For episode 96 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Smeedia Returns!  

A lot has happened since Tanner was last on the podcast, not the least of which is that he finally got his 6-cylinder turbo STI up and running, broke in the engine, and then ended up having an engine failure.  

Tasso and Jon talk with Tanner about his path so far, and what his plan is to continue on with his 6-cylinder build.  We also talk to him about some of his other projects, and he and Tasso talk a bit about standalones and wiring.  

That shifts to a talk about trying to think outside of the box when you are building your car.  What are the benefits and drawbacks to taking that approach, and why would anyone do that?  

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

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For Episode 95 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Tasso, Dussex, and Jon catch up with Tasso about his first overall win of a Colorado Hill Climb, and then Gridlife Alpine Horizon.

Just a few weeks ago, Tasso was running at the Continental Divide Hill Climb in Monarch. It was a great event for the OTC Racing team as they finally achieved the goal of a first overall finish in the CHCA series!

Just two weeks after that, Tasso was set to compete in the Rally Sprint race at Gridlife Alpine Horizon, and Dussex was going to be competing in the Time Attack class there as well.

Although Alpine Horizon was a very fun event, it didn't go quite to plan for either Dussex or Tasso. And in Tasso's case, it did not end well.

We talk all about what happened, and about what Tasso's plan is going forward.

Thanks for watching and Stay Tuned!

For episode 94 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, we talk with Tony Barber from Turn in Concepts about Mike Aumick's Time Attack STI, and Tony's Tesla Model 3 that he runs in Time Attack Street Class.

Tony was bringing these two cars that Turn in Concepts supports down to Gridlife Alpine Horizon this month, and since he got into town a bit early, he reached out to see if we would like to take a look at the cars, and maybe put together a video or two.

Of course we said that we did, and we ended up shooting two videos, one on each car. We had two really good conversations about the build and challenges of each car, and I wanted to put them both together in full and put them out as a podcast so you could hear all of both conversations.

A big thanks to Tony for making the long drive to the shop, and thanks to you for listening.

Stay Tuned!

For Episode 93 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, we have the second half of our conversation with Larry and Drew from Race Comp Engineering.

There has been a lot going on lately, and we haven't had a chance to sit down to record an episode this week, but I didn't want to miss getting something up. So I went back and pulled up the second half of our conversation with Larry and Drew from Race Comp Engineering. We had a great conversation about valving, but it went long enough that I decided to split it up into two parts.

For part two here, we start off talking about how much of an effect you the driver has on how a car handles. From there, we move on to talk about adjusting compression valving and how that works. And we wrap everything up with a talk about Autocross.

Thanks very much for listening and Stay Tuned!

For episode 92 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Ryan, Tasso, and Jon sit down with Hyundai WRC mechanic Heather Holler.

As cool as it is that Heather has been crewing for the Hyundai WRC team for the last 2 years, she has also worked as a mechanic for Dirt Fish, and Vermont Sports Car as well.

Needless to say, we had questions, and it was fantastic to get a much better picture of what it is like to be a mechanic at the highest level of Rally. It is no simple feat to keep these cars together at that high of a level, much to move them all over the world each season.

There is also a great chat at the end about the Jessi Combs Foundation, and how that played a role in Heather's career as a mechanic.

On Episode 91 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Tasso and Jon sit down to talk to Dewey about how he got him started with Subaru's, and what drew him to Time Attack.

Dewey has become a fixture in Time Attack in the last handful of years, and we sit down to talk to him about his roots, which turned into conversation about The Fast & the Furious, Sport Compact Car Magazine and Modified Magazine, Gran Turismo, and how drifting relates to Time Attack.

From there we move to talk about his current race car, Boogie, and what he likes and also doesn't about the current Time Attack rule set.

It is a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it!

For episode 90 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, we did something a little different. 

We asked you all a question on our Instagram page, which was "what is keeping you from going to the track?"  And you had a lot of good reasons/answers.

  So Dussex, Tasso, and Jon go through them.  

The most common ones were lack of funds, or lack of time, so we talk about that.  There was also the concern of reliability...    

There were lots of good points, and we did our best to cover them all.

Thanks for listening and Stay Tuned!

For episode 89 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Jon, Ryan, and Tasso catch up on all the racing that the guys have been doing lately.

Tasso is just back from running in the Lands End Hill Climb, the second event of the CHCA Season.

Dussex was running with Global Time Attack at the Ridge a couple of weeks ago, and now he is just back from racing at New Jersey Motorsports Park on the opposite side of the country just a couple of days ago.

There is a lot to discuss and this episode ran a bit long so the full video will be up on our Patreon here shortly.

Thanks for watching and Stay Tuned!

For Episode 88 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Jon sits down with Brett Middleton, the founder of MRT Performance in Australia.

Back in 2001 and 2002 when the Subaru WRX first landed in the US, most shops, and even Subaru Dealerships, were left to look for a company that made the best parts for this car that we were just getting for the first time. That is how many of us discovered MRT Performance in Australia, and Flatirons Tuning was actually a distributor for MRT for a number of years.

For this episode of the Podcast, we get Brett to go all the way back to the beginning to talk about the origin of MRT Performance, which wasn't inspired by a Subaru in fact. We then talk about how Subaru and the WRX and STI became a focus of MRT.

Not only that, but it turns out that Brett put together what may well be one of the first, if not the first Youtube channel talking about what works when it comes to tuning a WRX or STI, and what doesn't. We had to talk to him about what his inspiration was to start the channel, and what his videos have done for the Subaru community.

Thanks for watching and Stay Tuned!

For Episode 87 of the Flatirons Syndicate Motorsports Podcast, Jon sits down with Drew and Larry from Race Comp Engineering to talk about suspension valving.

The inspiration for this conversation started with Digressive valving, but to talk about that, we would have to talk about how valving worked, and that would make for a broader discussion. Drew was certain that we could spend an entire episode just talking about valving, but I wasn't sure.

Drew was 100% right.

This is a great discussion about how your suspension works, and the different types of valving do (linear, progressive, and digressive), and what those adjustment knobs on your suspension change, and how to get a sense of whether or not you have them set properly.

In fact, this ended up being nearly a 2 hour conversation. I have put up the majority of the talk here, but the full length episode will be the first one that we put up on our new Patreon page!

If you sign up, you can listen and watch to the whole conversation, and there were some good points at the end that we didn't have time for here.

Thanks very much for listening and Stay Tuned!