Carmmunity Featured on Banging Gears
On a cold Minnesota day in January 2023, I received a call from the director of an up and coming show called Banging Gears that was going to be filming in February at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The concept of the show was exotics vs tuner cars, which are best? But little did I know they were going to have the likes of Rob Dahm, Adam LZ, Collette Davis, Mr. JWW, Chris Forsberg and dozens of other stars on the show as well.
I had met the director at SEMA 2022 a few months prior, so I knew it was happening, but didn’t think I could ever make the cut. Turns out a few people weren’t going to be able to have their car projects done in time so I was next on the waitlist. However, the director asked me how my Evo X was doing and I said “well its not running anytime soon, but give me 48 hours to give you an answer on if I can make something happen”.
So I spent the next day and a half making calls to every business in MN that I thought could make this a reality. Tint Pros, 3M Films, Modern Automotive Performance, Eurocharged Minneapolis, JWP Automotive, B&M Performance, Heppner’s Auto Body, and White Bear Mitsubishi all played a role in getting my car from a 3500 pound paperweight, to a 400hp track ready machine. Thanks to everyone, my car was transformed in 21 days, including a new built engine from Modern Automotive Performance, Fortune Auto suspension, and my white Enkei RS05RRs wrapped in Michelin Sport Cup 2 tires.
A week before my film date, my car was picked up from Minneapolis to be brought out to Las Vegas. An amazing Ukrainian driver had the job done in under 72 hours and I was able to get the car almost right after I landed in a city I normally only visit in November for SEMA. The clock was on and I had 3 days to break in the engine fully and get it tuned. I was able to put 600+ city and highway miles on the car over 2 days and got 2 oil changes knocked out by local performance shops as well.
Then the night before my shoot day, I headed out 45 minutes north of the strip to do some street e-tuning on a back country highway in the desert. With my tuner remotely logged into my laptop and getting a livestream of my dash, we spent a few hours dialing in the car as we went over a few snags in the engine bay, most likely due to a failing boost controller that I was able to replace. After a few more pulls, we felt confident in where the car was at for power level.
The morning of my shoot was early, with a 6am start time including driver’s meeting, suit fitting and a full day of filming ahead of us. Track was hot by 9am and people were putting down their best times for the circuit at LVMS. After 2 practice laps to shake off my years of rust, I got about 8 laps to get myself a time of 1:03, making it one of the faster laps of the day’s competition. Up next was drag racing, something I’ve never done before, let alone in my Evo X. After doing a practice launch in the parking lot, I decided to give it a shot against Collete Davis and her Evo V. While I wont spoil who won, you’ll have to see the race when the series releases. Later that day, I had a great interview with Adam LZ about the history of Evos, a walkthrough of my build, and an explanation of what Carmmunity is and hopes to achieve.
The final day of the experience was probably one of the most enjoyable and stress free for everyone involved. After 3 weeks of shooting, vehicles were being loaded onto transports, people were saying their goodbyes and those that remained were invited to the wrap party on a restaurant on top of the Palms Casino. I made the most of the day enjoying a cruise with a bunch of local enthusiasts and getting to know the Las Vegas car scene a bit better. The words in this article don’t even come close to how appreciative I was for the opportunity to be involved with something like this and the experience that it provided for me as an enthusiast as well as a young CEO of a passionate tech company. The film crew are like family, the influencers and other participants are like friends, and the staff at LVMS were nothing but the best. I hope to see more enthusiasts go on to take part in this series and cant wait to see Banging Gears debut on a streaming platform in 2024.
