My horror story of a Wisconsin drift shop: I wrecked my s13 hatch 12 hours after buying it, hit a deer, not even drifting. I looked for a reputable shop to do a tube front. I was recommended by like 10 people to a local drift shop. The owner told me he could get it done no problem. He quoted me at 3 months for the whole front end, start to finish. The guy took over 2 years, my tube front lines up as if Ray Charles did the measurements and welding. My CF hood doesn't fit my pop up headlights. Not to mention when I jacked my car up on my bash bar, it bent and almost crushed me. Over a year later and I still don't have a replacement bash bar. Now he's an FD crew member for Jeff Jones team. Whenever I get the time/money, I'm gonna cut the front end off and make a whole new one.
I had something similar with an engine build in Phx. Everyone said this guy is the guy to go to for a 4AGE build. He asked for money for the new parts needed up front, the rest after the engine was done. It would be done in 3 months tops. Month after month I got excuses or delays. 18 months later he posts he’s moving to LA on Facebook. When I tried confronting him, he ignored me. Then he contacts me back, 48 hours before the landlord takes the keys back to the shop. On my way to the shop he texts me saying the shop flooded, it’s not good but he’ll fix it. He had my engine parts on the concrete floor!!! Block and crank were fully submerged in water, then never properly cleaned or treated. Rust everywhere!!!! Then, my new engine builder noticed parts were missing. The head that I spent $700 modifying (FWD to RWD cooling passages and port work) no longer had the cam caps! You can’t just replace those, I had to spend $300 on a new head, and repeat the $700 of modification work. Then this guy had the balls to get mad at me, that I didn’t want to ship him my engine to LA on my dime, so he could finish the build because “I’m still trying to get setup in LA and I need the work.” 6 months after I told him off, he butchered a F20c swap Corolla, and Blew Up a 4AGE by putting the wrong pistons in…. Yeah. Fun times.
Closed my shop six years ago. Clientele slowly changed and the quality of the cars and the customers in our area moved into a real negative place. Before drifting got very popular people actually knew what they were doing and they only came in for custom work or tunes and we were happy with that. Most of the money was in brakes and wheels and suspension installs and our tint bays. Like he mentioned in the video 3-4 big jobs is all an even medium sized shop can do because its so damn complicated. As time went on people walked in with unrealistic expectations and after a while we raised our rates and the problem jobs went away and we worked on more expensive cars and easier and faster jobs. Sadly drifting as a hobby has become price prohibitive because of the popularity and scarcity of the older cars. There are no cheap cars these days so upscale is the only option in most markets. After a few years drift work outside of the big dollar custom work projects just didnt pay enough to sustain in a major market thats not california. When we started a kid could pick up n ultra clean slick top s13 for 2k and swap an SR20 out the door for 5k. Nowadays you add a zero to everything. Not sustainable sadly. Setup a shop that does brakes and general maintenance and do special projects on weekends for the big spenders. Sponsor some events and coffee and cars and get a tinter. Most drift shops failed in our area because good mechanics are often ill equipped to be salesmen and accountants and the reality of owning a business is soul crushing when its not working well. Things like insurance and overhead seem simple enough till you have to juggle parts and payroll and taxes. Every single drift shop that opened in our rather large city ended up screwing a bunch of long term projects that they butchered. Every try getting parts for an RB20 lately in the midwest? Parts and clean cars are simply not available anymore unless you get a full dropout or you just do LS swaps into 1 or 2 different kinds of cars. Best paying jobs were resto mods for dentists.
This hits the nail on the head for the most part. A lot of guys don't know what it takes to do a swap they are not familiar with. A business is always about profits, and if you don't know how long its going to take to do a swap, its hard to be profitable. Stick to what you know
I think a lot of people underestimate parts that don't fit. If you custom make stuff in a garage, you work towards making it fit Once you have a shop and multiple projects, you need to either mass produce your own parts (which is hard) or rely on third party suppliers. Some of them are really bad, like for instance Sikky, where I bought a swap pan that didn't fit for miles. 70+ emails later I pay for a different pickup tube they claimed would clear the pan, guess what, pan still doesn't clear, and this was after we cut all the baffles out and tried it on three different motors. Hard to explain to your client, who pays $$$ for a specific pan but you also need to charge 10+ hours to make it fit.
Great video. I only have one suggestion: Let the guest finish their thoughts. I know you want to get your questions out but it can mess up the flow of the video. Keep up the good work
There’s like 10 people in Cali that would be interested in that or can afford it. I’m seeing a major decline in the quality of vehicles here in Cali. A lot of these kids have no mechanical ability and want to drift. So they are buying built cars beating them into the ground, then flipping them for 12-20k then the car gets parted out. It’s sad. Californias drift scene is getting worse and worse.
yep...and 2k gets you a clapped out, high mileage 240, 8k gets you a high mileage is 300 manual, 4k gets you a miata with 200k miles, and the gs300 here are slowly creeping up to 4k.
Because the vast majority of drifters are not the financially comfortable gentleman like in most other motorsports. It’s kids. Broke kids who have been tricked/tricked themselves into thinking drifting is a cheaper form of Motorsport. It’s not. A lot of younger people are living paycheck to paycheck or racking up debt to work on a project. I was one of them for a while until I learned how much it was actually slowing down my progress. I don’t want to discourage anyone from their passions, but you have to do it the right way. Avoid Debt, use a written monthly budget, live below your means, and work your butt off. 🤘🏼💕
The unfortunately reality is that a huge portion of the American drifting community are not actually qualified mechanics, engineers, or fabricators or even all that knowledgeble about tuning and proper modifications at all regarding the average consumer and also many don't have the funds to pay shops that are legit. So there is a huge cycle if people who think they know more than they do as both customers and shops and they just circle jerk each other.
All well and good. But also drifters taking it too seriously and going over budget, they can't afford to properly power-up at a shop. There are no shortcuts, IMO most of us (me incl) are better off sticking to grass roots, if we can't build it just lay off and keep with what we know and gradually work up.
My friend and I built sr20 s13s and he went with a bigger turbo, bigger cams, and just as big as possible of everything and ended up making like 60whp more than me but mine ended up being faster and more responsive. You really put it nicely about how the parts need to work together rather than just going for numbers. He blew his engine up too LOL
I think the biggest difference is demand and density. The demand here (states in general) isn’t equal to the demand in Japan in terms of how spread out we are. America is massive and most people won’t get into a sport if they have to trailer the car 2 states away to get worked on. But every shop in Japan is at max a few hours away and they can all do their own thing but a shop here is getting a broad range of cars and projects and needs to learn how to do everything to survive.
MA Motorsports has been around for years and they advertise as a drift shop, they seem to do great work and have stood the test of time, I would consider them to be both successful and a "drift shop"
IMO when you're a mechanic, you have to charge for the mechanical knowledge and the labour ideally. But if you do that, that means you're gonna have to charge more and customers won't want to pay that. Especially in a drift car where chances are its gonna end up in or as a wreck. People would pay for that knowing that its in a nice, long term weekend show/meet car.
this is a problem with most shops in general around the world not just drift shops and those customer that he tries to turn down we all have them for sure
Didn't Dan build an RB Mustang tho 🤔 ..but he actually did a great build. What also helps is knowing when to sublet or farm out certain parts of the build. Ultimately the client doesn't want to call around to a bunch of shops to get their build done. They just want to drop off their car, wait then eventually pick it up (months or years) later.
To expand clientele, wouldn't it be a good idea to hire 2 guys for each type of chassis. For example 2 guys work only on supras, 2 only on 240s, 2 on miatas, or whatever. Then maybe do like a 30/70 split with them. This way you can have people specialized in each chassis and only accept the jobs they know they can get done. Maybe one long job that may take a few weeks to a few months and bring in 1 other car for maintenance or something that'll be a quick in and out. So now you have the chance at having 4 big jobs and atleast 4 services a days. Assuming you have 8 people working for you. But then again i dunno.. just spit balling here
Sounds good in theory but likely to be practically impossible in reality. Just getting 5-10 good general labor employees and being able to pay them is extremely tough, much less individuals that have chassis/engine specific level of specialization within a niche market. We are also in a labor shortage on top of that, wages for average labor is $20+ an hour in any kind of city that could even potentially have the number of drift specialists mechanics in the labor pool, so paying that kind of talent is going to be extremely expensive.
Here in Canada the going rate for just a brake service shop is like $100 an hour, so when I heard your rate I thought holy shit that's low for such a specialist. You should work on designing and making parts. Also specific build packages kinda like Tommy does
Worst financial mistake I made was selling my clean 3kgt VR4 and buying a 240sx. LUCKILY I got the s14 for 1k but a year later it's still on jack stands 🤣
A lot of Bigger is Better guys who want to buy their way to the top, why I don't build my cars to be fast. I'm too poor to keep up with the guys who buy fast cars and too lazy for the upkeep.
@@LoneStarDrift you keep pumping out these great videos it will. I love them! The break between drift week I was starving for content a little. Cool you posted some old Japan footage during that time to tide us over.
The only way I can do daily uploads is interviews! And people watch them more than actual driving! I can't afford to do daily uploads and driving lol. I don't feel like I am interesting enough to do daily stuff without asking people questions that are more interesting than me.
My horror story of a Wisconsin drift shop:
I wrecked my s13 hatch 12 hours after buying it, hit a deer, not even drifting. I looked for a reputable shop to do a tube front. I was recommended by like 10 people to a local drift shop. The owner told me he could get it done no problem. He quoted me at 3 months for the whole front end, start to finish.
The guy took over 2 years, my tube front lines up as if Ray Charles did the measurements and welding. My CF hood doesn't fit my pop up headlights. Not to mention when I jacked my car up on my bash bar, it bent and almost crushed me. Over a year later and I still don't have a replacement bash bar.
Now he's an FD crew member for Jeff Jones team. Whenever I get the time/money, I'm gonna cut the front end off and make a whole new one.
that sucks man 😓 cagekits from Rob makes a killer tube front! super strong and the pop ups and factory hood latch still works
I'm from Wisconsin and I think I might know where you're talkingggggg abooouuuut LOOOL....not laughing at your situation...
I had something similar with an engine build in Phx. Everyone said this guy is the guy to go to for a 4AGE build. He asked for money for the new parts needed up front, the rest after the engine was done. It would be done in 3 months tops.
Month after month I got excuses or delays. 18 months later he posts he’s moving to LA on Facebook. When I tried confronting him, he ignored me. Then he contacts me back, 48 hours before the landlord takes the keys back to the shop. On my way to the shop he texts me saying the shop flooded, it’s not good but he’ll fix it.
He had my engine parts on the concrete floor!!! Block and crank were fully submerged in water, then never properly cleaned or treated. Rust everywhere!!!! Then, my new engine builder noticed parts were missing. The head that I spent $700 modifying (FWD to RWD cooling passages and port work) no longer had the cam caps! You can’t just replace those, I had to spend $300 on a new head, and repeat the $700 of modification work.
Then this guy had the balls to get mad at me, that I didn’t want to ship him my engine to LA on my dime, so he could finish the build because “I’m still trying to get setup in LA and I need the work.”
6 months after I told him off, he butchered a F20c swap Corolla, and Blew Up a 4AGE by putting the wrong pistons in….
Yeah. Fun times.
Closed my shop six years ago. Clientele slowly changed and the quality of the cars and the customers in our area moved into a real negative place. Before drifting got very popular people actually knew what they were doing and they only came in for custom work or tunes and we were happy with that. Most of the money was in brakes and wheels and suspension installs and our tint bays. Like he mentioned in the video 3-4 big jobs is all an even medium sized shop can do because its so damn complicated. As time went on people walked in with unrealistic expectations and after a while we raised our rates and the problem jobs went away and we worked on more expensive cars and easier and faster jobs. Sadly drifting as a hobby has become price prohibitive because of the popularity and scarcity of the older cars.
There are no cheap cars these days so upscale is the only option in most markets. After a few years drift work outside of the big dollar custom work projects just didnt pay enough to sustain in a major market thats not california. When we started a kid could pick up n ultra clean slick top s13 for 2k and swap an SR20 out the door for 5k. Nowadays you add a zero to everything. Not sustainable sadly. Setup a shop that does brakes and general maintenance and do special projects on weekends for the big spenders. Sponsor some events and coffee and cars and get a tinter.
Most drift shops failed in our area because good mechanics are often ill equipped to be salesmen and accountants and the reality of owning a business is soul crushing when its not working well. Things like insurance and overhead seem simple enough till you have to juggle parts and payroll and taxes. Every single drift shop that opened in our rather large city ended up screwing a bunch of long term projects that they butchered.
Every try getting parts for an RB20 lately in the midwest? Parts and clean cars are simply not available anymore unless you get a full dropout or you just do LS swaps into 1 or 2 different kinds of cars.
Best paying jobs were resto mods for dentists.
This hits the nail on the head for the most part. A lot of guys don't know what it takes to do a swap they are not familiar with. A business is always about profits, and if you don't know how long its going to take to do a swap, its hard to be profitable. Stick to what you know
this was a perfect episode to explain why there needs to be more series like lone star drift across the country !
Yes
Agreed. Finding events or even places to practice legally is a nightmare in the northeast
umm then it would be called multi star drift and thats deff not as cool...
The world needs lone star events!
I think a lot of people underestimate parts that don't fit. If you custom make stuff in a garage, you work towards making it fit
Once you have a shop and multiple projects, you need to either mass produce your own parts (which is hard) or rely on third party suppliers.
Some of them are really bad, like for instance Sikky, where I bought a swap pan that didn't fit for miles. 70+ emails later I pay for a different pickup tube they claimed would clear the pan, guess what, pan still doesn't clear, and this was after we cut all the baffles out and tried it on three different motors.
Hard to explain to your client, who pays $$$ for a specific pan but you also need to charge 10+ hours to make it fit.
Great video.
I only have one suggestion:
Let the guest finish their thoughts. I know you want to get your questions out but it can mess up the flow of the video.
Keep up the good work
And ask one question at a time would really help with the flow of thought
That’s what makes Aaron tho 😂 it took me a while to get used to him and how he conversates but I love him now!!❤️❤️❤️
@@terrelldancy7830 good point
There’s like 10 people in Cali that would be interested in that or can afford it. I’m seeing a major decline in the quality of vehicles here in Cali. A lot of these kids have no mechanical ability and want to drift. So they are buying built cars beating them into the ground, then flipping them for 12-20k then the car gets parted out. It’s sad. Californias drift scene is getting worse and worse.
Cali doing cali things.
Pretty much. It’s the worst state everyone here pretends and spends way to much money and they pretend they like it. It’s the goofiest shit.
yep...and 2k gets you a clapped out, high mileage 240, 8k gets you a high mileage is 300 manual, 4k gets you a miata with 200k miles, and the gs300 here are slowly creeping up to 4k.
Because the vast majority of drifters are not the financially comfortable gentleman like in most other motorsports. It’s kids. Broke kids who have been tricked/tricked themselves into thinking drifting is a cheaper form of Motorsport. It’s not.
A lot of younger people are living paycheck to paycheck or racking up debt to work on a project. I was one of them for a while until I learned how much it was actually slowing down my progress.
I don’t want to discourage anyone from their passions, but you have to do it the right way. Avoid Debt, use a written monthly budget, live below your means, and work your butt off.
🤘🏼💕
Dan's 2j sound effects were spot on!
Thanks for this perspective!
Social media has ruined cars and drifting...
This seems like on helluva volatile business. Only a tiny number of people can afford the work and they are very fickle people.
Crazy.
The unfortunately reality is that a huge portion of the American drifting community are not actually qualified mechanics, engineers, or fabricators or even all that knowledgeble about tuning and proper modifications at all regarding the average consumer and also many don't have the funds to pay shops that are legit. So there is a huge cycle if people who think they know more than they do as both customers and shops and they just circle jerk each other.
All well and good.
But also drifters taking it too seriously and going over budget, they can't afford to properly power-up at a shop.
There are no shortcuts, IMO most of us (me incl) are better off sticking to grass roots, if we can't build it just lay off and keep with what we know and gradually work up.
I felt high listening to Dan talk 😂 but super important information for the car community in general, not just the drift community.
My friend and I built sr20 s13s and he went with a bigger turbo, bigger cams, and just as big as possible of everything and ended up making like 60whp more than me but mine ended up being faster and more responsive. You really put it nicely about how the parts need to work together rather than just going for numbers. He blew his engine up too LOL
Aarron speaking about Yokoi in the first minute hits so many nails on the head.
Can you stop being a conversation strangler and let Dan speak.
Rad dan has so much knowledge to share! Thank you so much for the 3 videos aaron!
I think the biggest difference is demand and density. The demand here (states in general) isn’t equal to the demand in Japan in terms of how spread out we are. America is massive and most people won’t get into a sport if they have to trailer the car 2 states away to get worked on. But every shop in Japan is at max a few hours away and they can all do their own thing but a shop here is getting a broad range of cars and projects and needs to learn how to do everything to survive.
Ran Dan is one of my favorite dudes. Loved this interview and the topic was really cool too
MA Motorsports has been around for years and they advertise as a drift shop, they seem to do great work and have stood the test of time, I would consider them to be both successful and a "drift shop"
IMO when you're a mechanic, you have to charge for the mechanical knowledge and the labour ideally. But if you do that, that means you're gonna have to charge more and customers won't want to pay that. Especially in a drift car where chances are its gonna end up in or as a wreck. People would pay for that knowing that its in a nice, long term weekend show/meet car.
this is a problem with most shops in general around the world not just drift shops and those customer that he tries to turn down we all have them for sure
I can’t think of a “drift” only shop in the states in all honesty. Touge factory comes to my head every time.
Didn't Dan build an RB Mustang tho 🤔 ..but he actually did a great build.
What also helps is knowing when to sublet or farm out certain parts of the build. Ultimately the client doesn't want to call around to a bunch of shops to get their build done. They just want to drop off their car, wait then eventually pick it up (months or years) later.
That's because TJ paid an insane amount for him to learn.
Tj paid a metric fuckton of money for that and even then you could tell that Dan still didnt want to do it. Lol
Dan is the coolest ,,he always sounds like we’re at the beach
I always appreciated Rad Dan. But this earned my fucking RESPECT Dude is dope
Love these new chat videos
I lowkey want to see what happens with the FRS and if the owner actually does it justice LOL.
@6:20. please bring boxes. lmao. Same with my car.. Its like 200 and needs 300... lol. This was cool. Rad Dan is the man.
how much would it be for dan to sell engine trans and drive shaft packages for 2jz engines
The annoying part about that is finding engines at a consistent price would be impossible and fluctuate a ton with time
@elementaljoch of course with taking those accounts into reason 🧐
Rad Dan FTW. Is Dan an unofficially official Lone star drift member now? 🤔
To expand clientele, wouldn't it be a good idea to hire 2 guys for each type of chassis. For example 2 guys work only on supras, 2 only on 240s, 2 on miatas, or whatever. Then maybe do like a 30/70 split with them. This way you can have people specialized in each chassis and only accept the jobs they know they can get done. Maybe one long job that may take a few weeks to a few months and bring in 1 other car for maintenance or something that'll be a quick in and out. So now you have the chance at having 4 big jobs and atleast 4 services a days. Assuming you have 8 people working for you. But then again i dunno.. just spit balling here
Sounds good in theory but likely to be practically impossible in reality. Just getting 5-10 good general labor employees and being able to pay them is extremely tough, much less individuals that have chassis/engine specific level of specialization within a niche market. We are also in a labor shortage on top of that, wages for average labor is $20+ an hour in any kind of city that could even potentially have the number of drift specialists mechanics in the labor pool, so paying that kind of talent is going to be extremely expensive.
Here in Canada the going rate for just a brake service shop is like $100 an hour, so when I heard your rate I thought holy shit that's low for such a specialist. You should work on designing and making parts. Also specific build packages kinda like Tommy does
Worst financial mistake I made was selling my clean 3kgt VR4 and buying a 240sx. LUCKILY I got the s14 for 1k but a year later it's still on jack stands 🤣
I work with rich people building 356 porsches in California and they are actually very chill. A gt3 drift shop would be awesome
@12:33 this!! Drifting is just about the most disrespectful thing you can do to a car, shits bound to break. Thats why I love it 🤣
Remember the old saying… Speed costs money, how fast you wanna go?
does he do jz swaps in corona chassis? i got the 2j and am dying to stuff it in the rona
Love this inside real talk 👍
I dont watch often but I’m subbing to help you get to 100k!
Thanks!
Thank you for the upload aaron
I'm behind on the drift week content. Aaron's been quite up until drift week
Pro tip dont cut your guest off mid sentence to plug your sponsors. Its realy annoying and unprofessional
A lot of Bigger is Better guys who want to buy their way to the top, why I don't build my cars to be fast. I'm too poor to keep up with the guys who buy fast cars and too lazy for the upkeep.
what about papadakis racing
Aaron TH-cam stocks 📈
Been wanting to start a shop for years but yeah exactly all those reasons. You’d have to be making videos or something on top of regular work flow.
I want to build engines for a living, have gone to school & done it, but engines are going extinct :/
Shops that specialise are the only ones to go to when you have a performance car.
Good knowledge in here
Take a shot everytime Dan says “ya know”
“You could buy two Ferrari’s for the cost of that car” … no.. you could .. haha
Great video 👍
Notification pops up, I click. Simple 🤩🤟
Next video, why “drift TH-cam fails”
So close to 100k
Always seems that way lol. One day it will happen lol!
@@LoneStarDrift you keep pumping out these great videos it will. I love them! The break between drift week I was starving for content a little. Cool you posted some old Japan footage during that time to tide us over.
Nailed It
Truth
RTR
🤙🏻🍕
You know
👍💪💯
1
Please stop saying the word (like).
Daily uploads 👍🏻
Interviews 👎🏼
When do we get to the actual Drift Week driving? 😂
The only way I can do daily uploads is interviews! And people watch them more than actual driving! I can't afford to do daily uploads and driving lol. I don't feel like I am interesting enough to do daily stuff without asking people questions that are more interesting than me.
you know, you know, like, like, WTF, half of the time its just this BS...
You know