Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Powerflex! - Suspension & Bushings

Transcript

Powerflex! - Suspension & Bushings · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Grand Touring Motorsport started as a social group of car enthusiasts,
• 0:04
  but we've expanded into all sorts of motor sports disciplines and we
• 0:08
  want to share our stories with you.
• 0:10
  Years of racing wrenching and motorsports experience brings together
• 0:14
  a topnotch collection of knowledge and information through our podcast.
• 0:18
  Break Fix.
• 0:22
  Suspension bushings are some of the most highly stressed components fitted to
• 0:25
  a vehicle and the least talked about.
• 0:28
  They undergo enormous strains in the most arduous of conditions
• 0:31
  with no maintenance or lubrication.
• 0:33
  Having old, tired, broken bushings or even bushings made of poor quality
• 0:38
  materials can cause excessive tire wear, breaking instability, and poor handling.
• 0:43
  This is the single biggest reason you can instantly tell the difference.
• 0:47
  Between driving a 3-year-old car and a new one.
• 0:50
  That's right, Brad.
• 0:51
  However, even new cars will benefit from upgraded components, especially bushings.
• 0:57
  Enter Powerflex, an engineering company with an arsenal of innovative
• 1:01
  solutions for failure prone and poorly performing stock parts.
• 1:05
  And because of their superior design, they offer much more effective control
• 1:10
  of your suspension components to a much greater extent than the OE items.
• 1:15
  And with us tonight from Powerflex, USA is Jake Palini from the Sales and
• 1:20
  Customer Service Department, as well as Powerflex owner James Clay, who some of
• 1:25
  you might also recognize as the president of Bimmer World to discuss all these
• 1:31
  crucial components of your vehicle.
• 1:33
  So welcome to the show, James and Jake.
• 1:35
  Awesome.
• 1:36
  Thanks for having us.
• 1:36
  Thanks for having us.
• 1:37
  There's many of us, at least in our world, that already might use Powerflex
• 1:42
  components, especially on the German cars.
• 1:44
  They've kind of become the staple that we run to, but a lot of us
• 1:47
  don't know where Powerflex came from.
• 1:49
  So let's kick off this episode like a lot of our other ones, talking
• 1:53
  about the origin story of Powerflex.
• 1:56
  Yeah, it's, it's funny you say German cars, which must mean
• 2:00
  that we did our job, right?
• 2:01
  Because Powerflex, or our version of Powerflex, our term at the helm
• 2:06
  started with our sales of BMW bushings.
• 2:09
  This was super early on in my career as a Bimmer world guy, and so
• 2:15
  this would put it around early two thousands or something like that.
• 2:18
  I had found power flake bushings.
• 2:19
  I loved the parts.
• 2:20
  Uh, I used them on on my cars.
• 2:23
  On cars.
• 2:23
  We were building, which, you know, small workshop, we weren't building a
• 2:26
  ton of cars and we had started selling parts as bier world at that point.
• 2:31
  So we were selling some of these things.
• 2:33
  I just absolutely loved them.
• 2:35
  They started to become more popular in that, in the BMW world became
• 2:39
  popular enough that we were selling so many that they said, Hey, you
• 2:43
  know, we have a US distributor, but their sales are 90% your sales, so.
• 2:49
  Would you like to be the US distributor?
• 2:51
  So we, we raised our hand, said, sure.
• 2:53
  And, and basically that was just a way to get more product because
• 2:55
  we were just really struggling to get enough of this stuff.
• 2:57
  It was well received.
• 2:58
  People loved it in the, in the BMW world, having a powerflex bushing
• 3:03
  with a lifetime warranty, which is one of our hallmarks, I suppose.
• 3:06
  But having that lifetime warranty was pretty awesome,
• 3:08
  especially when urethane was.
• 3:11
  Starting to be a thing, but not really universally a great
• 3:15
  thing in the automotive world.
• 3:16
  So the early urethane, I remember some of the guys were taking stock bushings and
• 3:20
  of course stock bushings made to a price point, usually outta rubber U usually
• 3:25
  with a lot of voids to kind of reduce the NVH noise vibration harshness, which is
• 3:29
  something I'm sure we'll talk about a bit.
• 3:31
  People were taking those stock parts and filling them with urethane.
• 3:35
  And so I remember it's like two part stuff you buy at McMaster
• 3:37
  car and it comes out red.
• 3:39
  And if you do it at the right temperature, maybe it works out okay.
• 3:42
  And if it's not quite right, it crystallizes.
• 3:44
  And a lot of the solutions in the market were kind of made of
• 3:48
  that material or something real close to it that wasn't so great.
• 3:51
  So to have a company like Powerflex with a product with a lifetime
• 3:54
  warranty, and then again, not just a product that fills a hole, but.
• 3:58
  A well-engineered product with specific voids, specific hardware,
• 4:03
  you know, all this stuff.
• 4:04
  We've done this for a bunch of years, uh, so that was early two thousands.
• 4:08
  But the parent company, Powerflex is a UK based company.
• 4:11
  So were they building these components for British cars first
• 4:15
  or did they start with BMWs as well?
• 4:17
  So they started with European cars and now we're seeing it more in the us.
• 4:23
  I, I assume Jake would say that we've, we see a lot of BMW, but
• 4:27
  we also see Porsche, Volkswagen, Audi is a, is a big thing for us.
• 4:31
  Yeah, they're, they're huge as well as some domestic stuff
• 4:34
  is getting pretty big too.
• 4:36
  Like the Ford Focus, uh, we're seeing some stuff for the S five 50 Mustangs.
• 4:40
  We've actually just recently seen stuff released for the
• 4:43
  FJ Cruiser, the forerunner.
• 4:45
  Tacoma.
• 4:46
  That's new stuff for us.
• 4:47
  'cause that's sort of almost kind of breaking into the off-road market,
• 4:50
  which has potential to be huge.
• 4:51
  So, you know, interesting.
• 4:53
  But even though we're kind of on Ford Focus, Ford Focus is a European car.
• 4:57
  Right?
• 4:57
  That's a, that's a European market car that now we get in the us And kind of
• 5:00
  same thing on the, on the Mustang that the reason that we started being on
• 5:04
  the Mustang is because that became a global car instead of just a US car.
• 5:08
  Powerflex in the UK was absolutely focused on European cars, had good
• 5:13
  adoption from those drivers of those major marks, the BMW, the
• 5:16
  Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, et cetera.
• 5:18
  And then just based on where they're located, based on the cars that
• 5:22
  they could get for development.
• 5:23
  Then of course we had.
• 5:24
  Volvo Saab.
• 5:25
  Yeah, it just, it European manufacturer.
• 5:28
  So that's really why the focus became that, I suppose, as, as they started out.
• 5:32
  So was the focus the first car they developed something for,
• 5:35
  or was there something else?
• 5:36
  And I'd say the focus, the attention focus.
• 5:39
  Ah, yeah.
• 5:41
  Yeah.
• 5:41
  Okay.
• 5:42
  So let's play, who wants to be a Millionaire?
• 5:43
  What was the first car that Powerflex developed something for?
• 5:46
  You know, that's funny.
• 5:47
  I don't even know that.
• 5:48
  And, and so Powerflex uk, their company started about two years
• 5:51
  before I started Bimmer World, which is our umbrella company for
• 5:54
  Powerflex, USA, I believe that.
• 5:57
  It started with BMW, Volkswagen, Audi, and then some, some oddball stuff.
• 6:02
  And I say oddball, gosh odd for us, alpha Triumph.
• 6:06
  Some of those, you know, we would call 'em historic cars, but at, at the time
• 6:11
  they were certainly more active cars and, and cars that people were modifying and,
• 6:15
  and wanted a, a quality bushing for yeah, some other obscure stuff like Lotus.
• 6:20
  We, we offer pretty much an entire range of bushings for the Lotus Lease, the
• 6:25
  Agora, uh, some for the Esprit, I believe.
• 6:28
  It's a lot of weird stuff in there.
• 6:29
  Read stuff that the UK guys love, right?
• 6:31
  Yeah, so to your point, James, you know, back in the day, even when you
• 6:36
  looked at motor mounts, which were a big deal, going to urethane motor
• 6:39
  mounts, now you have companies, BFI, you have ECS putting out their own.
• 6:44
  And back in the early days for the Volkswagens, we're talking early
• 6:46
  days is in the two thousands.
• 6:47
  VF engineering was a big name making urethane motor mounts.
• 6:50
  There's probably, you know, other.
• 6:52
  Bunch of others.
• 6:53
  So there's different durometers of urethane, right?
• 6:56
  Which means the strength and the density of the urethane.
• 6:59
  What it can withstand.
• 7:00
  It's interesting when you dig into that stuff, because not all urethane
• 7:03
  components are created equal.
• 7:05
  Does Powerflex have its own proprietary formula, their own like standards?
• 7:09
  I know there's a purple series and a black series and different things.
• 7:13
  Do you want to kind of expand upon that and, and just talk about,
• 7:16
  you know, what makes them special?
• 7:17
  So you're going right to one component of our parts, the, the urethane
• 7:22
  itself, taking a step back out of that.
• 7:25
  Powerflex is an engineering company.
• 7:26
  I mentioned earlier that at, at the time there was a, there was a bit of
• 7:30
  whatever fits a hole, we need to pour this thing in a hole and basically take
• 7:33
  up the same space as a stock bushing.
• 7:35
  And that's, that's your urethane part.
• 7:37
  Powerflex approaches this differently.
• 7:39
  Every part we do is engineered some of the basic urethane bushings.
• 7:42
  We, we would call a top half bushing.
• 7:43
  It's a two pieces go in from either side and then a stainless
• 7:46
  steel sleeve in the middle.
• 7:48
  And it's just a, a real general approach to a bushing.
• 7:50
  But we have a lot of more unique bushings up to some of these
• 7:55
  things that are mono ball.
• 7:57
  Urethane mono ball, which is pretty super cool.
• 7:59
  We, we also have mono balls encased in urethane.
• 8:02
  We have all kinds of tools at our disposal from the engineering
• 8:05
  standpoint to make something that is going to last well, et cetera.
• 8:08
  But the urethane specifically, yes.
• 8:10
  What we do is proprietary.
• 8:12
  In fact, it's, we just got a surprise for one of the, one of the components that
• 8:16
  only we use in our urethane A as well.
• 8:19
  It's used in another industry, clothing industry for your Lycra and spandex.
• 8:23
  Interesting.
• 8:23
  It's a small component in that, but that's unique to us and we know that
• 8:28
  because all of a sudden in the world material shortage, it's gotten kind
• 8:31
  of wild and hard to find that stuff.
• 8:33
  So we have a unique urethane.
• 8:35
  It's part of the reason we can offer a lifetime warranty because we do
• 8:37
  things a little bit differently beyond the control process and so forth
• 8:41
  in the actual manufacturing of it.
• 8:42
  The formula is unique.
• 8:44
  And then you mentioned we have different durometers, so we do have.
• 8:47
  You said a black series, which we, we have the Power Flakes black series,
• 8:50
  which is our 95 Durometer, pretty stiff stuff for a more track focused car.
• 8:56
  If you have a track car, if it's really hopped up, you'll
• 8:58
  get all black series stuff.
• 9:00
  And then our other series, our, our primary series is just.
• 9:04
  The Powerflex series.
• 9:05
  So it's not that it's purple.
• 9:06
  It could be purple, it could also be yellow, purple.
• 9:10
  Would being an 80 durometer, yellow being a 70.
• 9:13
  Durometer could be red, which is a 65, 65.
• 9:16
  It could be black if black happens to be the right durometer for the application.
• 9:20
  So it could be that 90.
• 9:21
  So we have that full range, but again, it's an engineered product
• 9:25
  and we need to decide per car, per location what the correct urethane.
• 9:31
  To use what, how much, um, you need.
• 9:34
  So in, in my history, early on in those, in the BMWs, the old five series, six
• 9:38
  series, these for us big heavy cars, not, you know, they've, they've added
• 9:42
  another thousand pounds to 'em in modern times, but big heavy cars and all the
• 9:46
  braking load is carried by this one bushing in a thrust arm in the front.
• 9:51
  That thing has to be a black bushing because the amount of load you're throwing
• 9:54
  in this thing, and, and you know, guys were modifying different series parts.
• 9:58
  There was a big scramble early on when I was getting into BM BMW stuff of,
• 10:02
  well it's gonna live in this location.
• 10:04
  Turns out Powerflex does.
• 10:06
  But in that location.
• 10:07
  Needs to be a black 90 durometer bushing.
• 10:09
  Makes sense.
• 10:11
  That leads me to another question in some other industries related
• 10:15
  to the performance side of, of the automotive world that we all live in.
• 10:19
  When there isn't a part available, I'm sure the catalog is extremely
• 10:23
  large for Powerflex, but when there isn't a part available, is there the
• 10:27
  ability to send it in and say, Hey, can you create this for my, you know,
• 10:31
  70 8:00 AM C Rambler or whatever, you know, I'm just making this up.
• 10:35
  Is that an available option with Powerflex or is it gotta be on the shelf?
• 10:39
  It's gotta be something that everybody wants.
• 10:41
  It's not a lot of custom work being done, but if there's enough demand,
• 10:45
  we've seen it in the past where they've actually taken that into consideration.
• 10:49
  Say, Hey, nobody else offers this solution for this.
• 10:51
  It might as well be us.
• 10:52
  I don't remember exactly which model Porsche, but it's a uh, Porsche rear
• 10:56
  trailing arm bushing that you cannot buy by itself from the factory.
• 11:00
  You have to buy the entire trailing arm, which will cost you upwards
• 11:04
  of a thousand something dollars.
• 11:06
  When you could just now come through us, replace the bushing, which is 99% of the
• 11:10
  time, the only thing that goes bad, and save yourself a lot of money and have
• 11:14
  a way better product with a lifetime warranty, which is something you're also
• 11:17
  not gonna get out of an OEM product.
• 11:19
  If there's enough demand for something like that, then, then yeah,
• 11:22
  they'll uh, certainly look into it.
• 11:24
  We have some one-off parts like that.
• 11:25
  We have, we have something for a Jeep Grand Wagoner that's, or a Grand Cherokee.
• 11:31
  That's, that's a little bit odd for us in general.
• 11:34
  We got over 10,000 SKUs, so if we don't have the part for your car, I'd
• 11:38
  be surprised if it fits our model.
• 11:40
  So, you know, your example was a MC Rambler.
• 11:43
  That's probably not a Powerflex car, so probably for you, unless
• 11:47
  you had a hundred other buddies that thought that was a really good
• 11:50
  idea, we're not in the business of.
• 11:52
  Custom solutions.
• 11:53
  We're in the business of production and we have to be, to be able
• 11:56
  to produce at the quality we do.
• 11:58
  We have to have some volume to be able to make molds that we can spend as much money
• 12:03
  as we spend on molds to be able to produce the level of product that we produce.
• 12:06
  So there, you know, I'd love to say we do everything, but we certainly, the market
• 12:10
  we serve, we cover it extremely well.
• 12:13
  And if there's something we don't cover, that's a surprise to us.
• 12:16
  We picked up 2000 twos, BM bmw, 2000 twos.
• 12:18
  We, we got a lot of requests for those and we said, you know, it is a whatever,
• 12:22
  50-year-old car, 60-year-old car.
• 12:24
  Sure if there's enough interest, we will do that for you.
• 12:26
  You got me really excited there because you said Jeep Grand Cherokee,
• 12:29
  which is what I was actually hinting towards because I need some bushing
• 12:34
  upgrades on my Jeep Grand Cherokee.
• 12:36
  So now that I know you got something, I'm definitely gonna be looking in
• 12:39
  the catalog to see what's there.
• 12:41
  So you gotta make sure it's the right one though.
• 12:43
  That's true.
• 12:43
  That's true.
• 12:44
  It's weird that Jeep Grand Cherokee does stick out.
• 12:47
  I mean, we make one part for one series of that vehicle one production
• 12:51
  series and stuff like that happens with Powerflex because nobody else
• 12:55
  makes a part that will hold up.
• 12:56
  So the fact that we can engineer a solution that we have a lifetime warranty,
• 13:00
  but it doesn't matter about the warranty.
• 13:01
  We have the lifetime warranty because we make a part that's a lifetime part.
• 13:05
  So our ability to make a true lifetime part for some applications, and if nobody
• 13:09
  in the aftermarket has been able to do it, then sometimes we raise our hand
• 13:12
  and say, sure, we'll knock that out.
• 13:14
  Jake and I were talking a little bit before this, I don't know if you've
• 13:16
  ever been to London, or I think this was more prevalent maybe 10, 15 years ago,
• 13:21
  when they had all those black London taxi cabs, because they had about a
• 13:23
  hundred thousand of them out on the road.
• 13:25
  They had a power steering rack bushing that failed about
• 13:30
  every six to eight months.
• 13:31
  And given the number of those things out on the road, and of course the,
• 13:35
  you know, the constantly running around, that was a huge expense.
• 13:38
  So they called Powerflex and said, we can't solve this problem.
• 13:41
  Can you make a bushing for us?
• 13:43
  So we made exactly one run of bushings to cover all the cars
• 13:46
  and never had to make 'em again.
• 13:48
  So again, if you happen to have a London taxi cab, we would have that unique one
• 13:52
  bushing for you because we are the guys.
• 13:55
  In the world that can solve a problem.
• 13:56
  Nice.
• 13:57
  So, you know, that's really awesome to get the background of the company
• 14:00
  and you know, for those of you that are listening, that are using
• 14:02
  Powerflex, you know, it's good stuff.
• 14:04
  I mean, I highly recommend it.
• 14:05
  It's in our Volkswagen, BMW and Miata builds.
• 14:08
  If you go to our website, it's always listed on our buildout sheets,
• 14:11
  especially for the Volkswagens struck mounts on those cars are notoriously
• 14:15
  terrible in the fourth generations.
• 14:17
  And the same is true of the real trailing on bushings.
• 14:19
  Now, I'm probably throwing out for the new listener a bunch of
• 14:22
  terms that they don't understand.
• 14:24
  All of this stuff is related.
• 14:25
  To suspension.
• 14:26
  And what's really cool about the Powerflex website is they have an what they call
• 14:30
  an alignment one oh one page where they kind of go through all of the terminology
• 14:36
  and, and different pieces and, and parts of how your suspension works.
• 14:39
  And so we wanted to spend some time with Jake and James and talk about this so you
• 14:43
  guys could learn more about the dark art and kind of black magic of setting up a
• 14:48
  car and what's involved in that and how those powerflex components play into that.
• 14:52
  So I think we really need to start off with, you know, that classic rule of
• 14:55
  three, the three big things we always hear about in suspension and alignment,
• 14:58
  which is camber, castor, and tow.
• 15:01
  And you've probably heard about Canberra the most.
• 15:03
  So let's start with that and unpack that idea and then dive into the
• 15:08
  other two and then learn about how they relate to each other.
• 15:11
  Alright.
• 15:12
  I feel like I can talk about this stuff and, and my, uh, viewpoint is more from
• 15:17
  track, car, race, car point of view, and certainly, and I, and I can relate that
• 15:20
  back to street stuff, but that's, that's my foundation or that's my expertise
• 15:24
  is in the, really in the racing world.
• 15:25
  So, you know, it's simply put, camber is the angle of your wheel, tire to
• 15:32
  the ground or, or how it is related perpendicularly to the ground.
• 15:37
  Um, and basically defines what your contact patch is on your tire when it's
• 15:42
  loaded, when your car is loaded in a turn.
• 15:44
  So I suppose that's when it matters the most.
• 15:46
  So if I had a car with zero camber, that means that my tire is
• 15:49
  standing straight up in the air.
• 15:51
  That means that I have a perfectly even contact patch left to right when
• 15:55
  I'm driving in a straight line or when I'm braking in a straight line or
• 15:59
  putting power down in a straight line.
• 16:00
  So if I'm a drag guy, I wanna have all that contact patch in a straight line.
• 16:04
  If I wanna stop my best.
• 16:06
  Zero camera is fantastic because I have all my contact patch
• 16:10
  when I'm in a straight line.
• 16:11
  But if I'm driving this thing on the track, autocross, whatever it is, and
• 16:15
  I plan to turn a little bit, once the suspension starts loading and moving,
• 16:19
  then the whole thing changes a little bit.
• 16:22
  I need negative camera so that I basically can roll my car, my
• 16:26
  platform, up onto that camera.
• 16:28
  So maybe a number that rings in my head is three degrees or so.
• 16:31
  Three degrees up front.
• 16:32
  Negative camber.
• 16:33
  That means the top of the tire's tilted towards the center of the car.
• 16:36
  And if I, if I had a protractor, I guess that's the tool I would use in.
• 16:40
  School, I could measure three degrees between where the tire
• 16:43
  is now leaned inward to where it would otherwise be vertical.
• 16:46
  When I load the car, when I turn, then that loads the car essentially
• 16:50
  to straight, which is how I think about what maybe an optimum camra is.
• 16:54
  Of course, that's tire dependent.
• 16:55
  It's car chassis dependent.
• 16:57
  It's suspension design, of course, but once, once, we're talking
• 17:00
  about aftermarket parts here, which certainly is one aspect of Powerflex.
• 17:03
  When I'm thinking about aftermarket parts on a car.
• 17:06
  If I have soft springs or Stockish Springs, then.
• 17:10
  My car's gonna roll a lot more, and so I need more camber for it to roll up
• 17:14
  onto, versus if I have stiff springs, I, I reduce that roll a fair amount.
• 17:18
  And then I'm thinking more about the tire flex and so forth.
• 17:20
  Yeah.
• 17:20
  And then every bushing in the suspension, whether it be a struct
• 17:24
  mount, a control arm, a sway bar, bushing, all adds deflection.
• 17:28
  Now I think a lot of people probably don't realize there's also deflection in the
• 17:31
  wheel bearing, depending on the setup.
• 17:32
  Right?
• 17:32
  Front wheel drives notorious for the hub and wheel bearings,
• 17:35
  you know, flexing during hard cornering and things like that.
• 17:38
  All of these things affect the camber of the vehicle, and that
• 17:41
  offsets your contact match.
• 17:44
  Now, we've talked a lot about negative camber, and I, I'm seeing
• 17:46
  on the site, you, you wanna dial in some negative camera for better
• 17:49
  cornering, uh, capabilities.
• 17:51
  But is there ever an instance where you would want to have
• 17:53
  positive camera clown car?
• 17:57
  There's a specific reason why I'm asking too, but I, I'll
• 17:59
  wait to hear the answer from my foundation, uh, which is modern cars.
• 18:04
  There's one minor instance.
• 18:06
  Well, I say in my world, there's one minor instance.
• 18:09
  For some reason in old cars, and I don't know the, the suspension geometry
• 18:12
  in those older vehicles, but positive camra used to be a thing positive.
• 18:15
  Camra used to be in a thing in like the whatever, twenties,
• 18:18
  thirties, that era car maybe.
• 18:20
  But again, don't hold me to that because I don't really know those cars.
• 18:22
  But when I think about positive camra and I say, well, Camra is needed
• 18:28
  so that when your car loads in a turn, that it, it can roll up on it.
• 18:32
  And, and a, a lot of times that means that I'm thinking about that outside tire,
• 18:36
  but if I'm only turning one direction.
• 18:39
  Then it also matters what the inside I, I don't have to optimize
• 18:43
  for left turns and right turns.
• 18:45
  I can just think about optimizing more for one direction turn.
• 18:48
  So certainly our friends in na, NASCAR and the dirt world and all,
• 18:52
  all that who are always turning left have a fair amount of negative
• 18:56
  camera in their, in their right side.
• 18:58
  They have positive camera in their left side because when that car loads,
• 19:01
  again, it's, it's loading up now.
• 19:03
  That's the NASCAR world.
• 19:04
  But there's also this little track up in Connecticut that we go to Limerock
• 19:08
  Park, which has one left hand turn and then everything else is right.
• 19:12
  So we would sometimes, um, sacrifice our setup or consider like a zero
• 19:17
  camera or maybe a little bit.
• 19:19
  More of a positive camera on that, on that right side.
• 19:21
  Again, just because we're, we're gonna sacrifice one turn to be faster in
• 19:25
  seven others at that specific track.
• 19:27
  Yeah.
• 19:27
  And what you said about vintage cars is absolutely correct.
• 19:29
  And it has to do with the geometry of the suspension and the springs that they used
• 19:33
  to use and the real, real early cars.
• 19:34
  I mean, you were talking about, you know, opposed leaf springs where they
• 19:38
  went perpendicular to the body line of the, of the center line of the car.
• 19:42
  So they almost acted like a sway bar, and then they decided, oh, let's rotate them.
• 19:45
  So they're parallel to the body.
• 19:47
  You know, you really didn't see the changeover until, I'd say the late
• 19:51
  fifties, early sixties, especially out of Lotus, because, you know, uh, Colin
• 19:56
  Chapman stole the design for McPherson and modified it and call it his own.
• 19:59
  But until the McPherson suspension was created, you had these.
• 20:02
  Odd positions in suspension geometries because we were still figuring it out.
• 20:07
  And then the McPherson setup became standard front and rear on a lot of cars.
• 20:11
  And then, you know, now double wishbones, it's, it's kind of
• 20:14
  changed the dynamic again, you know, all these kinds of things.
• 20:16
  So to your point, I think it goes along with the evolution and as
• 20:19
  we've progressed and we've made giant changes in suspension, geometry and,
• 20:23
  and the mechanics of it, we've gone more and more negative Canberra now.
• 20:26
  Not stance, bro.
• 20:27
  Negative camber, no offense.
• 20:28
  So those guys are listening.
• 20:29
  Know, eight, nine degrees of Camra looks cool when you're parked, but doesn't
• 20:33
  really work too well on the track.
• 20:35
  What do you think about that, James?
• 20:37
  Well, I'll tell you, we, anything anybody does with a car is our thing.
• 20:42
  So that's, that's, uh, you know, while I don't currently drive a stance car,
• 20:46
  honestly, I appreciate what people do.
• 20:48
  I appreciate what, uh, what limits people push.
• 20:51
  So, you know, a stance car isn't necessarily my thing, but.
• 20:55
  Guys, I mean, stylistically, stylistically they look cool, the
• 20:59
  wheels tucked up under whatever.
• 21:00
  But we often find it really funny when the Stan Pro guys, you
• 21:04
  know, we use that term lovingly.
• 21:05
  Alright, let's just put it that way.
• 21:07
  You know, when they do come to an autocross or a track for the first
• 21:10
  time, they start to realize cam's gotta start to come way more positive.
• 21:14
  To get that car to actually turn and do something on track that is, let's say,
• 21:18
  amenable to the result we're looking for.
• 21:21
  I'll, I'll tell you though, and it's interesting, I, I think about
• 21:24
  oddball exceptions to certain rules.
• 21:26
  We were racing, touring cars in, uh, the early two thousands and those touring
• 21:31
  cars with the specific tire that we were on, which is, which was a street drive
• 21:35
  tire, not a, not a true racing slick.
• 21:37
  We consistently had six plus degrees of Canberra, and that's
• 21:40
  in a rear wheel drive car.
• 21:41
  And some of the front wheel guys had.
• 21:44
  Eight to 10 super odd situation where we had a, a tire with a very soft
• 21:48
  sidewall, which gave, so it, you know, the, you had to support that
• 21:52
  with more camra, you know, and maybe that's how all this stuff derived.
• 21:55
  Anyway, you used to see these touring cars with tons of cam.
• 21:58
  So that's the race look.
• 21:59
  And that's what, that's how I want my car look, might be outside of Camra.
• 22:02
  You got two more components to our rule of three, right?
• 22:04
  You've got castor and tow and they're all actually related to each other.
• 22:07
  So let's talk about Castor for a minute.
• 22:09
  I didn't write this part of the Powerflex website, I don't think.
• 22:12
  Maybe I chimed in on it, but, and I can be wrong on this stuff.
• 22:15
  I, and I'm, I'm pretty content being wrong.
• 22:16
  I am lots of days, lots of times.
• 22:18
  So, um, so castor, I, I would call castor.
• 22:22
  Whenever I say castor, the next thing I always say is.
• 22:26
  Dynamic Camber.
• 22:27
  So I, I think McPherson struck car because that's, that's what I deal with
• 22:31
  for the castor can be in other types of suspension design, but basically it's,
• 22:36
  well, I'll take the suspension out of it.
• 22:37
  It's how much camber is gained when you turn your wheel tire package
• 22:42
  left or right off of center.
• 22:44
  And so, and, and why I say it's dynamic, camber castor is awesome because if I
• 22:48
  have a car with enough built-in castor, first of all, it self centers when
• 22:52
  it go, when it drives down the road.
• 22:53
  So that's, that's kind of nice.
• 22:55
  The, a nice thing, a nice streetcar thing about.
• 22:57
  Caster, but also it gives me the ability to have that straight line acceleration,
• 23:04
  tire loading contact patch, that straight line braking where I'd like less camber,
• 23:08
  maybe I don't want have so much camber built in because I want that better
• 23:12
  when my wheel is straight contact patch.
• 23:14
  But then when I turn the wheel, if I have a lot of cam in the car, then I'm
• 23:17
  adding the camber that I didn't have when my wheel was straight to when I
• 23:21
  need it the most when my wheel is turned.
• 23:23
  So for BMWs, we like a ton of caster in the front and that is kind of.
• 23:28
  What helps us fight some of the problems inherent with the McPherson strut
• 23:32
  design, or in my opinion, inherent with a McPherson design where you, you don't gain
• 23:36
  camera, if anything, you often lose it, uh mm-hmm When you, when you load your car.
• 23:39
  And that's 'cause of the, well, let's call it what it is, a single point of
• 23:42
  failure and that strut bearing, right, that the power flex bushings try to
• 23:45
  overcome because you have a massive amount of torque load being put on a single
• 23:50
  point at the top of that strut tower.
• 23:52
  If you had a double wishbone, you have three points to mount to.
• 23:55
  So it's a much sturdier design, but it takes up a lot more space.
• 23:58
  And you kind of see it on the more exotic cars that are built,
• 24:01
  you know, around tube frame.
• 24:02
  You're not gonna see that around, or a tube frame or mono cock design.
• 24:05
  You're not gonna see that on your typical front wheel drive Honda.
• 24:08
  They're just, that takes up way too much space.
• 24:10
  You know, it would also be 12 feet wide to make it all work.
• 24:13
  So I get your point.
• 24:14
  So how does tow play into the equation, man?
• 24:18
  What to say about tow to tow is where your.
• 24:21
  Tire is pointed, left to right, independently of what is going
• 24:25
  on on the other side of the axle.
• 24:27
  So if I have my steering wheel centered and my car is going straight.
• 24:32
  If I have tow out, that means that both of my tires are now pointing out.
• 24:37
  They're almost fighting each other given that they're
• 24:39
  pointing out if I have tow in.
• 24:41
  Both front tires are pointed in towards each other, so a car with tow out to me
• 24:46
  can be a bit nervous because you have both front tires initiating a turn,
• 24:51
  and so your car is kind of telling.
• 24:52
  Which way you want me to go?
• 24:53
  Which way?
• 24:54
  Which way, which way?
• 24:54
  And it's, it is just kind of nervous as you drive it along
• 24:57
  when it's taken to an extreme.
• 24:58
  But of course sometimes we want something that's nervous or in a
• 25:02
  better word, or a, or a more compelling word, agile, ready to perform.
• 25:07
  And so I like tow out because tow out is a tool that gets your car pointed for you.
• 25:13
  Tow in is in, in strictest sense, tow in neither tire's, really
• 25:17
  excited about doing anything.
• 25:18
  And so it's, it's a little bit more benign.
• 25:21
  Your, your car with tow in is pretty content to just go in a straight line.
• 25:25
  'cause both tires are, are kind of working that way.
• 25:28
  Now that said, in my street world, and especially when we start talking about
• 25:32
  all these things that are related, right?
• 25:33
  So if I have a car that I set up for street use that has more
• 25:37
  camra in it, because I want that, I want it, I want it to perform.
• 25:41
  One of the bad things about tow is that because your tires aren't rolling straight
• 25:46
  unloaded, they're kind of pointed a direction that's fighting each other.
• 25:50
  You start to lose some rubber, right?
• 25:52
  If your tires are working against each other, something's gotta take
• 25:55
  that hit, and so it's tire wear, and so you start killing tires.
• 25:58
  So a lot of times I think about zero in my toe for a street car, just so
• 26:02
  I'm not beating up my tires so much.
• 26:05
  When I think about tow on the racetrack, I said earlier, maybe tow out makes the
• 26:09
  car more eager and ready to perform more.
• 26:11
  Eager to go into a turn.
• 26:13
  I call it.
• 26:13
  I call it dirty.
• 26:14
  Yeah, there you go.
• 26:16
  It's, yeah, it can be, and again, we're, we're talking powerflex, right?
• 26:19
  So Powerflex bushings.
• 26:21
  Go on, streetcar.
• 26:22
  So we're, we're talking about streetcar stuff or streetcar based stuff.
• 26:25
  Sedans, we're not talking about formula cars or, or things that are more exotic.
• 26:28
  There are some absolute truths in sedans that aren't absolute in the
• 26:32
  automotive world or the racing world, but some, some absolute truths in sedans.
• 26:36
  There's always a compromise.
• 26:37
  It's never optimized for track performance.
• 26:39
  There's so many things, whether it be using a McPherson strep
• 26:42
  because it's cost and packaging, and that's the reason to do that.
• 26:45
  Or if we're taking some sacrifices for the street drivability, how do I want
• 26:50
  this thing to perform on the street?
• 26:51
  Because, you know, us people that are, that are out there flogging
• 26:54
  these things on the track.
• 26:55
  We're the, we're the strong minority.
• 26:56
  We're not who they designed the car for necessarily.
• 26:59
  They might give us some good stuff, but they didn't say, let's
• 27:01
  make this thing a track killer.
• 27:03
  So one of the compromises, if you ever park your car in a parking lot and
• 27:07
  you like to make those tight turns, you probably want a little Ackerman
• 27:10
  built into the, to the steering.
• 27:12
  So.
• 27:12
  Ackerman is dynamic tow.
• 27:15
  So based on steering rack placement, um, I wouldn't expect my inside tire
• 27:20
  and outside tire to necessarily turn at the same rate or same amount of angle.
• 27:24
  So because of that Ackerman that's built into the car, there aren't absolute
• 27:28
  rules for what tow should be on the track or in a performance application.
• 27:32
  And sometimes a specific tire is going to want a specific thing also.
• 27:36
  So whether it's the Ackerman of the car or what the tire wants.
• 27:39
  And so there is, to me, there is no rule on what I want for tow.
• 27:42
  I, I can say, yeah.
• 27:43
  For sure I'm gonna want negative camra and I'm gonna want about this
• 27:46
  much Every time I test a, a new race, car and tire, we have to figure out
• 27:51
  whether it likes to tow out or tow in.
• 27:52
  Probably tow out.
• 27:54
  That's probably the, the slight nod, but sometimes tires like to tow in.
• 27:58
  So I've heard that there's always different instances and, and to your
• 28:01
  point, setups for different tracks.
• 28:03
  Like you were talking about lime rock and whatever, but maybe they're wives tales.
• 28:07
  Maybe it's, you know, unproven science, I don't know.
• 28:09
  But I've also heard that tow out helps the car turn in quicker.
• 28:13
  And tow in is designed for stability, especially high horsepower
• 28:17
  rear world drive cars or nine elevens, I'm gonna say that again.
• 28:20
  Or nine elevens keeping them under control.
• 28:23
  So a little bit of tow in, in the rear helps stabilize the rear end of
• 28:26
  the car, whereas tow out in the front gives you quicker turn in and like you
• 28:31
  said, sacrificing the opposite side of the car because it's also trying
• 28:35
  to go, you know, turn the other way a little bit going into the corner.
• 28:38
  Yeah, I think that's generally correct and that's, you know, that's,
• 28:41
  that's kind of what I would default to for setting up a street car.
• 28:44
  If I wasn't zeroing the front.
• 28:46
  I always add a little bit of tow in on the rear of a car because I, I do want
• 28:49
  that stability if I'm at the racetrack, I have to start making choices, right?
• 28:52
  I've, I've got a box of tools and depending on what type of
• 28:55
  car I'm driving, I could have a big toolbox or a small toolbox.
• 28:58
  If I have a, a pure stock car, I don't have a lot of tools in my toolbox.
• 29:02
  I have tire pressure.
• 29:03
  For the most part, if I have a race car, I may have a bunch of spring
• 29:07
  adjustments, height adjustments, shock adjustments, geometry adjustments.
• 29:11
  My toolbox is a lot bigger.
• 29:13
  Yes, tow in in the rear can stabilize the car.
• 29:16
  When I'm thinking about racetrack as well, we talked about tow in, tow out the, the
• 29:20
  less of either that there is, the faster the thing rolls in a straight line.
• 29:23
  So I'm also careful, especially on a track with long straits, I
• 29:27
  consider how much I'm willing to drag the tires down those straits
• 29:31
  and how much speed I'm sacrificing.
• 29:32
  But then there's also situations, you know, I've been at the racetrack in.
• 29:36
  No matter how big my toolbox is, I can't get this stupid car not
• 29:40
  to initiate the turn necessarily.
• 29:42
  That's, that's a front end job, right?
• 29:43
  The front end.
• 29:43
  You turn the wheel, it's initiating the turn, but once I'm in the turn and
• 29:47
  loaded, I can't get the car to rotate.
• 29:50
  Is the tow in that I have in the rear to stabilize the car, the thing I
• 29:53
  want or would a little tow out or a little less of that toe in whatever,
• 29:56
  and we've run tow out in the rear.
• 29:57
  Sometimes you just have to have that tool to turn the car.
• 30:01
  Same thing, and, and you're, you're dead on in the front.
• 30:03
  Yeah, sure.
• 30:04
  I think that the, the tow out typically makes a car a little bit
• 30:07
  more darty or a little bit more active right at that initial turn
• 30:10
  initiation point, but I can usually.
• 30:13
  Get my car to initiate the turn.
• 30:15
  And again, I have other tools in the toolbox.
• 30:17
  I have a sway bar, a, a shock and some other things often on a hand hand brake.
• 30:21
  You know, we, we got those two.
• 30:22
  Yeah.
• 30:23
  Rip that hand brake.
• 30:23
  Go for it.
• 30:24
  Yeah.
• 30:25
  There's, there's other tools in the toolbox to get that
• 30:27
  immediate initial turn in.
• 30:29
  And a lot of times what I'm thinking about is how do I make this car get
• 30:33
  all the way through the corner, right?
• 30:35
  And then I'm starting to think about balance a car.
• 30:36
  So I really think about tow, personally.
• 30:39
  I think about tow more about what's happening mid corner and steady
• 30:43
  state once things are loaded up.
• 30:44
  And that's why it comes to that Ackerman question.
• 30:46
  What, what's the Ackerman built into the car?
• 30:48
  What does the tire want?
• 30:49
  And then therefore, what maximizes grip midterm.
• 30:51
  No, and that's a really good point you bring up.
• 30:53
  And I think what many people may not realize is the three, you know, the
• 30:57
  triumvirate we've been talking to here, Canberra, castor and tow apply to the
• 31:01
  rear as much as they do to the front.
• 31:03
  But the other thing that's important to realize is that, you know, you
• 31:06
  mentioned about adjustability of suspensions and people will go out and
• 31:10
  buy all it's really cool components, whether it be dual reservoir olins
• 31:15
  or muons or whatever they are.
• 31:17
  Or you know, it's a guy with a set of coney oranges, you know,
• 31:19
  you know, it's all over the map.
• 31:20
  Progressive springs, coil overs, you know, dual coil overs
• 31:24
  and all this kind of stuff.
• 31:24
  But the one thing that's always funny is the guy that's like, well, I'm gonna
• 31:27
  go change the ride height of the car.
• 31:29
  And doesn't do.
• 31:30
  The rest of the math doesn't realize that changing the height even, uh,
• 31:34
  the smallest amount actually changes.
• 31:36
  Those other three things we've been talking about, the caster, the camra
• 31:40
  and the tow are suddenly outta whack.
• 31:42
  And unless you have the ability to realign the car on the spot, the change you
• 31:46
  just made probably made your car worse.
• 31:48
  Yeah.
• 31:49
  Ride height is a good tuning tool.
• 31:50
  It's great on the protein when we, we have a setup pad and we, okay, we change
• 31:54
  the height, throw the car on the pad.
• 31:56
  See, you know, get the, get everything else right.
• 31:58
  How much things change, of course, depends on the suspension design.
• 32:02
  It also depends on what window you're working in within that suspension design.
• 32:06
  I can tell you on A BMW, one of my favorite tuning tools, and this
• 32:10
  is when I'm dragging a car to the track myself, it's a race car.
• 32:13
  I'm gonna get under the, it was a street car.
• 32:15
  I wouldn't get under it.
• 32:16
  I'd just say, ah, well I'll just drive it differently.
• 32:18
  But given that I'm gonna do a little bit of work here, but I'm
• 32:20
  doing the work, I don't have the guys on the team doing the work.
• 32:22
  I'm not gonna do a lot of work.
• 32:24
  Raising and lowering the rear works out pretty well for us because given
• 32:28
  that suspension design, there's pretty much no camber change and
• 32:32
  pretty much no tow change within the window that I'm working in.
• 32:36
  Right.
• 32:36
  And height adjustments, which is, you know, five mil, 10
• 32:38
  mil max, something like that.
• 32:40
  10 mil would be super big.
• 32:42
  However, on the front of that car, totally wouldn't touch it.
• 32:44
  You know, I don't know if it's gonna mess with a cam that much.
• 32:47
  Definitely gonna mess with my toe.
• 32:49
  Yeah, it's, it's one of the things that I consider for sure, we talked a lot about
• 32:52
  these three things, the triumvirate, but we're, we're also talking when I have
• 32:57
  my powerflex hat on, when I think Well, and how does Powerflex relate to this?
• 33:01
  I think a lot of times people consider these as.
• 33:04
  Measured numbers, they are right.
• 33:05
  You, you measure camra, that's super simple.
• 33:07
  You measure castor a little bit more complicated process, but
• 33:10
  you, but it's a measurable thing.
• 33:12
  But what you're doing is measuring these things and optimizing your
• 33:15
  car while it's sitting still.
• 33:17
  That's not the real world or not the one that we live in, right?
• 33:21
  Because we don't care what the car does when it's sitting still.
• 33:23
  We we're men of action.
• 33:24
  We wanna see what this thing does when we're flogging it, when
• 33:26
  it's fully loaded, et cetera.
• 33:28
  So that's a different set of numbers.
• 33:30
  Sure.
• 33:30
  We we're using what it does, sitting still on a setup pad or an alignment
• 33:34
  rack as a baseline for what that is.
• 33:36
  That's not really what we're seeing on track.
• 33:38
  You know, if I make a camera change, I'll note the difference on track.
• 33:42
  The easiest way to, to note that or to, to keep record of that
• 33:45
  is what it's doing statically.
• 33:47
  But what I care about is what it's doing on track from the powerflex side of
• 33:50
  things, we do have adjustable bushings.
• 33:52
  We have a range of some pretty cool parts to, to add.
• 33:56
  Canberra, take away cam.
• 33:57
  You know, add, add a full range of adjustment.
• 33:59
  I, I say Canberra, but more things, role center, things
• 34:01
  we haven't even gotten into.
• 34:02
  We do have that range of bushings, but more importantly, and in every
• 34:06
  bushing we make, when you have a bushing that is stiffer than stock.
• 34:12
  That has more control than stock.
• 34:13
  When you're in that loaded up operation of the car, you keep the suspension
• 34:18
  from moving and flexing as much.
• 34:20
  If it was a race car, I'd be mono ball.
• 34:22
  I'd be straight up solid, and it would be exactly what I wanted it to be, not.
• 34:27
  I've, I've done this as a guy that also engineers and designs things.
• 34:30
  I sometimes get put in odd situations.
• 34:32
  One of these was riding on top of a motor in a car as it drove around
• 34:36
  the parking lot at some decent speed.
• 34:37
  So I could sit there and watch things move and so forth.
• 34:40
  I probably could have done that with a GoPro, but it was
• 34:42
  more fun the way you did it.
• 34:44
  It was more fun.
• 34:44
  It, yeah, the, the guy driving the car loved it.
• 34:47
  But you know, in parking lot speed.
• 34:48
  So we're talking like 10, 15 miles an hour.
• 34:50
  If I'm really working hard, you can see the top of a McPherson strep, for example.
• 34:55
  You can see that thing move a quarter inch plus, which is a huge amount of movement.
• 34:59
  So if I think about, well, I'm gonna add 0.3 degrees of cam, and that's
• 35:04
  maybe an eighth of an inch or something like that of movement to get that
• 35:07
  angle change and this thing's moving around a quarter inch while it's
• 35:10
  being loaded at 15 miles an hour.
• 35:12
  You know it's gonna be max load when you're on the racetrack.
• 35:15
  The Camra is who knows what.
• 35:16
  So not ideal.
• 35:18
  So having bushings that are stiffer, we're a street track product, so they're stiff.
• 35:22
  If they're black series, they're, they're all stiffer.
• 35:25
  But in the regular series, we add as much stiffness as is reasonable within
• 35:29
  some clever tricks to make it so that this thing doesn't beat me to death.
• 35:33
  Right?
• 35:33
  That's why road cars aren't made to be the stiffest things possible.
• 35:37
  They're made to fit this nice balance and maybe be your Porsche is gonna
• 35:41
  be a stiffer balance than your whatever your Audi, S-U-V-S-A-V,
• 35:45
  whatever, whatever that is.
• 35:46
  It's made for a little bit different target market.
• 35:48
  Either way, they're not made to be super, super stiff, which is what
• 35:52
  we would want for performance.
• 35:53
  So we can achieve those balances sometimes with a properly designed part.
• 35:57
  And one that we're willing to spend a little bit more money for.
• 36:00
  So that's, you know, we're also not making $5 OEM bushings.
• 36:03
  Our stuff may be 10 x the cost, but it's worth it.
• 36:06
  You get kind of more of everything.
• 36:08
  Absolutely.
• 36:09
  And there's give and take in all of this.
• 36:10
  And I think it, it funnels up into the concept of suspension tuning everybody.
• 36:15
  I think they do it by feel more than anything.
• 36:18
  Right.
• 36:18
  And to your point, it's very hard to say, how much is my strut mount
• 36:22
  deflecting at 15 mile an hour versus 60 mile an hour versus 80 mile
• 36:26
  an hour, or whatever it might be.
• 36:27
  So I wish there were more sensors, I wish there was more empirical
• 36:30
  data that we could collect as a, you know, kind of a layman versus what
• 36:34
  the pros have available to them.
• 36:36
  You know, all the type of telemetry that they're able to collect
• 36:38
  from every corner of the car.
• 36:40
  So some of it is, is black magic.
• 36:42
  Right.
• 36:43
  In in some respects, would you say, is there a formula to follow certain things
• 36:47
  that guys and gals should be doing versus other upgrades to the suspension to.
• 36:53
  Get to that tuning stage before we kind of get into the deeper talks
• 36:57
  about, you know, alignments and, and, and bump and squat and all these other
• 37:01
  kinds of kind of advanced features.
• 37:03
  In the introduction, we talked about, you know, a three-year-old
• 37:06
  car drives way differently than a new car because things have already
• 37:10
  started to break in, settle in.
• 37:11
  I think what a lot of people, as, as a pure starting point, make sure you
• 37:15
  know what you're starting with and I think people automatically make some
• 37:18
  assumptions that, Hey, I have this car and it's, it's like black box.
• 37:22
  This, this car is always this thing.
• 37:24
  You start with basic maintenance, right?
• 37:25
  If you're, if you're gonna take a car out on a track, you at least know what
• 37:29
  oil you have in the engine, right?
• 37:30
  You're, yeah, you're doing some basic maintenance to stabilize your platform.
• 37:33
  The same for the suspension.
• 37:35
  You need to first just make sure that the stuff that stock,
• 37:39
  if you plan to keep it stock.
• 37:40
  It's still working like it was intended or some reasonably close version of bushings.
• 37:45
  Do wear fast powerflex lifetime warranty?
• 37:48
  Well, it's because we're spending a lot more to make a bushing than the
• 37:51
  factory is when they, when they're making 30,000 car sets for a year of
• 37:55
  whatever model car those pennies add up.
• 37:58
  So they're saving some money here and there where they can, even if you have
• 38:01
  a Porsche, they're saving some money and there's an accountant involved in building
• 38:04
  your car like it or not knowing that you have parts that are working properly.
• 38:08
  And then really it depends on car model as far as what your weak
• 38:11
  parts are, what parts you need to address specifically on A BMW.
• 38:15
  I know that the front control arm bushing is a real problem for us
• 38:18
  because it takes a lot of that load.
• 38:20
  Or depending on, on design, I speak a lot of times towards three series
• 38:23
  stuff just 'cause it's so common.
• 38:24
  So maybe a front thrust arm bushing, again that's taking that braking load.
• 38:27
  We've done GoPros on these things and you can check us out on YouTube or I
• 38:30
  think they're link linked to our website and you can see some of that GoPro
• 38:33
  footage if there's a bushing like those.
• 38:35
  That has a void from the factory so that it, it's nice and cushy
• 38:38
  for that luxury car market buyer.
• 38:41
  When you look at our GoPro video of that thing in action and see it moving
• 38:44
  a half inch plus, that's probably one of those that you should have on your
• 38:48
  list, especially at the time of purchase of a, like a coil over suspension.
• 38:51
  Like a powerflex bushing is a great addition to a purchase
• 38:56
  of other suspension parts.
• 38:57
  When you're replacing your control arms that are worn out, Hey,
• 39:00
  let's replace the bushing too.
• 39:01
  When you're upgrading the performance of the car, you're doing
• 39:04
  coilers, you're doing sway bars.
• 39:05
  Gosh, let's make sure the stock stuff or the stock type stuff is working
• 39:09
  like it should, or let's optimize it a hundred dollars in bushings for the
• 39:13
  wheel and tire to be where thought it was or where it's supposed to be.
• 39:17
  Totally worth the investment.
• 39:18
  Especially when you compare it to like a thousand, a 5,000, what,
• 39:21
  you know, whatever dollar coil over that you're comparing it to.
• 39:24
  Yeah.
• 39:24
  And you know, I bring it up because we had this come across our desk recently.
• 39:28
  There's different contingents within GTM.
• 39:30
  There's some of us that are very intimate with, you know, Volkswagens and whatnot,
• 39:33
  and we had a guy, you know, ask us, Hey, I wanna get rid of the body roll
• 39:37
  on my, you know, 2005 Jetta diesel.
• 39:40
  And I'm like, well first things first.
• 39:42
  What is it you want to do with the car?
• 39:43
  Is it your daily?
• 39:44
  Is it gonna be parked?
• 39:45
  Are you, he's obviously not gonna track it or autocross it, but the thing is, what
• 39:49
  do you want to get out of the experience?
• 39:51
  Right?
• 39:51
  Going back to that tuning of the suspension, and I was like, I can
• 39:55
  recommend different things, but to your point, I'll recommend new bushings,
• 39:58
  control arms, things like that.
• 40:00
  If you're not ready for a car that's about to be lowered two inches, that's
• 40:04
  gonna ride really, really stiff.
• 40:06
  It might not be what's best for you and for, you know, your style of driving.
• 40:10
  So.
• 40:11
  Drive other people's cars, get a feel for what's out there and
• 40:14
  what those combinations are like because no two cars are, are put
• 40:17
  together the same to your point.
• 40:18
  But I think what's interesting about this part of the conversation is for the diy,
• 40:24
  just like this guy who's trying to put his kit together, you know, what should I buy?
• 40:27
  What should't I buy.
• 40:29
  Some of the questions that, that I even look at from my perspective having
• 40:33
  done this for years now is what can I buy that has powerflex already in it?
• 40:37
  Or if I'm going to do let's say control arms, which are some of
• 40:41
  the worst jobs depending on how they're designed, are there special
• 40:44
  tools for pressing the bushings in?
• 40:46
  'cause it is a kind of a pain in the butt.
• 40:48
  So what's some advice there and what are some of the components that, you
• 40:52
  know, we should be looking out for that may have Powerflex OEMed in them and
• 40:56
  we don't know that, you know, they're just rebranded a a couple of points.
• 40:59
  First of all, specific to your question, a lot of our dealers package parts together.
• 41:04
  So as Powerflex.
• 41:05
  We generally are a bushing seller, or we have, we have some pieces that are
• 41:10
  a bushing in a bracket and, and are a little bit more extensive, but our
• 41:13
  dealers who are experts in their specific mark will offer the powerflex bushing
• 41:19
  with the control arm that you need and sell it as, as a, you know, an FCP
• 41:24
  or a package or, or whatever that is.
• 41:27
  That's, that's great.
• 41:28
  Those, you know, that's, that's why we love our dealer network.
• 41:31
  Speaking from me as a bimmer world guy and a BM BMW standpoint, we have a lot of arms
• 41:36
  with bushings available and I can provide a, a complete solution for a purchaser
• 41:41
  instead of, you know, from Powerflex.
• 41:42
  Again, we're bushings only, you won't find us unadvertised.
• 41:46
  We don't do a lot of things.
• 41:47
  We we're proud of our brand.
• 41:48
  We, we do good work.
• 41:49
  People pay money for our brand, right?
• 41:51
  We we're not the cheapest guys on the block.
• 41:53
  So I don't think you find us snuck in places that nobody said,
• 41:57
  Hey, this is a powerflex part.
• 41:58
  So if you're looking at how do you get powerflex kits, get it from Powerflex,
• 42:02
  I say, we're not the cheapest.
• 42:04
  One thing that people should consider, and I think is so rarely
• 42:06
  considered you, you talked about control arms being a bear of a job.
• 42:10
  How many times do you wanna do that job?
• 42:12
  You know, in the BM BMW world, your control arm failed prematurely.
• 42:15
  That's how that works.
• 42:16
  On an E 46, it failed early.
• 42:18
  If you left it long enough, it took the tie rod with it.
• 42:21
  It all started because you've got this stock built to a budget control arm
• 42:25
  bushing that wore out and then allowed so much slot that it started wearing
• 42:30
  everything else out in the system.
• 42:32
  Instead of replacing that with the same OEM part and having to do it every
• 42:36
  60,000 miles, spend the money on the Powerflex with a lifetime warranty, again,
• 42:40
  it's not, it's not about the warranty, it's about the fact that we produce a
• 42:43
  lifetime part, put that powerflex part in the car, and then you won't have
• 42:46
  to do that greasy, messy job again.
• 42:48
  Or if you're paying somebody to do it, you're not gonna have to pay
• 42:51
  the 400 bucks or whatever it is for front control, just for the labor.
• 42:56
  For a front control arm, front control arm bushing, whatever
• 42:59
  else you have to do there.
• 43:00
  And let's not forget the alignment that you have to do every time
• 43:03
  you replace suspension bushings.
• 43:04
  To that point, we do offer some kits, like he mentioned with a
• 43:08
  bracket around it that's already been been engineered by Powerflex.
• 43:11
  Like for, uh, mark five, mark six, mark seven golf.
• 43:15
  The front control arm bushings, we offer a standard bushing that's
• 43:19
  a standard geometry replacement.
• 43:21
  We also offer a kit with anti lift properties and castor offset.
• 43:26
  It's like a degree of castor offset that already comes with its own bracket, that
• 43:31
  power flex in the UK machines in-house, um, and anodize and everything like that.
• 43:35
  We offer a similar kit for an R 35 GTR that they developed with
• 43:39
  Litchfield Motors over there.
• 43:41
  And we also offer other kits that come with their own brackets and such.
• 43:44
  So you don't have to do.
• 43:46
  As much work.
• 43:47
  Another good BMW related thing, E 36 and I believe E 30, front control arm bushings.
• 43:52
  Although our bushing does not come pressed into the bracket there, it
• 43:56
  doesn't require a press to install.
• 43:59
  Once you get the old bushing out, you can push that thing in with your hands.
• 44:02
  I've done it a hundred times.
• 44:03
  It takes 10 seconds to do once you get the old bushing out.
• 44:06
  I wish they were all that way.
• 44:07
  Let me tell you, don't we all.
• 44:08
  I have done so many fourth gen Volkswagen control arms.
• 44:12
  I don't even want to talk about it.
• 44:13
  It's a nightmare every time I do 'em.
• 44:16
  Yeah, a lot of our bushings are like that.
• 44:18
  The, he mentioned the top hat bushings earlier.
• 44:21
  A two piece design that you push one half in from one side.
• 44:25
  Yep.
• 44:25
  You push the other half in from the other side and you just jam a sleeve
• 44:28
  in the middle of it for the bolt.
• 44:29
  That doesn't require a press to do at most.
• 44:31
  It might require a vice or a C clamp, but you don't have to take that thing
• 44:34
  somewhere with a hydraulic press and, and hope that it's enough to jam it in there.
• 44:38
  It's something that just about anybody can do.
• 44:40
  You don't have to use the special factory tool that you don't have.
• 44:43
  You're gonna have to rent or buy or whatever.
• 44:45
  You don't have to use that because of the design of a lot of our bushings, you also
• 44:49
  don't need that tool to get the old stuff out, which would be the other use of it.
• 44:52
  Right.
• 44:53
  If I have a rear subframe that I really don't want to take off the car and
• 44:58
  take over to the press, et cetera.
• 44:59
  'cause all the other stuff I, you know, that makes that a 10 hour job
• 45:02
  instead of a, you know, a two hour job.
• 45:04
  You know, I just drop it some inches, four inches or whatever, find the
• 45:07
  trustee Sawzall and just get out there and cut out the bushings.
• 45:11
  And then if there's a sleeve, you just take a hammer and a
• 45:13
  chisel, pop the sleeve out.
• 45:15
  And then the powerflex bushings just go in so easily in most situations.
• 45:18
  Of course, there's, there's ones that, unfortunately the design of the car
• 45:21
  means that we can't make them like that.
• 45:23
  But certainly if ease of install is a potential factor, we nail that.
• 45:27
  Another interesting thing, I, I just wanna throw this in here, 'cause he
• 45:30
  mentioned that you don't have to be super careful if you don't have to have that
• 45:34
  tool to, to put the bushing back in.
• 45:36
  I've seen a lot of people that set them on fire and let them
• 45:40
  burn out, which is amazing to me.
• 45:42
  Whoever thought of doing that first, I just wanna give them a salute.
• 45:49
  It's better than the approach I take, which is keeping
• 45:51
  Schwab in tools of business.
• 45:52
  Right.
• 45:52
  All those, yeah.
• 45:54
  We, we don't tell people to set things on fire, but there's obvious risk to that.
• 45:58
  And gosh, the plume of black smoke is, yeah, no, no.
• 46:01
  Horrific, but.
• 46:02
  Effective.
• 46:03
  I'm sure it smells really bad and I would never recommend doing it,
• 46:06
  but I've seen videos of people doing it and it's kind of funny to watch.
• 46:10
  You know, as we go back to talking about the dark art of suspension
• 46:13
  tuning, you mentioned a couple times already, you gotta get an alignment.
• 46:16
  You gotta get an alignment and you know, most of us are probably used to, well
• 46:19
  I can go to the local shop and get an alignment for 30, 70, a hundred bucks.
• 46:24
  But is that really the alignment that we want after we've done, let's say a
• 46:28
  full bushing redo on the car, let's talk about the differences between a, like a
• 46:32
  standard two-wheel alignment versus doing a full fledged four-wheel alignment.
• 46:36
  And what doing that type of work would give us or, or yield
• 46:39
  us in the, in the long run.
• 46:40
  I'll tell you fir, first of all, even when we don't replace parts,
• 46:44
  you should do an alignment.
• 46:46
  It's crazy if on a typical car with a few links, and I'm thinking like BMW five
• 46:50
  link rear, if I loosened all those bolts.
• 46:53
  Then re-tighten them.
• 46:54
  My settings are gonna be obviously different just because there's
• 46:57
  enough slop and multiply it by all the bolts that you have.
• 47:00
  Things change when you have your car apart and put it back together.
• 47:03
  Absolutely.
• 47:04
  Do an alignment.
• 47:05
  I, I think it's a super common error.
• 47:07
  People don't think about that.
• 47:08
  I just lowered my car, put on some lowering springs.
• 47:11
  Wow.
• 47:12
  500 miles later I wore my tires out.
• 47:14
  Why is that?
• 47:15
  Well, every time you, you do any sort of suspension, work
• 47:18
  on your car, get an alignment.
• 47:19
  It's worth the money.
• 47:20
  Now I say it's worth the money, but sometimes I question that and
• 47:24
  it based and, and not as a general principle based on what you're getting.
• 47:28
  Right?
• 47:28
  If I think about it, you know, this is a little bit foreign to me, so I'm sure
• 47:31
  you're gonna be more experienced than I am, but if I take my car to an alignment
• 47:36
  shop and get a two wheel alignment, my, my front end a line, I think all
• 47:40
  they do on most cars, because most cars don't have that camera adjustment,
• 47:43
  most cars don't have castor adjustment.
• 47:45
  Maybe there's, we call 'em crash mounts, crash parts that the factory
• 47:48
  offers to change 'em, you know, 0.5 degrees or something like that.
• 47:52
  But there's really no adjustment available.
• 47:54
  Powerflex has some options there, so you can add that certainly.
• 47:57
  So what are they doing on that front end alignment?
• 47:59
  They're changing the length of my tie rods and getting my toes straightened
• 48:02
  out, and they're gonna call it a front end alignment and say, this is what
• 48:05
  the computer says about your car.
• 48:06
  Good to go.
• 48:07
  To be fair, that tow is what's gonna kill your tires.
• 48:10
  If you lower your car and you know, 500 miles later you won't be disappointed.
• 48:13
  But, you know, I don't think you get much from that when you go
• 48:16
  for a full four wheel alignment.
• 48:18
  A, a car is four tires to the ground, right?
• 48:20
  It matters what all four tires do.
• 48:21
  I don't, I don't think thinking about just what my front end is doing is a super
• 48:25
  smart, systematic approach because we're dealing with the system a lot of times.
• 48:29
  I don't necessarily see even a four wheel alignment from just
• 48:33
  a standard alignment rack again.
• 48:35
  Unless you have those adjustable bushings and adjustable parts really
• 48:38
  doing much, you're often, and again, depending on the suspension design,
• 48:42
  you may not even have no adjustments.
• 48:45
  You may have no adjustments in the rear of the car other than just give
• 48:48
  a read out of what this is because you don't have a tie rod, you, you don't.
• 48:52
  That's a tie.
• 48:52
  Rod by definition is, is gonna be a tow adjustment in the front.
• 48:55
  So is a four wheel alignment worth it if you don't have any adjustable suspension?
• 48:59
  Parts either from the aftermarket or built in this to the suspension of your car.
• 49:03
  You know, I think you've hit something that that's really interesting there.
• 49:06
  To your point, the general alignment shops are gonna make your car go straight,
• 49:09
  let's, let's boil it down to that, right?
• 49:11
  And, and you're on your merry way and you paid for this
• 49:14
  alignment and you're like, cool.
• 49:15
  The car goes straight and the steering wheel is straight and it's, I can
• 49:17
  let go of the, you know, I can let go 60 mile an hour, no problem.
• 49:21
  But I think one thing in all of that, in the four wheel alignment, if a guy
• 49:25
  really knows what he's doing, and this goes back to another thing, you know,
• 49:29
  the guys with the front wheel drives, oh, the, the back is just with the car.
• 49:32
  It keeps the rear end from dragging the ground.
• 49:34
  The one important thing that they can do on those machines in a
• 49:37
  general alignment shop is they can.
• 49:40
  Check the thrust angle, which most people don't realize is the distance of the
• 49:45
  front wheels to the back wheels and how straight they are in a square shape.
• 49:50
  Like you said, you're back there tooling around, maybe you just
• 49:53
  change trailing arm bushings.
• 49:54
  Your rear end could be cocked.
• 49:56
  So you're right, your camra adjustment, your caster adjustment can't change.
• 50:00
  The tow is fixed by the factory because maybe there's no tie rod to your point,
• 50:03
  but now your thrust angle is off.
• 50:05
  So actually the car is, is wiggling, you know, kind of walking down the road
• 50:09
  and, and the classic is those old pickup trucks that you see, the bed is straight
• 50:13
  and the wheels are totally, you know, cocked to the side and you're like, how
• 50:16
  is this thing even going down the road?
• 50:17
  Because nobody checked the thrust angle.
• 50:19
  And it's something you should ask for when you're in alignment
• 50:22
  Shop is please check this because they can do it on those machines.
• 50:26
  Yeah.
• 50:26
  At least you get your money's worth if you know what to ask for.
• 50:29
  Fair enough.
• 50:30
  And I, I think as enthusiasts, which we all are, right, we wouldn't be listening
• 50:34
  to all of us Yammer on if we didn't care about what we were doing here.
• 50:38
  But as enthusiasts, we, you know, the machines have the capability you
• 50:41
  need to ask for it to your point, but you also need a technician with
• 50:45
  the capability and the, and the care.
• 50:47
  Yes.
• 50:47
  Who's also an enthusiast.
• 50:48
  So I think it's awesome when people do their own work.
• 50:51
  We, you know, huge numbers of our customers do their own work.
• 50:54
  But even if you're gonna do your own work, and if this is
• 50:56
  outside of the scope, right?
• 50:57
  Everybody has their threshold.
• 50:59
  Am I gonna get into my engine?
• 51:00
  Well, that's beyond me.
• 51:01
  Am I gonna.
• 51:02
  Align my car.
• 51:03
  Well, it's beyond the tools that I have.
• 51:04
  What you know, whatever the reason that you've passed your threshold
• 51:07
  of what you're personally gonna do.
• 51:08
  Having a shop that's a knowledgeable shop, that's a capable shop.
• 51:12
  Does performance work, race work, cares more than just sending this thing down
• 51:15
  the road straight or not crabbing or, you know what, with to the thrust alignment.
• 51:19
  That's a, that's an important resource and certainly a good relationship to have.
• 51:23
  You do get to a point though, as you advance as a driver and, and your
• 51:26
  technical skills, and if you are working on your own car, you know, going back
• 51:30
  to these suspension tuning and these alignments, I got to the point myself
• 51:33
  where a, I got tired of loading the car up, finding a shop that would take
• 51:36
  it, put it up on the machine, and here I'm gonna blow another a hundred bucks.
• 51:40
  'cause I made another change to the suspension is to learn how to do
• 51:43
  a string alignment and getting the appropriate stuff to do it yourself.
• 51:47
  I've done plenty of string alignments at the track for my buddies when it's like,
• 51:50
  Hey, car's outta whack doesn't seem right.
• 51:52
  All right, let's throw it on the, you know, the slip plates, let's get it
• 51:55
  measured out and you know, 15, 20 minutes later, the car's tracking the way they
• 51:59
  want it to and you go about your business.
• 52:00
  So yeah, I just saved them a hundred bucks.
• 52:02
  But on the same token, it's making those minute changes.
• 52:05
  That you can do and you can learn.
• 52:07
  And there's a lot of really great tips.
• 52:08
  I actually learned how to do string alignment from an
• 52:10
  E 30 pro solo autocrosser.
• 52:13
  He is like, this is how I do it.
• 52:14
  I set my car up at every event and it was some neat little tricks to
• 52:17
  make it fast and efficient, and that was, you know, worthwhile and I'll,
• 52:20
  I'll try to remember to share that video as part of this, this episode.
• 52:23
  I'll go dig that up.
• 52:24
  But you know, it's things like that that you can learn.
• 52:26
  Now, doing thrust angle, you're not gonna be able to do that yourself.
• 52:29
  You should put it up a machine.
• 52:30
  You have to have a baseline.
• 52:31
  And that's what I guess I'm getting at is you gotta pay for it at least once.
• 52:34
  And like you were saying, James is having that ledger, having those numbers, you
• 52:38
  know, going back to the pit and knowing where your baseline is supposed to be.
• 52:42
  You can always work from that and you can always adjust from that.
• 52:45
  So make that part of your build and part of the resume of the
• 52:48
  car is what are those numbers?
• 52:50
  And when I tell other guys with similar cars, this is what you need to start with.
• 52:54
  Then adjust for your driving style.
• 52:56
  Right.
• 52:56
  And tune the suspension to how you drive.
• 52:58
  Not how I drive, but at least start with my base numbers.
• 53:02
  Yep.
• 53:02
  Absolutely.
• 53:02
  Makes sense.
• 53:03
  You know, there's some other things that we could talk about, you know, bump
• 53:06
  and squat and all those kind of things.
• 53:07
  But there's one I really wanna touch on and it's roll center because I
• 53:11
  think it's something that people don't sometimes totally understand,
• 53:14
  but we argue about it a lot.
• 53:16
  So I'm gonna get your take on roll center and maybe we'll bat this
• 53:19
  one back and forth a little bit.
• 53:20
  Hmm.
• 53:21
  Roll center.
• 53:22
  We have um, we have a roll center adjustment kit for R 53 Mini Cooper.
• 53:29
  It's, it just.
• 53:30
  Pushes your roll center, I think it adjusts it by like 10,
• 53:34
  15 millimeters or something.
• 53:35
  And I imagine we have pieces that are like adjust to anti
• 53:38
  dive or something like that.
• 53:39
  So I, that has to have an effect on roll center.
• 53:41
  So to me, roll center is, is most typically adjusted by ride height,
• 53:45
  changing, you know, if you have a coil over spring set up, you can change
• 53:48
  the height of the car, which changes the, the angle of the arms as they,
• 53:52
  you know, relative to the ground.
• 53:53
  And then it changes your, changes your role center in the racing world.
• 53:57
  We also, we can add parts and, uh, that change role center, typically we're
• 54:02
  always going in one direction, right?
• 54:03
  We, if I think about it, we're, um, in, in the powerflex world, which again is
• 54:07
  sedans that we're designed for street use that we're now using at the track, et
• 54:10
  cetera, we're usually lowering the cars and then we're coming to correct the role
• 54:15
  center back to before it was lowered.
• 54:17
  Two inches, three inches, you know, whatever, whatever the number is
• 54:19
  to get the look we want, et cetera.
• 54:21
  Does it apply equally to all cars or is it all based on the setup?
• 54:25
  And I know this is kind of a leading question, but I I just want to go there.
• 54:29
  What do you mean?
• 54:29
  Does it apply equally to all cars?
• 54:31
  So, okay, I'll, I'll put it this way.
• 54:33
  I've gone back and forth with people on this about, especially front
• 54:36
  wheel drives, because it's not the most common thing in racing.
• 54:40
  You know, we always wanna go with that front engine rear
• 54:42
  drive or nine 11 platform.
• 54:44
  Rear wheel drive is the king of racing, right?
• 54:46
  But there's plenty of argument to say front wheel drives are
• 54:48
  equally as competitive, you know, touring car and whatever.
• 54:51
  And they can be made to go very fast.
• 54:53
  But a lot of the techniques that are used are counterintuitive to what
• 54:57
  everybody uses on a, on a standard platform, let's call it that.
• 55:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 55:00
  You know, I've gotten into debates with people about the role center.
• 55:03
  It's like, oh, your role center is, is basically under the pavement.
• 55:06
  And I'm like, well, okay.
• 55:07
  Theoretically, yes.
• 55:09
  However, let's talk about front wheel drive specifically, or fun wheel drive
• 55:13
  is we like to call them on the show.
• 55:15
  If you want to induce lift throttle over steer, where should your roll center be?
• 55:19
  Mm, below the ground.
• 55:20
  Why?
• 55:21
  Because I need my car level under acceleration, but I need it to dive
• 55:26
  under load to pick the rear end up so it can rotate because again,
• 55:30
  the rear tires are just keeping me from dragging on the pavement.
• 55:33
  So there's some opposite techniques there, but I think it could be true
• 55:37
  even of a rear wheel drive where I, I had an E 36 track car and you set
• 55:41
  the ride height so that it squatted a certain way so that under breaking the
• 55:45
  car was level and it didn't get light.
• 55:47
  So you were trying to create the opposite effect and keep the car stable.
• 55:50
  So there's a lot to setting up that balance front to rear and where
• 55:54
  you position your roll center.
• 55:55
  So I guess what I'm getting at here with a long-winded explanation is it's not always
• 56:00
  about the position of the control arm so much as what you're trying to achieve
• 56:04
  with the balance of the vehicle, right?
• 56:06
  Totally.
• 56:07
  Powerflex world, which means we're talking about sedans going
• 56:10
  from street use to track use.
• 56:12
  It's another tool in your toolbox.
• 56:13
  And, and it's not about having a textbook perfect.
• 56:17
  It's about being able to make the change that you need and have that
• 56:20
  role center correction or role center adjustment as a tuning tool.
• 56:23
  So when I talked earlier about one of my favorite adjustments on the
• 56:27
  BMW being, raising and lowering the rear of the car, and, and that
• 56:30
  was within a range of reasonable.
• 56:33
  So I'm not really affecting camber.
• 56:34
  I'm not really affecting tow, I'm really not affecting corner weight.
• 56:38
  Right.
• 56:38
  Like does, does raising the rear of the car a quarter inch.
• 56:41
  If I think about, you know, my buddy, the Ian, what does that
• 56:44
  do to corner way to the car?
• 56:45
  Really nothing.
• 56:47
  What I've done, I've changed the rake a little bit, but
• 56:49
  I've changed my role center.
• 56:51
  And so that's, that's why that change is so effective.
• 56:54
  And I don't necessarily care slash know where the role center is when I start.
• 56:58
  I just know that I'm making a change in a direction that's, that does what I need.
• 57:02
  Um, with that adjustment on that specific platform, we do
• 57:04
  a lot of role center changes.
• 57:06
  For example, in, uh, in a Specky 46 car.
• 57:09
  So it's a, it's a race car.
• 57:10
  It has defined spring rates front and rear, and so I can't change those,
• 57:16
  but I can change my effectiveness of the rates by changing my role center.
• 57:19
  It's not an arrow car.
• 57:21
  So I'm not thinking about like, maybe I am on some of our GT
• 57:23
  four stuff, like how close to the ground am I getting the splitter?
• 57:27
  I don't care about that.
• 57:28
  I want to either make the spring act more like a spring or lower it
• 57:33
  to the point that my spring is less effective because it's a tuning tool.
• 57:36
  It's a tuning tool for the balance front to rear the of the car.
• 57:39
  We have this monster Pikes Peak car that we, that we're building, which
• 57:42
  is, it's less of a, less of a road car.
• 57:44
  It started out as an E 36, but it's, it's a tube frame, or,
• 57:48
  you know, it's a tube frame.
• 57:49
  I, I'm not gonna lie to myself, it's a tube frame.
• 57:51
  So we've got dual arm fronts and we've got lots of racy parts, but we kept
• 57:55
  that, uh, E 36, uh, E 46 rear suspension, kept those trailing arms, et cetera.
• 58:01
  So we initially set that thing up.
• 58:04
  With a roll center in the rear approximately like
• 58:08
  we use on the street cars.
• 58:09
  And again, that's a great tuning tool.
• 58:11
  It works, you know, it works so well.
• 58:13
  It has, this thing has massive arrow, but it's, it's, it's with tunnels
• 58:16
  so it's, it's not really affected by our, our, uh, ride height so much.
• 58:20
  But, so it's set up like a street car.
• 58:22
  Like, man, this thing is just fallen over on its face when we go into a turn.
• 58:24
  This is not working.
• 58:25
  So we changed the role center on the car 10 inches, which is a
• 58:29
  pretty big change for a, you know, we did, we did it with arm mounts.
• 58:32
  Yeah.
• 58:32
  But you know, in the grand scheme of things, pretty big change.
• 58:35
  Basically we, we took it from street car geometry to, if we ignored that, this
• 58:39
  thing started as a street car and we just wanted to make it like a prototype.
• 58:42
  That's typical prototype role center.
• 58:45
  And arm geometry and suddenly the car works like it's supposed to.
• 58:48
  So, you know, granted that's a massive change.
• 58:50
  That was such an eye-opening thing about how it really made the spring
• 58:54
  work and allowed us to come down significantly on spring rate because
• 58:58
  it made the spring do its work instead of being a improper bandaid for it.
• 59:01
  Absolutely, and, and there's a lot to all of this.
• 59:04
  I mean, we could go down a whole, probably another episode about how sway
• 59:08
  bars play into the spring rate and every millimeter that you increase the sway
• 59:11
  bar adds X amount of, you know, spring rate and all these kind of things.
• 59:14
  It's all tied together.
• 59:15
  And then you have end links between the sway bars and the control arms
• 59:19
  and the suspension components and there's bushings there, right?
• 59:21
  You replace those with Powerflex as well, or you know, whatever you have
• 59:24
  available for that whole application.
• 59:25
  But every one of those deflection points.
• 59:28
  Is another variable in this, this larger equation to suspension tuning.
• 59:32
  Right.
• 59:33
  But I think if we boil this back to basics, one of the things that
• 59:36
  people always wanna address is, what's the quickest way for me to
• 59:39
  eliminate under steer or over steer using Powerflex catalog there?
• 59:44
  What would be some of the things that people would leverage to help
• 59:47
  mitigate just some of the basic unwanted characteristics of a vehicle?
• 59:52
  I would say before you, you say unwanted characteristics of the
• 59:55
  vehicle you have to make the car work like it's supposed to work.
• 59:58
  That's the foundation.
• 59:59
  Whether, whether it's like we discussed earlier, replacing old stuff that's
• 1:00:03
  worn out or not functioning like it used to, or just replacing road car
• 1:00:07
  stuff, you know, that's fine for a road car and meets whatever balance the,
• 1:00:10
  the engineers were trying for there.
• 1:00:12
  But if you want a track car, you, you want your car to do very specific things.
• 1:00:17
  So getting rid of that slot and making the car work, all the, all this suspension
• 1:00:23
  flex, et cetera, is free amped movement.
• 1:00:27
  If I have an optimized race car, everything is solid, things are moving
• 1:00:31
  exactly how they're supposed to move.
• 1:00:33
  They're set exactly the way I wanted them, and I have springs and sway
• 1:00:37
  bars and shocks controlling it.
• 1:00:40
  A lot of other tuning features, et cetera.
• 1:00:42
  But those, those are my control devices in motion.
• 1:00:44
  If I go back to that stock bushing example, but I still have my fancy racing
• 1:00:50
  springs and shocks and all that stuff.
• 1:00:51
  I'll, you know, we talked about dampers early.
• 1:00:53
  I'll, I'll throw MCs four ways, which is what we have on the, on the Pikes car.
• 1:00:57
  10 grand worth of dampers.
• 1:00:59
  Amazing if I do that, but they're controlling whatever amount of,
• 1:01:03
  of motion roll, et cetera, that's, that's compressing that spring
• 1:01:06
  through the shock, et cetera.
• 1:01:08
  But then I've got it all mounted on arms that are just doing kind
• 1:01:11
  of whatever they want to do.
• 1:01:12
  I, I have zero control.
• 1:01:14
  Why am I paying 10 grand for dampers on a suspension that's compressing and, and
• 1:01:18
  rebounding two, two and a half inches when I've got over a half inch of movement
• 1:01:22
  on my geometry of the whole thing.
• 1:01:24
  So I, I think a lot of people go immediately to the shocks and springs
• 1:01:28
  and Sure that, that makes sense.
• 1:01:29
  Lower the car on springs.
• 1:01:31
  That's a nice thing.
• 1:01:32
  It's aesthetically pleasing.
• 1:01:33
  I get that.
• 1:01:33
  But if I'm thinking about it from purely a performance
• 1:01:37
  standpoint, the first thing I do.
• 1:01:39
  Is to make sure that those parts are actually working like they're supposed to.
• 1:01:44
  By controlling the movement on the stuff that's not supposed to be moving
• 1:01:47
  around, which is the bushings of the car.
• 1:01:49
  I can't agree more with that because you know, as I was thinking about what
• 1:01:52
  you were saying, I think if I was gonna recommend, you know, going back to
• 1:01:55
  the gentleman we talked about earlier with this Jetta who's looking to get
• 1:01:59
  rid of body roll and things like that, I would tell 'em target the control
• 1:02:02
  arms and the trailing arm bushings.
• 1:02:03
  Leave the suspension alone, clean that car up.
• 1:02:06
  It's 15 years old, if not older at this point.
• 1:02:09
  So those bushings have gotta be worn out.
• 1:02:11
  They weren't great to begin with.
• 1:02:13
  Target that, and it's way cheaper.
• 1:02:15
  You're gonna, to your point, you do a set of conies and, and h and r or
• 1:02:19
  you know, bill Steins or Newsfeed Springs or something like that.
• 1:02:22
  It's gonna set you back a thousand bucks.
• 1:02:25
  And what's a set of bushings right?
• 1:02:26
  At the end of the day?
• 1:02:27
  So, to your point, Powerflex might be expensive, a hundred bucks for,
• 1:02:30
  for a set of, you know, strut mounts.
• 1:02:32
  Is not a thousand dollars for suspension.
• 1:02:34
  Now, I'm not saying if you want to go hell low and do all that kind of stuff.
• 1:02:38
  Aesthetics aside, it's awesome point.
• 1:02:41
  You drove home is start with the easy stuff.
• 1:02:43
  It's actually cheaper in the long run and you're gonna bring back better than
• 1:02:46
  new car feel, probably eliminate some of that body roll and under steer and
• 1:02:50
  over steer if you're experiencing that instead of, you know, just throwing
• 1:02:54
  more money and not really solving the, you know, the initial problem.
• 1:02:58
  Think about it like, you know, when I'm working on my car, right?
• 1:03:00
  You know, everybody listening here probably, probably does
• 1:03:03
  some level of work on their car.
• 1:03:04
  Imagine performing, whatever that job is.
• 1:03:07
  Let's, you know, we're talking about suspension, okay, I'm gonna install
• 1:03:09
  some control arms, so if I'm gonna install some control arms, I wear
• 1:03:12
  gloves when I work, I don't want stuff under my fingernails, et cetera.
• 1:03:15
  I like to, I like.
• 1:03:16
  Keep it kind of clean.
• 1:03:17
  I've got little, uh, you know, latex or nitrile gloves that I'm gonna use, right?
• 1:03:21
  Because I wanna be able to feel things and so forth.
• 1:03:23
  If I did that same job with my ski gloves, I'd have absolutely
• 1:03:28
  no feel, I'd have no control.
• 1:03:29
  I couldn't do the job I was supposed to do.
• 1:03:31
  That's what your bushings do on the car.
• 1:03:33
  If you have the right components on the car, doing the right
• 1:03:36
  work, springs, shocks, et cetera.
• 1:03:38
  But it's doing it through this translation of, I can't feel
• 1:03:42
  what my, my fingertips are doing.
• 1:03:44
  'cause I've got these big, big fat heavy gloves on you.
• 1:03:46
  Just, it, it gives you no control.
• 1:03:49
  So, you know, we have a lot of customers that.
• 1:03:51
  We'll do the springs, the shocks, the all the, the stuff that makes sense.
• 1:03:55
  First, it will work, it'll perform fairly well, but what makes it really work?
• 1:04:00
  You know, so it's, it's like you've spent five grand, whatever for,
• 1:04:03
  you know, for a nice racing setup.
• 1:04:04
  You've, you've spent a good chunk of money and you're getting like 75% of the
• 1:04:08
  performance of it, and then that's a real number, like 75, 80% something, which
• 1:04:12
  is way off, you know, because you could have spent a grand 1500 bucks and gotten
• 1:04:17
  that same amount of performance if you were allowing those parts to do their
• 1:04:20
  work with the rest of the full package.
• 1:04:23
  Again, it's systematic.
• 1:04:24
  Your suspension is not your spring, your suspension is not your spring and shock.
• 1:04:28
  Your suspension is the whole system of all the arms, all the
• 1:04:31
  bushings, and all the thing that make this whole car work in concert.
• 1:04:36
  You know, and it's funny you, the way you said that, it, the
• 1:04:38
  one word popped out in my head.
• 1:04:41
  And it's dexterity.
• 1:04:42
  And people often talk about road feel, to your point.
• 1:04:45
  It is translated through the suspension, through those bushings.
• 1:04:49
  The bushings are the contact points for all of your suspension components.
• 1:04:53
  Good on you.
• 1:04:54
  You got a tubular control arm.
• 1:04:55
  Doesn't mean anything if you've got a soft bushing, but if you got a hind joint,
• 1:04:59
  it's gonna feel completely different.
• 1:05:00
  Right?
• 1:05:01
  And so all of that I think translates to dexterity.
• 1:05:04
  It's the dexterity of the vehicle, how you're communicating
• 1:05:07
  through it and feeling the road.
• 1:05:08
  And so all of this is super important.
• 1:05:10
  It all plays together.
• 1:05:11
  And you're right, it is a system.
• 1:05:12
  And we've had other episodes where we discussed safety as a system.
• 1:05:16
  You know how all the harnesses and seats work together.
• 1:05:18
  All of this stuff in the automotive world really is designed to work together.
• 1:05:22
  And if you have one point that you kind of skipped out on, or if you put
• 1:05:26
  the cart well in front of the horse, the system doesn't work the right way.
• 1:05:30
  So starting with small steps, starting with bushings as an example, is a
• 1:05:34
  great way to really build up to what you were maybe trying to achieve.
• 1:05:38
  And maybe in the case of this guy with a Jetta, he needs to throw the 14 inch
• 1:05:42
  wheels away, go to a lower profile, and it might feel a little different on the
• 1:05:46
  road, you know, a little less squidgy, but I'm just gonna leave that on the side,
• 1:05:49
  you know, leave that where we found it to, to your point, you, it only works as
• 1:05:53
  well as the weakest part of the system.
• 1:05:55
  Right?
• 1:05:55
  If it's a system, the weakest one is gonna define the performance potential.
• 1:05:59
  Absolutely.
• 1:05:59
  I like to think about the, the bushings.
• 1:06:01
  Like, you know, your car is, it's like the, the human body, you know.
• 1:06:05
  Uh, you got all these bones and everything, but what
• 1:06:08
  holds 'em all together?
• 1:06:09
  You got your joints, and that's what your bushings do.
• 1:06:12
  It, it's exactly what they do.
• 1:06:13
  They're the joint for everything in your suspension.
• 1:06:15
  It's, it's all put together like that.
• 1:06:17
  You can have strong bones, you can drink your milk and have great bones,
• 1:06:20
  but if your joints aren't working right, then you're not gonna feel good.
• 1:06:23
  So.
• 1:06:23
  That's right, that's right.
• 1:06:25
  That's sage advice there.
• 1:06:27
  So let's just kind of switch gears here into, you know, our final segment.
• 1:06:31
  Let's talk about other products and offerings that Powerflex has
• 1:06:35
  that we might not be aware of.
• 1:06:36
  Like, we're very intimate with the, you know, the bushing side and, and strut
• 1:06:39
  mounts and things like that, but the catalog is probably deeper than that.
• 1:06:42
  So, you know, tell us a little bit about the other stuff that you guys offer.
• 1:06:46
  So we've got some stuff, like, we have a universal bushings that some people use.
• 1:06:51
  Uh, a lot of them are modeled for, for different, I believe
• 1:06:54
  like carts and UTVs or whatnot.
• 1:06:56
  They've developed over in the uk we offer a. Pretty large range of exhaust
• 1:07:00
  mounts that are made of our 65 a polyurethane as a replacement to the
• 1:07:05
  standard rubber ones that you always see destroyed under people's cars,
• 1:07:09
  and those are meant to last way longer and they handle heat really well.
• 1:07:13
  So you don't have to worry about that being an issue either.
• 1:07:16
  We also offer a few kind of obscure things.
• 1:07:19
  We have our own camra gauge that's not really advertised on our site that
• 1:07:22
  much It, it is just a camra gauge.
• 1:07:26
  It's pretty cool.
• 1:07:27
  It says Powerflex on it.
• 1:07:28
  It comes in a really nice case.
• 1:07:30
  Um, we offer some, some pretty neat stuff aside from the bushings.
• 1:07:34
  Nothing really too crazy that you won't find on our website, but
• 1:07:37
  those are a few good things like the exhaust mounts and whatnot.
• 1:07:40
  We are a specialist.
• 1:07:41
  You know, we're very clear that what we are, what we are good at is your thing.
• 1:07:45
  We have proprietary urethane that nobody else in the world has.
• 1:07:48
  It's, you know, we haven't really talked about it much on this show because it's
• 1:07:51
  not necessarily your audience, but NBH, noise Vibration harshness our urethane.
• 1:07:56
  Specifically is engineered to smooth out some of the rough edges.
• 1:08:00
  Urethane has a bad name from some of the subpar urethane suppliers out there from
• 1:08:05
  some of the subpar urethane formulas.
• 1:08:08
  So we are very good at what we do, our production process, et cetera,
• 1:08:12
  you know, to have a part that that truly does last a lifetime.
• 1:08:15
  So we haven't, like some other companies in the suspension world, we haven't taken
• 1:08:20
  urethane as an anchor point and jumped off to make whatever we decided to make.
• 1:08:25
  Um, you know, Jake mentions the camera gauge, you know.
• 1:08:27
  There's nothing special about our camera gauge other than has our name on it, but
• 1:08:31
  what we're, I still want one, but, you know, Hey, well, well, I appreciate that.
• 1:08:35
  We're awesome at making urethane.
• 1:08:36
  And so we, we have expanded, we have over in the UK 25 30 cncs running,
• 1:08:42
  running around the clock, and they, you know, we, so we've expanded to making
• 1:08:45
  things that do have aluminum housings, et cetera, but there's almost always
• 1:08:48
  a urethane foundation and component.
• 1:08:50
  We didn't make engine mounts for a long period of time, and that's
• 1:08:53
  something you mentioned early on, which we've now started doing.
• 1:08:56
  But our engine mounts are, again, an engineered product,
• 1:08:59
  includes machined aluminum.
• 1:09:01
  They're made to act in a specific way.
• 1:09:04
  I, I know the ones that we make for the BM BMW are actually
• 1:09:06
  tunable with urethane rods.
• 1:09:07
  So you can tune your stiffness of how much vibration am I
• 1:09:11
  willing to accept for my engine?
• 1:09:12
  If I want it to stay more in place, more solid, and I can take a little
• 1:09:16
  bit more vibration, I'm gonna add more of those rods in and stiffen that up.
• 1:09:19
  Again, especially important if you've ever tried to put a
• 1:09:22
  urethane motor mount on a diesel.
• 1:09:24
  Let me tell you that's, and, and again, you know, if I, if I look at
• 1:09:29
  other urethane suspension companies, I have red brand suspension company, I
• 1:09:33
  have yellow brand suspension company.
• 1:09:35
  You know, they have their urethane.
• 1:09:37
  It's the one thing we offer four durometers of urethane plus.
• 1:09:41
  We have metallic components specifically to your engine mounts and engine mount
• 1:09:45
  inserts, which we use a lot of times because it's easy to just drop an
• 1:09:48
  insert in, fill those factory voids.
• 1:09:50
  We have a special one for diesels with a softer urethane because we know
• 1:09:55
  that the guys with diesels don't wanna be vibrated to death and will be.
• 1:09:59
  So we have it, that one for those guys.
• 1:10:01
  We have a purple for a standard gasoline car.
• 1:10:04
  And of course we always have the black series if you just want this
• 1:10:07
  thing to be as stiff as possible.
• 1:10:08
  You get a black series.
• 1:10:10
  In fact, mark vi and Mark VII golf are engine mount inserts
• 1:10:15
  as well as our hybrid mounts.
• 1:10:17
  Because those dog bones have like the two pucks.
• 1:10:19
  They have the one in the bottom and the one on the top.
• 1:10:21
  We have a hybrid mount that is an insert up top and then a complete
• 1:10:25
  poly replacement for the bottom puck.
• 1:10:27
  But in those particular product lines, we offer those inserts and hybrid
• 1:10:33
  mounts in every durometer that we, that we sell, we offer 'em for the diesel.
• 1:10:37
  We offer them for the lower end performance slash street driven car, uh,
• 1:10:43
  which is our yellow, the 70 a durometer.
• 1:10:45
  We offer those for more.
• 1:10:47
  Spirited drivers slash occasional track guy who wants the a DA in there.
• 1:10:52
  And then we offer the 95 A for the dedicated track cars.
• 1:10:56
  You probably wouldn't want that in a streetcar.
• 1:10:57
  You know, James, you brought up several times the lifetime
• 1:11:00
  warranty of the Powerflex bushing or the Powerflex product itself.
• 1:11:04
  So let's expand upon that a little bit.
• 1:11:06
  We get it.
• 1:11:07
  It's lifetime.
• 1:11:07
  It's built to last.
• 1:11:09
  However, say something fails.
• 1:11:11
  Something definitely goes pear shaped.
• 1:11:13
  What's the process in which, you know, you get it RMA or, or replaced or whatever.
• 1:11:18
  What, what do we have to do to get a replacement?
• 1:11:21
  We make it super easy.
• 1:11:22
  Like I've said, the, the lifetime warranty isn't just the stamp we throw on there.
• 1:11:26
  It means something.
• 1:11:26
  We don't expect a bushing to fail, but if it does, and certainly there's,
• 1:11:30
  you know, there's environments that you will fail bushings, and we get it.
• 1:11:33
  And there's instances that you will fail, bushings, if you're in a wreck,
• 1:11:36
  there's a fair chance that something might be affected negatively and,
• 1:11:39
  and your bushing is certainly one of those pieces that could go as well.
• 1:11:43
  We make it easy.
• 1:11:44
  There's a lifetime warranty button on our website.
• 1:11:47
  You just fill out the form, we send you new stuff.
• 1:11:49
  You've gotta provide pictures of your failed part.
• 1:11:52
  You've gotta provide a receipt that you're actually the purchaser or the
• 1:11:56
  part, and then we send you a new part.
• 1:11:58
  So interesting.
• 1:11:59
  So if I bought a vehicle that had powerflex components on it, and maybe
• 1:12:03
  they were installed improperly and that caused it to fail, not my fault, but
• 1:12:07
  I would love to have them replaced, then I'm stuck buying new ones.
• 1:12:11
  Or is there still an avenue for me to pursue?
• 1:12:14
  So yes, the warranty does only apply to the original purchaser.
• 1:12:18
  And if the bushings are installed improperly to begin with,
• 1:12:22
  that's a whole other thing.
• 1:12:24
  Our warranty does cover defects in our bushings and bushing failure after,
• 1:12:28
  you know, you've installed the bushings properly, it doesn't cover user error.
• 1:12:32
  It does not carry on to any other, anybody else other than
• 1:12:36
  the Yeah, it's non-transferable.
• 1:12:37
  I get that.
• 1:12:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:39
  We're an enthusiast company.
• 1:12:41
  We, we care about our customers.
• 1:12:42
  Not everything is a. Firm, hard rule.
• 1:12:45
  But by the same token, we expect people to be fair with us.
• 1:12:47
  I mean, you, you put our part on, you don't do it.
• 1:12:49
  Right.
• 1:12:49
  You, you don't, you don't read the instructions, which, gosh,
• 1:12:52
  those things are minimal anyway.
• 1:12:53
  It's not that tough to install our stuff.
• 1:12:54
  Yeah.
• 1:12:54
  If you're not doing it right and you destroy our part, you know,
• 1:12:57
  you guys ought to buy another one.
• 1:12:59
  That's, that's fair.
• 1:12:59
  So in, in general with, with anything we do, fairness is an important part of it.
• 1:13:05
  And so it, you know, give us your best sob story.
• 1:13:07
  Tell us why we're wrong.
• 1:13:08
  Tell, you know, give us, give us an opportunity to help you, but
• 1:13:11
  we've gotta have some opportunity.
• 1:13:13
  Why it's our fault or why it's our.
• 1:13:15
  Why it's our issue.
• 1:13:16
  But I'll tell you, you know, this lifetime warranty, we, we do wave that
• 1:13:19
  flag around and we're, we're big on it because we want to service our customers.
• 1:13:23
  We want our parts to be on there for a lifetime, and our customers do too.
• 1:13:26
  That's why they're paying more for our parts and not heated labor bill.
• 1:13:28
  It's, it's an upfront investment with that.
• 1:13:31
  And as easy as we make it for people to cash in on that if needed.
• 1:13:35
  Our warranty stats are something in the range of a 0.0 x percent per year for
• 1:13:41
  the 20 years we've been doing this and for all the stuff we have out there.
• 1:13:45
  So it's, um, it's our badge of honor, but by the same token, it, we do provide
• 1:13:49
  a lifetime part and used properly.
• 1:13:51
  And I'm not even saying used in the right environment, right.
• 1:13:53
  If you race on the part, if you beat it up or whatever, if it fails, then that's
• 1:13:56
  on us installed properly, given its chance to perform like we designed it to.
• 1:14:01
  Pretty good chance that you'll never need that lifetime warranty.
• 1:14:03
  And occasionally parts do go through redesign.
• 1:14:06
  So if we, there's a design that's not working to the best
• 1:14:10
  standards, then they'll go through and they'll redesign the part.
• 1:14:12
  And if you happen to find yourself with a set of bushings that is not current,
• 1:14:17
  it's not the new design, you can let us know and we'll be happy to replace that.
• 1:14:21
  We'll be happy to send you that like a upgrade program.
• 1:14:24
  I like that.
• 1:14:24
  That's pretty cool.
• 1:14:25
  Yeah.
• 1:14:25
  We want our customers to have the best version of, of what we've got.
• 1:14:28
  If you've got something that's outdated, we don't want that.
• 1:14:31
  We want you to have what's now.
• 1:14:33
  Speaking of the, now, let's talk about the future.
• 1:14:35
  Is there anything coming down the pike that you'd like to share?
• 1:14:38
  Maybe something that's new and upcoming for 2021 or maybe 2022
• 1:14:42
  coming from Powerflex that our listeners should be aware of?
• 1:14:45
  We do an excellent job of covering car models.
• 1:14:49
  I don't envision us deciding to make powerflex exhausts anytime
• 1:14:53
  in the near future, right?
• 1:14:53
  We're gonna stick with things that are urethane.
• 1:14:56
  So of the things that we do that are urethane, we keep adding CNC machines.
• 1:15:00
  Um, you're starting to see more of these complete powerflex solutions
• 1:15:04
  that include CNC aluminum blocks and housings, and there's one with a Volvo
• 1:15:08
  so that you don't have to harvest the pin out of the factory part, which is
• 1:15:11
  just a, a real pain in the butt to do.
• 1:15:13
  So.
• 1:15:13
  You'll see more complete solutions like that.
• 1:15:15
  Our big focus is making sure that we cover our full cars, so we, we
• 1:15:21
  have clear marks that we focus on.
• 1:15:22
  We're European, we get that.
• 1:15:24
  We do some Japanese as well, but we have clear car marks that we supply parts for.
• 1:15:29
  Then we just wanna have everything.
• 1:15:30
  And it's, you know, sometimes it's a, it's a little tough for us.
• 1:15:33
  I mentioned having over 10,000 SKUs, you know, we have to keep a large volume of
• 1:15:37
  those, of each of those SKUs in stock.
• 1:15:39
  So the inventory requirement is heavy for us sometimes to have
• 1:15:43
  parts for cars that are still under warranty, which is just wild.
• 1:15:46
  But we are gonna do the engineering, we are gonna have the part available.
• 1:15:51
  And, you know, for your, for your new model BMW, even if it's only three
• 1:15:54
  years old, we'll have the opportunity to upgrade or replace with better stuff,
• 1:15:58
  even if you could just go to the dealer and get it replaced with the stock stuff.
• 1:16:01
  So yeah, that's what we're doing.
• 1:16:03
  Just making sure that we have everything you need.
• 1:16:05
  Well guys, it's been awesome to really kind of dig into suspensions
• 1:16:09
  and bushings and whatnot.
• 1:16:10
  But you know, for our listeners out there, if you wanna learn more
• 1:16:13
  about polyurethane poly bushings, powerflex, aligning your street or
• 1:16:18
  track car, be sure to visit powerflex usa.com or follow them on Facebook
• 1:16:24
  and Instagram at powerflex bushes.
• 1:16:27
  Or Powerflex, USA, so you can always reach out to Jake for additional information.
• 1:16:32
  You know, use the contact us form on the website.
• 1:16:34
  But, you know, I gotta say, guys, this has been super informative.
• 1:16:37
  I think this has been a great segment that we did here.
• 1:16:39
  You know, getting down and dirty with suspensions,
• 1:16:41
  learning more about Powerflex.
• 1:16:42
  I can't thank you guys enough for coming on the show.
• 1:16:44
  Thank you for having us.
• 1:16:46
  It's, it's been a pleasure talking with you guys.
• 1:16:47
  And, uh, great.
• 1:16:48
  Yeah, it's, uh, you know, I love, I love talking suspension.
• 1:16:51
  That's my favorite part of the car.
• 1:16:52
  As a, as a driver, that's, you know, that's my best tuning tool to be
• 1:16:56
  able to, to make the car go fast.
• 1:16:57
  And so to be able to chat for an hour about suspension.
• 1:17:01
  Good stuff.
• 1:17:02
  Thanks for the opportunity.
• 1:17:03
  No worries.
• 1:17:09
  That's right.
• 1:17:10
  Listeners.
• 1:17:10
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• 1:17:15
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• 1:17:25
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• 1:17:30
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• 1:17:33
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• 1:17:37
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• 1:17:40
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• 1:17:45
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• 1:17:53
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• 1:17:55
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• 1:17:57
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• 1:18:00
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