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I Speak Jeep
If you love Jeeps and off-road adventures, this is the podcast for you! Join the experts at SFJ4x4 as they share decades of experience with all things Jeep. From in-depth discussions on Jeep builds and restorations to honest reviews of top-tier products, you'll get insights rooted in real-world application—not sponsorships. Every product we discuss has been tested in the field, so you know it's the real deal.
Tune in for engaging conversations, Jeep history, technical tips, and plenty of laughs. Catch the video version of I Speak Jeep on YouTube or watch us LIVE every Monday at 10:19 AM EST on Facebook and the SFJ4x4 YouTube channel.
I Speak Jeep
Oil Slick or Science of Oil
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Welcome back after a short break for Labor Day. Neil, Scott, and Jeff announce the winner of the swag pack for reviews contest. Guess what, they're not done, we have another swag pack to give away. Write a review, submit it then screenshot and email it to us to enter for your own swag pack! This episode dives into the tech of oil. Neil promises to keep it 1 episode as Jeff and Scott remain doubtful. Find out if there will be another episode or if Neil was able to nerd out enough in just this one episode on oil.
Thanks for listening, give us a review and check us out on YouTube -SFJ4x4 and visit our website to grab some great gear or products for your Jeep, SFJ4x4.com. Don't forget, you can email Jeffc@sfj4x4.com for special content requests, blind react videos, suggestions, special guests, or general questions. Check out our Patreon patreon.com/ISpeakJeep
Good morning, afternoon, evening, wherever, however you are joining us. This is the I Speak Jeep podcast presented by sfj4x4.com. My name is Neil with Simpson Family Jeeps joined in grandma's couch studio. Are you sure?
SPEAKER_02:Jeff Schimani, the producer, making sure we were on time and audible and it sounds like everything is working on our So hopefully on their end it is. Are you sure? No, I'm not
SPEAKER_03:sure. We were pretty fired up from last time. This is our first time back with our live audience since prior to the Great Smoky Mountain Jeep invasion. Those of you who enjoyed that podcast, you would have enjoyed it specifically in your ear holes on your favorite streaming platform because our attempted live... We were told no. Yeah, fell real flat on its face.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But before we get to that, you, sir? Maddest mad scientist. Exhaust extraordinaire this morning. Oh.
SPEAKER_02:Exhaust, huh? Trying to. Exhausting. And that's Scott Brown. Yes. Old doc. Part of our process this morning was that we went with our starting soon screen several minutes early so that we could make sure things were copacetic for when we actually went live. And because of that, we threw off the infamous Nate and Joe got First, with good morning. That's my winter winter noise. Sure. Then Daddy Jeep says you're early, but good morning. And then he said hi to Joe O'Brien. Billy Joe says good morning. We got Nate saying good morning. Geoga Jeeper saying good morning. Jeannie saying hi, everyone. Hope you had a great weekend. Photo Eye Park saying hi from San Antonio. And I probably butchered the pronunciation of that. I'm sorry. And
SPEAKER_03:Not just me doing accents for folks around the world.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Nate is saying, we can hear you again. Daddy Jeep says, we hear you. Jeannie said, glad to have voice this time. Joe says, everything is working. Everybody's so surprised we did
SPEAKER_03:our job.
SPEAKER_02:Joe is saying, ding, ding. And then Photo Eye is saying, your volume keeps cutting off, coming back on, then cutting off again. That could be an issue with them. It could be YouTube. It could
SPEAKER_03:be Well, I guess, you know, objectively, you know, our goal is to be able to put this program on for our, uh, our, our listeners, our followers everywhere. And this is why we do, uh, attempt to go live both on the book of faces and the YouTubes. Um, but obviously the primary medium for this is on your favorite streaming platform. So whether that be iTunes or Spotify, audible, uh, You are a valuable part of ensuring that this program makes sense. And so if you are listening to us at a later date, understand that you can come on and jump into the comments, say good morning and, you know, be part of the big Jeep family and this program. And so, you know, you can join us nearly every Monday at 10, 19 a.m.
SPEAKER_02:Live. And Darwin is actually saying your sound is just fine and he's on YouTube as well. Okay. So, Maybe try closing and reopening.
SPEAKER_03:Unplug it and plug it back in again.
SPEAKER_00:And when they are on our favorite streaming platform listening to us, what are they supposed to do? Jeffrey? Leave a review
SPEAKER_02:because I've got a stack of reviews. We have read all of these ones off, but we have to announce who the winner is of that so they can get
SPEAKER_00:the most valuable, most useful, purposeful purple strap.
UNKNOWN:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:So we had encouraged you folks to go on, leave us a review. They had, you know, screenshot it, tell us that, you know, that whatever the review was, kind of didn't care what it said. I mean, I care that you're actually helping grow the program a little forward, but we didn't need it to be too uptight and kissy-faced. But we did, within a degree of people who had followed the directions of leaving the review and doing the screenings, Screenshotting and so on and so forth and a little bit of randomization. We have picked the winner who is going to get a swag pack, which will include some clothes of sorts, some stickers, and then ultimately Scott's absolute favorite size doesn't matter recovery strap.
SPEAKER_00:It's not about how big it is. It's how you use it.
SPEAKER_02:And the winner is Jeffrey. We should have used that this weekend, bro. but we'll talk about that later. So this is, if this is your review, please email us with your contact info so we can ship the package out to you or you can pick it up here at the shop and get a tour of the shop. My favorite Jeep podcast. This is three real guys sitting on grandma's old couch in their shop talking about my favorite topic, Jeeps. What you see is what you get. There is no fabrication here. Flat out the best shop around. It is exactly how you would imagine it. Lucky for me, they are only an hour away. I appreciate the best and honest Jeep expertise you will find on any social media platform. Keep the content coming.
SPEAKER_03:And so whoever wrote that and submitted that.
SPEAKER_02:I will follow up with an email too, just asking for that. But if you're listening, you can reach out to us quickly as
SPEAKER_03:well. Winner, winner, chicken dinner on that one. We thank you for that. We do have another swag pack to give away because we've got another strap. So we're going to keep this ball rolling. So if you did not get a chance to leave a review we're going to you know we're going to keep it going and and who knows that next pool might be bigger it might be smaller i don't know but we encourage you to leave a review that helps uh kind of facilitate and push this podcast further uh for more people to enjoy it so if you enjoy it please consider uh letting other people know by leaving that review specifically on itunes if possible and uh then sharing the podcast so other other people can get in In general, let's talk about hot topics coming up as we have been doing for the past year or so. If you're interested in what's happening in our personal lives, stay tuned through the outro credits. We will share with you then. Today, we are going to be talking about oil specifically, something I'm definitely kind of, you know, I like to nerd out on and we'll be giving a pretty interesting overview over oil. lubrication, if you will. You are passionate about lube. I am passionate about lube. Guys, just remember, this is not our After Hours episode that we keep planning. We keep planning it. This should have been our After Hours.
SPEAKER_02:Holy cow. Because I
SPEAKER_00:don't know that I'm going to make it through. Nate, talking
SPEAKER_02:about lube. Nope, we're going to go to comments. Nate says, only 20 days until Trail Hero and 30 days until the premiere of
SPEAKER_03:Trail Hero X. Yes, and And I believe Nate will be on that video series. On HeroX, right? Yes. So tune in, and you'll get to see himself, his family, and the other participants.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not going to lie. I'm pretty excited to see that, especially knowing Nate. He's been in the shop. We've had him in a couple times. He brought us donuts. He's our almost always number one commenter.
SPEAKER_03:Yep, yep. Super cool stuff there, and we look forward to that. I mean, off-road content is cool no matter where it's coming from, and so looking forward to that. Trail Hero is a great event and organization, it appears.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and he was very hush-hush. He followed his contract. He's not allowed to talk about it, so he left us hanging. I was hoping he'd give us some insider. He wouldn't. Nope,
SPEAKER_03:nope. So best of luck as that series premieres. Since it is our first live from Smoky Mountain, I do want to address a gift from the owners of Cookie Monster and the Minion. We got this really sweet ducky four-wheel drive signage. That's cool. And a really nice heavy-duty magnet. Feel that magnet. It looks like a heavy magnet. Right? I mean, you could clock somebody with that. And it says, Jeep, anything but ordinary. I appreciate the gifts, and I like to recognize people when and how they share with us.
SPEAKER_02:I feel like the four-wheel drive sign is going to have to get hung somewhere. Oh,
SPEAKER_03:absolutely. Absolutely. So thank you, Jeannie and Jeff, for those gifts and thinking of us during that event. With that said, we had some interesting information, which I would like to share out to the world now and kind of our first and foremost confirmation. We've signed on the dotted line and a congratulations to the mad scientist, because we have hashtag not arrested. which will be a feature build within the Crown Automotive booth at SEMA 2025. They have a beautiful peninsula booth space, and they will be showcasing that build within the convention center as kind of a prime example for it.
UNKNOWN:Thank you.
SPEAKER_03:He gets some applause. Was that rain? That was absolutely rain. That did sound kind of like rain. I agree. I love the soundboard. I just... But do you? Are you sure? I think Jeff is listening to things in his ears right now and he's trying to do producer stuff. No, I wasn't. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02:I was just reading the different sound
SPEAKER_03:effects. Oh, he's reading the sound effects. Oh, dear. It was super intense. So look forward to more conversation about that as we get closer to getting that Jeep out to sunny Las Vegas in about two months.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, that Jeep has... Traveled quite a bit thanks to the show circuit that it's been on, so it's pretty exciting. Obviously, it was at Smoky Mountain and right on the corner as well, so it's pretty awesome. The owner is on Cloud9, as he should be.
SPEAKER_03:Yep, yep. It's a build worthy of all the accolades it's receiving. And if you're unfamiliar with it, there's a whole bunch of videos out there about it. There was a really cool viral rolling video we did right before we went to that was fun smoky uh the funniest thing is just so everybody's on the same page i mean we were so professional because we have a rolling rig you know the savage has bought you know a special arm that attaches to jeff's jeep and jeff's out there as uh as our numero uno wheel man and we're doing cattywampus closed course yeah
SPEAKER_01:maneuvers
SPEAKER_03:and and and the guys went so far as they hooked me up with a set of headphones on a walkie talkie because you know so the ability for Savage to weigh in and say hey this is I need you to move in this direction and in 3, 2, 1 I want you to switch lanes and yada yada there's a lot that goes into producing that except for he didn't warn you about the tree down no no I mean we did almost collide that
SPEAKER_02:one made me nervous
SPEAKER_03:yeah we actually we almost collided in one of the shootings on on a kind of a back country road.
SPEAKER_00:On a closed course. On a closed course. Yeah. Right.
SPEAKER_03:Just a tree randomly was down on the closed course.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I hate it when that happens.
SPEAKER_03:And the funniest thing is, and that video went viral, and of course, when that happens, you're going to get all the humans out of the social pages, which is whatever. But they were like, why do you have headphones on? You're a sissy, you know? And I was like...
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, because
SPEAKER_03:they thought
SPEAKER_02:your
SPEAKER_03:ears were cold or something. Something. Or like, I
SPEAKER_00:didn't want
SPEAKER_03:to hear the pipes.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. Yeah. And then also, does that really go down the
SPEAKER_03:freeway? Oh, we got, that must be AI because Jeeps can't go that fast down the freeway. Yep, they can. Yeah, when they're built right. I just thought it was so funny. Nope, it's 100% real. It was actually, I was wearing headphones so I could hear the directions from, you know, the videography side of things. The Jeep actually goes, you know, 70, 80 miles per hour pretty confidently. Yeah, the biggest challenge is it's a brick
SPEAKER_00:and wind is not your friend.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Other than that, we're good to go. Or down trees on it. on closed courses while Jeffrey makes maneuvers.
SPEAKER_00:You just got to climb over them. It's a Jeep.
SPEAKER_02:Just fortunately, both of us are pretty good behind the wheel, and we were
SPEAKER_03:able to avoid that. Yes, professional drivers. On the closed course. On the closed course. Anywho. So,
SPEAKER_00:oilage. Oilage. Lubrication. That's what helps the Jeep go 70 miles an hour down the freeway. Black gold. The right kind of oil helps
SPEAKER_02:the Jeep go that fast. Texas tea. Yep. What happens if it's the wrong you
SPEAKER_03:know what's cool thing I mean overly overly overly contextualizing I don't think that Titusville Pennsylvania gets enough recognition honestly
SPEAKER_00:I mean we all had the chance I don't know about Jeff but we all got a chance to go out and look at the well and kind of experience that as kids Drake's well
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_03:Jeff's fired up for our listening audience and I'm Nitro.
SPEAKER_02:So fun how they got that oil.
SPEAKER_03:It was always really interesting. From our listening audience in the six out of seven continents, dang you penguins, and the multitude of countries we're in, we are geographically located only within about an hour of the Franklin City, Oil City, Titusville conglomerate, which is where the discovery of oil at Drake's Well originated.
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_03:I think that that is so cool.
SPEAKER_00:It's kind of unique because now we have the oil, we have the steel, we have the manufacturing. We just almost take it for granted of sorts. Grew up with what's the way I want to call it? On the side of the railroad, the steel iron ore pellets all that kind of stuff is right in our backyard yes so we grew up around that stuff
SPEAKER_03:I think it's easy it would be easy to take it for granted equally if you were elsewhere on the country you know kind of your peripheries on the coast if you will oil and ground minerals might be a little more foreign to you it might almost be a little mysterious whereas for all of us we recognize the many positive implications that crude oil discovery had on a region. Now, as many people know from Detroit to Pittsburgh up to Buffalo, if you will, that this area is maybe a bygone of the manufacturing industry, right? But once a really prominent world player as far as where iron ore and oil was being made, refined and distributed from. And so we are speaking out into our global listening audience as individuals who are located in this breadbasket of originality, not just for Jeeps alone, which I think is very special from, you know, again, Toledo to Butler, but from that original degree of discovery that propelled industrialization into what we know it to be.
SPEAKER_00:And the best part of that is because of that we have kind of hometown brands that honestly I don't know where they nationwide or not but we have little companies that you know it's not Pennzoil it's not Quaker State it's not that kind of stuff it's literally Wolf's Head or Schaefer's or that kind of stuff that you know let us know do you know of those brands because those originated over in Pennsylvania right
SPEAKER_03:well Pennzoil obviously did as
SPEAKER_00:well right but they They got bigger and bigger, and maybe
SPEAKER_03:they don't realize the origin story of those. found deposits of oil elsewhere in much more substantial means. But when it was discovered in our area, it changed the world quite literally.
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_03:so we all understand this product, crude oil, which is a composition, is a liquefied remnants of the dinosaurs. Nope. Which actually I love because of a Sinclair oil. Do you remember Sinclair? I do.
SPEAKER_00:With their little dino on there. I have a sign. And that was actually a misnomer that people said it was dino oil, but it actually isn't.
SPEAKER_03:Correct. Yeah. But, uh, I still can't get over the dino blood. I, I, it's like one of those things, like it's ingrained in me. Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. And that's how I feel. Right. Of course we didn't know though. We didn't understand exactly where, uh, oil came from per se. Um, because of course, up to that point in time, you know, if we just thought we call a spade a spade, they were using like lard composites for fuels, you know, so whales, seals, other animals. Um, you know, we, as a, as a society, we were repurposing, we hadn't really, uh, found these energy sources yet, you know? So go ahead and expand upon what you might want to. I
SPEAKER_00:was just at, uh, Obviously, people were always digging in the ground and that sort of thing. And over at Jake's Well, we finally found kind of oil on purpose for our use. And when it first was discovered, we really didn't know the capabilities and all the different things we were going to use it for. Then kerosene lamps were a big thing. I was going to say, really,
SPEAKER_03:we were just fuel oil and kerosene was really the only thing. In fact, there were so many byproducts of oil that were wasted at that time.
SPEAKER_00:And that's something I don't know many do know or not. Gasoline literally was a waste product. At one time, people, they burned it off, they dumped it, they threw it away. So when cars started using it, it was literally like running off banana peels. Oh, cool, this is running off garbage.
SPEAKER_03:Why is the savage coming back here?
SPEAKER_02:He's popping the door a little to see if we can improve our internet signal because the internet is glitching for everybody. But I was just looking as he was coming back to do that. We are actually direct connected to ethernet. So there is something to do with the internet. It has nothing to do with anything on our end. Conspiracy. Conspiracy theory.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Anyways. Big oil.
SPEAKER_02:Mindless to say, while you guys are talking big oil, I'm over here communicating with Davey, with my wife. We're going to let you keep going. We're going to keep going we are we are continuing i don't even know where we're at in conversation that's fine you
SPEAKER_03:keep
SPEAKER_00:doing i heard drinks again and
SPEAKER_02:i got excited
SPEAKER_00:because we're past that ish so any who's we were you know originally looking for kerosene uh obviously we needed some heavy oils for like grease and lubrication steam uh locomotives that kind of stuff needed constant lubrication correct um so as things progressed more and more uh scientists looked into like how can we use more of this product right and you know kind of put a hundred years of this discovery in one little chunk we got plastics we got gasoline we got grease we got all the kind of weights of oil diesel fuel diesel fuel
SPEAKER_03:because I and I can't hammer home enough folks and for me and the way that my brain works I need our listening audience to understand that and I'm going to contextualize myself I'm perfectly happy to get behind the driver's seat of a big block or a small block and let the Eagles fly as much as I am to get really jazzed up on e-automotive technology, right? See, I prefer medium block. Uh-huh. So, you know, I'm willing to get behind the whole V8s need to be an appropriate aspect of our automotive experience. But what the world went through when that oil price process initially happened is what we are living through for electrification. It just is what it is. And we can make all the arguments in the world until we're blue in the face, and you can tell me how it's a bad choice, and this, that, and the third. But as a student of history, quite literally... When they were coming for the horses. When they were coming for the horses, and oil refinement was not available in the hills of Kentucky... all the jobs were put out for horse maintenance. Correct. Horse maintenance, stable maintenance, carriage maintenance, so on and so forth. That is what the moment we're living through. It's about context and
SPEAKER_00:perspective. And the other part I think is so interesting is talking about how gasoline cleaned up big cities from manure. You don't think about that. You have hundreds of thousands of horses. And dead animals. Of horses. Yes. In a day. Yes. horse graveyards. I don't
SPEAKER_02:remember the stats, but that one episode, we talked about that and how much manure it was. It was insane. Yes.
SPEAKER_03:And so without getting off on a tirade, understand that the similarities are drastic as oil becomes more prevalent, the refining process becomes prevalent. There was, of course, a number of people who were just the race to try and use it for whatever they could, medicinally or otherwise. It's absolutely crazy. There's a lot of crazy stuff,
SPEAKER_00:right? Literally where snake oil came
SPEAKER_03:from. Correct. To a degree, right? To a degree. So as we move forward and springboard ourselves into kind of modern technologies, specifically, let's jump over, unfortunately, you know, 100 years, basically. Yep. And bring ourselves to, bring us up to speed of the 80s and 90s. We have conventional oils of a mixed degree of weights. Weights specifically address viscosity viscosity is um basically how you know i guess an oversimplification is how something flows or thinness or thickness of it so why is there two numbers and a
SPEAKER_00:w well hold on so first we have to talk about straight weight oil yes well that's the
SPEAKER_03:single weight
SPEAKER_00:and at this point those are usually uh air compressors a lot of mores
SPEAKER_03:yes industrial application
SPEAKER_00:old automobile some point. So if you got a Willis, then you could probably use a straight 30 or 40 weight oil.
SPEAKER_03:I need to know what button on the soundboard I'm allowed to push, Jeff, when I want to interrupt. Pivot! I want our listening audience to recognize. I've recognized something because I'm a purveyor of human beings. And so I pick up on micro expressions and little interactions and habitual things. And when people purposely make changes in their life, I notice these things. Other people might not notice, and it's one of those things that you might just kind of like... It's part of his tism. Yeah, it's part of my tism, okay? Scott, for our listening audience, I want you to know this, is attempting to walk through life in a manner in which he respects multiple belief systems. When it comes to vintage vehicles of a particular era, he is purposely choosing to use the pronunciation Willis. Yes. I watched a video. And there are times that he'll still refer to things as Willis.
SPEAKER_02:I'm going to go back to Jeep Jeopardy where I got scolded by both of you for saying Willis. And now he's using Willis.
SPEAKER_03:That's okay. But he actually is able, he is straddling both sides of the belief system of kind of digging our heels in. I'm still going to call like a modern A package a Willis package. Okay. Absolutely. And I want to specifically, because I'm not jumping on the Willis bus. I'm just not right now. So
SPEAKER_00:you're going to make us derail, because I have to do for two seconds. So Willis was the guy's name. Yep. That's the created Willis Overland. Yes. And when Kaiser got a hold of Willis Corporation, so many people were calling it Will-E's because nobody actually knew how to pronounce it. They just were doing it. sure thing off of what it said on the vehicle yep they ran with it they did so both are correct yep and if you want to pay homage to the man and the original corporation which we're talking
SPEAKER_03:about
SPEAKER_00:back
SPEAKER_03:in 100
SPEAKER_00:years ago i said why not say willis i know i know exactly
SPEAKER_03:what you're doing and i think that in life there are too many little like innuendos or too many little things and mitism can't not address it so that other people are aware of the intentionality that Scott is taking in his talking points. Boom, they're done. There's my pivot. I'm going to get back on the rails. It's just any who. So straight weights, if you have those older vehicles, they might call for a straight way. And, and ultimately now, can you put a dual weight oil in
SPEAKER_00:those or will it make it blow up?
SPEAKER_03:No, you can put a dual weight in them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. The vehicle isn't going to panic.
SPEAKER_03:Here's the thing. And so, and, and, this is where I start to really
SPEAKER_02:kind of nerd out. I'm going to jump in real quick because the comment is perfect. I got Joe O'Brien going, what you talk about, Wills?
SPEAKER_03:That tracks. That tracks. So, this is where I really start to... This is the dumbest and like my self-imposed nerd fact you will find out about me and about how these oils differentiate. I get real jazzed up on viscous modifiers. He does.
SPEAKER_02:What's so funny is that Saturday we were talking about, because Scott asked what we were going to be doing on the topic, and I said, oh, we're talking oil. And Greg goes, oh, that's Neil's favorite nerdy topic.
SPEAKER_03:Outside of U-joints? I was going to say, next to U-joints. Like, how dumb. People get really excited about things that, I don't know, actually are fun. I don't know, wheels or lights. I
SPEAKER_00:secretly think U-joints is just because of the special grease that the The joints used. So still lubrication.
SPEAKER_03:And the seals that hold the grease in or purge the grease out. Yeah, that's kind of true. So viscous modifiers are the devil and what most people don't take into consideration.
SPEAKER_00:So what he's trying to say is when you have an oil that says 5W20 or 5W30... It starts out one thing and heat and pressure creates something, magic. Yes, magic happens. And the oil
SPEAKER_03:transitions to the other number. Okay. And there's a magician in the same bottle who has to carry that weight from the initial startup weight, which is thinner, right? So when it comes to a dual weight oil, and that's all I'm going to concentrate on is when we have a lower number and then a higher number versus straight weight. The engine needs to start with the thinner viscous weight. And that is so that you can appropriately lubricate the internal components. So on a arguably what's called a cold start, and I don't care if it is the middle of summer or the dead of winter, it's still a cold start. And that means that the engine has not pressurized, that the internal lubrication and oiling system has not initiated its process. The oil is simply able to flow better from bottom to top. Think about drinking a drink of water through a straw versus drinking a milkshake. The water, with the same level of effort, subjected to the straw is simply going to come up into your mouth faster than the milkshake. The milkshake will require more effort from you to kind of initially get that flow started. Now, the thing is, a viscous modifier's job is to transition that water into milkshake as heat and friction is increased so we have to so think about the initial number on a dual weight oil as the water and the secondary number as the milkshake and the modifier has to move it now that modifier or magician who does that
SPEAKER_02:stuff well I appreciate your analogy it's actually driving me nuts because milkshake in oil is also usually a bad thing
SPEAKER_03:fair Fair in general, and maybe we'll get to that or not. But the challenge with this is the fact that you have to decrease the lubricity content of the quantity. So if you think about going to the restaurant to buy your large milkshake, and it's going to initially come out as water, You then have to have a product in there that allows the transition to happen. So you have some of that product, which exists as water and a kind of a particulate content. You have some of that content that exists as milkshake. And then you have some of that content, which is the magician who magically moves the water into milkshake.
SPEAKER_00:And then after that... is the additives and the things that make it Pennzoil.
SPEAKER_03:And yet there is a fourth party represented in that same large milkshake that is the detergents, the additives, the Molly
SPEAKER_00:Bond, and so on and so forth. Just to keep running with your analogy, that's the strawberries, the blueberries, the Oreo.
SPEAKER_03:100%, right? The malt. The malt. So in theory, straight weight is just the milkshake. Yes. Okay. And when we
SPEAKER_00:have a milkshake all the time,
SPEAKER_03:all milkshake all the time, and you can have a degree of malt in that milkshake, and we have not lessened the lubricity of that 30 weight with detergent, right? Because some of it will be without detergent. And that's a degree of detergent in them. Some have more, some have less. That's their secret sauce. So,
SPEAKER_00:other than an additive, what does detergent do?
SPEAKER_03:Well, it's primarily going to break down carbon deposits and it might...
SPEAKER_02:It kind of does what you expect detergent to do. It cleans.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Fair way to
SPEAKER_00:save me on that one. So, if you've ever taken an old vehicle apart and you pull the valve cover off and there's a perfect imprint of the valve cover... and sludge. Yes. They were running non-detergent oil. Yes. If you take a new vehicle apart that's only seen detergent oil and you just have a nice golden brown of everything and no sludge, there is your why it's in the oil. Your
SPEAKER_03:primary differentiation. I love it.
SPEAKER_00:Which is also why if you have an old vehicle and you go and you put detergent oil in it and it's got the perfect imprint of the valve cover, you're going to plug things up because it's going to liquefy all the sludge all at once.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, because the sludge actually starts to break down the detergent. It acts like a solvent. It's going to start to break down the carbon deposits or other basically sludge deposits that exist in the engine. But it doesn't instantly
SPEAKER_02:dissolve at all. It just makes it move and plug things up. And it
SPEAKER_03:could plug another oil galley or journal in the process and actually create problems. I don't want to get to that just yet. I situation and my continued kind of, you know, soapbox about it as we move into so many of these other things. I love oil talks, man. I'm thinking to myself, God, we can move into synthetics. We can move into multi blends. All right. This last piece of multi episode. I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to folks. I'm going to try and close it. Everybody wants one and done episodes. I'm going to try and keep it to one. No, you're not. So we haven't even got there. So many, there's so much good science around this. If you want to read like, like really ridiculously, like mind-numbingly boring charts and-
SPEAKER_00:Jeff would be asleep.
SPEAKER_03:Summary or synopsis on how these oils, multi-rate oils are made and whatnot. I'm going to try and kind of stay on topic and just give you kind of bird's eye views, understanding that people like myself do really get giddy over this stuff. But arguably in the last 40, 50 years, we've seen a number of different oil manufacturers change recipes or change their marketing, change for engines. And the big thing is basically it's this, the engine manufacturers are doing one thing and the oil companies are doing another. And they're always kind of trying to work cohesively yet independently of each other. I
SPEAKER_00:think it's important as well. And this talk of dual weight oil, we've seen a progression, you know, We got our TJs and older. They're a 1030, 1040 kind of Jeep. And then we got our JKs. Those are a 530 and a 520 kind of Jeep. And then we came out with a JL, and everybody got all upset because it's 020. Yes, sir. And it's water. It starts as water. Yes. And transitions to 20, which is literally what the JK, when hot, was running on. Right. And we're only 10 points less than what the TJ ran on hot. Mm-hmm. And I think people miss that part. But why we start out with a lower number first is because they keep making the tolerances on the motor tighter and tighter. When cold, that's important. As it heats up, things expand, change, and therefore why the electricity changes. Yes.
SPEAKER_03:And that is exactly what I was wanting you to fill in is the fact that engine technology, as it becomes more efficient with more precision tolerances based on its construction then the oil has to get thinner to do its job whereas our old engines in the Willis era basically grandpa could put that engine together with a half inch wrench and a sledgehammer in his backyard and many individuals did that's why America fell in love with vehicles was because so many people could work on these things with, you know, because quite frankly, it was just big UGG and you could put an engine together.
SPEAKER_00:And just quick, small detour, bearing and seal technology has also changed huge amounts. Back in the early motors, we literally had just BABIC poured into a block. They machined it in the block and you assemble the motor, which meant you had no ability to change for wear. There were shims literally where you would shim things to try to make it a little better where today we have bearing technology that just vastly uh is a more superior than what those were yes and seal technology also which is why when you take an old motor and even fully rebuilt and you put a you know say you were to put a 020 oil in it and it was all cork gaskets and rope seals it's going to leak like a
SPEAKER_03:with that said, uh, as we kind of make this compare and contrast of, of, you know, prior days, we have heavier oils that do exist. And I think it's important to, you know, just kind of address that there is a still for race applications, 2050. Um, and the reason we're, and I'll kind of expand upon why that might exist, uh, for diesel applications, we still have 1540. Um, and, and back in the day, and I'm going to throw into this category for a blip on the radar, 540 and 1040. And that's an oil that's bygone. You really don't see that specific oil still in utilization. Again, what oil manufacturers were doing with that specifically, were trying to create a low resistance start up weight. So you had an engine that was used largely in maybe cold environments or whatever. And it then needed to be subject to a heavy duty cycle. And so that's why you wanted to make it for generality sticky, right? You wanted to make it thick because it was in a heavy duty environment. The reason that A, we don't use some of those oils again. And I guess maybe I'll go to the race weight and the diesel weight. We do still use those. They have changed. We use them not in our daily drivers as much as we once did. We use them more in specialized applications.
SPEAKER_00:And it's important, though, because it kind of goes hand in hand. Most of those oils, when you still get them, are going to have a higher zinc content, which is a lubricant. That is what our flat tappet camshafts on our older vehicles need to not have flat cams. But they also hurt emissions equipment. like catalytic converters. So the newer oils as those, you know, sadly it's 1970s and up had catalytic converters. As they were removing that zinc more and more and more and more, we started seeing cam failures because it did not have that lubrication. So now we, when you go to a street rod oil or a hot rod oil or a racing oil, I'm just making them wait, it will have higher zinc content. And you can buy an additive sometimes, or most of the time, that also adds that zinc back into it. Now you can go.
SPEAKER_03:That is not the cam failures that the 3.6 specifically, I don't care what genre or generation of 3.6 experiences, that is not the cam failure.
SPEAKER_00:Because they have a roller. Correct. And it's a different technology.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Sidebar for those of you who
SPEAKER_00:want to make that association. For those 350 guys, we've had roller cams in them since the 90s.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, But Joe O'Brien
SPEAKER_03:said so. Jeff is yawning. Jeff, I'm so glad that our topic is so interesting. Scott and I are over here like we're teenagers again, meeting for the first time, having a conversation. Jeff wants to die.
SPEAKER_02:Some newer diesels are using 5W30 per Joe. Correct, because of the
SPEAKER_03:tolerances, right? And so we keep shifting in that direction. Now, here's the challenge is why we're moving that way for tolerance purposes. But B, the reason you don't see the 540s or the 1040s like you once did is because what they discovered was that in our milkshake that you had too many viscous modifier as far as a content or a volume of it that the oil was depreciating too fast.
SPEAKER_00:Breakdown.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, it broke down entirely too fast. And since viscous modifier is not a lubricant, it would burn off and dissipate faster than the oil itself. So if you are an individual who is experiencing base oil consumption and yet it's not going anywhere in your engine, and there's a couple YouTube videos or if you've worked with me individually, you'll know that your Jeep might call for 020 and I have changed you to 520. That is because I'm intentionally switching with less viscous modifier so that there is more lubricating you know, there's more lubricating content in the oil itself. To translate Neil
SPEAKER_00:Knees, that is closer or less of a change from the start to the finish.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Because zero to 20 is quite a change. Correct. Five, but now we're five closer
SPEAKER_03:to 20. And that's just ultimately all it comes down to is we're trying to give you more lubricant in there. Equally, the detergents and the malts and all that kind of stuff, we're always looking at if If I have a theoretical milkshake container and that's 100 parts to make my milkshake, you can't have 100 parts milkshake or 100 parts just standard ice cream. You're going to have some flavoring in there. You're going to have the cookie crisps. You're going to have those things. And that's going to take up some of the volume of the overall product.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Which is really more reason why some vehicles have had more consumption issues with zero 20 more than just all the rings are bad. Oh, the motor design is bad. No, it's literally using up that modifier.
SPEAKER_03:Especially as we've gotten to, uh, synthetics and longevity between oil changes. Yep. Um, you know, definitely kind of a, a, a challenging piece for us to address, uh, as an automotive, uh, culture and how we, uh,
SPEAKER_00:how we approach this. I would also say synthetic is why you can go longer between oil oil changes more so than the weight of the oil.
SPEAKER_03:Right. The conventional oil simply broke down or burnt off or whatever.
SPEAKER_02:Because synthetic can be made to be thinner and it can be manufactured so that it's a smoother molecule. So it actually...
SPEAKER_00:Which is why...
SPEAKER_02:Holds
SPEAKER_00:up longer. All 020 oil is synthetic. Just pretty much lying in the sand.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Then the last piece I want to hammer home on the engines themselves would be like, well, Neil, why don't we just add... So if you're telling me this is bad and blah, blah, blah, and you don't have this much content, why don't I just add something in on top of it? Well, having too much oil in the engine is bad. Just like you should not fill your differential up to the very tippy top. That's why the fill hole isn't on the top of the differential. That's why it's at a predetermined position on the diff cover.
SPEAKER_02:Marvel's mystery oil.
SPEAKER_03:What is he throwing out? He's
SPEAKER_00:going where my brain was already going. Just like early days of medical for us, when things were a little bit vague, you had lots of things that would come up and, oh, this oil or that castor oil. You were saying
SPEAKER_02:about adding stuff to the oil, and that's what made me think of it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got Marvell's, you had Lucas, you
SPEAKER_03:had... Marvell's. Yeah. Marvell.
SPEAKER_02:Marvell was how they actually pronounced it, but Marvell.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, my gosh. It's a freaking Willis conversation
SPEAKER_00:again. It's a Willis conversation. Anyway, and where you get into this is you'll have, well, my grandpa used Marvell's oil, and so I'm going to use Marvell's. 100%.
SPEAKER_03:Marvell's, Lucas.
SPEAKER_00:But I have no idea what's actually in it. Seafoam. Yep. And spoiler alert, most of those things are literally just oil. Just kerosene.
SPEAKER_03:A high content of it. That's an oversimplification, but I get what you're saying. Very much so. And I'm not telling you not to use those things. I got to be honest with you. They do work in certain applications. They
SPEAKER_00:get the sludge out.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. The last piece that I want to hammer home on that overfilling, which is why we wouldn't want to do it. Gail Banks does a great instructional piece specifically around differentials and overfilling them. the increased pressure, heat, friction that exists.
SPEAKER_00:Your mad scientist moment, the only time it's allowed to overfill is when you have an AMC V8 and it's a five quart capacity. You're going to run out of oil because we had a problem with our oil systems and you should put six in
SPEAKER_03:it.
SPEAKER_00:And
SPEAKER_03:stay within that. But I have absolutely addressed kind of the average population being like, well, if five is good, then why isn't seven better? There is a point in time where We overflow the fish tank and they fall out,
SPEAKER_02:right? Well, and then there's also the option to upgrade your filter. And we do have the XL filters in some applications. Which you then can add to that. And that is another thing. And external oil
SPEAKER_03:coolers and increased capacity. When you increase capacity, you have to increase the oil or else you're
SPEAKER_00:actually... And people don't always think of that together.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. And I love it. I love external oil coolers and oversized filters. Anytime you... you can create volume. You create better duty cycle, um, regardless. So all is good. Big thing is friction modifiers aren't necessarily bad. Um, that's just me kind of in a jokingly way, trying to hammer home what they do and why they do it. Um, but let's go back to the Marvell's and all the other fun little additives. I know that one of the things I heard you say was that it was increased the cleaning of them. Uh, quite frankly, I know a number of people, the old farmer's trick of throwing some automatic transmission fluid in to their
SPEAKER_00:engine oil. I've told many people that, and they look at me like I'm crazy. It has lubricant in it, which kerosene kind of doesn't. It has a high detergent, so it cleans. I've said this forever, but go work on your Mack truck that has got 400,000 miles on it and get as greasy as possible. Take some automatic transmission fluid, put it on your hands, because you're already content what the heck and go like this and your hands will be red but clean yes that is what transmission fluid does and because of that uh because of that high refinement the base oil and automatic transmission fluid is pretty much good no matter if you go to coastal you go to walmart you go to the dollar general doesn't matter it's the additives that make it special yeah and old transmissions kind of don't care uh aside from Some Fords are a little picky on clutch type and manufacturer. So you need a certain additive to help that not shudder or bite. That's really what the like FA and type F oils were. But you can literally put type F in your Chrysler product or in your GM product. And a lot of our racing oils literally just have type F clutch material additives in them to help them lock up better. But your newer vehicles, again, smaller passages, more electronics, they want to see specific things at specific times, they want to see a temperature at a certain time. That's when you really need to use the specific fluid that they say the
SPEAKER_03:use. And as we progress into general, you know, Petro esque based componentry, because I had this conversation with a customer over the weekend with a manual transmission and a specific manual transmission has a specific fluid with a product who has a byproduct in it called it's a synchro mesh and it is the this specific product is better at lubricating the synchros in the Mercedes based six-speed. So enter 2004-ish TJ through the JK model.
SPEAKER_00:And again, back in the olden days when we just had straight-cut gears and you just banged them until you found them kind of scenarios, you had brass synchros. Those don't care what oil's in there as long as it's lubricating it. So you can use a heavy 80-90 weight oil, and it's perfectly content. Now you go into a newer transmission, and the best example for that is a T5. They were used for so long, they actually were used both ways. You had ones with brass synchros that used gear oil, and you used ones that had fiber synchros, which are basically an automatic transmission clutch, and that needs automatic transmission fluid. That is why the six speeds and some of the newer transmissions need the special oil. It's more for the synchros, than for anything else.
SPEAKER_03:And a fun fact as an extension of that, the AX15, which we saw in prevalent utilization through the late 80s into the earliest 2000s, actually runs engine oil. And if you were to cross the, you know, if you were to cross the approved Chrysler Mopar numbers, it basically comes out as a 530. And so my recommendation is always to get as close to a conventional 530, or at least it used to be. I don't know how
SPEAKER_00:valid that is anymore. And again, an X15 is a derivative of a Toyota transmission. If you go and look up Toyota spec, it's not motor oil. That doesn't mean it has the same components inside. Correct. They were specifically made for the model it was gone into. And so
SPEAKER_03:the big issue was we had individuals, folks who were from that old straight cut day and they just knew that put gear oil in them and they would shove gear oil in the transmission and it seemingly worked okay for them. And then we had individuals who were like, well, if ATF is good in this transmission, then it should be good in the AX15. And I absolutely will tell you that I did a fluid change on my AX15 and I put ATF in it and that thing shifted Like, uh, no, terrible, terrible. It was terrible. It actually, um, got stuck in gear. I would, it would get, it did not have the sufficient lubricity, um, that your standard engine oil did. And it was not, I had to drain it out again. Now, after I had cleaned it with the ATF and then put engine oil in it, it was better. Now it was butter, right? And, um, but that was a young Neil, you know, trying to follow the early days of the internet and reading. And, and at that time only there was a Chrysler number and, you know, you were supposed to go to the dealership and buy the fluid. And I thought, wow, that seems unnecessary. Let me screw this
SPEAKER_00:up. You know, I had a T five, uh, in my ownership that I ran motor oil in instead of transmission fluid. Cause it was leaking like a broken fish tank and I could not keep the oil in it. So, uh, I went to a heavier weight oil being motor oil. oil and when it was dead cold when i was inappropriately trying to drive my car around halloween i could it was very hard to shift until the transmission was warm with automatic transmission fluid it didn't matter what temperature it was i could go through it the gears easily
SPEAKER_03:and i think that that is the challenge is that with a degree for the general consumer they have certainly the older vehicles it mattered less
SPEAKER_00:yeah right it was just bigger clearances it was easier easier to shift your, you know, more junk kind of, of shifting where today, yes, a multitude of oils will work, but the engineers have gone in and been like, okay, well at negative 10, how does it shift with that oil? Okay. At 115 plus, how does it shift? And we've got to find an oil that works the best in both situations where we go along and we're like, oh, we, we know best. We know more than the engineer and we start doing that. Well, now we're not using the oil that's best for the usage range. The
SPEAKER_03:broad spectrum utilization
SPEAKER_00:of that component. And because of that, someone that's in Southern California could have a little bit different of an oil expectation than someone in Maine. I'm
SPEAKER_02:going to interrupt because we are at the end of the episode. And my question is, did you get through all the things? No, I failed. I failed. I failed them. I
SPEAKER_00:said we wouldn't get through I knew it I failed our listening audience I
SPEAKER_03:knew that and as you before you got in on it I looked up at the time and I said you know what I'm just going to have to own my indiscretion it is what it is we've got more additives we didn't even get into moly bond and that product we haven't got into synthetics in any degree
SPEAKER_02:we didn't get into engine knock and what the additives allegedly did for that
SPEAKER_03:or the potential just the root failure of the 3.6 you know components and obviously talked about that and what our experience has been with routine oil changes and how often should you actually change your oil so that will all be things that you look forward to next week because I won't shut up and got too jazzed up on viscous modifiers and milkshakes and as Rob Morgan has said I hope that all of you go out and have a milkshake today and you think about not an oil milkshake well and not an oil milkshake as Jeffrey teased we'll talk about that next week as well somebody should be noting all the things that I said we're going to talk about next week. Jeffrey, that's on you. Good thing Davey goes back and listens to these episodes. But I hope you go out and buy a milkshake this week and you think of us and straight white oil and Drake's Well and all those other goodies that we shared with you. Wow. We've got Jeeps to build and do we have a full slate of them? And if you're interested in knowing what's going on, Jeff has been off for the last year and a half from work and left us entirely up against the wall and things didn't get done that were 100% Jeff's fault so
SPEAKER_00:that's why we might have a Tuesday update on Friday for those following along
SPEAKER_03:so if you're interested in knowing what Jeeps are working on and how we're progressing through those since Jeff is back gamefully employed from his year off we should have a
SPEAKER_00:Tuesday
SPEAKER_03:update
SPEAKER_00:we should have a Tuesday And if we don't, we're going to give him so much grief. We will
SPEAKER_03:next week. Until next time, Jeep on. Jeep on. Jeep on.
SPEAKER_00:I was a good year off, I'm just saying. It's very busy. I didn't realize it was a
SPEAKER_02:whole year.
SPEAKER_00:It's a very appropriate transition. Last week, Jeff was like, hey, how's your building coming? I was like, well, Jeff, my concrete guy has been off for a year and a half.
UNKNOWN:What?
SPEAKER_00:And I don't know what the heck I'm doing with concrete. And I don't know how to build a building. So when is my concrete guy available?
SPEAKER_03:Jeff's the concrete guy.
SPEAKER_02:Then I was like, hmm. I heard that he'd be available on Sunday. Yeah. To which I got the response of it would have to be after 3.30. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because I had already packed 40 pounds of crap into my weekend. Yes. In true SFJ fashion. We don't know how not to. Yes. so I ended up running home to get prepared so just message hey can I come over yet and I'm like I thought you'd be here by now
SPEAKER_03:right I totally was talking about Jeff the Builder this weekend as well talking about some of our own projects internal and I was like Jeff's been off so much he hasn't been able to do
SPEAKER_02:like customer service I didn't show up at 3.30 though because his exact message I should be home
SPEAKER_03:about 3.30 tomorrow being very... Listen, first of all, he was being very general. I'm with you. Two, our power of responsivity conversation we had on the American Hustle this morning was not confirming. It was not affirmative.
SPEAKER_02:And that's why I said, let me know when I should head over. He's like, I'm already getting ready. I'm like, oh, well, I'll head over.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:As I told him, it was going to be heck or high water since my concrete guy was available. I was a foresight into existence. But then he then somehow transitioned into my general conversation Uh,
SPEAKER_02:yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And showed me where all the previous subs have gone wrong.
UNKNOWN:Ha ha ha!
SPEAKER_03:There's only been one subcontractor actually not involved out of us. And the fact that in my own house build, I'm always blaming the previous guy who worked on it, which is just me and the help of a handful of good customers who have taken pity upon me.
SPEAKER_02:There was multiple realizations and some pivots that had to be had. The concrete work did not get done.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, are you kidding me? More interpretations, non-affirming, because I don't know what the heck I'm doing.
SPEAKER_02:Listen,
SPEAKER_00:it was so
SPEAKER_02:bad that he went and got his wife, and Amy comes out, and he's like, I wanted her to see what we're dealing with, too. No! Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:she went in the house. How's it going? Bad.
SPEAKER_03:Sorry, folks, if I just blew your eardrum out on that. That was a spit take, as far as I'm
SPEAKER_00:concerned. Why is it bad? You just got to come out and hear it from Jeff. He's breaking my heart, just like he does at work. There are bad news. That's a crappy pep talk, Jeff. But we were able to find a way to resolve it. And instead of having to re-dig, I don't know, 14 holes, we only have to do two. And luckily, I bought a backhoe
SPEAKER_03:accidentally. What is going on?
SPEAKER_00:What is happening? Basically, as you progressively measure, and you realize that the print says on this side of the post versus that side of the post, and you start adding up this failures of measurements and then you have the guy digging the hole interpreting your little flag and you think i literally said this mistakenly well when you got a 24 inch hole you got lots of wheat
SPEAKER_03:so absolutely i heard you talk about you know that's a pretty big bullseye to land on
SPEAKER_00:yeah you know what's not a big bullseye i guess 24 inch holes once you get from one side to the other because you go well we're still okay but we're kind over off the side of the window pane. And now this one actually in the middle of those two holes. It gets better
SPEAKER_02:because this is, we're measuring the holes and because it rained, there was a lot of washout. So the holes weren't five foot deep anymore. Oh God, oh God. So there was one of the inside holes that was actually five foot deep. I said, let's start there because we don't have to do any digging. He goes, it's going to be difficult to get the equipment in there. And I'm like, why? You have two garage doors you're supposed to have two garage door spots. Those holes aren't far enough apart. No. And that's when we went in and
SPEAKER_00:got the tape measure. And that's when the panic started. That's when we got the tape measure out and started measuring everything. Oh, and it gets better. You're not done laughing. So in the middle of all this.
SPEAKER_03:I want you to know, and for the listeners at home, I just, I empathize with you so much
SPEAKER_00:because of my. I was literally thinking like, Neil is going to so be dealing with this crap when he goes through this. Because this
SPEAKER_03:is exactly what I'm dealing with with my house. Yep. 100%. Because you don't know. But you don't know. But you don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So in the middle of all this, we finally have gotten the go-kart, Aiden's go-kart, to a point where he can use it and not have it break the first three trips around the yard.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And he is excited beyond belief.
SPEAKER_02:Well, he was riding it around the whole time.
SPEAKER_00:So he's trying to put in as
SPEAKER_03:much seat time as possible. Before it snows. I would expect nothing less. This kid has waited, I don't know, five years for this go-kart to be done.
SPEAKER_00:So I had already told him, like, hey, you can't. do your normal track because now we're trying to work up here and the go-kart may have brakes or may not have brakes. I'm just going to leave that loose. Nah! Not for not attempting to have brakes, but you know. And he was like, oh, I'll just let off the gas. It'll be okay. That's fine.
SPEAKER_03:I just wait a second, first of all, for contact for everybody. How many Jeeps I've wheeled that they've watched footage of, that they've seen pictures of that have a brake, right? How many vintage pieces of crap where I'm this way on a hill that's like this and I am I'm on a break. So I don't discredit you, but I don't know what's worse because somebody asked to borrow a bicycle. They're doing a whole four day trip. They are stranded. They know that my family has bicycles. So my family, uh, so my sister asked us the best bicycle for this particular individual who needed to borrow. It was my son's bike. He rides all the time, but we had to like contextualize, be like, well, it doesn't exactly have good breaks. What
SPEAKER_00:is wrong with us? So at Anyway, nobody else lives this way. So I tell him, go out back and just do circles. And I knew he was going to get bored of that, but he wasn't there yet. So fine. So we're trying to work and Jeff's crapping in my Wheaties and holes aren't in the right spot. Nothing's deep enough. And I hear thwack. Yep. And I look over and where's Aiden? The only spot that he could. Firmly planted in the front of my C10. Firmly into it. In the front of your truck? Yep. And I thought, well, I could handle this two ways. I could be my father and start screaming. Oh, God. And then he'll be traumatized and will never ride the go-kart again. Oh, God. And he'll never want to see the truck again. Or I can go up and give my kid a hug. because he is me and giving himself all the grief. Oh, yes. And I was like, so how bad is it? Well, I think I just scratched the bumper. Okay. He's like, I'm glad I have my helmet on because you know what else we haven't worked on? Seatbelts. Oh, God.
SPEAKER_03:So
SPEAKER_00:he went flying. He went forward. He learned about perpetual motion. Yes.
SPEAKER_03:Inertia. Yes. Momentum.
SPEAKER_00:Momentum. So truck's okay. Whatever. Scratched the bumper before. It's not bent. He He learned a valuable lesson about turn radius and wearing his helmet. We consoled him. He also had to go in and get consoled by his mother.
SPEAKER_02:He said he's done riding it for a while because
SPEAKER_00:of that. Which turned out to be about an hour. Yep. Yes. Yes. Yes. But anyway, I was like, well, he's back on the horse. That's good. I started my morning off looking at seatbelts and how the hell do I get brakes on a go-kart?
SPEAKER_03:I love it. I love it. What a weekend. What a weekend. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Jeffrey?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, other than the shenanigans there and the things that we did that we can't say on air because of OSHA. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Trust exercises. You know what? Rick's a really good handrail. A backhoe. Well, yeah. Oh,
SPEAKER_03:without question. So anyways. I know that 100%.
SPEAKER_02:No, I had a mostly relaxing weekend. Did some cleanup from the event and went through the trail. Well,
SPEAKER_03:but you know what the thing is? Our audience has not heard about your weekend with your festival. So why don't you give us a little insight there? Since that was Labor Day weekend.
SPEAKER_02:It was Labor Day weekend, and we were off for Labor Day. So we had a two-day event in downtown Erie where we shut down a street. And I'm talking we barricaded both ends of the block. So you had 8th Street between State and Peach completely barricaded off. You had to enter through Voodoo Brewing and come out onto the street. from their patio. We had food trucks. We had vendors. We had 41 different musicians playing or bands, acts, 41 different acts total. So it was a really fun time. We ended up picking who the winners were. We had this great panel of judges that deliberated for an hour or so trying to figure out who the overall winner was going to be because the talent was just so
SPEAKER_00:amazing. The part I loved the most about the whole event is now you are big enough that you are getting the attention of all the business owners, good and bad. And just to contextualize, you've tried to go in and educate the businesses affected by the event and the size of the event and everything else. But just like any human, you're half paying attention, you're half listening, and it goes in one ear and out the other. And the part I love the most is one of them thought a musician was going to play on the street. Yep. Ah.
SPEAKER_02:They thought that there was a business that thought that when I approached them a couple weeks ago for the third or fourth time that we've been to their business that I was a musician dropping off my card because I'm going to be playing on the street and wanted them to know I was going to be playing on the street.
SPEAKER_00:So he's going to set up his guitar box and you're going to throw money in it. That's
SPEAKER_03:awesome. That's actually funny. I mean, that's a great reference because that's exactly what I was thinking. Yep. And that's literally what they thought. I have not heard that story.
SPEAKER_00:So when he showed up and shut their street down, they were dismayed, amazed. Yeah, there was a lot
SPEAKER_02:of emotions with the way that we shut down the street. But we had the city's permission. We did everything by the book. We did it all right. We did make some changes to try to accommodate those businesses differently than what we started with. And it worked out for the
SPEAKER_00:best. I mean, the best thing I heard of it was after all the hubbub of the stage of emotions and grieving that they had to not have their street. Once everything was done, you had such a professional ability to it that the businesses affected were like, you know, I actually would like to be part of this next year. Yes. Excellent. We had from anger to helping.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And, you know, the media obviously was there. We had all the local stations show up and film and record. I got interviewed by a couple stations.
SPEAKER_03:Jeannie says she was there.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's cool. I did not see her either. I'm not surprised. We had a lot of people. We had about 2,000 people throughout the two days. That's impressive. It was really fun, really good turnout. We would have liked to have seen a little bit more than that, but overall, we were satisfied.
SPEAKER_03:Well, and the particular city that you're doing this in does a lot of festivals. They do a lot of different events. Labor Day weekend's a tough weekend. Yep. And it's growing. This is yet the next... biggest rendition. This was the biggest we've done. We tripled our size of attendance. Correct. And you've kind of continued to plow back into it, the festival. And I'm sure that you guys will continue to refine it. And everything that's coming out of it seems to be overwhelmingly positive. And, you know, I obviously wish you guys the best luck going forward. Yeah. And it was very cool. I mean,
SPEAKER_02:needless to say, I was very tired for the next week. And so this week, and I'm like, you know, what? I'm not going to do a whole lot. Took it kind of easy. I watched some football, you know, that perfect week. Steelers started playing again. So I was like, all right, cool. We're back to NFL. It
SPEAKER_03:was the, uh, the kickoff seat, you know, kickoff weekend. Yep.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So good time there.
SPEAKER_03:Outstanding. Outstanding. Um, for me, I, it was a lot of just, uh, sharpening my ax, um, equally trying to recenter myself as after a very busy, uh, you know, kind of summer kind of as summer wound down and the school year started up, that presents its own challenges. I'm in a season of life where it's a lot about being there for my family at the moment. And of course, as overdoers tend to do, I found myself thrust back into the sports ball world. And I have been volunteer coaching for local school. Which if you think he's passionate about oil. Yeah. You know, as an internal insight to how SFJ 4x4 works, we oftentimes kind of talk about humans and each other as our six week interests, right? Humans oftentimes find a shiny object figuratively and we get really invested for six weeks. And I think it's important that we continue to maintain that, that humans continue to get excited excited about things that are new uh maybe something you've pulled out of your closet an old book that was on the bookshelf a movie that you used to love that you used to watch a lot those types of things i think we do the same thing with uh tractors or atvs or festivals or uh doing a particular home project and we get reinvigorated it gives us purpose you know um as long as jeff doesn't come over and tell you it's all wrong I have found myself thrust back into an emotional roller coaster of my own athletic career. For those who may or may not be aware, I was a pretty decorated athlete at one time. I've done a pretty good job of shoving that down into a little box because it doesn't matter when you become an adult. But I've really been enjoying being able to be there for my kids and my family, um, and seeing the different things that they are engaging in. And so that's taken some, some, some interest or time, uh, or it's kind of soda seat for me, uh, of sorts, um, taking some of that as a viscous modifier, if you will. Um, but otherwise, uh, we had lots of, lots of athletics, lots of family time. The big thing is, uh, my wife as a teacher, uh, needed desperately to paint her parking lot. Paint her spot. Paint her spot. Yes, the spot. As a charitable fundraiser, we had to pay for the luxury. Of course, it was$20, so whatever. Of her ability to paint a spot, but can Simpsons just do a little Mrs. Simpson? No. No, this was an all-day affair of painting a parking spot. I know it was. With kids. And you know the worst part is we went into Home Depot and you'll see pictures of my wife sewing I'm tagged into them. And I really didn't want to be that guy. I was a little bit of a sour puss. I'll be honest with you. Oh, you couldn't tell with your shorty shorts on. I was in my hoochie daddy shorts and I was pretty, pretty good mood until, until, and we had a great, like, of course, because again, we can't do anything, you know, half ass in any capacity. It's all in or nothing. All in. So we've got, we've drawn a small crowd at the Home Depot paint desk because now my wife in her, her magical nature might as well be like spinning and dancing and showing any person who's willing to look her design that she has conceptualized. Yes. They all, which many people when they look at my life are like, you're crazy. You're not actually going to do it. Yes, we are. But wait, we are. So how much glitter? So they make a special glitter packages. So we bought two of the primary paints specific glitter packages, which is, in the grand scheme of the world, a lot, apparently. Yeah. And, of course, in blatant delusion, my wife thought she was just going to just buy little sample packs to do her paint. And then I'm looking at it, and I'm like, there's no way in the world that the little pint sample is going to do the design she had. So you were buying quarts? Gallons. Oh! Did you get glow-in-the-dark paint? We did not. Oh. We did not. You missed an opportunity. I did miss an opportunity. But you will see that we actually– so a big shout-out to Home Depot, to be freaking honest. They actually reduced pricing as kind of like a– because I think it was like one of those things where– Well, when you buy$1,000 worth of paint for a parking space– We didn't, fortunately. We didn't.$500? We didn't. I'm not disclosing. But I will say that actually Home Depot came out in a big way and reduced stuff for us. I didn't because they reduced it so much. There you go. Hashtag not sponsored. But also because you will see a picture on my wife's where I am covered in black paint because as I went to check out, I held the court can to take a shot this way and the court can exploded over their self-checkout because in the throes of my wife dancing around, sewing her magic to all the people. They forgot to seal that can. They forgot to seal that one can. So as I pulled it out of the cardboard box that they had so nicely provided us. And I went to shoot it. It spilled all over my hand, the checkout register, so on and so forth. And so I just stood there contemplating life once again, going, what did I get myself into? To which a case, another small crowd gathered as I just kind of stood there staring at this can dripping all over my hand, spilled across the floor. Did your hoochie shorts get any black paint on them? Or are they near miss? First of all, hoochie daddy shorts. And no, I kept my shorts and my Crocs clean, which was 100% my wife's thing going, well, at least your shorts and shoes didn't get any paint on them because she can find silver lining in any moment. Until next time, folks, Jeep on. Jeep on. Jeep on.
SPEAKER_01:We did.
