Cars & Coffee with Kenny Brown Performance - Episode 91

[Music] thank you hello everyone welcome welcome welcome we're glad you're you're here today on a Saturday morning here in Indianapolis it's raining uh Brad says it's 80 degrees down there and he's in his shorts uh but welcome we have a very exciting show today we have Scott hode who's a guest expert talking about his exhaust systems that he's developed and they're they're high quality you'll really enjoy listening to him and if you have any exhaust questions make sure you put them in the comments uh Brad what is Kenny talking about today uh Kenny is going to be talking about I'm using uh Street brake pads on the racetrack versus using race brake pads that that should be really interesting there's a lot of fallacies about uh race to a street pads so it'll be very interesting and then we will have guest expert Scott Hope from MRT on but before that I want to announce something that Scott has graciously uh offered a book that we can give away during the show so if you're live today on the show a little bit later we'll announce how you can participate in the giveaway and the book is called let's see it's engineer plus Enthusiast equals excitement Scott used to work for Ford um and he was a program manager on the 0-1 bullet in the 0304 Mach 1 and it's the inside scoop on how that was developed and it's just a really interesting story so he'll be giving away that book it's a 79 value and it's a beautiful beautiful book so anyway Brad everyone yeah I want to remind everyone if you're viewing on Facebook uh please be sure to give us a like or better off uh heart-shaped wrench um and of course follow our speed therapy uh Society group page that's where all the inside scoop information and fun stuff goes up um also if you're following on YouTube be sure to like the video be sure to subscribe to our Channel and if you click the little bell next to the Subscribe button once you are subscribed then you can get all notifications so every time we load a video or we go live with Cars and Coffee you can be sure to tune in and so tons of videos on the YouTube channel so and there's also a lot of resources on the Facebook our Facebook speed therapy Society Facebook group so make sure you join that to get even more information more Tech stuff okay Brad okay so um we've got the uh the video one of Ken's uh Tech videos so this is going to be uh Street pads versus race pads it's just a quick overview uh q a that he did uh previously so let me see if I can get this set up correctly bear with me a second sorry okay can you see that yes we can okay and it's not working well does that surprise anybody no but we haven't we have something else we can try hang on just a second here okay so I always have a background okay I'm going to show a peek of Scott home's book while you're getting that ready Brad so look at here guys the brake pads Ultra super important if you're going to the track I sell people Street pads for the street track pads for the track and never the twain shall meet because your operating temperature on the street is way less than operating temperature on the track in brake pads brake pad compounds there's three elements to it it's heat friction and wear and you take like a street pad that's designed to run under 500 Degrees and you go on track and you have eight 900 Degrees all of a sudden the the friction will go down and you're aware will go up and I've seen too many times I've seen people show up for the first track day with stock brakes and some of them don't even make it through the morning before they burn their brakes up or if he's going down straight away they can't stop they run off the track so I mean brake pads are super important and like the I know there's a lot of people who try to get away with like the like high performance Street brake pads uh well that's if it's your first time maybe you might get by with it if you're not really using the brakes if you start using the brakes it's not going to work because they only go up the compounds they only go up to about 800 Degrees and like I say my cars I'm running 1200 degrees of rotor temperatures and I need a brake pad that's going to be the medium operating range has got to have to be somewhere in the middle and the pads IU that you is a a 400 to 1600 like in a hawk or the newer pads that we're using we're really really happy with a g-lux I'll get something that's like 1800 degrees it starts at 200 degrees so it's a really broad range and we can actually get those brake pads pre-bedded so you don't have to wait okay so that was short and sweet so um people are here excited to listen to Scott on exhaust we have fishing jts and he says he actually has a 22 Mach Mach 1 so that's really cool you'll enjoy listening about the history of the the mark on that uh MRT develop or not MRT but Scott Hall developed fredcher good to see you from Louisville we have Dylan here good morning we have Lance from Foxbody FX here he's jealous uh so um perhaps the weather I'm sure and then we also have Calvin Goring good to see you and I know Joe Johnson's in there someplace and Eric Lee hey it's great to see everybody make sure you comment and think of questions you want to ask God hope and I'm going to start with uh introducing him right now so Scott Hogue is our expert on exhaust systems and he is the founder and president of MRT performance and he's with us today he's also what's interesting about it there's a couple interesting facts before I'm going to let Scott talk about himself a little bit but I want to mention a couple of things MRT does anybody know what that stands for it yes Scott you know it's uh stands for Mustang racing technology so that tells you what a Mustang Enthusiast is and we he's been in business 19 years at 23 is going to be his 20th anniversary you know really excited that's wonderful to go on that way lots of people know MRT from the industry but and he's expanding into other product lines but his heart and soul I believe is with mustangs uh also the other thing I think is interesting uh is that Kenny and Scott have the same philosophy and passion for performance in the aftermarket they align by offering the highest quality engineered products for the performance Enthusiast I mean his quality of products spots are is really good but anyway without further Ado Scott I'm going to introduce you and we're excited for you to be here this morning can you tell me a little bit about how you got started in the industry um sure that's kind of a a fun story to me because uh my wife and I kind of see it at different angles but uh but bottom line is I've been in the tuning and performance side of the automotive industry since before I could drive that includes uh doing some unwanted modifications to my dad's car while he was at work not watching me so uh truly Grassroots uh fast forward that several years of going through college and and then working working for Ford that tinkering individualizing performance driving side of the of the industry has always been of interest to me so truly I was a car guy found in the automotive industry at Ford and people kind of would take that comment and say well of course well if you're in in the industry you'll know that that's not a con formula in fact sometimes uh you're a little ostracized being a car guy working in the Auto industry um being a fringe Kook guy that kind of stuff I can wear all those badges proudly um but while at Ford the uh I was I was doing track day performance driving um off-road stuff in my version that means kind of missing a corner um the opportunity came up at Ford I had manufacturing chassis and overall program product development experience and the opportunity came up at Ford to take a very unique position actually it was a brand new position at Ford that was developed after the 2005 Mustang was introduced at the uh the Detroit International Auto Show in 2000 so five years before the car was going to be produced they produced they showed this all new exciting retro styled um cool Mustang the first time in Mustang's history that it was a ground up from scratch vehicle designed to be a Mustang all of that's cool and exciting the industries of customers got excited about it and uh and then the reality set home of we still have five years we need to build and sell Mustangs or Mustang will die we won't have a chance to build this car so the Mustang customization attribute Department whatever was developed under the the leadership of art Hyde and I got selected fortunately to take that role and my job description was very simple it was keep Mustang interesting exciting for the Enthusiast the people who live love and like to celebrate Mustang this has to be cars for them and from that process came the 01 bullet then we followed on with the 2003 Mustang and then the car that was that made it to the drawing board but never happened was going to be actually 2004 uh Boss 302 but wow maybe we can talk about that one someday but uh the reason that didn't happen isn't because Ford forgot the Enthusiast but it was simply too close to the o5 launch uh we needed all hands on deck for the o5 to make sure that it really was a spectacular car so I can't criticize that decision I can't believe you had that much leverage within Ford to to develop these Enthusiast cars I mean that must have been really exciting for you especially since you're such a car Enthusiast absolutely it was it was a dream job uh clearly right time right place and uh yeah I'm I'm blessed to have had that opportunity so Scott I know that you started MRT and I and I started Mr Mark and how did you start MRT yeah good good question um so back in in 2002 um we started the the concept of of MRT and it was basically built on uh conversations that I had with my wife Lisa on you know we need to do this it'd be cool if we could do that right all these kind of things and uh I think she got tired of my whining and said well if you want to do these things uh put together a business case let's review it and if if we think it works uh do it stop whining about it um so I did that much to her Chagrin uh on one of our holiday trips to Minnesota which is 11 hours of car time I had her captive and I I pitched my business case so that was that was basically the uh the beginning and the idea was to take the systems engineering concept that that we were doing at Ford and at the OEM level and and take it to the aftermarket and the intent was to rise the quality and execution of the aftermarket experience to Enthusiast customers so that the car that they already loved and bought for the OEM they could individualize it and love it even more and celebrate that car more fully so I know that sounds you know very romantic and car guy kooky stuff but that literally was was the goal and how we bring parts to the aftermarket in the last 20 years has changed dramatically I'm not saying that I caused all of that change but I certainly have been a part of that change and the end result is you know look look at the SEMA organization and how popular aftermarket performance and upgrades are and what size business that represents in the industry um it is it's no joke and it's not a fad it's here to stay it's part of Americana the trifecta you had the engineering experience experience from Ford and then your passion for Mustangs I mean those three combined that's a great combination for a a good business model so totally agree with that and I know Lisa so I'm sure she quizzed you in and puts you through the polls and you know before you started this this great job absolutely she also works with oh work for Ford as well and I think she was more in the uh bean counter area analysis of businesses or something strategy yeah business strategy and Engineering she started as an engineer so you know I couldn't I couldn't just fluff things and get a buyer fuse she's sharp yeah she is very sharp so the um exhausts well one thing I wanted to mention is that you talked about SEMA now how many cars have you brought to SEMA uh tell me about that we've uh We've displayed cars at SEMA for 19 years we built 21 cars um we have 19 Design Awards and one best of show so uh it's been a phenomenal trip uh SEMA happened this year uh this week I was not there this year uh the rationale behind that is very simple uh we are we're busy at MRT and we don't have enough resources to do things with excess comfort so we're here making parts so that uh we don't give our customers the excuse of well we're all at SEMA so I couldn't make the stuff for you so that's why we're here totally understand that we didn't go to SEMA this year I think uh talking to a lot of our suppliers and vendors and partners uh they didn't go to see me either so I don't I think since cobed um they don't probably don't have the participation we're going to be at the PRI show here in Indianapolis which is really easy and we can sleep in our beds at night which I love yeah yes absolutely I might see you there oh good and definitely do that and stop by your facility too um what else was I going to ask you I want to ask you one more question I'm taking up too much time and I'm going to go to Brad shortly I want to talk about your book just a little bit because we are going to be giving away one of Scott's books engineer plus enthusiasts equals excitement why don't you tell me a little bit about how you started that and and what it's about okay sure yeah and Dave's taking a quick picture of the of the book so you can see what the the cover looks like this book is is different than a lot of the the traditional car Publications the book started based off of the the pushing and prodding of Tony Alonso who is a a car Enthusiast and owner he owns a bullet in Mach 1 actually owned several bullets and Mach ones and every time we go to events and to club meetings we would kind of have a mixer get together afterward and it was kind of a fireside chat just low-key casual conversation and we would always talk about uh the process of how these cars get built and some of The Insider stories uh things that we did challenges that we were faced with that sort of thing and he said we got to write these down got to write these down so um I finally conceded and we you know he came up to Detroit and we sat and I believe it's like 20 hours worth of interview he just rattled off question after question and it's it's more of a interview fireside chat type format book and it's all about The Insider story you know what we're what were the the challenges what were the issues what's the what was the political climate internally um the things that a normal uh qualified book writer author and editor wouldn't necessarily have access to so it's uh it's a Different Twist we've actually had some people you know car Mustang enthusiasts that have gotten the book and they say they just found it just a a fun interesting read I've had a couple people comment on the book that really aren't necessarily Mustang enthusiasts but their automotive industry enthusiasts and they picked up the book to try to get that inside glitch Glimpse and they found it very very entertaining and uh and educational so um it's just a different twist so in the book you're going to see a lot of pictures and content and data that you haven't seen already out in the in the media in the traditional channel so it is really something different is this the one I I saw on on your store shop MRT online that it was open it was a certified I can't remember what you call it it yeah hey this book is that in that this book too so we can open it up and see it or is that a special book yeah yes yep Dave's showing you a kind of a glimpse of of that right now um so in the publication so this is a single run publication so when they're gone they're gone but of the publication there were 300 collectors editions and what makes it a collector's edition is that it's a numbered book uh in sequence of of one to three hundred and has a certificate of authenticity has a couple little Easter eggs in it which you can see on that certificate so that sticker right in the middle of the certificate is actually a bullet sticker so for those of you know the o1 bullet they are all serial numbered and uniquely numbered not all of the stickers went on cars so I was held as the The Keeper of the they didn't find themselves in the marketplace and counterfeit bullets were being built in uh underground shops so um I got permission from Ford before the publication of the book to use up the remaining stickers in this way and make it in this book can you talk Scott I think we lost your there we go there okay perfect so so what we're gonna do before we get to the uh ask the expert questions uh Scott we you graciously offered to give this away in our giveaway today yes and yep so we are going to give it away to you're gonna at the end of the show you're gonna pick a number for me and I'll tell you between like 1 and 10 or 1 and 20 or one in a hundred and the person that that that answers this question or does this task will be uh um I'm really losing my words here it's going to be able to win the book so if you want to win this book either put down that you uh sign up for a newsletter and Brad will be putting the newsletter uh Link in the comments and then comment that you sign up for the newsletter many of you are probably already receiving that newsletter so uh just put that you've already signed up but you need to comment that you either signed up or you have it and you'll have a chance to win this book uh it's very interesting especially for those ones that people that own the bullet in the maquana I mean that's just phenomenal book and so we'll be doing that at the end of the show you'll be picking that winners for us Scott and the reason I'm saying the newsletter today is because we are over the holiday weekend and through the holiday we're going to be offering a lot of really cool new Kenny brown stuff mainly on the apparel line and I want to make sure that everybody sees that if they're interested in that we've had such demand for us to come out with a line especially since Kenny's past so uh look make sure you look for that and everything will be in that newsletter okay enough about that Brad are you ready to come online yeah I am here I am um I was frantically searching for the link to the newsletter and I cannot find it okay well I'll get it up there and how great is that okay I will look for it thanks okay so um anyway uh where were we um Scott so um I've known you for a long time um but I wanted to kind of get into the meat and potatoes of uh MRT and and so um my question is what sets MRT engineered performance apart from your competition um I I know you know premium quality and production and Manufacturing but can you kind of just run through the the bullet list of of really what makes you so special because you are you know pretty special uh company in person good well thank you yeah and we we think that we are uh in unique space as well and and there's a reason for that so it's just not us us thinking it uh MRT was designed from day one to be um a a low volume Niche Manufacturing Company um that can put specific attention to detail and specific controls in place that become very difficult to do in a high volume mass production world not that high volume and mass production is not good it's just different some of the benefits of of the process that we have at MRT is and uncanny attention to detail that just physically cannot be done at high volume so while at Ford my whole world in manufacturing was about high volume manufacturing how do you design quality in how do you monitor the process to predict a tool where process change that could Trend towards a quality issue and if you can predict that you can nip it in the bud and you can prevent it from happening before it occurs and that's how you keep quality up in a high volume manufacturing world I was blessed to work directly with Dr Deming while at Ford which was one of my highlights of my career for those of you who don't know who Dr Deming is he was the uh expert in manufacturing that the United States Sent to Japan after we blew them up and he was instrumental in getting Japan back online commercially and how to do so designing in quality into the process Ford Motor Company had been using Dr Deming since day one continuously to employ those kind of philosophies in the manufacturing process as well and while I was at Ford I was a production supervisor at an engine plant and we were designing ways to do computer integrated manufacturing and therefore got to work with with Dr Deming so one of the fun side note sparring exercises that I was able to have with him is how volume of production affects the methods that you can use to control quality and as volume goes down your sample rate opportunities go up in incredibly so in the OEM world what we would strive to do is to sample and inspect a couple parts per thousand produced right so if you're inspecting two parts per thousand that means that 998 of them didn't get inspected at all you could be producing a good amount of Parts incorrectly or not quite to the the fullest uh specified criteria as the volume goes down we can inspect things more frequently but if you design in your manufacturing process those checkpoints you can have 100 inspection in fact as MRT employs we have four-time inspection for every product that we ship so instead of inspecting two per thousand I inspect every part four times in doing that it's not saying that we slow our manufacturing process down to a crawl and we just don't make things very fast we actually have very good throughput in fact uh compared to other exhaust manufacturing companies I will take on the challenge that we have the best performance historically over the last 20 years of order to delivery we fulfill our orders and we deliver our products in a extremely quick turnaround without holding millions of dollars of inventory which if you can't do that math if you have thousands of exhaust systems sitting on the shelf with the average cost of 700 dollars that's a paycheck for somebody not me but for somebody so uh how you take the approach to manufacturing the product is one of our key differences the second is how we design the system so we designed the systems on vehicles um in the engineering world you kind of have two masters and there's always an arm wrestling debate over which is the preferred best way of doing engineering products one is to have CAD being the master meaning that you design everything on a computer and you say build it uh the second is you have the part being the master which in our case is we designed the part to the car so we literally have a car in the shop that we design the system to that's not only for optimizing the fit and flow or the the fluid dynamics of of how the exhaust is routed but it's also giving us an opportunity to do empirical testing which is driving the car and we get to see how the sound is outside of the car inside of the car at idle at highway at performance speeds so what we get is then a real picture of what the customer is going to experience when they buy this system um you bundle those attributes together and that puts us in a space that isn't like any other manufacturer out there okay Scott um thanks a lot and and while you were talking I was kind of giving a little uh tour of some exhaust tubing and some other stuff from the from your shop camera and so um it looks like I mean materials are pretty pretty important to you so t304 is is pretty much all you use in terms of stainless for your exhaust systems um let's explain a little bit about materials yeah so there are there are basically four materials period that that people would recognize in exhaust systems one is mild steel which is what used to be used on exhaust systems is is just mild steel and sometimes it's got a aluminized coating on it to make it last a winter but it will rust out and the you know the exhaust systems that fall off cars usually are the mild steel uh produced uh products and then the second grade of of Steel which is definitely noticeably better is 409 stainless 409 is the lowest grade stainless that can be called stainless meaning that it's it's more affordable it will Rust and in time it will rust out but it will take much longer time than mild steel to to rust out the oems these days pretty much use 409 stainless as their primary tube construction the tips almost exclusively now are 304 stainless steel that's the part that you see so if you see red rust on a tip that's not particularly handsome and they try to to minimize you having that experience by using 304 stainless which is the third grade material that that is used in in exhaust construction 304 is the highest grade stainless used for exhaust systems there are higher grades of stainless available they're usually used saved for things like surgical stainless steel and that sort of thing um as you increase the grade of stainless steel the product itself becomes a much harder tough material this is harder to machine it's harder to work it's harder on the equipment to do those types of things the elasticity flexibility of the material changes so the very very high grade stainless Steels can become very very brittle when they're exposed to things like thermal shocking Heating and Cooling Heating and Cooling that sort of thing so 304 is really The Sweet Spot of the best grade of corrosion resistance and and material stability longest lasting material for the the performance industry the last product would be titanium I think most of us have heard of titanium it's extremely light and it's a terrible product for an exhaust system to be put on the street it will fail it it really will succumb to the the vibrations the thermal shocking it'll crack it'll fail some people listening will probably say Well then why in the heck does a race industry use titanium like I said it's a very light very strong material it's not tough and tough equals longevity um if designed appropriately for a 24-hour race it's a great product to get an advantage from from a weight standpoint in that application our products need to last quite a bit longer than 24 hours so we do not reach for titanium in any of our applications okay so um Scott um what are your your top selling in terms of Mustang um exhaust systems what what are your top sellers um well in the Mustang Arena the it really depends on the generation of Mustang we make an exhaust system uh for for a 1964 Mustang all the way to current date and uh it really depends on the era so on the Vintage must Mustangs a complete exhaust system is normally what people are looking for because either you need an exhaust or not right so it's usually together as as one kit as you get into the more current and modern vehicles we tend to do portions of the exhaust like an axle-back or a Cat-Back versus a a complete manifold back system and that's predominantly because the factory is using 409 stainless steel so in many cases the factory parts that don't need to be changed don't need to be changed right why take the money and throw it after something that you don't need to change if you're looking for sound go after changing the axle-back on a on a 2022 Mustang um in the new Mustangs like the 2022 there are other sound mitigating things in the factory exhaust system there's a mid resonator which actually in the 2022 that is probably one of the more common things to change is take the resonator Factory resonator out of the midsection and put in an h-pipe and we're showing an h-pipe section here it's designed to be a bolt in so you you do have to cut to the resonator but you cut the resonator pull it out then a piece like this bolts right in and it does change the sound signature changes the volume changes some of the flow and it surprisingly is a a significant change to an exhaust system without going through thousands of dollars to change the whole exhaust system you can change the critical part of the exhaust system to get a little bit more performance sound attitude anger if you will and spin under 300 so as part of the engineered solution is attack what the challenge is and provide a solution to the challenge versus just doing the whole ball of wax at once which can be financially the same as throwing out the baby with the bathwater so that's that's pretty cool so you you talked a little bit about um sound um and I've got a couple of quite a couple more questions explain Sound Engineering that's something that it seems to me like you focus a lot um on sound to him and Sound Engineering is a term that I'm not that familiar with or hadn't heard from years back so that's that's something that I kind of like to learn more about what your take is on that good and I'll try to I'll try to make this as as as fun as we can without it being too Technic geeky but um let's let's start with the very beginning part of the sound right is exhaust system does not make sound exhaust system doesn't create noise an exhaust system will Channel refine accentuate the sound that the engine makes all right so um everybody knows this but maybe haven't really you thought about it this way it's the reason why a V8 does not sound like a V6 does not sound like a four-cylinder they can't the engine being the instrument is different in those those occasions right so it's really no different than being in band class when back in the day where they had band class and you know you really like the sound of a tuba but you're playing a trumpet well try to make your trumpet sound like a tuba you can do that it's called pick up the tuba right so you can't make a four-cylinder sound like a create based on just exhaust right you have to you have to have the originating sound be present but from that point once you have a sound uh being produced now the exhaust system like I said we can we can control or manage what you're experiencing in terms of actual sound and the perception of sound so let me explain those two things the actual sound is obviously what you are hearing both inside and outside of the car six cylinder to me is a is a sporty sports car type sound and if we manage it correctly the vehicle that it's in can have that sporty performance sound V8 is tough guttural Brute muscular right it's it's the badass let's call it what it is and how do we deliver that toughness in the sound that's part of our Sound Engineering four cylinders four cylinders can sound uh tough and cool they'll never sound as full as a V8 because it's half of a V8 the the musical beat I'm not a musician but the musical beat of a six cylinder is got a half beat in it which is a little off in our ear right so that's why you know why doesn't a V6 ever sound as cool as a V8 it's because of the orchestra under hood um so once you've met managed the sound to match the orchestra under hood then the perception of sound is left and the perception of sound uh we put buzzwords on as body boom drone resonance all three of those things would be referring to the same phenomenon and it is a harmonic frequency again the engine is the origin of the sounds and the vibrations and a lot of the nvh things that go on in your vehicle happen in the engine it's true that your chassis and Driveline can add other nvh things but for now we're talking about uh nvh that originates at the engine so as you hit natural frequencies a natural frequency is vibrating something at a frequency that is that is natural to its physical makeup is a short way of describing it and once you hit that point it will continue to vibrate and will amplify and that amplification becomes a pulse wave a pressure change your ear takes that pressure change and tells your brain that it's a sound all right so your ear works based on wavelengths which is a pressure change but it's what we're talking about by boom is it's an inaudible pressure change proof of pudding is you can put a tape recorder your phone whatever record body boom or resonance in your car you can't it's not a sound it's a pressure but it's not comfortable it's not a pleasing experience it's not something that most people want I have had customers call me and say that they want as much Drone as they can possibly get I believe they don't understand what they're asking for but that's you know customers always right and another example of resonance or drone just so you can identify with it it it's the same experiences if you're going down the highway and you roll down your back two windows and you get that type sound it's not it's the pressure changing at a at a rapid rate in your passenger compartment and your ear is pulsating and you're telling your brain that it's a sound truly it's not it's it's resonance so there are ways to manage resonance in an exhaust system now you know what it is we can measure monitor how it occurs when it occurs and we happen to use a device called a helmholt device um which was essentially developed by a German engineer as a a noise canceling device think of it kind of like creating White Noise mitigation inside of your exhaust system so we pick the frequency that is setting off body Boomer resonance and we capture that wavelength we revert it back through the exhaust system and it cancels out that particular mode and that will allow you to have the the pleasing Driving Experience while having the cool sound coming out of the back of the car that's Sound Engineering that's that's pretty cool um and not too far not too far so you know not too far over anybody's head so um I can tell you that um the conversation so far has generated a lot of comments um and then it has generated a few um questions as well and so um I didn't want to bombard you with too many um questions but since we have the MRT shop cam set up and you talked about manufacturing um because you do that then obviously you have machines and equipment and I see you have a few cars um up on the the lift for various different reasons probably Sound Engineering I'm assuming um so so why don't we go to the the turn the shop cam on and um maybe you can give us just like a little overview of what you've got going on in the back sure yeah so kind of kind of proof a point when we say that we make uh our exhaust systems here at MRT uh we really literally do right we're not coming up with an idea and Outsourcing the idea we start with straight tube uh we use U.S grade 304 stainless steel steel manufactured in the United States and we load the straight tools on these machines these are cnc2 Benders and they allow us to bend the tube into a variety of shapes if Dave you can get the tubes on the floor behind the Benders there um so these machines will produce uh these kind of tubes right so they're all bent into a specific consistent way the CNC element means that they're going to bend that tube that way every time so you know this tube was bent wrong really doesn't happen when you when you get into this level of machine once the tube is bent then we will we will segment it literally mark it and cut it into pieces and that tube then produces a pile kind of like this and this is a variety of individual pieces that then get assembled in a fixture and this is one of the things that is a product from uh our efforts with Dr Deming is designing quality in our our assembly fixtures are also our check gauges so once we set the tubes into the fixture we've controlled every uh significant characteristic of that exhaust system and what that means is that if the tube isn't bent right it will not fit into that fixture and therefore cannot be assembled into an exhaust system um once we Nest all of the pieces into that fixture we hand weld each system we will TIG or mig weld depending on the application and from there the assembler will inspect the system and then finally it will go which is our our third inspection if you're counting and then it will go up into our shipping and receiving area where each system is cleaned uh final inspection uh wrapped protected so if we have tips that are polished stainless we want to add Extra Protection on the tips so they don't get marred and shipping or if we've applied our very high temperature ceramic coating on the tips to give the exhaust tip a color effect we again will be protecting that tip with extra material so that it it doesn't get too damaged by our friends at FedEx in UPS who never damage anything I'm sure yeah that's um that's that's an interesting um little shop tour there and it looks like um you pretty much have everything you need to to get the job done and I I like the niche manufacturing I I particularly um like the the attention to um detail in terms of processes and checkpoints um you know that I've worked um on the OEM side um well top tier of the aftermarket into to OEM side and so we we hear words like ppap um which is a which is a scary term if you're somebody like me because that means hundreds of hours of work um but essentially it's it's very thorough documentation of the entire manufacturing um process and it can be quite detailed I've done it on the electronic side of the business um and and I can tell you Ford's um Ford's pretty pretty stringent you know our ppaps um you know they really hold us to the fire on those um we also have you know the design validation process reporting um side of it and we have the the testing side of it and for us there's 21 different unique tests that we have to perform on an Electronics product um and and so it's it looks like basically you've taken what you were doing at Ford Motor Company and you've implemented that on your your manufacturing site and so I know the tremendous amount of time effort and work that it takes to put all of that together and and then maintain it um you know as as well so um really interesting stuff there um so before we get Carrie's got um a pretty long list of of questions to go through and we did have an advanced question from a viewer um that I wanted to ask as well but um I understand that you're you're getting ready to sell it celebrate your 20th anniversary next year is that right has it been 20 years can you believe it I had brown hair then you did yeah 20 years it's uh it's been it's been quite a trip quite a roller coaster a lot has happened in the industry in 20 years A lot has happened at MRT in 20 years uh one of the cool Parts about small business is um being able to be flexible and to adapt quickly to to change and the marketplace has changed the customers have changed the OEM products have changed and I'm not gonna lie that's been a fun part of being in business in the last 20 years is to to participate and and to play in that in that change you know an engineer at the end of the day is a is a problem solver a problem and solution identifier and then implement the solution that's basically what an engineer is and this environment has created a lot of excitement for an engineer yeah yeah no it it certainly has and and so one more thing um that I wanted to mention um I wanted to wish you and Lisa a happy anniversary because I think that we're right around anniversary time this is SEMA wheat and I always remember going to the SEMA show I haven't been since 2019 mostly due to covet um where I got covered actually um yeah but I I would always see I would always see you and Lisa at the SEMA show and that was always your anniversary week and yeah and um I know that there was at least one or two years when she probably said hey let's not go to the SEMA show and let's have a real anniversary vacation trip yeah so it doesn't look like you're on vacation right now so hopefully you have something yeah we do in a couple of weeks and thank you for that she uh she's tolerated me for more than 30 years I can't believe that yeah well that's great this is a wonderful person um one thing I wanted to add is if you're interested in any of the MRT products uh they are listed our website under exhaust I believe it's the only product exhaust product where listing Kenny believes and only listing what he believes in so we have limited products because of that he sells what he uses and what he believes in so that is on our website uh the MRT book there's a link in there if you would like to purchase it guess what uh Scott two people have already purchased your book Joe Johnson thank you no yes I do Hey Joe Tim Allen has purchased it so and we're getting people that are interested in it so if you've just joined us we have Scott Hogue from mrtion and he has graciously uh given us a book to give away today so how you can win that is sign up for our newsletter or and put it in the comments that you signed up or if you're already lined up just put that you're already signed up the reason we're pushing the newsletters we're having a whole bunch of new products come out mainly apparel and Kenny Brown you know just tribute type things so make sure you sign up so you see everything that we have uh during the next few weeks once we get it going which will probably be around Black Friday we'll have some products available and then through the holidays every Saturday we'll be showing some products and also giving some away so make sure you join us live and we'd love for you to join us again just add sign up for the newsletter to win Scott's book but make sure you put it in the comments that you signed up okay Scott we have a ton of different comments and questions and Brad I'm going to ask you to help me as well because I think I'll run out of breath here so let me get back to the comments so let me start with one of the comments that we have uh questions is what are the quality um right there what are the qualification certification does MRT have quality certifications um it I I'm not exactly sure what the what the question is um referring to um but the the quality certification is literally our our process right so we are we are the first customer of our quality um I don't Supply product to companies like Ford GM or Chrysler directly honestly nor do I have interest in it uh and the reason for that is is that they start driving our bus and they start changing the complexion of of who and what we are and that's important to me and that's that's why the business is set up this way so having qos certifications those sorts of certifications those are driven by the oems to become an oem supplier um it's not appropriate for our space um and and I mean it in that it's not appropriate I understand what those processes are I've been a part of them at the OEM level and uh our process isn't terribly complex to to document and it is completely regarded in terms of success and failure by the people who are involved in it which we monitor so Qs process in summary is a great process to say um what you are doing and how you are doing it it doesn't say or monitor that you're doing it right or doing it well if doing it badly is your process qos will just say you're doing it badly all the time so uh it it is different and it is appropriate for our space I hope that answers your question but I think that's good I I didn't mean to throw that one out you that's a tough one to answer I get that so um here's another one do tips affect the exhaust sound uh absolutely I mean the the tip or tips can uh actually be a megaphone or a restrictor you can condition your exhaust uh note by the tip um location orientation size so uh absolutely it is is part of the song for sure okay again Tim Allen just bought your collector's edition book there's a link in the comments if you're interested in purchasing that and or go to shop MRT we also have people are really impressed with uh Jorge says he's just really impressed with uh Dr Demi and uh Jorge is in the automotive Market uh not aftermarket the automotive uh Market as well he works for somebody and I can't really remember who um let's see Eric Lehigh um okay never mind you don't need to know that one I'm getting there's so many I'm trying to get through it's okay that's good it's good activity good action yep keep them coming okay here's a comment uh so that's amazing Quality Inspection so I mean thank you what you do compared to other people in the aftermarket is incredible so uh here's another one on Dr Deming wow that is honoring my career as an industrial and systems engineer so that's what Corey is so he understands that awesome it was yeah special time and then we have uh fishing uh jts he has a question is aluminized steel equal does it equal mild steel or is it um I still uh systems labeled aluminized he still sees systems great great question yeah it aluminized steel will still be the mild steel and the aluminized refers to the coating that has been applied to the steel and that's at a added as a rust um suppressant it doesn't eliminate rust it'll slow the rusting process down now here's a question from Tim Allen um or common he's I like that you still offer a high flow catted h-pipe for a fox body Mustang there aren't as many there's not they're not common these days it's one part because of its cost and function that one that's of high quality because it's needed to work and work well so thank you Tim and that let's just talk about that a little bit h-pipes and catalysts have been a point of controversy contention and confusion in the recent years and let's just talk a little bit about it the the EPA has has cracked down um pretty seriously on people taking their emissions components off of their street different cars to avoid emissions compliance and one of the things that we have done history historically on exhaust is is we've immediately gone to headers we can talk about that again as a second note um take off the the catalysts go to larger diameter tube and make your exhaust system absolutely free-flowing that equals maximum performance maximum power Etc now in a 1970 uh big block Mustang check all of those boxes you do all of those things to your car and it's going to be a beast in today's technology let's fast forward to the to the 2020s and the manifold designs from the factories are getting better and better and better so they're going from a a log style manifold Dave's going to show you what I mean by that um the picture that that he's showing up right now the manifold portion is a big cast iron honk and it's all four cylinders feeding into one trunk or One log the fluid dynamics of this manifold are horrific they're they're basically are no fluid dynamics there so changing that to you know our aftermarket version shown here which is a individual tube uh header this says going on an AC Cobra is the application but the fluid dynamics the path of the flow is incredibly different and the performance gains are going to be immediately noticeable right so um getting to back to the to the catalysts the uh the catalysts are there for several reasons one obviously to choose to clean the emissions um but a lot of the engines especially modern day engines are tuned for a certain amount of back pressure and the the tuning isn't just for flow but it's it's heat management it's managing um Scavenging I mean there's a lot of elements that the whole system is is engineered to work together so just just lopping off catalysts off of your exhaust system doesn't instantly give you the results that you are you are hoping for to the degree that you are hoping to get them first of all you need to tune the car to run and operate correctly without the Catalyst in place and they can be tuned and they can operate correctly and they can operate almost as clean as if you had catalysts so um if you have a purpose-built car let's just say we're talking about a race car I know that's kind of common in this this clientele here um you want the you want the exhaust to get away from the engine in a clean efficient manner you want the engine to be operating optimally meaning you are burning all of the fuel that you can burn without burning up the motor right too lean is fast until you blow up those physics aren't going to change right so the the tuning and the balance of the tune uh it it goes hand in hand exhaust is part of that whole tuning exercise so we do encourage people to retain catalysts especially if the car is going to be driven on the street at all uh stay legal you're not giving up uh much of the performance side um in in some of the aftermarket exhaust systems Dave's going to show you a couple points on an on a stock system there are several points of restriction in the exhaust system and that's where the tube necks down naturally to accommodate certain features in the exhaust each one of these neck down points are a restriction and they reduce exhaust flow and sometimes they reduce exhaust flow extremely so all of these things that you're seeing on this picture this comes from the factory this way right I didn't I didn't damage this exhaust system even though it looks damaged so getting a straight clean flow is is important um again back to the Catalyst I'm sorry I'm kind of derailing all over the place but um the catalysts right now here here's the the literal law of the land is that if a license repair facility removes a functioning emissions device off of a emissions equipped vehicle they're breaking the law and they're subject to some pretty serious fines and for years they've kind of given a blind eye uh at least in the midwest they're they're taking this as no joke and and they're levying some serious fines um a secondary question so I'll cut to the to the chase would be so why does MRT still make h-pipes uh there still is a legal appropriate loophole in the system and it's not really a loophole it's just keeping in mind the performance car Community is if your vehicle is set up for racing for off-road application performance uh it's not against the law to you for you to put a non-catted or a high performance cap system on your car it's when those cars live on the street that our emissions laws are still in effect so important little Nuance I'm giving people is for off-road race applications it's legal and appropriate to do those kind of changes I have a little story to share with you about that this is years and years and years ago when the EPA started getting you know really tight on this stuff and we were very well known we were in almost every publication always articles about our high performance cars I can remember the scene directly so we were in our building and Ken looked out the window and said what are those five or six guys walking in this industrial park they have long coats like you know the like uh Cowboy you know you know they had I came like six or eight people come into our facility and rate US to try to find yeah and they found like six or seven cats and we had to prove to them that they belong to a car and we were smart enough so on our invoices we had that was uh you know non-street and then it was a race car and so we never were fined on anything but they were using us as an example and I can't remember a couple other kind of companies because of our high profile so they're serious about it and they're kind they may have had guns under those coats I don't know yeah it it's no joke there still is a way to do it appropriately and you know that's kind of the guidances is make sure you know what the what the rules are and have a defendable path so I wouldn't ask a couple more questions this is your last call if you would like to win the um Scott's book uh he will be giving one away at uh in about another five minutes because I know a lot of you have to leave um at a certain time so in another five minutes we'll be doing that if you want to win put your name in the comments and sign up for our newsletter or tell us that you've already signed up for it okay here's some more questions are you ready this is a good one oh that's not the good one but that's interesting right so that's Bob Jones there we go how much of a trade-off is there between Sound Engineering and performance aspects um well I have to use a party line on this one if they're done right there is there is no trade-off um the how we do it is we we developed the system for the performance path and package and performance sound and then we drive the vehicle do the evaluation and if there are uh some of the Drone or the resonant issues that we need to mitigate we will add those components to the system so the trade-off there is going to be essentially weight right so we're going to add tube to the exhaust system to make an acoustic chamber to manage that sound so for a race application where weight is very important it may not be a good step to go to the what we call our drone management system and and mitigate that drone you know if it's a race car yeah deal with the race car elements right there's a lot of things that are happening on a race car that you accept and don't worry about that you wouldn't accept on your street driven car but as far as fluid dynamics and back pressure and performance our acoustic Chambers don't change any exact exhaust flow or the path of the exhaust so it does not take any of the performance away that's great good explanation so I have a I'm going to go down to the very bottom of the comments because there's some related to what you were just talking about and uh one of it is uh wow that crimping is crazy and thanks for the great explanation on Catalyst and Emissions that was wonderful and uh Jorge says I can tune my fox to run clean up 14.7 to 15.3 without cats so yep it can be done absolutely uh the time to takes to to develop a calibration on a car to run that clean obviously takes more than a few minutes and that's not something that the OEM can do so though the OEM calibrations are very good very clean they're also very safe which leaves performance on the table we use unburned fuel on the table which pretty much is then the reason the catalysts are required to take care of the unburned unused fuel that did not get consumed in the combustion process well that's cool so uh Brad you want to ask the next question uh sure I can um I was kind of going down the list so I want to make sure that we don't miss anything so this is Dylan's question Scott you can probably see this um is there a calculation you use to determine the proper header and exhaust system size uh that way you maximize exhaust velocity without compromising performance with excess back pressure so uh interesting question there yeah they're they're absolutely are calculations that uh that can be performed and they are going to be pretty much vehicle specific uh you getting to the racing side of the business this is one of the variables that you can measure Monitor and control um so displacement of the engine operating RPM whether the engine is normally aspirated or supercharged or turbocharged right all these things are going to become variables and last but not insignificant is package right so unfortunately some of the times we don't reach our Optimum configuration because we physically just can't put that tube in that position given the environment of the car so on a laboratory bench or a an engine Dyno you could design an Optimum exhaust system because you've got the world to package or package it in but once you once you make it real and put it in a car unfortunately trade-offs start to occur okay so here's another good question from Charles and we know the answer does MRT only work with foreign brands uh no we uh we began our life 20 years ago with the Ford brands in fact if somebody turns their calendar back they'll remember that in that period of time Mustang was the only performance Pony car right so it made sense for us to be Mustang Racing Technologies um about a minute after that uh became reality that we needed to do more than just Mustangs and uh we we have shortened their name to MRT and we went went gangbusters on all of the makes and models so since then MRT designs and manufactures the world's finest handcrafted exhaust for uh vehicles in the Ford GM Chrysler Toyota Subaru um Polaris missing several uh lines so we we have over 300 systems that we've designed and we manufacture uh for all of all of these vehicles you know GM with the Camaro and the Corvette have strong Enthusiast vehicles and our product works very well in those applications and we have a strong presence um if everybody i

2022-11-08 02:27

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