- [Rob] They say you should never meet your heroes,
but if meeting them is bad,
then inviting them back to your shop
and seeing all your project cars has to be worse.
Fortunately, I love making bad decisions.
(upbeat music)
Steve Dinan is America's most successful BMW tuner.
His cars were powerful, refined, and reliable.
He took a break from building cars
to dedicate himself full-time to racing,
but he's back with a new company called CarBahn Autoworks.
He's one of my heroes, and for some reason,
he agreed to show me how he puts together cars.
Well, it is an absolute honor to have you here at my shop.
I've known of your name and your brand for a long time,
and it's been an inspiration
even though this isn't exactly European.
- Yeah. - I will say,
there's one anchor point that we can relate on
and it's, that's from a BMW.
- [Steve] Yeah, I recognize that.
So it was an all-wheel drive, then?
- [Rob] Yes, and you mentioned briefly
that you did actually touch rotaries at one point.
- I did, I also used to work on rotaries.
I worked at a place called the Mazda Works
in Campbell, California in 1977, 1978.
- Wow. - And I also worked on BMWs
as a sideline.
They mostly worked on rotaries,
and I fell in love with the BMWs,
and I quit my job and started riding.
- Okay. - So that's how I got
introduced into BMWs in a Mazda shop.
- The rotaries were so bad you're like,
"No, I'm gonna go over to BMWs."
- No, I mean, they were cool,
it's just that I love the refinement of the BMW
and that's kind of what I'm all about.
I mean, I'm the kind of guy that likes, look,
I build a race car, I buy a factory race car
and I go the race track, and I race it.
But for my tuner street cars, I like them to be nice cars.
- Yeah. - I wanna get in
every day and have them start
and pass a smog test, and idle, and be comfortable
and have the air conditioner work
and all that kind of stuff.
- Yeah, so what I wanna show you is this car here,
and there's a reason why, this takes a lot for me to admit
This is a 1000 horsepower, 3 rotor, RX 7.
This is what kind of got me where I am now.
- Yeah. - So I've been known
for taking this car in the street,
and in Michigan this basically is a street car.
- [Steve] How do you get traction with it?
- That's my, that's...
You know what, I never knew that
too much power is actually a big problem.
- Oh yeah.
- And so, that was actually what really
fascinated me is that you mentioned you brought something.
- Yeah. - And it's an actual
street car but it also makes basically
the same amount of horsepower.
- I want a street car that's as refined
and nice as the stock car, just 25 to 50% faster.
Something I can drive every day, but has no compromises
of durability, or drivability, or emissions, or anything.
It's 900 flywheel horsepower. - [Rob] Okay.
- So it's less, you know, it's probably 150 or 200 less
than this thing. - Yeah.
- But it's also got all the carbide burrs on
and it does that on pump gas.
(garage door opening)
(groovy music)
- [Rob] The BMW M8 competition puts out over
600 horsepower stock.
Adding power to a big luxury car like that risks
subtracting refinement and day to day usability.
But CarBahn's promise is that
you can eat your cake and have it too.
Obviously, we already established
this is a very comfortable car.
- It's like luxury car. - Yeah.
- You'll be shocked at the racetrack
how quick the car is not well handled for given
how nice it is. - [Rob] Yeah.
- [Steve] And one of the arts to that is,
people have a tendency to lower the car
too much and then bottom it out against the bump rubbers.
- Right. - And the bump rubbers
are an integral part of a suspension system
that most tuners just don't completely understand.
And we tune 'em a lot in race cars,
but how they're supposed to be tuned is,
we're driving the road like this,
the bump rubbers don't touch
- I believe that, that makes sense.
- Okay, and then it rides really nice.
But then when you roll the car into a corner
the bumper rubber engages, and it's a progressive spring
and you can double the spring rate.
- You're using the bumper rubber
as a progressive spring, - Right.
- Oh my God.
- That way it supports the car
in the corner to make it stiff.
But when you're driving in a straight line
down the highway, it still rides nice.
Most people think they are crash barrier,
we actually use the bumper rubber as a tuning tool.
- [Rob] That's amazing, I've never thought about that.
- [Steve] You have to change the shape
of the bump rubber and the durometer of the rubber,
and tune it for the travel that you have.
- Yeah. - It's a lot of work.
We have a shock dinan.
You ever seen a shock dinan?
[Rob] Yeah, yeah. - [Steve] Okay.
We put the spring rubbers on the shock dinan
and we measure the force on it
- Oh my god, yeah. - and the (indistinct).
One of my arts on both race cars
and street cars is making really
good handling cars that also ride really nice.
And in race car terms,
that's mostly means just taking bumps well.
- [Rob] Yeah, so I might be oversimplifying
but does that mean if accounting for the bump stop
you could use a slightly softer spring.
- Yep. - Yeah, okay.
- Yeah, and then it sinks into the bumper rubber
and that way on the low speed corners, the car stops,
so it breaks and puts down power.
- Yeah. - And on the high speed
corner that gets support from the bump rubber,
and you get your cake and eat it too.
(car engine roaring)
(Ron laughing)
- That pulls, that is smooth.
- Isn't it? - Yeah.
- [Steve] So, on the engine all we did was really
big intercoolers, really big heat exchangers to get rid
of the heat and software with a lot of boost.
And it went up 220 horsepower,
and it makes 800 and almost 890 horsepower.
- This is such a smooth car for everything you've modified.
So, I've seen this car on the street.
I could almost fall asleep in the passenger seat
with how soft and comfortable it is,
but yet this can also go to the racetrack
and that's something I wanna experience.
- [Steve] Yeah, I think it's gonna be pretty
quick on the racetrack too.
I think you'll be surprised.
(groovy music)
- Well, it's a little different
than the streets we were just on
but we are out at Willow Springs,
a great place to really let this thing unwind.
And I really would love to see more
about what's under the hood.
- It's a 4.4 liter twin-turbo V8, or the hot V from BMW.
And it comes with just over 600 horsepower.
- [Rob] All right. - [Steve] And we added larger
intercoolers to the engine, and then two really large
additional heat exchangers to get rid of the heat
of the intercoolers 'cause the biggest problem was when
you make a lot of power with a turbo, it makes more heat.
And that robs the power.
- But I felt it yesterday
when we were getting outta the car,
I could feel the heat being pulled outta the car too.
- [Steve] Oh yeah. - [Rob] So that was impressive
- [Steve] And see it has a huge electric fan
in the front that pulls air
through it and even stays on
after it shuts the car off to take the heat soak out of it.
- [Rob] Well, you know what
I'm surprised you don't have a laptop in the passenger seat
but that's because of my background
that I'm always tuning and driving.
- Yeah. - But in your case,
this is just wrapped up, good to go.
- Yeah, this car hasn't had a computer
plugged into it over a year.
We built a computer with the adaptation
ranges where the computer has the ability
to learn based on the fuel quality.
So you could put pump gas in, it makes eight and a quarter.
You put race gas in, it makes 890,
you put meth, it makes nine a quarter.
It doesn't require any software changes.
- [Rob] That's awesome.
Well, you know what that means to me,
that means I can just jump in and go.
- Just jump in and go.
Don't have to worry about it.
- Okay, well, I'm gonna take you up on that.
- All right, let's do it.
(intense music begins)
- It's kind of funny 'cause I'm wearing a helmet
and it's for safety
but I don't, it's not that type of car.
(intense music)
(car engine roaring)
Oh my God.
All of this is just very in touch.
(car engine roaring)
Steve was really selling me on the suspension
and the things he's done to upgrade it.
And I am blown away.
This is one of my first times ever driving this course
and I feel, not over confident,
I just feel like I am listening.
I can feel like I can hear the road.
The car's talking to me.
It's not like a fat car, even though it is.
(car engine roaring)
Look at all this elevation change, all these tight turns
and this car is meant for like grand touring,
it's a big car.
And yet here we are, maneuvering a very small track
with ease.
I don't feel like that, like lumbering body roll of the car.
I just feel the suspension
doing what it's supposed to do.
(car engine roaring)
(Rob laughing)
- [Steve] Now, I have a theory about mankind,
is that I think that almost every great thing we ever did
we really didn't understand how hard it was.
And if we really would've understood all the pitfalls
and all the, you know,
danger of every problem, we would never start.
But I think it's our naivete is kind
of our saving grace as far as feeding our creativity.
But because he's into it now he'll see it
through and he'll learn a ton, and that's a good thing.
And that's, you know,
I think that's what makes us people, honestly.
- [Rob] If it's not obvious, throughout this entire episode
I am geeking out with Steve.
Like that is an honor to be able to speak
to not just a legend.
You know, 'cause you hear that he's really smart
and knows all these things, but to have him engage
and show me what sort of knowledge
and experience he brings to the table.
It's awesome to have you guys watch these episodes,
but for me, I get the benefit,
I get to become a better tuner
seeing the sort of focus that Steve has
on this car and the handling of suspension.
I am flabbergasted.
There's like a straightaway up there
but I was like, I don't even wanna do this straightaway.
I wanna just, I hooked this thing back and forth
'cause it was just like so planted.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
What I felt was not what I see.
- No, it defies logic 'cause it's so big and everything.
- Yeah.
And that's why I say this small
tight course actually showcased
one of the things that I want people
to know is, okay, big horsepower numbers,
I can make big horsepower numbers, but refined.
Like that is the secret sauce to your formula,
is how refined it is to handle that power.
- Yeah. - And so, that's why I think,
I think this, it would've broken the car
if it was any less of a car.
- [Steve] Glad you liked it
- [Rob] Well, Steve, I can't thank you enough
for letting me drive the car.
- Yeah - I appreciate it.
- Anytime, man, and if you want to come up
and look at the race car and go over
some stuff on your car, I'm happy to help you with that too.
- [Rob] I will take you up on that offer.
Thank you so much.
(both laughing)
(car engine roaring)
(intense bass)