Season 2, Episode 92 - Radar Detector Deep Dive with Ariel Bravy, Holman test drives the Ford Raptor R through the desert

 

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. 

Quick Link to Previous Episodes

 

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (0s):

Holman, there’s a lot of show coming, so I’m just saying strap on your seatbelt. Whoa. Buckle in because it, it may be bumpy.

Sean P. Holman (8s):

Shoot strap in. Maybe is better than strapping on your seatbelt. Strap in. Strap your seat with your seatbelt. Sure. That’s, I just let, I’m saying from a, from a unfortunate phrasing standpoint, we just, we want to strap into our seats.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (22s):

I am good at unfortunate phraseology.

Sean P. Holman (25s):

Yes, yes. Hashtag unfortunate phrasing. That’d be a truck show podcast at gmail dot com.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (29s):

Speaking of breaking rules, things like that, we are going to have our friend, our new friend, I think he’s our friend. I, I want him to be our friend Ariel, who runs Vortex Radar. Anyway, I’m excited to catch up with Ariel and get the backstory to how he became a radar detector guru. And then, oh shoot. Do you mind if I give you some presence before we start the show

Sean P. Holman (52s):

Presence? Yes. Hold

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52s):

On a second. I have to step outside the studio ’cause they’re heavy and bring them in. Oh

Sean P. Holman (57s):

Boy. Here. Should I be worried?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 0s):

No. Well, first thing is this is make right, so right here.

Sean P. Holman (1m 3s):

Oh yeah, look at that. It’s the zero W 40 am oil. Yeah. That meets that really specific Chrysler requirement for their V eights. All right. All right. Got some AMS oil for my next oil chain.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 15s):

Again, they know AM oil. I stole this from work. Yeah. You know, am oil for oils, lubricants, things like that you don’t know am oil for their glass cleaners,

Sean P. Holman (1m 24s):

Would you say? Okay. So you say that their glass cleaner doesn’t leave any streaks at all. That’s correct. Okay. We’ll see. I don. Hard to believe. I’m looking forward to it.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 31s):

And you asked for,

Sean P. Holman (1m 32s):

I did ask for this Axel

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 33s):

Grease. I don’t know if this racing grease is the

Sean P. Holman (1m 36s):

Same. So this is the dominator synthetic high speed, high temp, extreme pressure. So this is the NLGI two, which is great for bearings and then chassis lubrication. So for me, it’s great for my ball joints, my performance ball joints on 3 92 and some of those things. And I did ask for this because this stuff is, wow, that is a heavy box. They felt it through the floor. Yep.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 59s):

Some big stuff here. So these are flyers that I want you, I know you have a lot of friends that own rams. Yeah. This is our latest flyer to talk about the P 2 6 0 9. It says stop. Yes. The grid heater failure issue. So I know you’re out and about a lot and you’re running into guys off road and they, a lot of ’em still don’t know about this issue. So please pass those out.

Sean P. Holman (2m 18s):

All right. This is the preventative $30,000 engine replacement safety bullet in 2007 to 24 Ram 6.7 liter trucks. And it has a QR code you can scan and get into the, the nitty gritty.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 31s):

The short story is that the monster ram, as we’ve said many times before, not only prevents this issue your engine from basically blowing up things to a little bolt that falls into the intake manifold and falls into your cylinder and kills it. It explains the performance benefits to the monster Ram and all that stuff. Anyway, pass that out. Now this you haven’t seen because I just put it on sale this morning. This is our, to kind of go along with that same theme of RAM trucks. Check out our new Cummins 6.7 liter blueprint t-shirt.

Sean P. Holman (2m 60s):

Okay. So I want us to do a T-shirt that looks like that without the banks logos on it and Well, this a bank shirt. I know, I know, I know. But, I want that shirt for The Truck Show Podcast with some different things on it.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 14s):

Oh, okay. You want like wieners hidden in it? Is that what you’re saying? Oh, that would

Sean P. Holman (3m 18s):

Be great. But

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 18s):

I almost did that just for

Sean P. Holman (3m 20s):

You. I mean there should have been something in there for that. Yeah. So this is, we will have to do the line drawing with The Truck Show Podcast version of that shirt. But I. I want their, the on the brass on the front. I want the, no, I’m not gonna tell you how I want it. Okay. Because don don’t want somebody to steal it. ’cause it’s a brilliant idea. Well,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 34s):

You tell me and I’ll print

Sean P. Holman (3m 35s):

It and our our people will

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 37s):

Can do anyway. So this is brand new. This is basically, it’s a black shirt with white ink on the back and it’s fine line drawing. It’s a blueprint of a Cummins engine line drawing.

Sean P. Holman (3m 44s):

Yep. Yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 45s):

Super, super

Sean P. Holman (3m 45s):

Cool. All right. But it’s a line drive of cumins with banks products on it. Like the turbo. That’s correct. And the,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 50s):

The monster ram on there. Look, it’s got the monster. Yeah. So then very cool. Next thing it’s from our friends down in Escondido, California. You got a an a GM shirt. Very nice. Alright. And then thank you. You’re, I’m gonna let you choose the, the jack rod. You can either choose the jack rod, the standard length right here, right. Or you can choose the Excel. Oh wow. I can use both. But you got I, we only have the two. So I need you to choose one. I’ll take the other. Alright,

Sean P. Holman (4m 17s):

Well we can row shabo.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 19s):

You wanna do that? Let’s go.

Sean P. Holman (4m 20s):

Okay. But you have to shout as you do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 23s):

Rock. How do you do that?

Sean P. Holman (4m 24s):

It’s rock. You just yell rock papers, rock paper, scissors,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 26s):

Scissors.

Sean P. Holman (4m 27s):

And then, and then, so which one do you prefer?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 30s):

I, I guess, well it’s my, both of our trucks are tall, so I think we both want the xl.

Sean P. Holman (4m 35s):

Okay.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 35s):

But I’m okay with either. Alright. So I’m not gonna be disappointed.

Sean P. Holman (4m 39s):

Okay. I’m gonna say 1, 2, 3. And then we’re gonna do the, by the

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 41s):

Way, this is by AG GM. So thank you very much to the guys at AG GM for sending this over that two of three. Alright. Best two of three. Okay. 1, 2, 3, scissors. Oh, I did papers.

Sean P. Holman (4m 50s):

So yeah, I won. I won first one. Okay. Okay.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 52s):

Ready? 1, 2, 3. Rock.

Sean P. Holman (4m 55s):

Oh, it’s a time. Okay. Ready?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 57s):

1, 2, 3. Rock.

Sean P. Holman (4m 59s):

Alright, let’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 0s):

Go. Go. 1, 2, 3. Rock scissors. Oh, you got it. Which one?

Sean P. Holman (5m 5s):

I’ll take the, I’ll take the

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 7s):

Xl. All right. There you go. XL Jack, rod. So for those of you that missed the episode that our friend from a GM was on, this basically turns your hydraulic jack into a jack stand.

Sean P. Holman (5m 18s):

Jack stand. Yeah. Locks it

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 18s):

Out. Yeah. So if you’re, I feel like we’ve done this guy. A lot of plugs. But. I. Just, I love the invention. It’s cool stuff. I love the invention. So that is, it’s more stuff. Monday

Sean P. Holman (5m 29s):

More stuff.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 29s):

Monday more stuff Monday. Exactly.

Sean P. Holman (5m 30s):

All right, well since we’ve teased all of our advertisers already, let’s go ahead and do the reads. But we have to start with Nissan, the presenting sponsor of The Truck. Show. Podcast and Nissan’s been with us since the beginning. If you’re in the market for a brand new mid-size truck, you’re gonna wanna check out the 2024 Nissan Frontier. It is one of our favorite mid-size trucks. Starts at $30,510. Comes standard with a 3.8 liter V six nine speed automatic 310 horsepower, 281 pound feet of torque, and a maximum tow rating of 6,640 pounds. And now you can even option your frontier with the ultra retro awesome eighties hard body package with the updated version of the three spoke monoblocks that anybody of our age remembers from our, our youth.

Sean P. Holman (6m 14s):

And you can, don’t

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 14s):

Date us.

Sean P. Holman (6m 16s):

I, I definitely wouldn’t do that. And you can find out more about all the options and packages by heading over to Nissan USA to build and price or take a Test Drive at your local Nissan dealership. And if you don’t have time to go down to your local dealer, you can go to the website and you can actually take your car buying experience online with Nissan at home where they will come, bring a vehicle to your house so that you could Test Drive it from your own driveway. So again, that’s Nissan usa dot com and Nissan making some of the most reliable, dependable trucks and supporting the best podcast in the world.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (6m 44s):

Yes. Alright, so I’ve got a special deal for you for our banks fans that have Cummins power trucks. If you’re interested in the new Cummins Blueprint shirt, the T-shirt that I just gave to Holman, if you place an order with me Lightning at truck show podcast dot com for your Ram truck parts, I will include a free Cummins T-shirt and I’ll hook a brother up on the price of the merch. Not only are you gonna save some cash on your parts, But I will also give you this free brand spanking new shirt. Whether you have a five nine or a six seven, hit me up Lightning at truck show podcast dot com. Give you a free T-shirt and a discount on your parts.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (7m 25s):

But you gotta go through me ’cause I’m gonna make a special discount code just for you. Just for your name. Your name will be the discount code. Send me an email Lightning at truck show podcast dot com. Alright.

Sean P. Holman (7m 36s):

We gotta thank our friends over at am Oil for supporting the show. AMS Oil is first in synthetics and it’s not just motor oil. AMS oil, as we said earlier, makes a slew of other products. I’ve got in front of me, the professional strength glass cleaner, which Lightning says no streaks, which, so I’ll have to tell you I’ve got my Nissan Aria. I, by the way, I put a thousand miles on it already. I freaking love that thing. I, I drove it out to Palm Springs and got to the hotel and I said, is there charging? Oh yeah, there’s free charging for guests right over there. So drove it home with a full, full charge. It’s been great. But what I was gonna say is the windshield rake, I’m not used to having a massive windshield with a lot of rake. ’cause I’m mean driving Jeeps all the time. Right.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 14s):

It’s a flat piece of glass. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (8m 15s):

Or a frontier. It’s just, it’s very upright. So I went to wash it and the driveway for the first time and I’m trying to like get the 80 and there’s streaks down by the bottom and you know how new cars are, they start kind of offgassing, you know, and they get kind of hazy for the first couple months of ownership is all the parts and stuff. Well

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 32s):

And it’s all the hot air that you’ve got coming outta you as well. Well

Sean P. Holman (8m 34s):

That too. Yeah. And I actually want to use a good glass cleaner ’cause what I was using Windex sucks at automotive

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 40s):

Glass. Windex sucks. It’s horrible. And you know what? Invisible glass sucks too. Yeah. My wife keeps buying bottles of invisible glass. It’s like comes in an aerosol and it comes in the squeeze bottle and I’m like, dude, it just, it’s

Sean P. Holman (8m 50s):

Awful. No good. And then this dominator synthetic NLGI number two will be perfect for my ball joints, drive shafts and the other things on the Jeep. ’cause I just got back from another desert trip. So this’ll go in my grease gun and I can do all the lubrication. And then thanks for the synthetic zero W 40 for the 3 92 because that’s what I’m gonna be putting in for the next oil change

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 11s):

Signature series is the bomb diggity, as they

Sean P. Holman (9m 13s):

Say. Awesome. So if you’re looking for synthetics for your vehicle, you’ll want to go to am oil dot com or you can actually shop by vehicle with your year make model tool or browse the full line of premium AM oil products in the latest AM Oil Factory direct catalog. Again, that’s am oil dot com

2 (9m 27s):

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

3 (9m 59s):

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

2 (10m 6s):

It’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 6s):

Kinda an interesting story how I arrived at Ariel Bray or Bray. B-R-A-V-Y is

Sean P. Holman (10m 12s):

His last name. Are you telling me once again you have not researched our guest name? Well,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 16s):

He never says his last name on his video channel on YouTube.

Sean P. Holman (10m 19s):

Are you gonna introduce yourself as Jay tile Les?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 22s):

No. Okay. No Lightning

Sean P. Holman (10m 24s):

Le heightening. No.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 25s):

Or or as people write

Sean P. Holman (10m 26s):

It Heightening

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 28s):

Lighting as people Lighting people write, write

Sean P. Holman (10m 29s):

It all the time. Lighting

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 30s):

Is, I forget the second end. That’s true. By the way, people when You write me Lightning has two Ns. NING. They’re

Sean P. Holman (10m 35s):

Just, but they’re not next. They’re not next to each other.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 37s):

No. They’re separated by an eye. Yeah. Lightning. So I’m on YouTube as I do so often. And I have an old passport where I actually escort I, it was time to upgrade. And so what does a normal person do? You Google it and then I find myself on YouTube and I’m looking at reviews and review.

Sean P. Holman (10m 53s):

You’re talking about radar

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 54s):

Detectors? Radar detectors,

Sean P. Holman (10m 56s):

Laser also jammers. All of

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 58s):

It. I’m not interested in jammer

Sean P. Holman (10m 60s):

All the things that are completely illegal where you live.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 3s):

Radar detectors are not illegal that I don’t believe they’re legal in the state of California. Radar jammers are, I mean, depending on where other people live. I’m, I’m, we’re gonna, let’s find out. ’cause that’s something I don’t know. Anyway, so I end up on YouTube and I’m going through all these reviews and I keep coming back to Vortex Radar. It’s a channel and don don’t even think he says his name. I don’t think I even knew Ariel’s name until I emailed back and forth with him trying to get him on the show. And this guy knows so much about radar detectors and his reviews are so in depth. I don’t know his background. don don’t know if he worked at a radar company, if he worked for Unan. Should

Sean P. Holman (11m 43s):

We just call him or

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 44s):

Cobra or one of the, we’re going to,

Sean P. Holman (11m 45s):

I feel like we’re doing a disservice to our guests by telling them what we don’t know. But. I. We don’t know his name. We don’t know his background. We don’t know what he does. I’m trying to

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 51s):

Express how like

Sean P. Holman (11m 52s):

Well call, just call the guy. Oh man. Let’s just call him and then we, we’ll go from there. All

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 56s):

Right. All right. I’m dialing. Ariel.

Ariel Bravy (12m 3s):

Hello, this is

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 4s):

Ariel. Ariel Lightning and Holman Truck show podcast. How you doing happening?

Ariel Bravy (12m 7s):

Good, how are you?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 8s):

We’re we’re great. Hey, how do you pronounce your last name? Is it Bray or Bray?

Ariel Bravy (12m 13s):

Yeah. Bray.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 14s):

Bray. Okay. So as if it had two vs

Sean P. Holman (12m 17s):

Now you’re picking apart the spelling of our guest name before we even play the jingle. Well,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 21s):

So what he, what he doesn’t know is we were trying to figure that out before we dialed him. Lightning

Sean P. Holman (12m 25s):

Has this, this, this great knack for Lighting up new new guest and butchering their names so well I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (12m 31s):

Didn’t know and he never says it on his YouTube channel. So how could I know? Hey Arrow, we have a quick jingle to play before we talk to you. Don’t move.

6 (12m 39s):

Prepare to dive.

Sean P. Holman (12m 40s):

Prepare to dive.

7 (12m 41s):

Hi Captain. Captain. We’re too

6 (12m 44s):

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

Sean P. Holman (13m 2s):

I feel like he should have had a depth detector there, right?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 4s):

Yeah, probably. We are going, we’re taking a deep dive on radar detectors. Ariel, before we dialed you, I was telling Holman my counterpart here that I was in the market. I had an old escort radar detector and it was kind of getting along in the tooth. It still worked. But I was getting a lot a a annoyed by how many false alarms it was having. And we’re in Southern California where there’s every door of every seven 11 at Target and Walmart has an a door that swings open and close using radar.

Sean P. Holman (13m 32s):

And most of those are what KB band

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (13m 34s):

We’re. We’re gonna find out. Okay. He’s gonna walk us through it. So I’m reading reviews online and I end up on your YouTube channel. And every question I had, you had an answer for kudos to you I have never seen someone with better unbiased reviews of radar detectors. So I wanted to get your background and find out how you ended up as being this radar expert.

Ariel Bravy (13m 58s):

Yeah, yeah. It’s funny because that was never the goal or the plan or the point at all. It was literally like I was just, you know, I wanted to learn more about this stuff too. So I started doing research online and I didn’t find a lot of good information at the time and I was like, okay, well let me then just start doing, I’m curious to see like what are the differences between the different detectors. If I change this setting, what does it do? So I just started doing a lot of my own testing with like, oh let’s try this setting, let’s change that. Let’s, oh let’s get police radar gun, let’s see what it’s like from the officer’s perspective. Let’s set up a test course. don don’t know. Let’s see like how far away can they pick me up? How far away can I pick them up? And I just started playing with all this stuff and learning and I’m like, Ooh, what about this detector? What about that one? What about these different radar guns? And it just kind of snowballed into this like, ooh, I just wanna learn everything and understand it all.

Ariel Bravy (14m 42s):

And then in the process of me testing and learning, I just started sharing what I found. I’m like, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I just tested this. Like is this working? Well, here’s what I found like, and it just kind of, people liked the test so I just kept trying other things. They would suggest more things, I would test something else and it’s just kind of continued on from there.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (14m 60s):

But what is, what is your background? Are you an electrical engineer because you speak, you speak with authority, but you’re not biased. You’re like this is how it works and this is how I found what this thing does in real life. But your, your delivery on your YouTube channel is straightforward but it’s friendly and it’s, it’s, I find it wonderful.

Ariel Bravy (15m 21s):

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean it’s funny like when I first got into this stuff I mentioned I was doing some research online and like I found some people who would maybe just recommend me something that they can make money off of but wasn’t necessarily what was best for me. And I was like, you know, I bought an escort one But I would’ve preferred a Valentine detector because I love to tinker and I love that kind of technical stuff and I love some of the performance attributes. And so like, I mean I do have a technical background. I went to school for electrical computer engineering and like kind of focused on radar and laser stuff. And so a lot of this was a natural like oh okay, I get the basics, I get the idea, I’ve got the background in it. And then I’ve done a lot of work with like still photography and so I was really familiar with cameras. And then eventually as I got into YouTube I was like, oh I kind of know how cameras work. Let me pivot to I guess videos ’cause I have an idea on like how I set up tripods and cameras and lenses and stuff.

Ariel Bravy (16m 5s):

And so I kind of figured out video stuff along the way. And so I have like that technical background but then also like this underlying sense of I wish somebody would’ve just told me like what was true and how this stuff actually works independent of what was best for them. And like their wallet just I wanted to know for myself. And so like whenever I do reviews or tests, it was like I just wanna share how this stuff actually works. You can buy whatever you want, you can trust me, you can go do testing yourself. I highly encourage you to go testing yourself because man, you learn so much in the process. You can validate what I find. We can compare notes. Like I find a lot of value in actually doing the testing. So I’m encouraging people like always go test. But like if you wanna save yourself the time, here’s what I found so far in the process. Here’s what I found.

Ariel Bravy (16m 45s):

Talking to other manufacturers who’s, what other testers have found. Like here’s everything that we know and here’s the info, do with it what you want.

Sean P. Holman (16m 52s):

So you’re

Ariel Bravy (16m 53s):

Whatever you want. But like I just want people to understand

Sean P. Holman (16m 55s):

You’re going with Ronald Reagan’s old mantra trust but verify. Oh

Ariel Bravy (16m 60s):

Man, I think that’s extremely important. Like it’s amazing how much you learn when You verify and if we have like 50 people all testing, instead of everybody saying like, well I’m just gonna wait for Vortex. Like I can’t do everything. Are you kidding me? I’m like, I’m one guy. And like it’s amazing different people testing with different radar guns and different terrains against different copies of detectors with different firmwares and different settings. Like I can’t do everything even if I wanted to. And having a lot of people all test really does add a lot of value. So hey, if I make a mistake you go test and like prove me wrong. I want, I don’t want my information to be incorrect, so please tell me if something is incorrect. ’cause like that’s important, you know? So by all means I, yeah, I love seeing other people test too. It’s not just me.

Sean P. Holman (17m 38s):

So have you made friends with like the, the local motor officer association? Like do you get help from the cops with tactics or what, what they’re using or do they hate you?

Ariel Bravy (17m 50s):

I mean I don’t necessarily like interact with them. I’ve had them show up to my talks and stuff and we’re like, oh cool i’s a cop all right, let’s chat about, you know, how do you guys approach things? You know, like I’ll share my stuff. But, I mean I always have to be careful on what I share because there are a lot of cops who watch my YouTube videos and I don’t want it to turn into like, here’s all the information on how to give people tickets and defeat counter members stuff. Here’s all the information silver

Sean P. Holman (18m 10s):

That reminds me of that one, that one was it a a GIF or something where it shows a dude on on Waze and he drives past the cop and so he puts the cop on Waze and the next scene is the cop sitting in his cop car on Waze removing it, right? Like it’s, it’s, you know, it goes both ways. The information is, it can can be bad or it can be good. The same information

Ariel Bravy (18m 31s):

A hundred percent. And even the wasting, that’s a common concern that people have. But like on the backend Google who now owns Waze, like they see how accurate are people’s reports over time. So like if five people come down the line and say like, oh the cop is still here but this one guy says he’s not there. Like they’re gonna value all the people who are doing like correct more verified information. If somebody keeps doing quote unquote bad information, like a cop who’s un marking himself because he is not there but he’s still there, they’re actually gonna like reduce the accuracy of the reports and not take it as seriously. So like that kind of stuff, there’s things that go on behind the scenes to validate the accuracy of the reports. And so that’s a common concern with ways that’s not actually a big deal of practice. But I know that’s a big concern.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (19m 9s):

I wanna go back a minute because you said that your background was with laser and radar, but not, I felt like maybe it wasn’t consumer oriented or like a radar detector. What were you doing with laser beams?

Sean P. Holman (19m 23s):

It was with

Ariel Bravy (19m 23s):

Sharks with laser? Yeah. Like it was our senior project in, in college and we were doing ram on amplification of multi-mode fibers. Wait, what? So basically working with, so basically working with like fiber optic cables and like sending ’em down like you know, we would have different signals. It would send down the fiber optics and then different ways to amplify the signal when it gets degraded over time. And so we would have like different transmitters and amplifiers and different types of fiber and so we would get comfortable with just playing with lasers like in the lab and these really expensive boxes. You’re like, what is this thing? And it’s like, oh it’s a hundred thousand dollars laser. Oh that’s cool. So you just have like access to this cool stuff and learning how to use it that, I mean I guess you wouldn’t have otherwise. And so just the like the science and the technical aspect was always a lot of fun.

Ariel Bravy (20m 4s):

I didn’t wanna like sit in a lab all day and actually do that stuff. But I love playing with it in a more, I guess relaxed way, which is what a lot of the radar laser stuff lets me do.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 13s):

So many questions. I I’m trying to figure out where to start. I, I

Sean P. Holman (20m 16s):

Think I start that you are driving down a straight desert road, you don’t have a lot of obstructions. There’s no Walmart putting out their, their false front door radar for, for you know, opening and closing doors. You’re going 120 miles an hour, 118 ’cause of your TRX it’ll probably say

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 33s):

’cause I’m limited because

Sean P. Holman (20m 34s):

You’re limited currently. And now what, what’s out there? How far is the range? What are they even using? Is it, is it K ka x seems to be on like yesterday’s technology

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 45s):

Right now. You’ve already thrown like three, three potential questions in there. I, well I’m, I wanna back, I wanna back up a hair and ask you Ariel, who do you think the target market is for your information, right? Is it a guy that has a fast car? Is it a a, a person who abides by all the laws and just is worried about getting a blemish on their record? Are these speed freaks? Like who is the makeup? Do you have any idea?

Ariel Bravy (21m 13s):

It’s funny. Yeah, I mean if I look at the YouTube stats for example, it’s almost exclusively guys for whatever reason that like are get really into radar detectors and dash cams too. But it’s mostly gonna be guys age range is gonna be all over the place. 30 to 40 is like the main stuff. But, I see people who are 20 years old, people who are 60, 70 years old. You’ve got the guys who are like, Hey I just bought a nine 11, I just bought a new Corvette, I bought a new McLaren. Like what equipment should I get? Kinda go over that stuff. You get people who are like, Hey I’m just getting into this stuff, you know, what detector should I buy? So you get people wanting the inexpensive entry level stuff. You get like the higher end equipment, it’s ultimately just people who enjoy driving and you don’t necessarily have to speed if you just wanna understand what’s going on around you. Like if you just want protection and more peace of mind while you’re driving, that’s where a lot of the stuff comes into play.

Ariel Bravy (21m 58s):

That’s true for both radar detectors and for dash cams.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (22m 1s):

So then before we get into the different bans and detecting and jammers and all that, what’s the situation legally with owning these devices? Whether it’s radar or a jamer,

Ariel Bravy (22m 12s):

You’re allowed to legally use a radar detector basically everywhere. The only exceptions are thing like Virginia, Washington DC where the penalties are like less than a hundred bucks. If you get caught they no longer confiscate. So the penalties are pretty low. It’s different than if you like go to Ontario, if you go to Europe or something like penalties vary all over the world. But here in the US it’s not a big deal. Most of the US it’s legal. There are some exceptions like military bases, commercial vehicles, vehicles over a certain weight, larger vehicles and stuff. But for the most part, passenger cars, trucks driving through the country, there’s no issue using radar detectors. With laser it is a little bit different. Well actually coming back to radar with radar jamming, that’s like highly illegal as in like massive penalties and prison time ble,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (22m 53s):

Right?

Ariel Bravy (22m 54s):

Plus it’s technically pretty challenging to do. It’s possible. I mean like military tough, like there’s radar jammers but like it’s tough to do. So for the most part people do like radar detectors but with laser it has to be a little bit different because of the way laser operates. Like you don’t get the advanced warning that you do with laser or that you do with radar. And so to combat laser you have laser jammers which not only detect the incoming laser beam but can also fire back and jam it that illegal. In most of the country there are a couple states about a dozen or so where they are prohibited. Again the penalties, they are oftentimes even worse for like speedy than they are for jammers. But as the main thing is like if you have a jamer, you just kinda slow down and disable it. That’s like the proper way to use the jamer.

Ariel Bravy (23m 35s):

So jams slow down, disarm the jamer and you’re good to go. So laws do vary for radar and laser, but that’s how that works.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 42s):

So this reminds me of a story. We

Sean P. Holman (23m 45s):

Once had a highway closed down in California to do a video shoot for like a commercial. And so when You have a highway closed down, you usually, if it’s a state highway, the CHP come out California highway patrol and they sit and basically hang out and make sure people don’t drive in the middle of your, your photo shoot or your video. So we had a couple of CHP officers and we had a truck, in fact it was a Nissan Titan when they first came out and we wanted to see what the top speed of the titan was. So I asked the officer, I said, Hey, do you care if I take this thing to to the to limit? He goes, no, you bought the road for the day, don don’t care. And they just sat there and hung out. And so we took it up to whatever it was like 112 or 13 or something like that and came back.

Sean P. Holman (24m 27s):

He goes, wow, that that truck’s pretty fast. I’m like, oh, where’d you guys, you know, oh radar you. He’s like, well the car is pointed that way. We were just laughing watching the, the, the readout. Well this particular road is off Highway 3 95 and it’s near Bishop and Lone Pine, you know, between the Sierras and the Owens Valley. So it’s a pretty desolate place. It’s one of the only major thoroughfares through there. It’s a, I think it’s a four-lane highway through there and China Lake Naval air station is right there. So if you’re out there and you’re lucky the f eighteens are out doing their thing. So I asked the officer, I said, Hey, just outta curiosity, if you’re patrolling by yourself in the middle of the night, has

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (25m 7s):

He radared a plane?

Sean P. Holman (25m 8s):

Do you ever get, do you ever get snuck up on by the f eighteens? And then he’s like, dude, they love police cars. He goes, we’ll be driving 75 miles an hour up the highway and all of a sudden our radar goes crazy and about 150, 200 feet above us here comes a screaming F 18 just scares the crap outta you. And I’m like, so what do you think? Are they locking onto you? He goes, I don dunno what they’re doing but we just assume we’re dead at that point. But he was laughing about how the Navy pilots love finding lone police cars and then buzzing them in the middle of the night, which to me is really freaking funny. Dude,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (25m 42s):

I’ve been buzzed on the way to Vegas one time. Oh yeah, it is crazy. Like they are, they’ll get low and they, and

Sean P. Holman (25m 49s):

So I think the, the the, at least the Navy from what I was told has like a 500 foot hard deck in training. You can go out, do your thing, you can’t go below that. Somebody listening might know more than I do. I will tell you I have video of f eighteens way freaking lower than that. And I’ve shown some of my, my friends and I’ve got a cousin who was an F 18 pilot. I’m like, dude, and they’re like, oh yeah, they’re they’re real low. Yeah, so, so But I, I I just imagine that the thrill of citing a lowly lone police car in the middle of the night going up the highway is just too much and those guys are willing to take the, the 500 foot above ground level, you know, restriction out play.

Sean P. Holman (26m 31s):

You’ll have some fun. I thought you

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (26m 32s):

Were gonna tell me the cop turns round and like radars to find out how fast the planeo was

Sean P. Holman (26m 36s):

Going. No, I think they’re, I think they’re still trying to get the heebie-jeebies out of them by having a F 18 buzz em buzz em at 500 miles an hour. Yeah,

Ariel Bravy (26m 44s):

Yeah, I mean at those speeds you’re gonna be like above the, the limits of what the radar guns are even capable of clocking. Like they’re not designed for clocking planes so they actually have upper limits. So like at certain speeds

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (26m 53s):

Just 9, 9, 9 or something

Ariel Bravy (26m 55s):

Sound at the, I forget it’s like 150 miles an hour, 200 or something kind of in that range is what you’ll see. So like 500 don don’t think the cops will even be able to pick him up and get that advanced warning before they get buzzed.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (27m 4s):

Oh interesting. So like a Bugatti veron? No, no dice, they have no clue. Well they know you’re breaking law. Oh you’re saying go faster than what the gun? Yes. Oh interesting. Okay. Yeah see the gun’s limit. Interesting. So still have to get to the bands. Most of the radar detectors that I’ve had, and I think I’ve had one since I was 16. So like dinosaur giant devices that hung on suction mounts from my dashboard and always would fall off in the hot southern California sun when I would go by a highway patrolman, their guns would quote unquote leak. Is that still a thing where their, you could tell if a cop was up there, even if he wasn’t pulling the trigger? Is that still the case?

Ariel Bravy (27m 43s):

So that’s not really leakage. I think there were some old, old radar guns that would always be transmitting and they didn’t have the ability to actually turn off the antenna. Maybe they could like not display something but the radar would always be transmitting ah, modern radar guns, like when they want to transmit or not. Like there is a technique called instanton and the idea is like instead of just leaving the gun on all the time, they’ll leave the gun like turned off. It’s in hold they call it. And it’s basically, it’s not transmitting. The officer can’t see any speeds, there’s no leakage, there’s nothing for you to detect. And only if they see somebody that they wanna get the speed of, then they hit the button, radar gun starts, transmitting speed pops up on the display and at that same time your detector will start alerting. So there is that, that’s called instanton. That’s a technique that they try to do sometimes to defeat radar detectors.

Ariel Bravy (28m 25s):

And as far as the leakage though, that’s not gonna happen. If you’re picking something up, it’s because they’re transmitting.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (28m 31s):

It’s weird because I’ll go up towards northern California on the five freeway, which is a long stretch to the most boring highway ever, although not much worse than the 40 in the middle of the country. And my radar detector will be going bonkers and the guy is sitting there just looking down at his pad of paper or writing notes and I’m thinking how so I’m picking up the rate. So that’s what you’re saying is the gun is always transmitting?

Ariel Bravy (28m 56s):

Yeah, a lot of times officers will just leave their guns on, I mean like while they’re sitting on the side of the road, maybe they’re running laser, maybe they’re doing paperwork, whatever, but sometimes they’ll just leave their guns on and maybe it’s to give people advanced warning, maybe it’s to slow down traffic, maybe they just, they’re fine don don’t wanna mess around with my radar gun, I’ll leave it on turn down the volume, it’s great. But like yeah that definitely happens. If their gun is on and you’re picking it up, it’s because the gun is actively transing.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (29m 18s):

Okay, okay, now let’s get to the bands. The bands are confusing X, why are they confusing X, K, K, K. So what, what are they? And then laser, which isn’t radar, which, which ones should I ignore? Which ones are important? Which ones are more in use than others?

Ariel Bravy (29m 34s):

Simple way of understanding radar bands, it’s kind of like, you know the car radio you have like am frequencies and FM frequencies, they’re like different frequency ranges. So like on FM we have 98 megahertz, 101 megahertz. It’s like kind of a range of frequency that we think of as FM radio am it’s you know, different ones as well. But they’re basically different frequencies that the radar guns are transmitting on. It used to be SB band way back in the day then they started using XB band and like these really old bands had massive, huge antennas because you’re working with these lower frequencies, bigger wavelengths and then they’re like, well officer’s space in their cruiser is at a premium and now they’ve got you know, speakers and lights and computers and microphones and all that kind of stuff. So they’re like hey we need to make smaller and smaller antennas also in case of a crash we don’t want this big huge thing that could potentially hit the officer.

Ariel Bravy (30m 19s):

We want them smaller lighter weight. So over time they started migrating to smaller and smaller antennas, which means they’re using higher frequency shorter wavelengths. That’s where you go from like X-band to KB band to now kab band. And so they’re basically just different frequency ranges. But the issue that you’re seeing as far as like hey there’s other things that also transmit on the frequency ranges. Yeah it’s not just police radar that can transmit there. So like KB band in particular that is definitely still in use all over the country. That’s not the case in LA. So if you’re down there you can actually just turn off KB band altogether and they only use like KA down there mostly stock or guns around 34 7 mostly KA and laser. So you could actually just disable K band and not even worry about like the filtering that you would need.

Ariel Bravy (31m 1s):

So there’s kinda little tips and tricks like that. But on Kaban specifically, the reason why that’s so annoying is because you have automatic door open or some shopping centers. You’ve got a lot of cars with their radar based collision avoidance systems or blind spot monitoring. A lot of those can transmit on KB a, like there’s other sources of KB A around you that’s not just police radar that your radar detector may also alert to because it’s also radar.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (31m 24s):

Yeah. In one of your videos, actually a couple of ’em you talked about is that a Mazda? There’s a particular one that’s annoying that it creeps into

Ariel Bravy (31m 32s):

The Mazda CX fives. Ah yeah. So those transmit on KB band usually around 24.1, 23 to 24.1 24. So if your detector falseness to those, a lot of times we’re actually looking at the frequency that the signal is alerting to and if we’re like, oh I see that signal, I see there’s a Mazda CX five in front of me, chances are that’s just a false alert. The annoying thing about that is that frequency is like right smack in the middle of where a lot of the police radar guns are like tuned to transmit. And so we can’t do some of the like same filtering techniques that we could use on like Acura and Hondas and Chryslers and Jeeps that a lot of times they’re slightly outside where the guns are centered. So we can’t be quite as aggressive on the to filter ’em out. So they’re kind of annoying to have to deal with.

Sean P. Holman (32m 13s):

So what about the future of self-driving? I know you just talked about some of the vehicles that have it, but with all this autonomous driving radar is going to be, you know, a huge part of the sensor package that comes on these vehicles and it’s not just gonna be blind spot, it’s not just gonna be adaptive cruise, you know, and it’s gonna be more pervasive in the industry. How are you going to be able to eventually filter that out? And then on on the flip side of that, when an officer is using let’s say the radar band to you know, track a speed or coming toward them, how much of that extra radar energy are they picking up from other vehicles that just happen to be in autonomous drive mode or adaptive cruise control mode or any of that?

Ariel Bravy (32m 54s):

Fortunately for the cops, all the adaptive stuff doesn’t interfere with their equipment. Like they’re transmitting at a very specific frequency and they’re only looking at return signals on that like very tiny frequency range. They’re not looking for a bunch of other stuff and like wide range of frequencies the way we would have to do with our radar detectors. So it doesn’t really affect them. Fortunately for them it is a bigger issue for us. That’s probably one of the biggest things that radar detector manufacturers these days are having to work on. It’s the biggest complaint of like why is this thing false thing all the time? Why is it alerting when there’s no cops nearby? Like it’s, it’s annoying And that’s one of the biggest things that we’re seeing from radar detector manufacturers and some of them are like being really aggressive to try to filter out these false alerts but sometimes that can actually come at the expense of performance.

Ariel Bravy (33m 33s):

They’re focusing too far on the filtering side so they’re trying to figure out a balance with all this kind of stuff. One thing that we’re seeing moving forward is like the FCC has actually mandated that moving forward a lot of cars are gonna be moving away from KA and they’re gonna be moving over to something like 77 gigahertz or so, which is even higher frequency range. There’s some advantages of KA some for like 77 gigaherz, but currently there’s no police radar guns that transmit at 77 which is nice for us so that we can just be like my detector doesn’t pick up 77 gigahertz but a lot of these cars nearby are transmitting at that range. So my radar detector’s not gonna alert at all. So that’s currently one of the things that’s really nice for us because a lot of stuff in the future, at least for now from what we’ve seen so far, is it actually gonna be a big issue for us.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (34m 14s):

So my original passport that I had when I was a kid, my little Honda accord it, it really just had a, a switch that was like highway city, a silence button, really really basic size of a like a little bigger than a deck of cards. Heavy made outta solid metal. Like I still have it, I think it’s rad, it’s like like a time capsule but it didn’t do much. So now because of what I learned off your channel right after Christmas I bought myself Unen R eight and nice, it’s fully customizable. So what do I do? I go to vortex radar dot com and I download a configuration file Holman, I drag that file into my unit end software, I plug my radar detector into my computer and I load up all of aerial’s pre-configured files for for California.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (35m 4s):

So it’s got all the filtering done for me. Now you, I could have certainly done that myself ’cause it you can just open up that software suite and flip these dip switches on off on off whatever you wanted. But he’s done a lot of that legwork for me and that was, it was a phenomenal resource so thank you very much for saving me that kind of time. And also a lot of people, I guess what I’m getting at is that I don’t think the average person knows that they can set all these things up on their radar detector. They just, they buy it from Amazon or they go to vortex radar dot com and they, they get one of your links and they end up with this Valentine or escort or or unit in and they just pl put it in their car and then go and then it squawks at ’em and they get annoyed and then then, then they turn it off and they put it in the glove box and they get a ticket

Ariel Bravy (35m 50s):

Happens all the time. Yeah and even if somebody wants to start going into the rabbit hole, the settings, it’s like don don’t know what the settings mean. What impact is that gonna have your performance? Am I gonna mess up the settings and potentially prevent the detector from alerting to a legitimate police radar signal? I don’t wanna do that. So like I totally get it. There’s a lot of concerns of like once you start messing with the settings to understand and know what settings to use because yeah the settings do vary depending on where you drive. Like what I need up here in Washington is different from what you would have in California, which is different than if you wanted to take your cross country road chain. Like some of the apps that you can get for the detectors can even like program the detector for you and start changing the settings based on what state you’re driving in depending on what radar guns officers use in those areas. So like there’s a lot of customization you can do that’s location specific above and beyond like you know, what’s the quote unquote best settings.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (36m 35s):

And then also I didn’t know that you can, as I’m driving along home and I’m going up to 4 0 5 through Culver City and as I’m going on an overpass, there’s a red light camera beneath me because it’s an, oh you know they, the highway is raised and underneath me is a red light camera. So of course the radar starts going bonkers because it sees the red light camera but I’m above it so I can hit a button on the top of the unit NR eight

Sean P. Holman (36m 60s):

And you laughed at it

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 3s):

And I tune it out basically. So the next time I go over that intersection it doesn’t go off again and then

Sean P. Holman (37m 8s):

You just scoffed at the man. It just

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 9s):

Remembers it based on GPS which is kind of neat. Now

Sean P. Holman (37m 12s):

Does that camera remember you?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 14s):

No, again the camera’s under me. No, I

Sean P. Holman (37m 16s):

Know. I’m just wondering if it, you’re saying,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 17s):

Oh yeah, yeah

Sean P. Holman (37m 17s):

You came over goes oh does reciprocate, I’ll get you next time. Yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 21s):

I don’t think so. No, you

Sean P. Holman (37m 22s):

Hope not.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 23s):

Tell me about the complexity. I guess this is where we dovetail in to the various brands and why one would be better than another. I mean how am I choosing escort versus Unen versus Valentine and then some of the other lesser known brands

Sean P. Holman (37m 40s):

I don and by the way, Valentine was like super advanced 20 years ago.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 45s):

Valentine is what the Ferrari

Sean P. Holman (37m 46s):

Owners said and they’ve done one, like one generation update since then. They’re like nope our stuff’s still good. Is that true? Is it still one of the better detectors out there or is it all marketing spin?

Ariel Bravy (37m 57s):

Oh I think the Valentine’s a fantastic detector. So over like the previous generation of it, the Valentine one gen one, they’ve had many different hardware changes and some software changes too and you used to actually have to like send in the detector for updates and pay 45 bucks or whatever it was and they would send you back and upgrade a detector. What they’ve done with the new V one gen two is now like they have an updateable software platform so it’s just all over Bluetooth. You run the app and it can update your detector for you. So they’ve had like multiple updates to improve the filtering to improve the performance, to add new features and functionality. So a lot of detectors now are updateable. That’s true for escort unit and Valentine denso et cetera. Well

Sean P. Holman (38m 33s):

The Valentine you know, basically has the same form factor although it’s behind like a smoother screen than it used to be but it’s still a a, a premium looking detector and the price of it, it’s not that bad when You compare it to some of the, the premium of the competition 5 99. I feel like that’s not that much more expensive than it was and you know the car and driver ads back in the day and here we are 20 years later. Yeah

Ariel Bravy (38m 60s):

They did a pretty good job about like maintaining the price. I know they raised the price like a hundred bucks or so maybe a year or two ago. I, I find like with the V one specifically, that tends to be something that like a lot of radar detector enthusiasts actually will like there’s a phenomenal Android app JB V one it’s called totally free app that you compare it, it’s like incredible app. Like there’s nothing else that I found that’s that good that capable like a lot of the stuff I mentioned like it can automatically adjust settings for you on the fly. That app is capable of it. Like there’s a lot of really cool stuff there and pairing the V one with JV one, like I actually picked up an Android just so I can run JV one a lot of times like regardless of if I’m running the V one. So there’s a lot of really cool stuff.

Ariel Bravy (39m 40s):

The detector itself is great but it’s missing some basic functionality like there’s no GPS, it’s not designed for photo radar detection. The display is pretty simplistic and it’s missing the frequency display like I mentioned earlier. That can be really useful to differentiate legitimate versus false alerts. So it’s missing some pretty core stuff but a lot of that functionality you can then add back in with apps, which is where it can start to get a little complex because you’re like okay I need to run that third party app and what settings do I use and which app do I use and how do I like why do the manufacturer provide that? So I think that’s kind of where I see a lot of the enthusiasts really dive in because they wanna get into the weeds and play around with the apps, which again are excellent but not everybody wants to do that, which is totally fair. Escort is kind of like the other side of the spectrum where they’re trying to do everything in the detector.

Ariel Bravy (40m 24s):

So there’s GPS, there’s Bluetooth, you can pair it to your phone. A lot of their stuff is actually currently broken, they’re trying to fix it, their cloud functionality. But like there’s, there’s wifi available so if you have a wifi hotspot in your car, it’ll update you if there’s new red light cameras that show up in your air in your area or there’s a new firmware update to like fix bugs, like it can update it right in the car. You don’t have to run any apps, you don’t have to plug it into a computer at home. So like they’re going for the more like set it and forget it experience. They’re also the one that I mentioned of like, hey they’re prioritizing quietness over performance, which can sometimes have some negative consequences we’ve been seeing and testing of like not picking up signals properly, having some alerting issues but they’re detectors are very quiet.

Ariel Bravy (41m 4s):

They’re among the quietest out there and you just set it on the windshield and it does a lot of the stuff for you. The dens I think are somewhere in the middle to where it has the GPS and the Bluetooth and all that kind of stuff. It’s got the arrows, I mean it’s got all that kind of stuff too. But it does a much better job on like the performance and responsiveness side. It winds up being a little chattier than the escorts but then you can like enable some of the filters and you can also add some additional app integration like with the V one to help quiet it down further. So that seems to be a really nice balance that a lot of people find is it’s sort of in the middle between the Valentine and the scorp. There’s some other companies too. There’s Stinger, there’s denso. K 40 makes really low end stuff. The marketing is good but like their detectors and their laser jammers are junk denso depending on the model.

Ariel Bravy (41m 49s):

They have some decent stuff like the DS one is equivalent to one of the unit detectors, the R four, very similar different form factor and stuff, but they’re stinger, they make like custom installed stuff. They’re based overseas in the Netherlands. They’re making some stuff here for the US as well. But, I. Think the big three that I see are gonna be Valentine unit and escort here in the us And if Cobra, some other ones I can

Sean P. Holman (42m 11s):

Mention too, if somebody handed you a good ones at least a thousand dollars and said go buy the best detector on the market for yourself, what are you, what are you getting?

Ariel Bravy (42m 19s):

People ask that all the time. And to me I’m like, they’re tools. I think there are different tools for different jobs. It’s like saying I want one vehicle for everything I could possibly do. I’m like, well that it’s not, I mean sometimes you want but er, but but sometimes you need a truck. But,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42m 32s):

But hold on. But it’s there tools. But but Ariel, hold on a second so I can, it’s, it’s kinda like saying I hand you a 10 millimeter socket. You can, you know it, it is a tool but it is, you can use it for so many things. Let me back up. I’m on your website and I’m looking at the UN end R eight i, this isn’t just an order of your recent, your most recent reviews of my favorite windshield mount radar detectors. It looks like they’re by price unit NR eight on top, escort redline 360 C. Again starting at the top.

Sean P. Holman (43m 1s):

You didn’t forget all those Lighting. I’m looking on Amazon right now at the car radar detector for 49 90 and there’s a 50% off promotion available. Oh my god, that one I’m just $25, 49 90 and it’s 50% off.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (43m 14s):

Oh, it’s normally a hundred bucks.

Sean P. Holman (43m 15s):

No, no, no. I think you can get her 25 bucks. Yeah, sure. I’m sure it works great. Yeah, I’m sure it does. Let, let’s,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (43m 20s):

Let’s not do that. That’s what you

Sean P. Holman (43m 21s):

Should do is a cheap rater detector shootout. If you haven’t done it already, that’s, that would be interesting.

Ariel Bravy (43m 26s):

And some of the low end stuff is awful. Like I’ve, I’ve reviewed some of ’em, taken ’em apart to show you the internals, like what they advertise, how it performs. Like, man, those things are terrible, but that’s where a lot of people start. But

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (43m 37s):

You’re g you’re going back to the tool thing and it’s like if the, the average person doesn’t know how to use the tool, like they don’t know how to slice this without watching a bunch of your videos or someone else’s, like how do they know what tool? Because you could have 10 different hammers and technically all of them will pound in a nail, but they have different claws. But some are for framings, some are for other, like what are the

Ariel Bravy (44m 2s):

Basics? And this has been like one of my gosh, I wish there was a simple question like this is something that for years I’ve tried to come up with a simple answer to this and like I have an answer. But, I feel like it’s too simplified and I can’t come up with a good one So the best way I can answer it right now is for most people I’m like, don, don’t know what I’m doing. I just want a good detector. Probably go get an escort detector, right? Simple plug and play set and forget it kind of thing. Yeah, it’s quiet. You’re not gonna complain about false alerts. There are some negative sides as far as performance. Some of the cloud stuff they advertise currently doesn’t work properly. So I feel a little conflicted sometimes with recommending it because I’m like, Hey, you can go get a unit detector that’ll give you the better performance. It’ll be chattier, but, okay.

Ariel Bravy (44m 42s):

Okay. You’re gonna, maybe let’s take a look at some of the settings. Let’s take a look at the apps. You can go grab the settings off my website if you wanna go down that route. The Valentine is also a phenomenal option. But, I. Think again, that’s more toward like the radar detector enthusiast is usually what we gravitate toward that one. So it really comes down to like maybe escort and Unitan is like the two. And again, we’re ignoring where people live. Do you need photo radar detection? We’re ignoring a lot of other stuff, but those are kind of the two that I would just start to direct people towards.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 10s):

I guess you almost need one of those charts, the comparative chart, right? Where you’ve got, if you’re looking at, you decided I want an escort, then you gotta look at all the escorts from left to right.

Sean P. Holman (45m 18s):

Escort, radar detector, Lighting, right?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 20s):

Yes.

Sean P. Holman (45m 21s):

Right. Escort radar detector.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 22s):

Not the escort that

Sean P. Holman (45m 23s):

I’m just, I’m just saying be clear with your language. Not

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 26s):

The one that on Wilshire Boulevard that I

Sean P. Holman (45m 27s):

Saw the other night. I’m just, that’s, I’m just saying escort radar detector is what we’re talking about. Not

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 31s):

Wearing leather.

Sean P. Holman (45m 32s):

You could, I’m sure they have leather cases if you want yours to match the interior of your Ferrari. Sure. Yep.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 39s):

Yeah, I, I can imagine that’s, that’s tough. Again, there’s you just like, you could buy a million hammers, they’ll all hit, hit a nail into the wall going through vortex radar dot com. It’s not just reviews of radar detectors, but you’ve also got like mounts. Recently I saw you install a blem mount, which I already had for mine. But I, I love it. And a blem mount is kind of this articulating mount that you can hang from your rear view mirror. It’s all like aluminum and it swivels in a million different ways. I thought that was really cool. But you, you’ve got all the periphery, all of the accessories that you both suggest and, and rate. I think that’s pretty cool too ’cause you support kinda the whole ecosystem of radar detection.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (46m 19s):

Yeah,

Ariel Bravy (46m 19s):

There’s a lot of really cool stuff there. So yeah, I mean, we’ll go into like where’s the best place to mount your radar detector, you know, pros and cons of like a blend mount versus a, a radar detector that’s on your windshield with a suction cup versus something that’s, you know, installed in your grill. Like here’s the best accessories, here’s the best different types of radar detectors. So there’s, there’s a lot of stuff there depending on what’s, again, best for you. What do you want,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (46m 39s):

Tell me about the systems where like, I bought a used car a couple years back and it had what looked like sensors in the front grill and under the bumper in this, under the, the, the rear bumper. I gotta assume that that was a jamer, I don’t know, the guts weren’t there. The brain was gone, but the sensors were still there. Any idea what that would be and what type of system uses front and rear facing sensors?

Ariel Bravy (47m 7s):

Yeah, so that’s when You start getting into the number one, the laser jammers and number two, the custom installed radar detectors. Chances are what you were noticing was the laser jammers because those have to be like visually present. Like they have to see the light coming in and be able to shoot the light back out. But the radar detector antenna can actually be installed behind a bumper depending on, you know, not behind metal but behind like a plastic bumper would be be okay. So you can mount it in a way where you, like visually you can’t see it from the outside. So if you have some equipment, chances are that would be the laser jamer heads you saw.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (47m 37s):

So what that means is whoever owned the car before me drove it like a bat outta hell to need those.

Ariel Bravy (47m 42s):

Not necessarily no, but they want protection. A lot of people do. Not everybody does. I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s amazing how many people are like, Hey, I just want the peace of mind knowing if anything happens. Like I’m not trying to do triple the speed limit in a school zone or anything crazy. It’s just like, hey, you know, I didn’t realize I was going over or whatever. Like, they’re not trying to do anything crazy or reckless. They just want a little bit of extra protection. Like that’s actually a really common use case. I see too.

Sean P. Holman (48m 4s):

Now what about when the cop pulls you over and decides, listen, I was gonna give you a break, but now that I see you have a radar detector, screw you pal, here’s a ticket, have a nice day. Is there, you know, I, I’m sure I’ve seen ’em in the past, the remote displays. Are there ways to hide your radar detector or to immediately start removing them from the inside of your car and shoving them into every pocket or seat cushion that you can before the red and blues light you up from behind? Are you asking for

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48m 33s):

Real life experience or legal

Sean P. Holman (48m 34s):

Advice? Just No, no, there’s no legal advice intended or, or presumed on this show, that’s for sure. I, I’m just curious like, well what, what do you do? Are they quick releases? Do people have their own way of hiding the displays? What? I’m just curious. The cop

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48m 51s):

Looks up there and there’s a Yeah, one suction there and one, yeah, one suction mount is gone. One store

Sean P. Holman (48m 56s):

And there’s like the, there’s like the ghost of the suction cup on the windshield. They

Ariel Bravy (48m 60s):

Can see the cable hanging down. Like, I mean yeah, they’re gonna notice that they pull up behind you. Like if they see you fidgeting and moving around and trying to hide stuff, they’re like, Hey, does this guy have a gun? Is he trying to hide drugs? Like they’re gonna get suspicious of something. So that kind of behavior, regardless of what it is, is gonna like set them an alert. Yeah, that’s one of the reasons why people might wanna get accustomed installed radar detector, nothing installed on the windshield, nothing for police to see, nothing for thieves to see potentially break into your car doesn’t compromise the aesthetics to the same degree. There’s no box on the windshield. It’s all like blended into the car and yeah, you basically wind up having like a little controller and a little LCD display and then maybe like an alert LED somewhere in the cabin. So it’s much more integrated and hidden. The displays can actually be like integrated into your rear view mirror if you like.

Ariel Bravy (49m 43s):

I’ve seen people build it into like the, the headliner area or in the, the heads up display, like in your instrument cluster. Like you can blend it in much more nicely to where yeah, there is nothing like on the windshield. And

Sean P. Holman (49m 54s):

What would you say, I mean I, I’m sure it’s regional to your point, but what would you say the danger of laser being in the mix is? What’s the percentage of departments that are using laser and not radar or are there guns that have both and the officer can decide what he’s using? Are they two completely different pieces of technology?

Ariel Bravy (50m 11s):

Yeah, I mean they both have their pros and cons. A lot of officers use both. Out here where I live it’s like 98% radar. I rarely see laser in certain places. It could be the other way where it’s almost exclusively laser. Other places are like 50 50. So how much officers use will very much be regional. But the pros and cons, like from their perspective radar, it’s much more convenient to where they’re like they have a box in the dash, they can just kind of sit back and push the button and speeds pop up on screen and they just wait for like a big number to pop up and boom, there’s your next customer to pull over. They can also use radar while they’re driving something they can’t do with their, with laser. So if they’re just like patrolling driving around, they’re gonna be using radar. A lot of the downsides of radar have to do with the fact that you’re just clocking every car on the road.

Ariel Bravy (50m 54s):

And so it can be tough to identify like if you’ve got, you know, 30 cars in front of you, okay, which car corresponds to the number that’s showing up on the display, they’ll do things like show you the direction of the signal, they’ll show you or the car they’ll do like here’s the strongest target, here’s the fastest target. So they have ways of trying to differentiate like which car they’re actually displaying on screen. But it is tougher and that’s actually where laser comes into play. So for like higher traffic areas, like on the highway for example, they may prefer shooting laser. Well, they’ll just sit sideways in the side of the road and they’ll just look through a viewfinder and they’ll just be like picking off cars and they’ve got a cross hair in the viewfinder, they’ll just put the dot whatever right on a car and push the button and boom the speed pops up. And at that point then there’s not really any question as far as which car they’re targeting. So that can be nice for them.

Ariel Bravy (51m 35s):

For like higher traffic areas, again, they kinda have to be stationary to like look through a viewfinder, hold a gun, push a button, keep it locked onto one car. They can’t do that while they’re driving. But it does make it easier like in traffic and stuff.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (51m 47s):

The sound that most radar detectors that offer laser detection make when laser is fired is awesome. Like Holman, you know, you get all these Ks and Ks and it’s squawks and it’s, it’s kind of like a eh whatever when laser goes off and I’ve only had it a couple times, it whales at you and you’re like, he’s there. Like there’s no mistake. Like this is not a false W won, there’s a cop and he’s about to nail us. So you slow down and you just pray at that point. Like, I mean once you get radar, ’cause laser’s not really bouncing around and you’re not not getting reflection off buildings and stuff like that. There’s

Sean P. Holman (52m 23s):

There’s a reason you can have a laser pointer and hit something a thousand feet away, no problem.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 27s):

Right? And so when he’s, when it goes bonkers, it’s like, just, just pray ’cause he’s got you right? Or I mean, or hopefully

Sean P. Holman (52m 35s):

The guy next to you, right? Or the guy behind you or something. So

Ariel Bravy (52m 38s):

We joke around that like LA laser detectors and a radar detector is basically a speeding ticket. Notifier like the thing alerts

Sean P. Holman (52m 44s):

He’s got speeding it coming like that’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (52m 46s):

It. Yeah. Yeah. That’s

Ariel Bravy (52m 47s):

It. Like, I mean your toast and a lot of times, like if you’ve got the detector up on the windshield and he’s targeting your grill, your front plates, your headlights, that kind of stuff, there’s many instances where like your radar detector might not even alert. And I’ve seen so many times that people say like, you know, hey Vortex, I just got pulled over, I’m running a detector, but my detector didn’t go off and I got a ticket. What happened? Majority of the time that’s laser. So like that’s actually a really common thing. It’s radar detectors are really best for radar. They’re not great against laser

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 14s):

Unless you have that a a a jamer, which again you said is illegal.

Ariel Bravy (53m 19s):

They are illegal in some places. Waze is actually legal everywhere. And that can be a nice countermeasure to laser too because as I I mentioned, officers can only use laser when they’re stationary. Ah, yeah. So if they’re parked on the side of the road shooting laser, you’re in a populated area, they’re gonna get marked quick on Waze. And so like, I mean I, yeah, Waze is phenomenal against Laser Up. We,

Sean P. Holman (53m 37s):

We need to have these third party apps that anytime Lasers detected, it just adds it to Waze automatically as a, as a, you know, user generated content as a clouds, you know,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 48s):

I wonder if that’s already the case.

Ariel Bravy (53m 49s):

S Escort tried to do that actually. Really? So they tried to do that years ago, but then they got kicked off of ways, didn’t want other companies like interfacing with their

Sean P. Holman (53m 56s):

Oh, their API. Yeah.

Ariel Bravy (53m 57s):

And so like exactly. So they kind of like shut down their API and then so s Escort can do that with sharing cloud alerts with other drivers, but there’s only so many people that use the escort systems. And so like I’ve been running it for, I don’t know, 10 years or so and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to save from Escort live. And so like, I mean it can do that. Like if

Sean P. Holman (54m 15s):

Hey one hand that’s five digits, that’s five speeding tickets you didn’t get. Yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 20s):

So then,

Ariel Bravy (54m 21s):

So I mean, and then other people have tried to integrate with Escort, but then Escort shuts them out.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 25s):

Man, Holman, did I tell you that Ariel was gonna be a wealth of knowledge?

Sean P. Holman (54m 30s):

Yeah. We should have him just do this podcast because No, he knows way more than we do about seemingly everything. Everything.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 37s):

I sure do you wanna sub for us when we’re outta town, Ariel?

Ariel Bravy (54m 41s):

I was do it

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 43s):

Like we, we’ve just scratched the sur I mean just scratched the surface of radar detection. Go to vortex radar dot com V-O-R-T-X radar dot com or go to Vortex radar on YouTube and Ariel puts out a video almost like I don Weekly. I feel like you’re doing these almost weekly.

Ariel Bravy (55m 6s):

Yeah, I mean, yeah, video sit man takes so much time for the testing and the editing and all that kind of stuff. So I would love to do more videos and all that kind of stuff. But I’m

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (55m 13s):

Not asking you to do more career based, I’m saying No,

Ariel Bravy (55m 16s):

I’m asking myself to do more. I wish I could.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (55m 18s):

I’m saying well you could, you can make some good money doing these things. But also like you, like Holman, the last one he put two days ago, he put out eight K cameras. Fake or real eight k. Well, right, and he’s comparing, I don’t know what the brands are here, but like can you give us a teaser? ’cause Holman is big time into dash cams.

Ariel Bravy (55m 37s):

Yeah, so it’s funny, there’s a lot of manufacturers that will advertise like fake 4K is a big thing. Yeah. So like companies use 2K sensors, but then they’ll just tell you it’s 4K and they’ll stretch the image without adding any quality. So there’s a lot of dash cams on the market that tell you they’re 4K, they’re really not. I saw the other day there was one advertising themselves as eight k. I was like, well that’s interesting. That’s the first time I saw that. So I bought the camera online, I grabbed a real eight K camera. So I just started diving into like, okay, what is this thing? Like what do they advertise? How does it perform? How does it compare to like 2K, 4K, eight K cameras? Like, okay, this is an eight K, but then what would an eight K dash camera look like? What are the ramifications to file size bit rate quality, you know, image processing. Like just kind of diving into like, okay, let’s talk about eight K dash cams.

Ariel Bravy (56m 21s):

Like that doesn’t exist yet, but maybe it will. Let’s talk about about it.

Sean P. Holman (56m 24s):

I love it. I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 25s):

I just think like, oh, that’s a whole nother show. We should talk about dash cams.

Sean P. Holman (56m 28s):

We can Are

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 29s):

You gonna, you can spin off another channel about dash cams.

Ariel Bravy (56m 33s):

I thought about that. If it’s funny. My YouTube channel actually originally started for dash cams. I was testing a couple different cameras and just needed a place to post the video of like dash cam A and dash cam B. And so originally I’d started it as a dash cam channel and then I would post like saves with my radar detector and let’s test something I have a YouTube channel. So it’s funny, I started with Dashcams, then focused on radar detectors and then like brought back to dashcam stuff.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 55s):

It’s coming full circle. All right. Ariel brobie vortex radar dot com. Damn.

Sean P. Holman (57m 1s):

And what’s his, what’s his YouTube channel?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 3s):

It’s Vortex Radar.

Sean P. Holman (57m 4s):

There we go. Yeah dude, thanks for coming on and sharing your, your wisdom with us and our listeners and, and

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 10s):

Helping us get out of speeding tickets.

Sean P. Holman (57m 12s):

Well, we’ll see. We’ll do you have a guarantee that Lightning will not have a speeding ticket

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 16s):

The next year? No, no, no. He’s not gonna have a guarantee. That would be foolish.

Ariel Bravy (57m 20s):

That would be fun.

Sean P. Holman (57m 21s):

Yeah. And also funny, but

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 23s):

Dude, he saved me so much work putting all the, just programming my unit NR eight.

Sean P. Holman (57m 27s):

It kind of sucks that he, he did all that work for you. He doesn’t kinda like, you’re just copping off the kid in class in front of you like you did all through school.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 33s):

But like that kid normally knows ’cause they look behind, you’re like, peering over. I did it stealthy. Ariel had no idea. Sure you

Sean P. Holman (57m 40s):

Did.

Ariel Bravy (57m 41s):

No. I’m like, please use it. I’ll learn from you guys. You learn from me. Like we don’t need to everybody specializing in the same thing. Like, here’s what I know, then I’m gonna learn from you. Whatever. You know? Yeah. So like, this is awesome. I think this is how it should be.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 50s):

Awesome. And dude, so, and, and support Ariel by going to vortex radar day dot com because I, I’m guessing you’re making a little bit of money when people click on the links and buy the, the radar detectors and a and accessories. And so that helps Ariel make more videos. So do go to the website. Awesome.

Ariel Bravy (58m 7s):

Great. Yeah, thanks for having me. This was great. Awesome.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 9s):

Really appreciate it. We’re,

Sean P. Holman (58m 10s):

We’re now putting you on the list of experts for radar detectors. Don’t be surprised if we call you in the future with more dumb questions. Sounds

Ariel Bravy (58m 18s):

Good. Lemme know. All right,

Sean P. Holman (58m 19s):

Thanks Ben. We’ll talk

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 20s):

To you. Thank you.

Ariel Bravy (58m 21s):

Alright, take care. Bye.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 25s):

Alright, Holman, this is where you tell me about driving fast in the desert in a new Raptor R with the upgraded horsepower, which is 7 2720

Sean P. Holman (58m 37s):

Horsepower. So I’m going to play some audio. Basically we had this amazing desert course that was a few miles long where we could just haul butt up this one road we turned off, there were, whoops, all this other stuff. We actually got a chance to, to jump the raptor, I jumped them. If you go to my Instagram at Sean P Holman

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 55s):

Oh, I saw it. I was actually, this is not just a little bitty jump you No. You

Sean P. Holman (58m 58s):

Aired it 72 miles an hour off the lip of that hill. That’s what, what I was doing when I hit that hill. And you can it, I mean it hucked How

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 4s):

Does the flight feel?

Sean P. Holman (59m 5s):

Great. Ah, it feels awesome. How

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 6s):

Did the landing feel? Landing

Sean P. Holman (59m 7s):

Was fine. There’s a little bit of a secondary balance as I hit, but everybody was cheering and four people were like, that was awesome. How fast were you going? ’cause they’re like, Hey, go this speed. And then they’re like, Hey, you could probably go a little faster. And I’m

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 18s):

Okay. So what was the next fastest? Were the other journalists going like, like 40?

Sean P. Holman (59m 21s):

No, no, no. I think everybody’s aiming for like between 60 and 65. And then, you know, there’s a couple people where they’re like, you can pick it up a little bit. So was able to, to air it out. And at

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 31s):

What point would they have been angry that you like exceeded like 90 or something?

Sean P. Holman (59m 35s):

Probably 80. 80? Yeah. Bending a a frame on a press drive. Bad, bad, bad, bad,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 42s):

Bad. Can I ask a dumb question about when You launch it? Are you under acceleration or you do you back off just as you hit

Sean P. Holman (59m 47s):

The lift? No, I blip it as I’m going off the lift to

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 50s):

Pull the nose

Sean P. Holman (59m 50s):

Up because it pulls the nose up and it also Yeah, you get that weight transfer backwards, you loads it, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it kinda loads the suspension. And while by doing that, you’re lifting the The truck off the front wheels and that’s giving you more up travel for when You land. Gotcha. So you don’t wanna, definitely don’t wanna break and you don’t wanna coast. You want kind of a right before you go off off, just like a dirt bike. Just like a dirt bike. So there’s a few things I’d like to say. So The truck itself is not super different. There’s a couple little Easter eggs, like the V eight in the side of the center console armrest where you walk in and it’s kind of in the mesh of, of the fabric and it just kind of hits V eight right there. The interior is just like all the other, you know, four trucks. That new F1 fifties, they got the update, the, you know, we talked about the new tailgate and all that.

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 34s):

And it was, it was fine. It would just, it felt like a Ford. The thing I’ll say about the Raptor R it felt to me like a much more complete truck than the standard V six Raptor. And that’s a hard thing to quantify in a standard V six Raptor doesn’t have as much power, but those trucks are not linear. So it’s really easy to be in the throttle hitting the whoops. And then if you mash it, the turbos light up so fast and violently, it’s really easy to hurt. You know, screw up the, the power delivery on this engine is so linear. Is

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 1m 7s):

This the difference between a two stroke dirt bike? I know we bring up dirt bike, two stroke and a four stroke dirt

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

Bike. No, no. I mean I, not really

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 1m 14s):

Because they, when when a two truck comes up on the pipe Yeah. All of a sudden you’re doing wheely accidentally.

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

Yeah. I mean, I get that. But the power of delivery is just, it’s, it’s different. I mean it’s, it’s, you’re isolated in a truck. I guess you could kind of say it was like that, but this engine down low is almost boring. It, it was one of those, those vehicles that if I wanted to, to hang it all out, match the throttle and it was big time. Whoa. You know, everything, although the supercharger wine wasn’t as much as I wanted it to be, the exhaust was way quieter than I thought it would be too. Like, I thought the exhaust was gonna be more rowdy, like a TRX, even a baja boat, I was kind of wishing for more. Hmm. But the engine feels great.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 1m 53s):

I wonder why, because so many people are going to like really crappy filter on a stick intake systems. Basically just a, a, a welded tube with just a big old conical filter at the end just to get that wine. Yeah. Because there’s so much damping inside that intake system. And then the mufflers are really good these days, right?

Sean P. Holman (1h 2m 17s):

When You get into a TRX, you know that they’re, they’re pegging the very limits of illegal factory exhaust. The raptor, there’s no, there’s no danger of that. And it’s kind of a bummer ’cause I really wanted to hear that V eight sing. Now The truck itself feels a little bit lighter than a TRX. The travel feels great. I was able to go pretty fast. So let me just play you this, this notice kind of my thoughts while I’m driving. I, I put the phone in my pocket hit record. So basically this course that they laid out in the desert was four miles. So it wasn’t like a, a nothing course. And so I’m able to talk and walk you through what I’m doing. Hopefully can hear The truck.

Sean P. Holman (1h 2m 57s):

It was well

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 2m 58s):

Based on the preface, we’re not gonna hear much. It’s gonna be,

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

We’ll see I actually have not listened to this audio. I recorded it and I went Well it is what it is. So we’re gonna play it on the show. Alright, so here’s me in the raptor

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 3m 9s):

RI love how you qualifi the fact that we just don’t care.

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 12s):

I we do care. That’s why you take the audio.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 3m 14s):

No, I know it. I put it in my pocket. I said let’s go. It sounds like ass. I’m

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 17s):

Sorry. No, it’s not gonna stand like ass. Here we go. Alright. So this is pretty cool. I found my way into a brand new 2024 Ford Raptor R with the 720 horsepower V eight. And we just pulled out of the staging area onto the highway and I didn’t think to record when I hit the throttle, but got on the highway and once I had traction stabbed it, then immediately lost traction was awesome. So today we’re going on about a three hour trip to do kind of some trail stuff, some sand dunes gonna get to jump The truck. This has the new live valve on two sides, compression and rebound.

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 58s):

So the shock upgrade, of course it’s got all the 24 improvements, like the new dash and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, it’s gonna be a hundred degrees out here today and should be.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 4m 9s):

Tell me about the interior real quick. What did they do? You said the, they have

Sean P. Holman (1h 4m 13s):

Basically a bigger screen. It’s, it’s very much the raptor that you know and love. Okay. Should be a lot of fun. This thing sounds pretty cool and so far on the highway ride real nice. So I’ll do a little bit more when we get off road, but so far so good. Yeehaw,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 4m 35s):

Just a little bit of wine coming through. Not much.

Sean P. Holman (1h 4m 37s):

Just at the higher RPMs. Yeah, like it’s really kind of mellow, but when You pulled out on the highway, like everybody was in four Auto and I’m like, oh putting two Wheel drive and I stabbed it and it was like,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 4m 47s):

It

Sean P. Holman (1h 4m 47s):

Was like, oh. Huh. Good morning.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 4m 50s):

Good morning everybody.

9 (1h 4m 52s):

Good morning. Good boarded. Fabulous.

Sean P. Holman (1h 4m 58s):

Alright, so here we are. Pulling away, already going off road right now. I can tell a difference with the, the tuning. This feels really nice so far, especially on the kind of broken stuff.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 5m 16s):

What size tires are on there?

Sean P. Holman (1h 5m 17s):

This is the one with the 30 sevens. Oh,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 5m 19s):

Okay. Oh yeah. ’cause that’s right. Did, did the raptor then the Raptor 37. And then this stuff, by

Sean P. Holman (1h 5m 23s):

The way, the, the curb weight on this truck is 5,710 pounds.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 5m 29s):

So I think it’s about 300 and something pounds less than the TRX then, right? Yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 5m 33s):

I think the TRX depends on what, what options you get. Yeah. But I believe the ram TRX is around 6,700.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 5m 44s):

6,700. Did you just say?

Sean P. Holman (1h 5m 47s):

I’m pretty sure. Really? Oh

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 5m 48s):

Yeah. Oh damn. Oh, large Marge right there. And then you’ve got my, my wheels, my tires, my brakes, my roll track, the, the the headache rack I’m about to bolt on and oh my gosh, all the other stuff I’ve, so yeah, I’ve weighed it down. I I’ve probably slowed mine down a second in zero to 60.

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 5s):

Yeah, I think if you don’t have the glass roof and some of that stuff, I think it’s like 6,500 pounds on a T Rx. Somewhere around there. But I. Think you have the glass roof and the higher end interior with all the bits and stuff. I think it kind of gets a couple hundred more pounds anyway. It’s definitely lighter and you can feel it, but not in a bad way. I mean, it’s lighter’s always better for fast. Oh, by the way, remember when I told you that my Jeep was basically like 6,950 pounds? Yeah. When I weighed it. Yeah. My dad and I, we have full like to the gills, everything on it. Roof rack loaded up. Yes. The two of us, everything in there literally packed to the ceiling. So I’m like, dad, we gotta go weigh this thing.

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 46s):

’cause I’ve never weighed with like all this stuff in it and it feels heavy. So we did take a guess.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 6m 54s):

All right. So the last time you waited I think was somewhere just over 6,900 pounds If memory serves, I’m gonna say you clocked in at 70, 72, 50.

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 11s):

That would be nice. I, I def

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 7m 15s):

How for a Jeep? Holy mackerel.

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 18s):

I I definitely had

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 7m 20s):

You didn’t break 8,000, did you?

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 21s):

Okay. 69 40 was my first one. Okay, okay. And I would like to turn your attention to the pod sheds tv.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 7m 31s):

All right. I’m looking up here. Waiting for the screen to change it. Oh, here we go. And 7,700 pounds.

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 44s):

That’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 7m 44s):

One meaty Jeep

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 45s):

Dude. I was, I was literally like, oh, like I didn’t think it was gonna be that much

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 7m 51s):

And it, did it feel like that? So, so going

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 54s):

From a raptor r to that, it felt like that on the highway and like

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 7m 57s):

Just washy. Just yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 59s):

Just heavy But I still got like 13 miles per gallon, even with all the stuff hanging off it. So I’m like, all right. I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 8m 4s):

Mean the engine doesn’t care.

Sean P. Holman (1h 8m 5s):

I mean it doesn’t, it just, I mean it’s not as fast when it has all that quirkiness to it. Now that’s not, I would never offroad with that weight. I mean, we did a little offroading to our campsite, but we stayed in the same spot for the whole weekend. You know, everything was set up and we had 30 steaks for that. We were cooking for one night and food for everybody. So like so

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 8m 22s):

You went home lighter than when You

Sean P. Holman (1h 8m 23s):

Went out? Oh, way lighter. I almost waited on the way home just to see But. I didn’t. But dude, 7,700 pounds. The only reason I bring that up is the Raptor R that 57. My Jeep this weekend weighed 2000 pounds. One ton more than a Raptor R.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 8m 37s):

That’s nuts. Holy mackerel. Yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 8m 40s):

Dude, it, it’s, it’s, yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 8m 42s):

It would’ve been crazy for you to sky your Jeep like off that same jump and then everything

Sean P. Holman (1h 8m 47s):

Comes flying off, off. No, I would’ve bent axles. Wheel would’ve

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 8m 49s):

Been disaster. Your lightener boxes going, flying off.

Sean P. Holman (1h 8m 52s):

Not the Lightning boxes would’ve been fine. Yeah, yeah. They’re, they’re, they’re solidly mounted so

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 8m 56s):

Your roof would come off all

Sean P. Holman (1h 8m 58s):

A hundred percent. Alright, so here we are pulling away.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 9m 6s):

You’re right,

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 7s):

I can’t even super charger in the dust, but it’s a nice gr it’s not super aggressive. That’s on the quiet mode. Sure. I get to play around with it some more already going off road right now. I can tell a difference with the, the tuning. This feels really nice so far, especially on the kind of broken stuff. And we’re in a, a line of raptors and we’re heading out in Johnson Valley to go have some fun.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 9m 33s):

How many trucks were out there?

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 37s):

So I don know if you can hear, I think my group had five, I think there were 10 total and they split ’em into two groups of five. Okay. So I don dunno if you can hear maybe about 45 off road right now. The VA sounds cool. It’s more subdued than I thought it would be, but it’s not annoying at all. Like it’s, it’s not too much. Could actually be a little bit more aggressive in the exhaust department. But it’s nice and smooth. Sounds good. Super healthy. Just hit some pretty big cross ditches out here. And the 37th and the new shocks just soaked them up. There’s a couple butt puckers.

Sean P. Holman (1h 10m 18s):

I’m like, ooh. And then it was nothing.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 10m 19s):

Your voice as it should be. It’s always funny listening to someone off road. They’re like trying dude. Oh yeah, because I’m, we’re

Sean P. Holman (1h 10m 25s):

In C Valley, we’re hitting like every ripple and crest and it was, I mean it was fun. We were playing follow the leader at that point. So I’m trying to keep, you know, stay in line and talk. But

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 10m 34s):

You just mentioned that you had a a, a a a butt pucker incident. A couple of them you had like ledges or something where you’re like, no. Oh,

Sean P. Holman (1h 10m 40s):

Hurt deep cross stitches that were like, you know, a six to 12 inch drop square edged drove right through him. You can definitely feel how solid the frame is. But I’m doing 45, 48 coming down now up into a hill.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 10m 56s):

I gotta know, did you have an open Dr. Pepper can in the center console? Yep. And

Sean P. Holman (1h 10m 59s):

It shook all the bubbles right on out.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 11m 1s):

It’s gonna

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

Say so super easy to pitch the tail on it and get around the corner sideways. It’s just a drift machine. It’s so much fun. That’s over those kind of chop chop washes and stuff. All right, here we go over a little few. Whoops.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 11m 42s):

How solid did it feel?

Sean P. Holman (1h 11m 46s):

It was fine. Sideways through the sand. Hear that blower pick up. Oh man, this thing’s a riot. Super rowdy. Fun, fun to drive. Now we’re back over the, whoops, we’re basically just playing Follow the leader right now with a line of raptor rs. It’s, it’s funny because you can hear me breathing but it, I’m breathing ’cause it’s like, it’s not ’cause I’m winded. It’s because I’m like, as I’m going over stuff, did

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 12m 15s):

You need the TRD seats that have the, the lower

Sean P. Holman (1h 12m 19s):

Portion I? don Dunno, anybody’s driven in those yet. So I have no idea how, how good they are. No, these have the ros, the Ford, ros, they’re super supportive. Now we’re going over some pretty big whoops and impressed with how good this feels. These are not small whoopers. They’re, they’re substantial. All right, that was fun. I just got up with the group. Okay, now we come to this obstacle where it’s about a hundred yard uphill sandy thing that turns into a short little go, go, go, go,

12 (1h 13m 0s):

Go,

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 0s):

Go, go keep valley with rocks. Okay,

12 (1h 13m 2s):

Now you’re, now you’re passing. Good job. Good job.

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 5s):

And so you gotta

12 (1h 13m 6s):

Continue. Okay, next truck. Let’s go

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 9s):

Up. So now you gotta continue momentum. You can hear Lieberman driving up the hill. But. I gotta continue. Momentum. I’ll leave the window down. So hopefully you can hear a little bit better. Good job.

12 (1h 13m 26s):

Come all the way to me. Keep your momentum. Keep your momentum. Keep coming right through. Keep going. Go, go, go, go.

10 (1h 13m 31s):

Alright,

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 32s):

Here I go. Good

12 (1h 13m 33s):

Job. Next truck. Come on.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 13m 35s):

What’s up with the hill? How Steve?

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 38s):

Very

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 13m 42s):

Like spooky steep

12 (1h 13m 44s):

While I’m standing right here.

10 (1h 13m 45s):

Okay.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 13m 50s):

Are you in low here or are you hauling bud?

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 53s):

Dude, stop talking over The truck. We’re trying to hear the awesome V eight sounds. Ask questions at the top of the hill. Will you?

12 (1h 14m 15s):

Good job. Good job. Next truck.

10 (1h 14m 18s):

Alright.

Sean P. Holman (1h 14m 18s):

Made it to the top. So imagine it being a hill. You enter the bottom of the hill at a slight left hand turn. And as you go up, you make a sharp right hand turn for the last third of it. And in that pocket is a bunch of rocks that you have to rock crawl over. So you need the momentum to get up to those rocks. But then you have to have momentum to crest the hill because it’s really steep. And it was pretty amazing. Raptors are not rock crawlers, but because of the 30 sevens and the long travel suspension, they certainly get you through to about anything in the desert that you can find. And this is just one of those perfect examples of, I wanna go fast, but the desert’s always changing. There could be a wash, there could be rocks. You have to be able to be proficient at doing all of it.

Sean P. Holman (1h 14m 59s):

And there was nothing that we threw in Johnson Valley at the Raptor or that it couldn’t handle. Very impressive.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 15m 4s):

Were you smashing the pumpkin on any rocks underneath or was it No,

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 7s):

The box. What do you think I’m rookie?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 15m 8s):

No, no. Well I don’t know how big the rocks are in the middle and the ruts

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 11s):

And stuff like that. You don’t, you don’t dude. Okay. Alright. First lesson about off-roading. Mm. You don’t straddle rocks ever? Well of course

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 15m 19s):

Not on purpose.

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 20s):

No. You don’t ever do it. You put your tires on top of the rocks because that gives you higher ground clearance. All sorts of people, they all think, oh, I wonder if I can straddle this rock and make it. Then they hit it with their diff and they the rear punt whatever. No, that’s not what you do. You put your tires on top off to the side and that gives you ground clearance so you’re not hitting your under clearance. What

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 15m 38s):

If you can’t get to the side?

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

You can.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 15m 40s):

Okay. I didn’t know I could.

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 42s):

I’m telling you. You can. Alright.

10 (1h 16m 1s):

Piece of cake. She’s a big girl.

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 2s):

She’s a big girl. I I like him with white hips.

10 (1h 16m 6s):

Exactly.

12 (1h 16m 8s):

Truck, come on.

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 11s):

Just in case you didn’t know we were,

10 (1h 16m 15s):

We were talking about The truck,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 16m 19s):

We gathered that. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 20s):

So Ford really wants us to see just that the Raptor R is not a one trick pony and that’s capable. And so we’re over going through a little rock garden right now and the suspension feels pretty good. Crawling over rocks. Like I’m, I’m pretty impressed. It’s very compliant. There’s not a lot of head toss. The rear coil sprung rear axle works really well. And now we’re heading down a, a rocky, basically like a downhill, which would be pretty gnarly going up. So you can imagine it’s pretty steep. I I don’t know what the I angle is, but it’s I don dunno, probably 50 degrees down, maybe 45 in sections.

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

It’s, it’s really steep with big chunky hard rocks in it. And The truck is, is just handily it. Nice. Yeah. Did you experience any staying within the suspension limits, which is,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 17m 14s):

Did you experience any brake fade?

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 16s):

Nope.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 17m 17s):

No. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 18s):

Good. You know I’m not bottoming out. I’m not topping out. Having this much travel definitely makes, makes a difference.

13 (1h 17m 29s):

So

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 31s):

Come down off the end here and then of course you’re going fast at the end and it ends in a couple. Whoops. Which is kind of cool. Super Sandy sold to grab these real quick and now an off camber big truck Swallowers right in here. I gotta tell, it’s funny that you can hear more of me just commenting than the truck’s so quiet. So quiet. Yeah, it’s, it is weird. Like it

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 18m 2s):

Doesn’t feel they really should have made it a little bit louder.

Sean P. Holman (1h 18m 4s):

It’s, it’s so it’s just like really docile. Hmm? Too sedate. Oh yeah. This is really rough terrain. Oh it’s a good plate. Sorry for And The truck feels great. All right. Coming up to a rutted sandhill.

Sean P. Holman (1h 18m 48s):

I know it’s not school’s lightning’s a Bronco R ride but for something that you can register that has license plates, this feels pretty good.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 18m 58s):

I have a feeling. That’s why it’s so quiet. They know that most

Sean P. Holman (1h 19m 0s):

People gonna, alright now we’re in the sand dune complex.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 19m 2s):

They’re gonna daily drive this thing.

Sean P. Holman (1h 19m 3s):

Of course they’re gonna let us get on it.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 19m 29s):

That sounded good.

Sean P. Holman (1h 19m 30s):

Yeah, it’s gonna, going all the way to the top and it’s trying to ride. It’s nice to have that kind of horsepower ’cause you’re climbing these big dunes and it’s all rippled. And

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 19m 45s):

What’s the red line on that thing? The rrp m do you know?

Sean P. Holman (1h 19m 49s):

6,000 something. Okay. It’s pretty high. I mean

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 19m 52s):

Mid sixties.

Sean P. Holman (1h 19m 53s):

Yeah. 6,700 maybe.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 19m 54s):

Yeah, the T rx is right in there. 67.

Sean P. Holman (1h 19m 57s):

I was, it’s funny ’cause I got to the top and I was trying to ride this fin and I just got stuck and I just ma used the horsepower to like power my way through the sand. I was like, ah, I’m not getting stuck here. It was pretty

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 20m 6s):

Cool. That would’ve been

Sean P. Holman (1h 20m 6s):

Embarrassing. Nah, I wouldn’t have done it. But. I didn’t do it right. I got out of it with the power. That sounded good. Yeah, I was definitely giggling a lot.

Sean P. Holman (1h 20m 49s):

I think I got, got Candy want this a little bit. So this is the point at the top where I am now stuck like high centered but, but I’m off to the side so I’m side sloping a little bit. Okay. So I’m sure everybody’s like ah, so like a sand dune or what? Yeah, big giant sand dune. And then I’m on the little like spine at the top, like sideways on it and everyone can see you. Oh yeah. And everybody’s probably going, oh crap. Now wait a minute. So were you the only one that went that high on the sand dune? Yeah. ’cause everybody was over on the, there’s like two bowls. Everybody was kind of following the left side. I’m like, well I’m gonna go over here because nobody told me not to. Was your, was your, you like, like a glam, that type of thing. You’d go up to the top of the sand dude and you crest over it and go to the other bowl.

Sean P. Holman (1h 21m 31s):

The front part of The truck crested over and the rear didn’t. Oh. And then I was just kind of hanging there. So what I was doing was I had like the front passenger Wheel was over it and then the other three wheels were on it. Okay. And so was one Wheel drooped out? No. don don’t know. It was inside the car. Okay. But I had one Wheel over the lip and I had to gun it to kind of crab it like this along the top. So I was like driving at like a 45 degree angle. That’s what, that’s what you’re hearing here. But. I. I I didn’t get stuck. You saved it? Mm.

10 (1h 21m 59s):

Is this you panicking

Sean P. Holman (1h 22m 0s):

Quietly? No, it’s me working the steering Wheel and the pedals. But. I don’t hear much.

10 (1h 22m 9s):

You’re

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

Just barely turning the The wheels. Yeah. ’cause I’m side slope so I’m just trying to be really careful. They’re back in the saddle crawl almost. Didn’t crest that dune there so I had to back off of it. Now that we are off the dunes, we’re kind of playing a little bit of follow the leader over just kind of really flowy terrain with some whippers in it. Some cross ditches rolled down the window. So hopefully you can hear the engine. The one thing I’ll say that I’m kind of surprised with is it doesn’t feel high strung at all considering it’s a, you know, a, a smaller V eight with a blower on it.

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

If you get into it, all those 720 horses appear like there’s no, no doubt about it. But if you’re kind of mellow, whoops going this way. But if you’re kind of mellow, we’re going over Whoops right now. Sorry about that. It just feels like a nice Forkey V eight. So after we went through the, the follow the leader, we went out and did this short course that was four miles and that’s what this audio is right here. And if you enjoyed that, I think you really enjoy this because this is me by myself. We did a practice route following somebody and then they just let us go on our own. So it’s me at my pace just explaining what’s going on.

Sean P. Holman (1h 23m 41s):

So I sense a little faster run. Okay sure. That’s you? What’s that? Do you guys carry window up or window down?

14 (1h 23m 49s):

We prefer window up I think. Yeah, keep the clean up to a minimum.

Sean P. Holman (1h 23m 60s):

I appreciate you asking us right Lighting This, this is the off road course. So this is essentially just gonna be a few minutes of me driving a raptor. 70 miles an hour through the desert at 72 right now on the dirt road that leads up to the course. 4,005,000 RPM 5,578. Probably a little fast. It’s just mashing on this road. Super smooth.

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

This road has a lot of undulations and things in the middle that especially is easily absorbing. Still 70 miles an hour. Fourth gear, 4,700 and here coming into the slowdown. Wanted to swap as I got onto the brakes. Alright, now I’m turning off onto the off road kind of Baja portion. So this is your typical desert two track doing about 35, 36, 40 miles an hour.

Sean P. Holman (1h 25m 23s):

Trucks handling it. 50 miles an hour. Alright, coming up on a turn off throttle, powering through back up to 52 55. Alright, coming up to your turn off the throttle, downshift and bunch of whoops. And through the turn. Accelerating out of the turn. Now this is a whipped out section so we’re gonna take this about 25 miles an hour is about the max through here. Bottomed out the suspension at 22. It was about 18 inch.

Sean P. Holman (1h 26m 4s):

Not huge but the frequency is really tight. So gotta give The truck a chance to respond. 25 is about the sweet spot here. Alright, coming out of this back onto a little faster road. Left turn. We’re off to the side. Massive whips in the middle of this road again. 25 sort of the sweet spot through here. Turning left again a little bit faster. About 40 miles an hour, A few whoops.

Sean P. Holman (1h 26m 50s):

Really loose soil. Whoops, hard pack all mixed together. High ridge in the center where the tires have dug down. Coming around the corner right turn heading toward the dry lake bed. 45 miles an hour. Got away from the whoops. ’cause now we’re going parallel to the alluvial fan, not perpendicular. And we’re turning. So we’re getting back into a few little whoops here. Just soaks them up nicely. Not bottoming out. Averaging about 30 through here. This is a bigger whooped out section.

Sean P. Holman (1h 27m 31s):

These are spread apart about the same size as the other ones, but the frequency’s not as tight. So you can go a little faster. So 37, 38 truck’s flowing through here. Just breathing all that travel. 38, 39. Whoops. Here we go. 40 through the, whoops. These are little ripples, like six to 12 inches. Alright, left hand turn. Downshifting. Very responsive with the paddles right now.

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 11s):

Heading down to the dry lake bed. And this is fast but there’s a big gotcha at the edge so we’ll be slowing down for that. 55, 58, 59 60. You’ll hear me let off shortly to navigate the whoops or the gotcha. Here we go through the whoops. Now slowing down big gotcha at the end of this. There it is. Okay, now we’re on the dry lake bed and this is like a autocross course.

Sean P. Holman (1h 28m 54s):

We will pull up. Wait for a turn. There’s a truck in front of us. Alright, so now we are entering the autocross course, which is on a dry lake bed. And we’re gonna use the throttle to bring us around. We’re in Baja four Wheel drive mode. Right turn. This is a decreasing radius. Left turn tails hanging out, steering with the throttle. Now we got it back to a right turn. Coming back to a left turn. You’re in the dirt don. Don’t understand why I’m hearing like skidding. That’s the tires trying to get traction on the dry lake bed.

Sean P. Holman (1h 29m 35s):

Oh that’s the lake bed surface. So, oh, okay. You came outta the mountains and then you got into the dry lake bed. And then that’s the very end of this sort of autocross course, which was the end of the whole Baja off road course. I mean it almost, it sounds like asphalt. It’s about as hard as asphalt. Almost as hard. And now we’re at the stop box. We’re stopping here and we’re gonna do a wide open throttle. So I’m gonna crack the window so you can hear it. Here we go. There we go. That was 65 miles an hour and we’ve stopped in the braking stop box and now we are pretty cool.

Sean P. Holman (1h 30m 22s):

65

12 (1h 30m 23s):

Miles an hour as you go up the ramp and The truck releases over the jump. Just back off the throttle and let The truck land. And then turn around, turn to your right, come back, kind of along this greenery here and we’ll we’ll try to get time for, for two jumps.

Sean P. Holman (1h 30m 38s):

Alright, I gotta put on my hands device. Is it photographers

12 (1h 30m 41s):

Get out and shoot. This

Sean P. Holman (1h 30m 43s):

Sounds like we’re about to go do a jump. Alright, so now I’m lining up for the jump. Where did I get to hit it at? About 60 miles an hour. Maybe a little bit faster. We’ll see I got a Hans device on. Everything’s done. Super safety and I just got the thumbs up. So here we go. Alright, we’re at 55 coming up to the jump 60 right here. Here’s the jump. Nice. So smooth. Wow. So I kind of got off the jump a little caddy wampus.

Sean P. Holman (1h 31m 24s):

’cause as I, it was accelerating through 60, the The truck kind of went off to the side just from the torque and it was, it was awesome ’cause I I, I felt it coming and I, you know, I didn’t expect it to be a harsh landing or anything. But I was just a little catty wampus and it landed freaking awesome. So that was the first of three jumps, but it was, that was Johnny Lieberman. It’s pretty cool. That’s a lot of jump. And I, I think what did you think? That’s a lot of jump. I’ve done this, we did this, we did TRX and Raptor R right here. Yeah. And I think the

15 (1h 31m 59s):

TR actually destroyed it, but it was a better

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

Jump. I mean it’s still a, a manufacturer still let us leave the ground. You’re in the air. You could,

15 (1h 32m 9s):

You know, there’s a lot more jumping to be done

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 14s):

By the way. Johnny said he wants to come down here and come in studio and do the show with us. I’m like really? Let’s do it. Get on down here. Absolutely.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 32m 20s):

So, but he’s in Silver Lake, isn’t he like up? Yeah, he’s in

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 23s):

Hollywood. Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what, which neighborhood

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 32m 25s):

Was low Ffel or somewhere like that. Something like

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 26s):

That. Yeah. He’s like, I’ll just Uber down there and we’ll just smoke cigars and drink whiskey and hang out the, I’m like, yeah, he’s gonna Uber.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 32m 32s):

Wait, Uber, that’s what he said. Why would he Uber?

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 34s):

Because he is rich. He’s Johnny Lieberman. But

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 32m 36s):

What he’s got a million, like he’s always got a car.

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

So it was funny. So so we’re in Palm Springs at this thing right at the hotel and he’s like, Hey, what do you wanna do after dinner? And I’m like, don don’t know. He goes, you wanna go find a cigar lounge? I’m like, yep. So he and I found a, there’s an Indian casino that I had. I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 32m 52s):

Saw the photo. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 52s):

So we went and smoked some cigars and that’s how he, now

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 32m 56s):

Is he gonna Uber down here because he wants to drink? That would be smart maybe. Yeah, sure. I’ve got no problem with that. Obviously But,

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

I just, maybe he’ll have a Tesla from Elon that will drive itself down here.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 33m 4s):

I mean he’s got so many vehicles to choose from. Strange. But no wait, how is he as a driver? He’s driven everything. I mean literally I’ve watched him on the literature channel.

Sean P. Holman (1h 33m 13s):

He’s a great, he’s a great on-road driver. I think he’s a, a decent off-road driver or I’m probably the opposite. I’m probably a decent on-road driver, but a pretty good off-road driver just ’cause that’s where he lives and where I live. Alright, we just got the green light to go faster on the next jump. So we’re gonna do it again. Let see if we can get up to about 65, 68, somewhere in there. And it’s always fun when a manufacturer trusts a bunch of journalists with different skill sets to go auger their trucks off of know drums to the desert. This isn’t like a and

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 33m 50s):

This is not a $40,000 truck.

Sean P. Holman (1h 33m 53s):

No, this is $120,000 truck.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 33m 54s):

Right. That’s what I’m saying is that

Sean P. Holman (1h 33m 56s):

With, with journalists of all, there were people that should not have been driving out there. Is that true? They’re not just not off road, they’re just like, yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 34m 4s):

Did any hurt

Sean P. Holman (1h 34m 5s):

Vehicles? No, no, no, no, no, no. But there’s just, there’s people who a manufacturer sends out invites and then whatever the freelancer says yes or the magazine says I’m sending this person, they don’t get to cherry pick who they’re sending. So you get people of all different skill levels, which is

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 34m 18s):

YouTubers and stuff like that. All

Sean P. Holman (1h 34m 20s):

Of it. I like when manufacturers put together, there’s a few Ford competitors are very good at this of putting together like a good driver’s wave and they put together a bunch of automotive journalists who are trusted and known for their off-road skill. And then we have a much more fun program. ’cause you’re not slowed down by the lowest common denominator. That being said, Ford puts on a really robust off-road program, probably as good as any of the manufacturers in terms of really letting you see the capabilities of the vehicle and letting you have some fun. Alright, now we’re heading back to the staging area where we will attempt our jump again, but this time a little faster. Alright. Right here we go. We’re gonna do a little faster this time.

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 8s):

Are we to hit it? 65? Oh that was 70. Yes. Oh, that was awesome. We air the crap out of that. It’s funny. Listen

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 35m 21s):

To that laugh. You went up a couple locked discs. Yeah, it was, I’ve not heard you laugh like that in a while.

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 25s):

Well

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 35m 26s):

Be funnier is what you said. And then maybe I’ll Oh

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 28s):

Man.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 35m 28s):

Oh look at that.

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 30s):

That was great. And we just slow The truck down and head back to the start. So there you go. That was a, a nice little loop with the new F-150 Raptor R, which is a fantastically fun vehicle to drive. So I don’t think if you’re listening, you had as much fun as I did, but hopefully that was enjoyable.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 35m 51s):

Well, damn, that sounded crazy fun and I wish I was there. I know I would not have actually gotten an invite, but I’m glad that you were there to bring it to life for us. Yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 36m 2s):

But you can’t really complain ’cause you were just in the Bronco r with our man Brad.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 36m 7s):

True But. I did not get air. I would’ve left him. Really? No. Didn’t. Huh?

Sean P. Holman (1h 36m 11s):

That’s a shame.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 36m 12s):

I mean I, we Nor did you drive? No, no. But you

Sean P. Holman (1h 36m 15s):

Got an e ticket ride. I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 36m 16s):

Did. I was, oh no, no complaints about being in that, that Bronco Dr. But like, and at 90 plus miles an hour going through the desert. It was awesome. It was awesome. But. I didn’t, we didn’t catch any air. I don’t we didn’t we a minute. Wait a minute. Or did you?

Sean P. Holman (1h 36m 31s):

We

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 36m 32s):

Might have, now that I think back,

Sean P. Holman (1h 36m 33s):

There’s just so much travel.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 36m 35s):

I think we might have come off, but you’re right, there’s so much travel. don don’t think I was. I do remember like feeling no Gs for a second. But. I. Dunno if the wheels were still on the ground because just say

Sean P. Holman (1h 36m 45s):

They were off. Nobody knows.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 36m 46s):

Oh man. We were flying through.

Sean P. Holman (1h 36m 47s):

There you go.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 36m 48s):

Attaboy. All right man, great episode. Thank you Holman for bringing that to us. Appreciate it. If you guys want away, well we were gonna take your email. We didn’t get a chance. We’ll do it on the next episode, I promise. Truck show podcast at gmail dot com.

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

The truck show. The truck show. The truck show won. Whoa. And I still have to touch on the next episode about my favorite version of the F-150, which we didn’t talk about here because we ran outta time. Can I guess?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 13s):

No,

Sean P. Holman (1h 37m 14s):

I can’t guess what it was. Nope. Really? Nope. Nope. We’ll, we’ll talk about it on the next show. So your

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 19s):

Favorite F-150 of all

Sean P. Holman (1h 37m 20s):

The, of all the things you can go to the dealership and buy right now. It is not

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 23s):

The rap with 720

Sean P. Holman (1h 37m 24s):

Horsepower

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 25s):

And live be shocks.

Sean P. Holman (1h 37m 26s):

No.

17 (1h 37m 28s):

Hmm.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 29s):

What the

Sean P. Holman (1h 37m 30s):

Hell. So I, this is the Raptor R We’ll do, we’ll do a little more F-150 in the next one. But in the meantime we want to hear your feedback. So please hit us up at Truck show podcast at gmail dot com. Myself at Holman at truck show podcast dot com or Lightning Lightning at truck show podcast dot com. And then on social at Truck Show Podcast at LBC Lightning. At Sean P Holman. And we want to hear from you

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 56s):

Or you get what are signaling to me. I thought

18 (1h 37m 58s):

You were gonna do the five star hotline. Oh,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 37m 59s):

I don’t. But I should have, yeah, we can talk about the five star hotline.

18 (1h 38m 1s):

6 5 7 2 0 5 6 1 0 5. I gave Lightning the five for five star, because I thought he was gonna, I didn’t know what that meant. Put the ball down and I thought you were gonna pick it up.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 9s):

No, I just whipped it. I mean, you’re doing like a high five at me. I’m like, what? What is, no, I’m

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 13s):

Saying five. Five star. Like

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 14s):

Five

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

Star. Highlights.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 15s):

Highlights. Well, are we gonna do five star reviews? Like,

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 17s):

I mean, well listen, give us a call. We wanna hear from you. And then also if you’d be so kind and leave us a five star review. I think

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 23s):

That this fell totally apart

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 24s):

Right at the end. Horrible. Because I thought we were in a flow and you’re just staring at me blankly. I didn’t know what No, you’re holding up five

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 29s):

Fingers. I, what does that even mean?

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 31s):

We still need some Know your notes before. We can do another segment there. Wait,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 34s):

Hold on, stop. Did you give them the phone number? Six five seven I 5 6 1 5.

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 37s):

I were here. You were sitting right here.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 38m 38s):

But. I did it. I don’t, I’m not listening to you though. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 41s):

All right, then lighting’s checked out. Also, head over to Truck Show Podcast. See you guys later. No, just would you stop, just sit there? You can be checked out, but you still have to be at the board. Okay. You have to push the buttons or something. Alright. Head over to truck show podcast dot com. You can go to our featured products page where we’ve got some discounts and stuff for you there. Or go to our events tab and then you can also find out what’s happening in your neck of the woods. If you’ve got an event coming in your area that you wanna promote or that we should know about, whether it’s a regular deal, once a week, once a month, whatever, or once a year. Give us a call or shoot us an email and we’ll add that to the calendar. Or

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 39m 16s):

Hit the button that says Buy t-shirts. Because Yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 21s):

Don’t worry, it’s, it’s coming. Yeah. Easy, easy. Go play your avocado song or something if you need to get those shakes out of you. All right.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 39m 32s):

Hey, I’ll pull us outta this rut. This is where we think Nissan. Oh

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 36s):

Yeah. Great. Great segue. Let’s go from Lightning’s antics right into our presenting sponsor. All right. Well, Nissan is one of our favorite truck manufacturers. They make one of the best trucks you can buy if you’re in the market for a mid-size truck. Head on down to your local Nissan dealership where you could Test, Drive, a Nissan Frontier. We like the Pro four X and the Hard Body. Or you could head over to Nissan usa dot com where you can see all the different options and colors that you can get your frontier in. And I hear they got some good deals going on right now. So, oh, by the way, if you head on down to your local Nissan dealership, there’s still some really crazy lease deals right now. And Leafs. There are and Arias, dude, did you Dude, I saw a leaf lease deal yesterday for $90 a month.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 40m 15s):

No, no, yes. No, no, no you didn’t, dude. If

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 18s):

You just need basic transportation, $90

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 40m 20s):

A month. Jump on

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 21s):

That People. In fact, one of our listeners emailed me, actually two of our listeners have bought Arias since I got mine. True story. Really? They emailed me, Mike and Ray, both of them went and got arias. They’re like, Hey,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 40m 35s):

I hope you’re receiving a commission. We were.

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 37s):

We were. Yeah. The show, the sponsorship of our show. It’s funny ’cause Ray bought a Ram rebel based on our advice as well. So you kidding? He bought two vehicles ’cause of this show. Dang. It was pretty good. So he was looking for a commuter car for his wife. Go Ray, heard about the ra. They went, checked it out, fell in love with it, took it home. My buddy Mike, same thing. And they wouldn’t have known about it if it weren’t for The, Truck, Show, Podcast.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 40m 57s):

No kidding. We’re doing some good. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 59s):

So go get a truck, go get a ev, whatever. Just go to Nissan. That’s all we’re saying. Alright.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 4s):

And a yes, banks power offers performance parts for Ford and for gm, but right now I’m talking to you Ram guys, with the Cummins 6.7 liter. Or maybe I’ll, I’ll bend the rules for the five nine guys, if you’re looking for some parts for your truck, hit me up Lightning at truck show podcast dot com. I will hook a brother up with a discount. And as part of the deal, I will give you the brand new banks t-shirt with the 6.7 liter Cummins diesel blueprint on it. It’s super dope. So Lightning at churchill podcast dot com for the hookup. This will be just for this week only. Just you hearing me If, if it’s Do it now. If the next episode is already

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

Out, you’re done. It’s, it’s over. Don’t, don’t bother the man. Don’t

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 45s):

Bother me. Exactly.

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 46s):

All right. I’m, I’m holding in my hand the, the tube of lube. It’s the Amsoil Dominator synthetic. And it’s funny ’cause I was reading through and it’s all, it’s, you know, this is the NLGI number two, by the way. Do

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 41m 57s):

You have the, the gun for that? I do.

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 59s):

Okay. High speed, high temp, extreme pressure. And then when You read on the back, it says High performance bearing and chassis lubrication for all race applications on snow, dirt, water, and track designed for superior protection of bearings operating under high speed, high heat, and heavy loads. That’s you, I got that part handled.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 16s):

That’s you with your 7,700 pound Jeep.

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 18s):

That’s fully loaded though. Yeah. Well actually I didn’t have gas in the back or full tank. Oh

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 22s):

My God.

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 22s):

So it could go higher.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 23s):

It’s, it’s loaded like that quite often actually. Not so that, that grease will do well. Yeah, once

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 29s):

A year. Once a year. That heavy. It’s, it’s, I would say my normal, like I’m going out to the desert by myself. I’m, I’m probably

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 36s):

68, 69. So look, when you’re at mso dot com, pick up some greases and some aerosols while you’re buying your favorite,

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 44s):

Like your glass cleaner. Or what’s the mud stuff

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 46s):

You love? Mudslinger, mudslinger, mud slinger.

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 48s):

Spray it on and all that stuff. Slides on.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 42m 50s):

I’m telling you, you you think this is like plug ola, dude, I’m telling you. Get a can of Mud Slinger, spray it on the inside of your Fender liners or, and then, and then spray it liberally on all your black bumpers and watch them come alive. I’m Dude Lightning told you to do it. I wanna hear back from you. All right.

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 7s):

Am oil the first in synthetics and also making your black plastics come alive?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 43m 12s):

That’s what he said. 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 Kahn. 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. Some vehicles may have been harmed during the making of this podcast.

19 (1h 43m 39s):

Yes. Oh, awesome.

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

The crap out of that.