailer and while I was within the towing specs of my 2023 Ram 1500 Eco Diesel, I was on the cusp of being over my payload rating. So I decided it would be smart for me to shop for a new truck. That is one of the hardest decisions for somebody to make to understand they love their truck and they bought too much trailer and now they have to decide what do I do? Ouch. So that was the right decision, Eric. He says, being that my truck spends probably 85% of its life unloaded, I decided Cummins was not the best option for me and ended up with a 2021 Ram 2,500 mega cab with a six forward liter gas engine. It tows my 9,000 pound trailer with ease and makes the trips comfortable.

Sean P. Holman (1h 33m 31s):

While I do miss the 27, 28 miles per gallon I got with my eco diesel and that plush car-like ride. I’ve been happy with the 2,500, even though it only gets about 14 miles per gallon. That’s actually pretty good. It says, thanks for steering me in the right direction and keeping the great episodes and keeping the suckage low. Don’t forget everything matters. You can

13 (1h 33m 49s):

Hear it sucking.

14 (1h 33m 51s):

Thanks for watching and remember everything matters.

Sean P. Holman (1h 33m 54s):

That’s okay. I love, I love when we get that feedback from our listeners where they’re like, Hey, I took a flyer on something you two idiot said and it worked out for me. That’s how I interpret those.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 34m 5s):

Oh no, I love me some, some rbs, some Ray, but I feel like this one may not be good for me. Lightning and Holman, I mean, no offense, but if you’re looking for

Sean P. Holman (1h 34m 16s):

Listener feedback, oh, he started out with, I mean, no offense.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 34m 18s):

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you’re looking for listener feedback on lightning’s new AI powered jingles, I’ll be brief, please. No, the original jingles are pure gold. Part of what makes TSP so unique, putting truck related words into a cookie cutter sounding genre does nothing for TSP. In fact, in my opinion, it cheapens your TSP brand. Can we

Sean P. Holman (1h 34m 41s):

Have you, has he met us,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 34m 43s):

Met us ai Now hold on a second, Ray. If Holman hadn’t said it was AI and I told you

Sean P. Holman (1h 34m 50s):

No,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 34m 50s):

You can tell that a friend of mine, no, you can tell, is in a pop punk band and wrote a song. Song’s

Sean P. Holman (1h 34m 54s):

Not dumb. Okay. Oh, speaking of pop punk band. Yeah. Let me, lemme play this little

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 34m 59s):

For, should I finish this? Well, lemme just finish this then you’ll get to your song here. All right. You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do says Ray, but my feedback is to ditch the AI generated country crap and go back to the spirit and uniqueness of the original jingles. So Ray, we never went away from those jingles

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 12s):

And I Don’t disagree with that. Yeah, but I had to have a little bit of fun. Yeah. And

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 35m 16s):

Well, I’m not done. He says PS the country music themed outro. Season two episode 96. Ken Bruner episode was way, way, way, way, way, way too long. I listened to the end out of respect for your work, but it was not fun. Listen,

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 31s):

Skip ahead.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 35m 32s):

He said it was not fun and I won’t do that again.

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 34s):

Alright, so I, I’m gonna throw something. I tried to do a bunch of songs and I was playing with the same thing Lighting did and it’s a pain in the butt. ’cause you gotta pay a bunch of money or you get these credits and stuff and you can alter the it’s lyrics, but then free, free. We about know only a certain amount of time during the day. It’s free. Like once you use your credits, you gotta, it’s 50 credits

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 35m 53s):

Day 24 hours.

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 53s):

Sure. Which is 10, which is five songs. Sure. Or five tag is 10 songs. Anyway. But then you gotta adjust the lyrics and it, it says what? But I think I found gold because I kept getting sucked into this country genre. I found ska

3 (1h 36m 12s):

To keep it clean. Lightness tails get So T RXs always s always good likeness. Absurd. Like a sea Truckin and talking. Oh likeness,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 36m 43s):

Chili stain

3 (1h 36m 45s):

Waves and weekly madness on the mic. Black news, talking strike every tail, all overflow ceiling Dodge fuel, short zone TX is body joy. Holman Thursday do one.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 2s):

Holman Truckin

3 (1h 37m 4s):

All line of shock. Holman.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 12s):

Rby is plugging his

Sean P. Holman (1h 37m 13s):

Ears right now. That’s right. He’s gonna skip

3 (1h 37m 15s):

Ahead

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 20s):

My hot blows and blows

3 (1h 37m 25s):

The score. Only way beast. One more away their night earth. This is the way The truck show turns Truckin and talking all night in some home. Keeps, keeps. Oh, look at that. Come on. That’s solid.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 48s):

You’re a musician now. Come

3 (1h 37m 50s):

On. That’s solid Little horn in the little fun, Scott. Yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 57s):

All right, well there you go. Truckin and talking in there from, that

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 0s):

Was a world, that was a world debut right there. Yeah. Lightning’s hot air. It blows and blows. T Rx talk B no more stolen by ho Holman. Even the score. I mean, that’s great stuff.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 9s):

Well done. You’re a songwriter. Great

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 11s):

Stuff.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 11s):

All right, next one. If you’re still listening at this point, we

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 14s):

Get some more. Come on. that was awesome.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 17s):

I mean sure,

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 18s):

Sure. It was that every bit as good as some of your other one

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 21s):

I don. I don’t think it was as good as mine.

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 22s):

I think It was great. All

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 23s):

Right. Hey Lightning have You Heard about no tundra trade-ins. Oh.

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 28s):

Yeah. Did you see that deal?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 30s):

Well he says, Hey Lightning have You Heard, no man Toyota needs to devote a full measure to kill this problem. And each week it seems to take on new life. So what he’s talking about, to be fair, he says this is the dealer issue and not Toyota, but the, but to the consumer, it’s all wrapped up in the same stinky package.

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 47s):

So what he’s talking about is people at dealers are not accepting trade-ins on those trucks right now across the country because they’re worried about the engines blowing up from that recall. So all these people are like, I want outta my truck. It’s like, no, we’re not taking those. That sucks. That’s crazy.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 39m 0s):

Yeah. What can’t Toyota Corp force them to take trade-ins?

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 5s):

Not if you’re a Ford dealer. Not if you’re a Ram dealer. Oh, duh.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 39m 8s):

I’m thinking Toyota dealers. Holy mackerel. So you want to trade out into an F-150 in no dice. So this is the, the engine shavings that you talked

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 15s):

About. I, I guess, I mean that’s, that’s, that’s what’s going on right now is the Toyota said, Hey, we found an issue with some, some engine shavings and we got problems. So don don’t know where they’re at with that. I’m sure moral will come out, but that’s crazy if you wanna divest yourself with that truck. Woo buddy. Ouch cha. Alright, I got one here from Eric Zimmer says, Lightning.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 39m 34s):

What

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 34s):

Up? He says, good afternoon gents. Several episodes ago, Lightning mentioned he was going to a truck and tractor pull. I’d love to hear what his thoughts were about it as truck and tractor pulling is a big thing in Ohio. I knew they had pulls in California, but honestly didn’t ever think I’d hear about Lightning attending one side note, the drop this place blows. Makes me laugh every time. Thanks Eric. This place blows. Thanks

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 39m 55s):

Eric. Yeah, you’re gonna laugh, but I’ve been to like three or four Ooh truck and tractor poles now. The one that I was speaking to last time was gonna be up in Cal Poly San Luis Bibo. and I did not make it to that. Well that’s not true. It was sold out. I couldn’t get in. I will be going up into Sacramento for an event in later this year. It’s like August or September, something like that. So I, I enjoy ’em. It’s, it’s not normally my cup of tea, but just like I would go to a, I’m not a country music fan, but I’d go to a country show ’cause it’s fun. Same deal. This is Trevor sliding in your dm. He says again. Yep. Hey Lightning, I’ve had this gift card for banks since my birthday back in April.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 40m 35s):

I’d like to get a pedal monster for my 21 F 2 56 0.7 liter. So please send nudes. I mean please hook a brother up. Thanks Trevor. And so I’ve actually, this is an old email ’cause I’ve already hooked Trevor up.

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 48s):

Oh good. So he can stop emailing us time and time again.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 40m 51s):

I’m gonna go into the future or the past and hook him up. I don’t know when that is.

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 54s):

Whenever it is. Trevor, find new topics. He’s hooked

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 40m 57s):

Up.

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 57s):

Alright. Got this one here from Michael Hall. Says Pepsi all day. Lighting, Holman Pepsi all day every day. No, that’s wrong.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 5s):

You’re wrong. No, no, no it’s

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 6s):

Not. He says you’re not

15 (1h 41m 7s):

Wrong. You just maybe less than right.

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 13s):

He continues by saying my father was also a Pepsi drinker and I. Guess that’s why I am. I cannot stand the taste of Coke, although I do not drink carbonated drinks anymore due to weight surgery. And also I’m an outlier because I’m a three liter durmax owner. Actually we have three of them in the family. Mine, my wife and my 22-year-old son just bought one and love them. Wish they had more aftermarket support. Cough. Cough, banks, power. And so anyway,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 34s):

Yeah, not gonna happen on the darry for that. I think it’s pretty much shelved as is the intake and all the other stuff. Now why is that? You can get a pedal

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 42s):

That ’cause of the engineering that wouldn’t do it. No,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 44s):

No,

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 44s):

No. Not enough demand. Not enough?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 45s):

No. Oh no. There’s demand. Okay, so we don’t have enough engineers. No, the reality is we just,

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 51s):

It’s on pause then

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 52s):

It’s Nope, I have, I’ve, because

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 54s):

Never happened.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 55s):

So what happened is when the fir, when the LM two was first released, which is the original three liter ax, we thought we were gonna release the tuner. We got, we, we started working on it. So here’s me on the LM two groups, guys. It’s coming a year, two years go by. I think it’s coming. Guys pretty sure we’re still working on it. Then like year three, I don’t feel like it’s happening. and I finally pushed the engineers to admit that they just haven’t made enough progress on it, or now we’re in the LZ zero. So the thing is, is that in order to make, this is kind of behind the scenes a little bit with like the big 6.6 liter durmax, we can modify fuel and boost and make pretty sizable power up to like 81 horsepower.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 39s):

The problem is with a little three liter, you can’t just intercept fuel and boost, you have to intercept, crank position, sensor, pulse width and all these other things and home. And to intercept some of the sensors, you gotta remove wheels and panels and like in, in a, in an exhaust manifold. And it’s totally unwieldy and not doable. So at this point, I don’t think that it’s coming out. That’s the reality. It’s just we can’t ask our customers to jump through hoops to install this thing. So that’s the jam. Sorry. No dice.

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 15s):

Alright, well that’s depressing.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 43m 17s):

And pick up the mood a little bit. RB sends us another one and it’s called soda rating, where apparently he’s ranked sodas for us.

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 24s):

Okay. Alright.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 43m 25s):

What do you think? It’s, it’s four. I’m gonna start it with four and then work to number one. So number four is what do you guess? That’s right. Mountain Dew. Alright, perfect. Number three. Coke. Number two. Cherry Coke number one.

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 40s):

Dr. Pepper. That’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 43m 41s):

Correct. Dr.

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 41s):

Pepper. Oh, he’s, he’s allowed to still be a fan of The truck podcast. He’s one of us. Alright. So I would tell you that my number one clearly Dr. Pepper. Yeah. My number two might surprise you unless you live in Southern California. don

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 43m 52s):

Don’t know. What is it?

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 53s):

Mexican coke in a glass bottle. Oh,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 43m 56s):

Interesting.

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 56s):

The

3 (1h 43m 56s):

Truck show. The truck show. The truck show.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 44m 1s):

That’s not all that uncommon though. I love Mexican Coke.

Sean P. Holman (1h 44m 4s):

No, but in other parts of the country, it might not be anywhere in LA where you go into a taco shop, you have Mexican Coke, which is made on the other side of the border. Right. With pure cane sugar and it’s awesome. that

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 44m 15s):

Was that cocaine sugar.

Sean P. Holman (1h 44m 16s):

Pure cane. Oh, pure cane. Pure. Sorry. Pure. No, it’s, it’s just the best kind of Coke there is. All right. Hey, we love hearing from you. Thanks for following us here at The Truck Show Podcast. Send us a note, will you truck show podcast at gmail dot com. Holman at truck show podcast dot com or Lightning at truck show podcast dot com. Hit us up on the socials truck shop. Whoa

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 44m 36s):

Truck.

Sean P. Holman (1h 44m 37s):

Truck Shop What happened to you today at Truck Show Podcast at LBC Lightning. At Sean P Holman. And of course, we’re waiting for some more messages. We like to hear your voice, but you on the air? 6 5 7 2 0 5 61 0 5. That is the five

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 44m 49s):

Star hotline. I know you guys have opinions. Come on now.

Sean P. Holman (1h 44m 52s):

We did a lot of stuff in this episode that’s kind of opinionated. Like, where are you guys? You can’t all agree with us.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 44m 58s):

6 5 7 2 0 5 61 0 5 As you’re hearing my voice right now, stop. Just hit pause. You don’t need the rest of the show. You know what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna do some, we’re gonna, we’re gonna thank Nissan and then we’re gonna play the jingle and then I’m gonna hide something like an Easter egg at the end of the show. You don’t need to hear that. What you need to do right now is pause is go

Sean P. Holman (1h 45m 17s):

To and reviews

10 (1h 45m 18s):

Leave is

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 45m 18s):

Review. Well, that too, but I don’t

Sean P. Holman (1h 45m 20s):

Slacking

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 45m 20s):

Off there too. No, hold on, don. Don’t wanna give too many tasks. The only task you’re, they assigning class have multiple

Sean P. Holman (1h 45m 25s):

Tasks to do whichever

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 45m 26s):

One they want. Class. Listen to me before the bell. This the last assignment. Okay, listen. 6 5 7 2 0 5 61 0 5 6 5 7 2 0 5. 61 0 5. Leave us a message.

Sean P. Holman (1h 45m 41s):

That is what? Is that a teacher voice? Yes.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 45m 43s):

She’s yelling just right before the bell rings. You know what? See? And then everyone races out. All

Sean P. Holman (1h 45m 48s):

Right. Well leave us a review. Send us a know your note or visit our website, truck show podcast dot com where you can check out our events page.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 45m 55s):

Yeah, what are you doing with that box over there? You gonna leave a message for anyone? That’s, well, I’m trying to figure out intruding my property. I’m

Sean P. Holman (1h 46m 0s):

Trying to figure out how to do it because,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 46m 2s):

So first you turn it on and they do a long press and it beeps twice and then you record it, and then you, then you let go, I think. Ow.

Sean P. Holman (1h 46m 7s):

Ow. Yep.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 46m 10s):

Nope. Not that one now. Jesus Christ. It’s loud. No, it’s not that button. You’re pushing the wrong button. Stop that.

10 (1h 46m 24s):

Hey, you. Yeah, that’s right. You in the hoodie. Does your mom know you’re out in the neighborhood at night trying to steal people’s cars? Well, guess what? I know your mom and I amm about to color you. Little bastard. Hey, you. Yeah, that’s right. You and the hoodie. Does your mom know you’re out in the neighborhood at night trying to steal people’s cars? Well, guess what? I know your mom and I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 46m 49s):

You little bastard. That’ll work. You think? Yeah, I do. The Truck Show Podcast is a production of truck famous LLC. This podcast was created by Sean Holman and Jay Tillis with production elements by DJ Omar Khan. If you like what you’ve heard, please open your Apple Podcast or Spotify app and give us a five star rating. And if you’re a fan, there’s no better way to show your support than by patronizing our sponsors. This place blows.