Two Guys Garage Podcast

Heath Norton, VP of Callies Performance Products and its sister company, Energy Manufacturing Ltd., returns to the podcast to update the guys on some new product releases and the surprising impact the pandemic has had on the aftermarket. “We’re in the Second Golden Age of Muscle Cars,” he exclaims. “The streetcar market has gone bonkers!” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoi...

Kevin and Willie welcome the “Father of the Ford GT” Chris Theodore for a special extended conversation chronicling his remarkable career in the automotive industry. The “engineer’s engineer,” Theodore has been a driving force behind some of the greatest vehicles of the 20th Century and beyond. His historic collaborations with the late Carroll Shelby culminated in the 2004 Ford Shelby Cobra Concep...

Nothing gets car guys fired up quite like the throaty growl of an exhaust system – the balance of loudness and quality, the flavors of the exhaust notes. As systems are getting more and more complicated, the guys wonder what’s coming down the pipeline, literally. “We’re in a world today where you have total system continuity,” answers the man from Magnaflow, Richard Waitas. “From the bumper to the...

Chris Gabrelcik of Hot Shot’s Secret returns to the podcast for another deep dive into the complex chemistry of lubricants, oils, and fluids. With his VP of Research and Development Kevin Adams in tow, the Guru of Goo leads Kevin and Willie through some of the key principles of Tribology, the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion. The conversation is anything but dry;...

Christmas comes early this year in the form of the all-new TREMEC TKX, their slimmer, rounder, lighter next generation 5-speed transmission that delivers an astounding 8000 RPM. “This is the first time we’ve actually developed a transmission specifically for the aftermarket,” says TREMEC’s Mike Kidd, while Kevin and Willie pick their dropped jaws off the floor. With multiple shifter locations capa...

Today’s cars and trucks are increasingly more complex machines running on ever more powerful computers, spitting out codes and diagnostic information that can be difficult for a DIYer to decipher. The new OTOFIX scanning tool is poised to change all that, offering dealer quality, access, and capability at an affordable price. Maurice Miller and Daniel Bemiss join Kevin and Willie to discuss the su...

A safety fuel cell is a legit piece of racing hardware; an indispensable replacement for a fuel tank with a whole lot of advantages for hotrodders. Aero Tec Laboratories has been producing and perfecting these since 1970. Ron Ross attributes ATL’s success to constant R&D and one fundamental principle: “We can’t sit still and not move forward.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/a...

As co-host of the long-running MotorTrend series Truck U from Day 1, Matt Steele has seen a virtual truckload of trends come and go. Over the course of 17 seasons to date, his passion for all things trucks burns as brightly as ever. As he tells Kevin and Willie, “I’ve always been a truck guy,” and nowhere is this more evident than in his day job as owner of the mud bogging off-road event series, T...

Few things are a bigger bummer than overheating. But keeping a white-hot engine running cool is no easy task. Willie and Kevin know that not all fans are created equal, and in this podcast, Fred Garza of Maradyne High Performance Fans provides some fresh insights about staying cool under extreme heat.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the release of its TKX next generation transmission in late 2020, TREMEC’s totally redesigned model quickly proved itself a gamechanger for both cars and trucks. While the timing may have initially seemed potentially disastrous, Modern DriveLine’s Bruce Couture reports that sales are up 70 percent over the prior year. “This pandemic has been great for business,” he ecstatically tells the guys...

Classic hot rods are as much about cruising as they are about digging deep and going fast. But they don’t offer much beyond three original gears. Adding a Gear Vendors overdrive system is a simple and versatile way to correct that and still maintain the value and integrity of the vehicle. In this episode, the guys get the skinny from company CEO Rick Johnson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

Will Dover, Director of Category Management, Undercar at CarParts.com joins the guys to discuss one of the two most essential aspects of driving – stopping. While not everyone sees the fun factor of brakes, those who do can really appreciate how great stopping power enhances vehicle performance and driving pleasure. Selecting the right kit can be daunting, posing this challenge for Will: “How do w...

Navigating a virtual rat’s nest of wires can drive just about any DIYer to the breaking point of gutting their electrical system and starting from scratch. Willie and Kevin know this drill all too well, and in this podcast they turn to American Autowire’s R&D Manager Don Bock for help with hassle-free wiring. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former co-host Bryan Fuller joins Kevin and Willie to celebrate Two Guys Garage’s 20th Anniversary and chat about the trio’s recent reunion with original hosts Dave Bowman and Sam Memmolo on the milestone season finale. They also go deep on one of Bryan’s latest and most unexpected projects, outfitting a ’69 Cougar convertible with Tesla underpinnings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megap...

Willie B is deep in the throes of his first solo SEMA build on a rare 1966 Dodge Charger “slapper” car that is most definitely NOT a General Lee. With the clock ticking down, he’s sliced, diced, cut, chopped and wide-bodied it, learning firsthand that “most nightmares occur while you’re awake.” In this final installment of our five-part series, he begins to question whether all the lost sleep, hig...

As president of Factory Five Racing, Dave Smith is the poster child for pride in ownership. The “Built, Not Bought®” kit car company has weathered its share of storms over the course of 27 years, with the last year-and-a-half being “both the most challenging and maybe a lot of fun, too, but not in the way I thought.” Consider this: There are 4500 parts in one kit, and with 10 kits sold in an avera...

Rob Ida is a third-generation car builder and, in Kevin’s estimation, one of the most talented designer-builders on the planet. His penchant for Tuckers is renowned, and he also tackles an incredible array of projects from the most modern to most archaic and just about everything in between. In Part 4 of our five-part series, Rob chronicles the hurdles and headaches of restoring a rare 1962 Holman...

Once upon a time, old school hot rodders had to sacrifice cabin comfort for horsepower. Today, there are zero reasons for any cool car not to have AC. Much of the credit for this can be attributed to the folks at Vintage Air and its Chief Innovation Officer, Ryan Zwicker. The company’s SureFit and Front Runner systems have revolutionized the industry, leading Willie to dub them “the panacea of pul...

As owner of the successful Girl Gang Garage and co-host of MotorTrend’s long-running hit series All Girls Garage and Garage Squad, Bogi Lateiner has earned an enviable reputation in the automotive world. Now deep into her third all-female SEMA build – “I did not expect to be building a SEMA car, ever!”– she takes time out to chat with Kevin and Willie about the project in the third installment of...

Geoff Hacker and Guy Dirkin have dedicated themselves to preserving the legacy of cars that most people have probably never even heard or dreamed of… including Willie and Kevin! “I don’t chase cars; I chase stories,” says Hacker. Over the last 15 years he’s invested more than 15,000 hours of work into Undiscovered Classics and curated a huge library of archival materials on rare handcrafted Americ...

In the second podcast of this five-part series, Willie goes deep on his first gen ‘66 Dodge Charger build for this year’s SEMA Show. Not exactly renowned for its natural beauty, this labor of love (emphasis on labor) is inspired in part by Kevin’s own kick-ass 1990 LS-powered BMW M3 build several SEMAs back. “Ugly cars get really cool at SEMA,” notes Willie, “and sometimes really gorgeous cars get...

Cleveland Power & Performance is a one-of-a-kind hybrid: part salvage yard, part custom build shop, and all-around amazing. Kevin describes it as “a go-to place for nothing but the awesome stuff,” and second-generation owner Rick Fragnoli doesn’t disagree. In fact, his famed “Reverence” restomod – a ’69 Charger with a 6.2L supercharged Hellcat engine – recently sold for around $400K. “If it’s a $2...

If SEMA is the Super Bowl of car shows, the Ring Brothers are the Lebron and Michael of car builders. Yet even Jim and Mike are up against the wall trying to get parts for the three projects they’re bringing to this year’s highly anticipated event, the first since the onset of the pandemic. In the first of a five-part series leading up to SEMA, Kevin and Willie go two-on-two with the legendary sib...

On today’s podcast Kevin observes that once you truly understand the way it moves, “the amount of things that you can go make with metal is incredible!” Much of the credit for this can be attributed to the good folks at Woodward Fab, purveyors of fine industrial grade sheet metal equipment at affordable prices. “The tools are very old and technology, they’re very, very simple,” says Manager Darren...

In the second of their two-part interview with Gale Banks, Willie and Kevin get deeper insights into the man who changed the history of the internal combustion engine. “I’m hopelessly addicted to horsepower,” exclaims the racing legend who cut his teeth on gas and is now largely known for diesel. On predicting what lies ahead, the born to run competitor anticipates “it has to have a higher energy...