The Gearhead Project

**David Lovett has some very interesting cars. **

If you don’t already know David Lovett, and I tell you he lives a mile from his nearest neighbor, deep in the heart of Texas; so far out in the boonies he still has to budget his bandwidth because it takes all night to download a single gigabyte on his “high speed internet” service.

What’s your brain telling you about him?

But what if I told you David has pet rabbits, speaks Japanese, and has an eclectic collection of small JDM cars, most of which I’m not even familiar enough with to remember even after he told me what they were. There’s a couple Nissan Zs, a Mazda Cosmo, an Isuzu Bellett, and a Mitsubishi 360, to name a few.

And just wait ‘til you hear what he does—_and has done_—for a living. I mean, _damn, son._

**David Lovett is a Gearhead Project.**

And he’s just started sharing stories and videos about his own projects on [Usagi Motors](http://usagimotors.com/). (Seriously. If you love build threads and project car updates—and want to see some really unique stuff—you _really_ want to check out Usagi Motors.)

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT IN TGP EPISODE 24

- David’s collection of interesting vehicles

- His job, and how he got into the field

- Investing in experiences moreso than car parts. Mark Twain said travel is something of a cure-all. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

- Travel is one thing. Actually living abroad is even better. How much Texas he took to Japan, and how much Japan he brought back to Texas.

- What he’s working on these days—vehicularly and professionally speaking

- The gearhead (human) condition and zeitgeist. The world’s changing, and we should be doing things to at least not fall behind, if not position ourselves for success.

PS: If you enjoy this episode, please share it with someone. Thank you.

**OMG. I am SO over it. ?**

In the month leading up to Gearbox Magazine's 9th anniversary, I realized I no longer cared about all the magazine-related stuff. I took a month off—and nobody noticed.

I like to chalk it up to Facebook being the Walmart of the Web, simultaneously eroding attention spans and reversing nearly 20 years of the Internet effectively uniting the people of the world through common interest, but the fact of the matter is I'd spent too long trying to live up to labels. Labels I assigned myself ("magazine"). Labels I let others assign me ("car magazines are only about cars").

**Turns out Ruston Smith was in a similar situation. ?**

He launched Overlanding USA on a lark; a way of trying out the things he was learning in college related to marketing a brand. He did a damn good job of it, too. He was north of 80,000 followers on his Instagram account. Something was obviously working.

People wanted to see pictures of his highly modified Toyota 4Runner.

**Ruston wanted to go in a different direction. A large part of his audience didn’t.**

**It takes guts to shut down something that’s working when it no longer works for you.**

_ **But ya gotta do what ya gotta do.** _

Check THIS one out.

**Sometimes you just gotta start over.**

It's easy to discover something new and exciting, go all-in, and have a number of very meaningful experiences—to the point where you it starts feeling like a calling. But it's also easy to get burned out, lose interest, and find yourself struggling with sunk cost fallacy—you don't want have wasted all that time.

**It's not a waste of time—but only if we learned our lessons.**

The Gearhead Project is changing directions slightly. We're going to start talking to gearheads—and friends (who might not be gearheads like us)—who have been through the things we're dealing with so we can all learn those lessons and stand the best possible chances of success.

We'll be opening up a sort of VIP/next level gearhead project group soon. And we'll be working with that group to determine whom and what we talk about on this podcast and more. In the meantime, I'm kind of demonstrating by talking to people about what I'm working on these days, personally.

**Reinvention. Walking away. And a fine, single malt whisky.**

If you missed it, I recently walked away from Gearbox Magazine in order to focus on The Gearhead Project exclusively. I learned a lot over nine years, but it was time to move on.

How do I make sure I learned my lessons? How do I make sure I don't make the same mistakes twice with the new site?

How do I make sure I don't end up burned out and wanting to walk away from TGP in a couple years?

**Danny Brown's done something similar.**

And I wanted to talk to him about it.

So that's what I did.

**Sometimes you end up in business for yourself purely by luck.** That’s how it happened to Justin Mohney. And it all started with a Christmas present back in 2009.

Tired of crusty brackets and whatnot under the hood of his first gen DSM, Justin asked his parents for Eastwood powder coating kit for Christmas. They put in a good word to Santa, who delivered, and Justin was powder coating stuff almost immediately.

He loved how the durable, uniform finish—even from an inexpensive starter kit—improved the overall look of his engine bay. So did his friends, who started generously offering to let Justin powder coat things for their vehicles so he could get practice.

Less than 10 years later, Justin’s unplanned business, Detective Coating, is practically a household name in the DSM and Evo communities, turning some of the crustiest used parts into the hottest bling.

I caught up with Justin to learn more about how he went from Christmas present to job creator.

It’s a pretty interesting story. Welcome to The Gearhead Project.

**Dan drives a Montero. Dan lives on a sailboat.**

I drive a Montero and want to live on a sailboat. When I discovered this fact about Dan, I got his number and called him up. He gave me some good advice.

Suffice to say, while living aboard a sailboat makes for some of the most affordable housing in Berkley, it’s like living aboard a project vehicle. That floats. In water. And will sink if not properly cared for.

Where do you think he works on his truck?

**This is The Gearhead Project**

**They say the best things in life are free.**

**But you’ve got to invest in the skills and experiences that prepare you for the best things in life.**

Elise Bent and Mercedes Lilienthal are doing just that. They are Team Free Range Dames—and they’re working their asses off to get to the Rebelle Rally in October

What’s the Rebelle Rally, you ask? It’s the first women’s off-road navigation rally raid in the United States.

In this episode, we talk about the countless hours behind the scenes, doing the grunt work. Dealing with the not-so-glamorous nuts-and-bolts of the affair. Looking fear and uncertainty straight in the eye—and making progress no matter what.

**Mercedes and Elise have been running down this dream for months.**

**Welcome to The Gearhead Project**

You can learn more at [http://www.teamfreerangedames.com/](http://www.teamfreerangedames.com/)

Here’s their GoFundMe page with more details: [http://gofundme.com/teamfreerangedames](http://gofundme.com/teamfreerangedames)

See also, the Instagrams!

[https://www.instagram.com/teamfreerangedames/?hl=en](https://www.instagram.com/teamfreerangedames/?hl=en)

[https://www.instagram.com/mercedes\_lilienthal/?hl=en](https://www.instagram.com/mercedes_lilienthal/?hl=en)

[https://www.instagram.com/elise.bent/?hl=en](https://www.instagram.com/elise.bent/?hl=en)

**Get this.**

**There’s an old saying about starting a business—find a problem and solve it.**

Josh Bent bought a fancy awning for his truck, only to learn they don’t sell mounting brackets because people install those awnings on all kinds of vehicles all over the world. It’s not a cost effective thing for an awning manufacturer to do.

**So what do owners do? They fend for themselves.**

A lot of people go out and rig something up using angle brackets from the local big box hardware store.

And like a lot of people, that’s what Josh did too. Until he got tired of those 50-cent angle brackets breaking every time the trail got rough.

**So what did Josh do? He fended for himself.**

He and a buddy designed their own brackets. They turned out pretty good. So good, in fact, people started asking about them. So Josh and his buddy scraped together enough cash to get a batch of five sets made and took them to Overland Expo East to see if they could find buyers.

Everyone thought they were beffy as hell and wanted a set. And, as always, a bunch of tire kickers dismissed them as being “way too expensive.” Maybe, if Josh had just gone with the 75-cent angle brackets, he wouldn’t have been in this situation.

Regardless, they sold out pretty quick—and that gave them the funding to get more made.

**That was a couple years ago. Today, [Bomber Products](https://bomberproducts.com/) is opening their own retail space in Bozeman, Montana, where they sell their favorite, Made In America, adventure and off-road gear.**

And he’s not stopping there.

_Would you like to know more?_

**This is The Gearhead Project.**

**Everyday, we see gearheads like us living the good life.**

They have the toys, the trips, the titles. They make it look effortless. It’s like they have perfect lives.

But we don’t see the dedication. The sacrifice. The sweat equity behind those carefully curated images.

**Today on TGP, a conversation with my old friend, Kris Marciniak.**

Kris had been a gearhead for several years before I met him back in 2004.

He’d bought a WRX and helped start one of the earliest North American, online Subaru Impreza communities while living up in New Hampshire. He’d been ice racing.

And then he discovered stage rally. And then he bought a base model Dodge Neon with a blown head gasket he knew nothing about fixing because—damnit—he and his girlfriend, Christine, were going rally racing.

Introduced by a mutual friend, Kaiser, on 2GNT.com, Kris and Christine’s second stage rally was my first. I volunteered as service crew for them at the Prescott Rally—and the rest is history.

Within a month of that race, I’d bought a Galant VR4 with a seized engine.

In the 15 years since, I’ve since walked away from both Galant VR4s and stage rally. I’ve volunteered within an inch of my life, up to and beyond the point where I’ve basically been a crazed lunatic out in the middle of Joshua Tree losing my shit. (I hope Kris didn’t get any of that on video.)

It’s been an excellent run, but I’m soundly back in spectator what’s-in-it-for-me mode again.

**At the same time, Kris has been on a very interesting journey.**

He’s built a second Dodge Neon rally car. Picked up a third. Sold Ze (Original) Neon. And today is the NASA RallySport Western Region Director.

**How does one get started in stage rally?**

**How does one get maximum fun from rally?**

**How does a guy with a dead car he knows nothing about become one of the highest ranking rally players on the continent?**

**Grab this episode of The Gearhead Project and find out!**

**SAVE THE FORUMS!**

Once upon a time, there were places gearheads like us could go online to find other gearheads, learn to maintain, modify, and fix our own vehicles—and make lasting friendships that border on family. These places were called “forums”, and they were the original social media.

Sadly, Facebook has all but killed the forum.

Our collective attention has shrunk to the point of being almost non-existent. We used to strictly direct no0bies to the forum’s search. Now we repeatedly answer the same stupid, lazy questions in Facebook groups over and over and over again. (In between political propaganda, of course.)

My guest this week is Chris “Ludacris” Raymond, who started—and still runs—DSMtuners.

Are you ready to get the real low-down on what’s happening with car forums today?

Welcome to The Gearhead Project.

**We gearheads are a special lot.**

We know what we want—and we’re not afraid to roll up our sleeves and sacrifice a few 10mm sockets and wrenches to get it. We take things apart. We figure out how they work. We put them back together—better than ever.

Some are content to remain consumers, buying go-fast bits and playing cars. Others take things a bit more seriously. We want to modify our lives alongside our machines. Such is the focus of The Gearhead Project.

**Talk to enough entrepreneurs, gearhead or otherwise, and you start to see patterns.**

Some of us knew early on we’d go into business for ourselves one day. Others stumbled into it by accident. And there’s a kaleidoscope of variations in between.

My guest on Episode 15 is Evan Hale, founder of EH Motorsport. He’s a little bit of both. He grew up in a garage. He goes out of his way to help his friends, many of whom go on to become customers.

What’s it take to turn those lights on and keep ‘em on? What’s the reality behind the “play with cars all day” image others see? Give this one a listen and find out.

**This is The Gearhead Project.**

Find Evan at EH Motorsports http://ehmotorsports.net/index.html