Quinn Pultz at 74 Weld on Episode 173

Have you been looking at portals for your Jeep, Bronco or Tacoma, we found your source. Quinn Pultz at 74 Weld gives the low-down on building his business. Great stories, good insight.  It’s a great listen, be sure to tune in on your favorite podcast app.

5:45 – I followed my brother's footsteps in everything he did, if he wanted to do it, I naturally wanted to do it too

18:22 – If you really want to prepare somebody for college, hand them a packet of information and say, we’re going to test you on this, go study.              

23:47 – the engineers we’re training nowadays can draw a doorknob, they have no idea how it works or how it’s made 

32:20 – I got into a Jeep, broke the rear track bar mount, paid $500 to fix it and broke it the next weekend, I thought, I can’t afford to do this!

40:53 – making your living off somebody’s hobby is a difficult thing to do

48:26 – I was so focused I couldn’t make it out of my shop for anything, so I peed in a bucket in the corner

53:51 – it’s really how I got where I got is asking questions of the right people who are willing to teach me along the way

1:26:21 – I believe if I’m going to develop a product, it’s got to fall into one of three categories…

Special thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:00.980] - 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the offroad industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors. Men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call offroad. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active in offroad. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call offroad.

[00:00:46.150] - 

Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks of Moab, or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxxis has the tires you can trust for performance and durability. Four wheels or two. Maxxis tires are the choice of champions because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis tires deliver. Choose Maxxis. Tread Victoriously.

[00:01:13.000] - 

Have you seen 4LowMagazine yet? 4LowMagazine is a high quality, well written, 4WD focused magazine for the enthusiast market. If you still love the idea of a printed magazine, something to save and read at any time, 4Low is the magazine for you. 4Low cannot be found in stores, but you can have it delivered to your home or place of business. Visit 4lowmagazine.com to order your subscription today.

[00:01:40.000] - Big Rich Klein

On today's episode of Conversations with Big Rich, we have Quinn Pultz. He's the owner of 74 Weld Incorporated, which is a fab shop and manufacturer of precision components for automotive and offroad applications. That's according to his website. So we're going to find out more about Quinn and what he does and what he's done and where he's going from here. Quinn, thank you so much for coming on board and spending the afternoon with me.

[00:02:08.720] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah, my pleasure.

[00:02:10.240] - Big Rich Klein

So let's start off with the question I ask everybody. Where were you born and raised?

[00:02:16.960] - Quinn Pultz

Born and raised in a small town just north of San Diego called Cardiff by the Sea

[00:02:23.720] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, I know Cardiff. What was it like? How long did you live there for?

[00:02:29.960] - Quinn Pultz

My whole life, really. I now reside in Encinitas, which is one city over, but still up in North County, still by the beach, and yeah, same area.

[00:02:43.260] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. So let's talk about growing up back then. Well, 41 years ago when you were born and you grew up by the Coast, I would imagine you probably surfed a little bit?

[00:02:57.540] - Quinn Pultz

I did, still do. Yeah, I grew up surfing and skating. I did some team sports. I played golf in high school, surf team, and I dabbled in other stuff. I played ice hockey for years, a random sport in San Diego, but it was one of the only sports. My parents wouldn't let my brother and I play football, and we both wanted to play a contact sport.

[00:03:24.420] - Big Rich Klein

Because football is too dangerous.

[00:03:26.940] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah. So ice hockey it was.

[00:03:29.870] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, there's a lot more ice hockey players without teeth or false teeth than there are football players. And probably just as many concussions.

[00:03:41.210] - Quinn Pultz

Probably. Luckily, I avoided most of those, but did get hurt a couple of times.

[00:03:47.630] - Big Rich Klein

So what student were you back then?

[00:03:52.610] - Quinn Pultz

I was always a good student. So my parents basically would leave my brother and I alone as long as we got As and Bs. And I didn't think that was that difficult to do. So both of us got good grades and got to pretty much do what we wanted.

[00:04:12.990] - Big Rich Klein

Very cool. And what things did you guys do family activity wise?

[00:04:19.990] - Quinn Pultz

My dad's an attorney, but he always jokes his mistress is golf. So he put a golf club in my hands at an early age. And I've always been into that. We did some camping, but not a ton. My brother and I got big into surfing and skating and so they'd support us in that. We played travel soccer for a bit, and as well as ice hockey was at the time, and it's still around, there's an ice rink in La Jolla at UTC. And we would get up at 4 30 in the morning for hockey practices. And so we did a lot of that stuff because the ice rink was used for figure skating during the day, and ice hockey was super early in the morning. So looking back, my parents really supported us in anything we wanted to do, down to getting up super early early and taking us to the rinks.

[00:05:32.530] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's pretty cool.

[00:05:34.260] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah.

[00:05:35.540] - Big Rich Klein

And how did you decide on playing hockey since there's not a lot of... I mean, you don't think of hockey in Southern California?

[00:05:45.620] - Quinn Pultz

No, not at all. I guess looking back on that, it was something my brother wanted to do. I really followed in his footsteps in everything he did because we were close and he's three years older than me and he wanted to do it. So I naturally wanted to do it also. That's how I got into most sports, I guess, with the exception of off road.

[00:06:17.440] - Big Rich Klein

And who was the better hockey player?

[00:06:21.620] - Quinn Pultz

He was.

[00:06:23.100] - Big Rich Klein

He was? Yeah. How about a surfing?

[00:06:28.900] - Quinn Pultz

I don't know. I couldn't really tell you. Surfing is something that we both did a little bit competitively. I probably entered more competitions than him. But surfing is a sport that the competitive aspect of it was never anything I enjoyed. I grew up next to the water and I've spent my whole life in the ocean, and it's just something I've always really enjoyed.

[00:06:58.660] - Big Rich Klein

Right. So question, with the surfing, you always see it in the surf movies where the guys, somebody goes to the beach to go to surf at a new spot for them. And they're totally looked as outsiders because the people claim the beach for themselves or the break for themselves. Was that something that you ran into or did you see... I surfed a little bit in college and I never saw that. Every place I went, nobody was that way. And that was back in the late '70s, early '80s. But it was...

[00:07:41.210] - Quinn Pultz

I think that is only very Seldom is that true. There are places, one that comes to mind is Windan Sea and La Jolla is supposed to be very territorial. I've traveled, I spent a couple of weeks in Bollywood, I've surfed in a bunch of the different Hawaiian islands. Hawaii is notorious for that reputation. But really, what it comes down to is there's a lot of etiquette in surfing. And if you're not if you don't follow that etiquette, it doesn't matter where you go, the locals will chase you out. But I'll tell you, I've probably surfed 20 different breaks in Hawaii. I've never once been hasseled by the locals because it really comes down to when you paddle out at a break that everybody knows you're not a local, you're there as either a tourist or you're not recognized, there's etiquette involved in that. And yeah, I'm sure if you don't follow that, they'll tell you to get out of there. But I think that that's more of a construct of the movies than anything else.

[00:08:53.040] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. Point break comes to mind, especially.

[00:08:59.600] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah. That's an interesting one. I haven't had those problems.

[00:09:06.290] - Big Rich Klein

Did you ever see the movie Surfer Dude with McConaughey?

[00:09:11.530] - Quinn Pultz

No, I have not.

[00:09:13.160] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, my God. That's something you got to watch then. It's pretty funny. That is Surfer Dude. You got to watch that with Matthew McConaughey.

[00:09:23.220] - Quinn Pultz

Well, it's like if you're a jackass in anything, especially in an individual sport, if you act like you own the place or show up and don't pay any respect. And when I say that, what I mean is you don't paddle out into a lineup and go after the very first wave and chase people off. You have to be, especially if you're not familiar with the area, you sit, you let the guy give up a couple of waves, wait your turn. There is a pecking order and there is a lineup in any surf break and I don't care if you're pro or not. If you go into a spot, paddle straight out, back paddle somebody and try and catch the first wave that comes, nobody's going to take a liking to that.

[00:10:14.300] - Big Rich Klein

I get it. Yeah. Okay, cool. So then what about the hockey? How many years did you play hockey?

[00:10:28.350] - Quinn Pultz

I think it was six or seven years. I played all the way through Bantam Midget. I was always a tiny guy. I'm 59, 150 as a grown adult. When I was playing, I was probably I don't know, 100 pounds plus when I was soaking wet. And I played defense, which actually worked out because when we got up into the full contact stuff, I'd be taking guys out at the knees. Hip checks and that stuff actually worked on defense because I could take his legs out and the refs would never call anything because I was just a different size. I always played up.

[00:11:12.100] - Big Rich Klein

That's good. In school, was there any subjects that you excelled in or that you really liked as opposed to ones you didn't?

[00:11:28.280] - Quinn Pultz

I did well in most stuff. I took a bunch of AP classes through high school so I could start college with some credits. I guess I really liked the social sciences. I did well in all of those. I would get through math. I was never great at it. So I took AP calculus and it was first period. And so it was hard for me I'm not a... At the time, I was not an early riser.

[00:12:03.940] - Big Rich Klein

Even though you were getting up at 4 30 in the morning before that to go play hockey?

[00:12:10.520] - Quinn Pultz

But that's different. That was because I Wanted to do it.

[00:12:13.580] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:12:14.350] - Quinn Pultz

So with math, I was always showing up either late or falling asleep in class. I made a deal with my AP calculus teacher that if I got a four or better on the exam, three is passing, four is good, five is like top level. If I got a four or better, she would go ahead and change my grade to an A. And she agreed to that. So I just coasted and spent my time cramming for the exam and got a four on that. So she went back, changed my grade. So I.

[00:12:51.470] - Big Rich Klein

Always did. How did you con a teacher into doing that?

[00:12:56.570] - Quinn Pultz

Well, it wasn't a con. It was she thought I wasn't performing. And I said, Look, it's just too early in the morning for me. And it was just a back and forth negotiation. But I mean, life is a negotiation, right?

[00:13:11.120] - Big Rich Klein

True.

[00:13:12.520] - Quinn Pultz

So that one worked out in my favor.

[00:13:17.130] - Big Rich Klein

I had a class, a German class, where the instructor had us sign contracts to do certain amount of work to get a certain grade. And it was like, you could say, Okay, I just want to be a C student, and he'd set up the contract so that you only had so much work to do. And of course I liked that. And I looked at it and I thought, Well, of course, I want an A. And I did everything that I was supposed to do for the A, but I messed around in class. I was a goofball. And I remember when the grades came out and I'd contracted for an A. I did all the work because I had tested out with the teacher's aide or assistant teacher, whatever you want to call her. But she was a grown up. She had her teaching credentials and stuff, but she was I don't know if she was new to it or whatever, but when the instructor posted the grades, he posted me with an F. And I'm like, What is this? And he explained that the contracts that I was supposed to test with him. And I said, Show me the contract.

[00:14:36.120] - Big Rich Klein

That wasn't in the contract. We looked at the contract and he had written it in because it was like two copies. So he had the original and then I had the mimeograph copy or whatever you want to call it underneath when they had the... They put the pieces of ink paper in there between them or whatever. And so I I pulled mine out and said, It's not on mine, it's on yours. And he goes, Well, it doesn't matter. You need it to test out with me. Well, I got a little upset, you might say, and trashed the office on the way to his office and classroom on my way to see the principal.

[00:15:19.180] - Quinn Pultz

How did that work out?

[00:15:21.040] - Big Rich Klein

I walked right in on the principal in his office. I went right past the secretary, opened his door and sat down and just said, Sherts is going to be calling here in a minute and it's probably not going to be good. He goes, Okay, what happened? He didn't answer the phone right away and I explained it all to him. Then he called Sherts in and Sherts started to explain to him what the deal was. I said, Ask him for his copy of the contract. He showed him the copy of the contract. I said, See, mine doesn't say that on the same thing. Why did he change the grade afterwards? I got my grade, but I didn't take German again after that.

[00:16:05.060] - Quinn Pultz

Well, in the contract, you don't get to amend it without both parties agreeing to that. So I would hope that you would win that. I would absolutely hope that.

[00:16:16.380] - Big Rich Klein

I did get detention for a while for trashing the overturn in a couple of tables. Some of the girls in the room were screaming, and some of the guys were laughing, like, What is going on? As I cleared bookshelves and stuff like that because I was pretty upset. But anyway, so this is about you anyhow. No contract signed in it. You just agreed to it, huh? Yep. That's pretty cool.

[00:16:42.350] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah. I held up my end of the bargain. She held up hers.

[00:16:47.200] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. So then, any other classes that you... Besides the social and math, was there anything did you do? Did you shop classes?

[00:17:01.840] - Quinn Pultz

Dude, I never did shop classes. And we had a shop class, but we had welding on site, and I never did that. And we had an auto class, and it just wasn't t the time, it just wasn't an interest to me. I took a bunch of Spanish, and then I had a really cool art teacher who left a really lasting impression on me. I was big in the ceramics at the time. And then right after high school, I got into glass and did glass blowing. And so I've always been like, I guess you could say an artistic person if I find an outlet that really interests me. But I had opportunities looking back on it like, man, I should have taken shop class. I never did. I took a woodworking class and that was not not for me. But yeah, I didn't really get into metal work or any of that till a little bit later, till after high school.

[00:18:09.470] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. And high school, were you Did you get involved with high school politics or any clubs or anything like that?

[00:18:22.530] - Quinn Pultz

No, nothing like that. I surfed and skated and was somewhat of a sink. But again, I figured, and rightfully so, Hey, if I do all my work and I get good grades, people will, for the most part, leave me alone. And so that's what I did. I look at high school as, to this day, as a perfect example of social conditioning to me. I had so many teachers who tell me that they're preparing me for college, and I still roll my eyes at that statement. You really want to prepare somebody for college, hand them a packet of information and say, we're going to test you on this, and you got to study yourself. I never got homework in college. It was, if you want a good grade, you have to put in the time, right?

[00:19:16.560] - Big Rich Klein

Correct.

[00:19:21.950] - Quinn Pultz

I don't want to say I skated through high school. It just was not very difficult. So I put in the minimum amount of work needed to get As and Bs.

[00:19:29.580] - Big Rich Klein

And I think that it's interesting that you guys that you had the shop classes and welding and woodwork and everything because I grew up in an age... I'm quite a bit older than you are. I'm 65 now. And I grew up in an age where home make shop, and I mean all types of shops, metal shopped. Everything was available. And it was more of art classes and music and everything was... You were given a wide variety of things, starting from sixth grade to high school. To the end of high school, to the end of high school. You were shown so many different things. And I think that they were preparing us for life and giving us all an idea of what was out there.

[00:20:29.830] - Quinn Pultz

And I feel.

[00:20:30.430] - Big Rich Klein

That a lot of.

[00:20:31.090] - Quinn Pultz

That is lost on this new generation.

[00:20:33.330] - Big Rich Klein

I think that's all lost. Now, when you talk about social conditioning...

[00:20:39.780] - Quinn Pultz

Nowadays, I feel everybody's pushed towards, Well, you need to be an engineer, or You need to be this or that. And they don't... I think that a lot of those classes, they've said, Well, budget cuts. And that's a whole different topic of conversation because the neighborhoods I live live up that I still live in. I mean, if schools get their funding from property taxes, which is what we're told, why are these schools not flush with money? And I get that sometimes that it goes into a general fund and then just burst out equally, and I'm good with that. But you're not going to convince me that they can't have these classes. I feel that a lot of that stuff is just because budgets are mismanaged. But I think it is a shame that a lot of that stuff has dried up now. I think that there's something to be said. I have friends that are plumbers and glass guys, and they can make a really good living. There's nothing wrong with that. And we're going to come up, I would say, in the next 20, 30 years where there's just going to be a massive shortage of people that know how to work with their hands and actually create things as opposed to somebody that just sits at a desk and they punch numbers.

[00:22:08.250] - Quinn Pultz

We're going to have a big void in the society, which I think is going to be a big problem.

[00:22:12.360] - Big Rich Klein

Do you follow Mike Rowe at all?

[00:22:15.030] - Quinn Pultz

I do. Absolutely. Yeah, he's awesome.

[00:22:18.360] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, he is. And I think that more people need to do that because... I don't remember ever being pushed into anything by my parents. If I started something, they wanted me to complete it, whether it was scouts or sports or just anything.

[00:22:41.170] - Quinn Pultz

But those are good lessons for life. I think that's a big issue in our society. You look at where we're heading and we outsource everything. We just assume that Mexico and China and other places are going to do all of our manufacturing for us. There's a shortage of people that actually make physical things on a daily basis.

[00:23:13.270] - Big Rich Klein

I think a lot of people that run businesses like yourself probably... Well, I know guys that are at least in fab shops where they're working, say, like, Branik Motorsports or Jesse Haines' Fab or a hundred others that are always looking for somebody that can do something besides just sweep the floor. They got to be able to sweep the floor. That's the first test. Can you sweep?

[00:23:47.220] - Quinn Pultz

Well, I have an interesting story about that. A kid that works for me who is now one of my engineers, he started out sweeping the floor. I I hired him literally to be a shop kid. Fast forward, six or seven years, he had work ethic. So whatever task you gave him, he would do a solid job on it. He'd put his head down, he'd complete that task, and then he would go, What else can I do? And he had that mentality of, What else can I do? I'm here to learn, but I'm also here to work. And I just kept giving him harder things, and he kept excelling. And he went from sweeping the floors to running CNC machines, to programming them to programming five axis stuff. And he'll finish up his engineering degree here next year. But I'll tell you right now that he will run circles around any college educated engineer. And he would have done that three years ago as a fresh man in college where he wasn't even into engineering classes yet because he learned practical engineering through working in a machine shop. And I joke about this, but the engineers that come out of college, and this is a general statement, and I'm always cautious making general statements, but the engineers that we're training nowadays, they can draw a doorknob.

[00:25:22.780] - Quinn Pultz

They have no idea how it works or how it's made.

[00:25:26.530] - Big Rich Klein

So true. And many don't care. Look at traffic engineers, when they're designing highways or on ramps or those stupid circles, traffic circles. They just need to get into a semi once and then try to go around a traffic circle with multiple lanes.

[00:25:49.370] - Quinn Pultz

Right. Well, and you can apply that same concept to anything. I do a lot of... We do aero space work, we do military stuff, we do a lot of port security. I do a lot of government work. And so much of the time, we get drawings from customers where we look at it and it's like, you can immediately tell that it's a new engineer or it's an inexperienced person who's never made parts because they'll over tolerance and overcomplicate things. And in some circumstances, I know exactly what they're trying to do. I look at this and I go, It's not their fault. It's that they've never actually made anything before. They'll put square pockets down into a part and it's like, Well, how do you expect us to machine that? T hen you come back with a really high quote and they're shocked and it's like, Well, it's because do you really need this? Well, we don't need those things. Well, then you designed it to where it's a part that either can't be made or super expensive to be made.

[00:26:59.260] - Big Rich Klein

Right. My dad was a tool and die maker, machinist. His last grade, he was called a model maker. But all the stuff that he did, Bridgeport and all that, was all manual. Nothing was computerized. And I always asked him when I was growing up, when all the computerization started, Why don't you leave the federal government as a civil servant and go into private trade? And it was just because I've got so many years here, I get to retire with 38 years at 55. He goes, Why should I leave? And now he's... There's something to be said for that. Yeah. Well, now he's 88 years old. Yeah, 88 years old. And he's been retired for 33 years, almost as long as he worked. So good on him. But the federal government didn't pay as well. So I was always looking at it, and he goes, Hey, there's more to a job in life than how much money you make.

[00:28:10.730] - Quinn Pultz

Absolutely. There's more to life than money in general. I look at money as a tool. Money allows you freedom. That's it. And I've always said that the only thing I care about is that I can make enough money that I don't have to care about money. And so if you adjust your lifestyle accordingly, you can live really comfortably. It all depends on... It all really comes down to what's your goal in life, right?

[00:28:44.440] - Big Rich Klein

Right. If keeping up with the Joneses is super important to you, then you better become a doctor or a lawyer and a good one at that, huh?

[00:28:56.690] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah. Well, I try to hammer to my kids, like, don't ever compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to how you were yesterday and try and be better. There will always be somebody that has more than you, and you will always have more than somebody.

[00:29:09.280] - Big Rich Klein

Just be happy. That's parenting done right. Yeah. So college. I'm assuming that you went to college? I did. Okay. And where did you go? Ucsd. Okay. And what when you started, what was your major?

[00:29:32.370] - Quinn Pultz

So I started in math and physics.

[00:29:35.890] - Big Rich Klein

Even though you didn't like math.

[00:29:39.380] - Quinn Pultz

Right. Well, again, my own doing, I was heavily influenced by my brother and always looked up to him. And he did math and physics and he loved it. And I guess the irony of this is neither one of us even remotely work in the field that we studied. So I started did math and physics and didn't really care for it that much. And ended up swapping and doing totally different. I did a double major in history of war and revolution with a focus on the Middle East and a second degree in international relations with a focus on China. I thought at that point that I was going to go and do international law. I finished UCSD, and while I was in college, I ended up buying a 1991 Jeep Wrangler and tinkering on that and just fell in love.

[00:30:51.790] - Big Rich Klein

And that was your first four wheel drive?

[00:30:53.720] - Quinn Pultz

That was my first four wheel drive. M y brother, while I was in high school, had a Ford Ranger. It was a extra cab 4x4. My first getting into offroading was I borrowed my brother's truck and took it offroading and messed it up a bit.

[00:31:14.660] - Big Rich Klein

Where did you take it?

[00:31:18.260] - Quinn Pultz

There were open fields in Fairbanks Ranch area. I started working at, I don't know, age 14, I started cattying at all these country clubs. And I would make, for a 14 year old, dude, I was crushing it. I'd make like 100 to 200 bucks a weekend. And I had no expenses. I had no overhead. Bed or anything. And so I'd catty one or two days. Well, I'd catty both days every weekend. And sometimes I'd do 18 holes. Sometimes if I was lucky, I could do 36. And it was one day after cattying, I saw this dirt road and started exploring and hammered the ranger, popped a tire, broke some stuff on the front end, came back and my brother was all pissed. But that was really my first offroading experience.

[00:32:17.670] - Big Rich Klein

I guess.

[00:32:20.590] - Quinn Pultz

I got into a Jeep and really immediately took it off road. I broke, of all things, the rear track bar mount on a leaf spring Jeep. Why Jeep would put a track bar on a leaf spring rear suspension? I don't know. But I didn't know at the time, just take that thing off and throw it away. I took it to offroad warehouse, and it was $500 to fix it. So I paid them to fix it and took it out the next weekend and broke the same thing again. And at that point, it was, I can't afford to do this. To fix it again would be $500. To buy a welder was going to be $600. And I've always had that attitude of, Well, if other people can do this, then it can't be rocket science. How hard can it be? And at the time, I was on a forum called Jeepaholics Anonymous. It was big in the early 2000s for the Jeep crowd. I was also on Pirate at the time.

[00:33:35.030] - Big Rich Klein

Everybody was.

[00:33:36.520] - Quinn Pultz

Every pirate was huge back in the day. Sure was. And one of the guys on the forums was like, Hey, I'll teach you how to weld. Come on up. And he lived in Temecula. And the first project I really did was a spring over swap where I put a 44 front and a 60 rear and did a spring over conversion on my YJ, and that's how I learned how to weld.

[00:34:05.540] - Big Rich Klein

Did you get rid of the track bar?

[00:34:07.710] - Quinn Pultz

I did, yeah.

[00:34:10.400] - Big Rich Klein

So how long did you have that 91 Wrangler?

[00:34:16.190] - Quinn Pultz

I had it for probably five or six years. I wheeled it. It basically turned into... That was how I learned how to build stuff is I did a spring over and then I left the spring over front and went spring under rear because of axel wrap issues and ended up cutting the tub a bunch. And at a certain point, I ended up cutting the frame right behind the seats, linked the rear, went coil overs, did basically everything I could in that, and then decided it's time to build a buggy. L iterally, I built all of that with a chop saw, a grinder, and a tube bender. My little hose, I had a Miller 135, 110 volt welder.

[00:35:21.030] - Big Rich Klein

And this was all while you were in college?

[00:35:23.380] - Quinn Pultz

Uh huh. Okay. Yeah. I built it on the side of my parents' house in the dirt. Perfect.

[00:35:31.970] - Big Rich Klein

When you graduated, did you graduate with the degree in Foreign Affairs?

[00:35:46.630] - Quinn Pultz

Yes, I ended up with two degrees, neither of them, which I use. I know I've got them somewhere. But yeah, to me, college is one of those things. I And the only reason I picked up the second degree is after four years at UCSD, I really wasn't ready to leave and I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I stuck around and was like, Well, pick up. At one point, I met with a counselor and they're like, You could just take two extra classes to get a second major. You get a second degree. And I said, Okay. So I didn't really know what I wanted to do, so I stayed in school until they basically kicked me out and said, Look, you've got two degrees, you need to leave and do something else. So I didn't really have a direction. And my father is an attorney. And I said, Well, I'm set up perfect. And people told me, Well, you should do international law. So I was like, Okay, yeah, I'll do that. So I was studying for law school and just found myself spending all my time. I rented a corner of a 1,200 square foot shop that a friend of mine owned, and he was racing a 16 car for his son.

[00:37:12.090] - Quinn Pultz

He bought a 16 car for his son to race. I started building a buggy there and then ended up racing the 16 car a bit with his son just because I'm so into off road. Any opportunity I got, I jumped on. Nice.

[00:37:30.380] - Big Rich Klein

And what association did you guys race in?

[00:37:36.820] - Quinn Pultz

Mostly here in the States. We never raced that in Mexico, so it was like MDR and best in the desert a little bit.

[00:37:51.350] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Did you end up going to law school?

[00:37:57.300] - Quinn Pultz

No. So I was studying for LSATs and missing exams because I was working on my Jeep all the time or building the buggy at that point. And my dad sat me down at one point and said, Look, man, don't do this because I'm doing it. Only do what your heart's into. And part of me wishes that my parents would have, I guess, pushed me and given me a little more structure on certain things. But if they did, I don't know that I'd be in the career that I'm in. I might have gone a different road, but they … My dad was never, Well, I'm a lawyer, so you should be a lawyer. He was into golf and would take us to play ice hockey or to drop us off to go surfing. He really wanted us to explore and be our own people. I got a ton of respect for him for that because I feel it's so easy for parents to push their kids down the road that they went or try to live vicariously through their children. That was something they never did to me. And because of that, I just took a different path.

[00:39:19.140] - Big Rich Klein

And that path ended up with 74 Weld. But how did that come about from working on your 91 Wrangler and doing some 1600 racing?

[00:39:37.380] - Quinn Pultz

Well, so then the guy that had the 1600 car let me work on that. And it just developed as, well, I can make a few bucks doing this. So then I built Jeeps for other people. I built different buggies. As that progressed, I became friends with some guys in the off road industry, and I just started fabbing for other people. I think that's how a lot of fab shops develop is they do it for themselves. And then other people look and go, Hey, you weld and you build stuff for Jeeps or race cars or whatever, do you want to do something for me? And at that point, it was, Yeah, sure. I'll go to the build that. Here's my hourly rate. I started small and just got into it that way.

[00:40:42.750] - Big Rich Klein

Was it always called... Did you when did the name 74 Weld come about? What is it about that name?

[00:40:53.680] - Quinn Pultz

I was starting to try to move to more industrial stuff because... And being a one man shop and building, I've always said that making your living off somebody's hobby is a difficult thing to do. And there's some people that are extremely successful at it. But I don't remember what my first job was, but I got a taste of industrial work, and holy cow, it paid a lot better. And so I started to get into, I guess, what you call precision welding. A friend of mine had a machine shop, and he would outsource me. I got into tig welding, and he would outsource me these underwater stainless housings to weld and a bunch of other I guess, aerospace and defense components. I'm trying to figure out, he's like, Look, man, you should start a business and actually come up with a name. I was talking to my brother about it, and he was staring at a Periodic Table of elements. The 74th element on the Periodic Table is Wolfram, it's a big W, which is tongue stung. I was he goes, What about this? I go, Okay, I guess I'll call it 74 Weld. And literally, that was a five minute conversation.

[00:42:25.820] - Quinn Pultz

And that's how the name came about. And like anything, I feel I have, typically, I have a 10 year attention span. And I was seven or eight years in when I came up with that name. And a couple of years later, the same friend that was sending me the welding work said, Hey, I've got an old CNC. I had a mill in LA that I used. And he basically said, Hey, I've got this old CNC machine. I'm going to sell it. Do you want it? 10 grand. And that's how I got my foray into machining. I bought it, said, All right, I'm going to learn how to do this next. And so it just transitioned from FAB to machining, which I still do a ton of FAB work. All the FAB work I do is either military or defense or I do a lot of port security work. It's all government stuff, and then some industrial. So I still did welding, but then I transitioned into machining at that point. And I've always had that mentality that, Well, how hard can it be? I should be able to learn this. And I think that came down to...

[00:43:55.940] - Quinn Pultz

That's one of the things I feel that college taught me, is that nobody s there to hold your hand. If you want to do something, do it, learn it. And the resources are out there. At the time, there wasn't the crazy abundance of information that we have now with... There's anything you could ever want to learn. Just go on YouTube and watch videos. You want to learn how to do 3D CAD modeling? Go on YouTube. Everything's there at your fingertips. And it was there at the time, but it just comes down to having that attitude of, I can figure this out. That transitioned me into machining and I picked that up.

[00:44:44.140] - Big Rich Klein

You became a job shop.

[00:44:48.840] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah, which is difficult. I still do a lot of job shop work to this day. One of the programs that we're on, which I think is pretty cool, is we're one of I think there's maybe four approved suppliers on this but we're part of the Navy's Submarine Rescue Program. So we make critical components for Submarine Rescue Missions. And we do aerospace work. I do a little of everything. So when people look at us, I think they might think For the off road industry, we're known for our portals and other stuff that we do. But the reality is that's a product that I hope will take over the majority of my business. But if all I did was make portals, I would have been out of business a long time ago. We still do job shop stuff and there's still good money in that. Offroad, we're known for portal stuff, but that's still not the bulk of our revenue.

[00:46:09.100] - Big Rich Klein

So you didn't make anything for Titan, right?

[00:46:14.580] - Quinn Pultz

No. Which is funny because I had a conversation with some of the guys on that program, and when I heard about that, I called them and was like, Hey, are you guys going to go get that thing? T hey chuckled and they were like, Hell, no, we don't go that deep. No, no. We had no part of that at all.

[00:46:35.370] - Big Rich Klein

Good to hear. Let's talk about your off road parts. Yes, your portals are the thing that I know you for. What else do you produce?

[00:46:53.570] - Quinn Pultz

I mean, I dabbled in a lot of things, and I made parts for people in the offroad industry for a long time since I got into machining. One of the first projects I did was a sway bar arm for myself because I wanted a stronger, wider sway bar arm, and nobody really made it back in, I think this was 2010, 2011. So I would make little things, but people don't understand how unbelievably difficult it is to bring a product to market, and I didn't realize it either. I would make things that I wanted, but then I never really took the time to establish a brand or market or do anything of that sort. I just built things that I wanted to build. Or friends of mine would come to me and be like, Hey, I want a set of A Arms for my Toyota Tacoma. Okay, so we designed and made A Arms. But once the product was built and done, I just had no interest in pursuing that much further. So I never really marketed ourselves. And I guess I'll be honest, I don't really have any desire to make parts that other people make unless I think I can drastically improve on them.

[00:48:26.330] - Quinn Pultz

So I never got into, I guess the typical suspension parts or rock sliders, bumpers, all of that stuff that a lot of Fab guys or machine shops that want to get into off road, they build the same parts that everybody else builds and put a slightly different twist on them. Whether that's from a design standpoint or a functionality standpoint. That stuff just didn't really interest me. I'm the type of person that if I'm not interested in something, I give it next to zero effort. But if I am interested in it, I remember a time when I literally couldn't even make it out of my shop. I peed in the corner of my shop because I was so dead set on fitting these last tubes on a buggy I was building that I didn't want to stop to go to the bathroom. And literally, I peed in a bucket in the corner of my shop because I was so fixated on, if I'm into something, I'm 1,000 % in. And if I'm not into it, I'm zero and I just walk away from it. I think that's probably one of the reasons that I work for myself is I'm really, and I've worked on this over the years, I'm no good at doing things if my heart's not in it.

[00:49:54.930] - Big Rich Klein

Let's talk about your portals. The portal that I'm most familiar with is the Hummer portal, which is what guys are using on the rock crawling competition side. Because Jesse ran, I mean, basically, Jesse just ended up eliminating all of the supply of used Hummer portals.

[00:50:22.680] - Quinn Pultz

Out there.

[00:50:23.200] - Big Rich Klein

So he ended up going through a long process to develop his. You're doing a Unimog Axel, correct?

[00:50:32.080] - Quinn Pultz

Portal? Yeah. So I started, a friend of mine, Mark Underwood.

[00:50:37.290] - Big Rich Klein

I.

[00:50:38.380] - Quinn Pultz

Want to say this is 2010. I was going to Johnson Valley, Wheeling with him and a couple of other guys. I had a solid actual buggy on Spider tracks knuckle with CTM, the 1550 shaves from Jack Krapf. I Jack's been a buddy of mine for a really long time. And Mark had an old set of MSI portal boxes. They were replacement boxes made out of steel for the Unimog 404. Super cool part. And I don't know whatever happened to them, but essentially, Mark needed two more and knew that I was getting into machining and I thought it was super cool. I basically tooled up and made some replacement boxes out of aluminum for him. That was how I got into the whole portal thing. Was literally a friend of mine says, Hey, I need... Can you make these? P robably a good thing that I was so green that I didn't know what all went into designing and developing something like that. And at the time, too, I remember the first time I bought tooling to do it. I spent $2,500 just on tools just to be able to make that portal box. I got a lot of guidance and assistance from a friend who had a big machine shop.

[00:52:24.610] - Quinn Pultz

I guess looking back on it, he never tried to squash. If somebody came to me with that, I would have told him, Don't do it because it's super costly. But he was like, Oh, yeah, I can point you in the right direction. So I made a set of 404 boxes and And then MSI, I think, either went out of business or just stopped making them. And so suddenly, I had a couple, two more guys go, Hey, I heard you made those for Mark. Can you make me a set? And yeah, sure. So we started getting into the Unimog 404 stuff, which is not nearly as prevalent because how many Unimogs are in the states? And while Jesse went and built everything around the Hummer, the Hummer just was not a platform I looked at just because I didn't have friends that ran them. And so I went the unimog route and got into that.

[00:53:35.270] - Big Rich Klein

How long a process was it to basically reverse engineer steel boxes that he had into the aluminum that you created?

[00:53:51.850] - Quinn Pultz

It wasn't very hard because, again, a friend of mine at the time had a CMM, it's a coordinate measuring machine. And basically, this is the way I reverse engineer everything. At the time, I didn't have one of these, and it's a hundred thousand dollars piece of equipment. But we put a factory box up on the CMM and measured everything. And then he had one of his guys in SolidW orks. I didn't know Solid Works at the time, redraw the box, and then we machined it. And so, again, I think that it's super important what you know. It's even more important who you know. And all along the way, I've been lucky to make friends with people who have knowledge and are willing to share that with me. And that's really how I got where I got is asking questions to the right people and having people that are willing to teach me along the way. So he reverse engineered a 404 box. We put it into SolidW orks and made a CAD model, and I just started making them after that. And that's really all I made for a couple of years was just replacement boxes because we found that if you replace just the box, everything else on the 404 would live just fine.

[00:55:27.920] - Quinn Pultz

The only reason that you'd break 404 gear s, is what would happen is the box... So the boxes were cast iron and they couldn't handle shock load. So the box would break or crack, and then the gear set would be able to misalign and would eat itself. And once we replace the boxes, people just stopped breaking them. And I mean, even to this day, Mark still runs, I think he's built for three years, or four or five of these portal cars since then. He still just runs an old Unimog box that I machine, and he still runs stock gears. I'll tell you, he was one of the first guys I knew that put an LS 3 stroker into a buggy. And he had a 600 horse junkyard motor that he built himself with unimog axles and Toyota and never had a problem with them. Never broke stuff because it wasn't a big deal. Once you took care of the box side of things, parts just weren't failing. And it came to a point where Cody Wagner was building a new car with Armata engineering, I want to say, in 2015.

[00:56:57.500] - Big Rich Klein

The four wheel independent it?

[00:57:00.570] - Quinn Pultz

Yes. Cody and I were friends. He was one of the guys that I wheeled with. And he looked at it and said, Hey, can we do portals on this? And that was where we took it to the next step and started actually making the rest of the components. But during that process, we basically ended up reverse engineering, changing, and doing everything we could around a Unimog 404 gear set. But we were still stuck with that same gear set because I never got into gear development at that time. Cody's car came out and we had basically built every component we could, the Upright, the box, the hub, but still had a stock gear set. The gears worked for the first, I want to say, two years. But he started driving the thing harder, the car was getting faster, and the gears just weren't lasting. I didn't know anything about gear design at the time, so he went to Weizmann and had Weizmann build gears for those. That's still what he runs today. That independent car is still based around a Unimog 404.

[00:58:29.820] - Big Rich Klein

But with the Weizmann gears.

[00:58:34.730] - Quinn Pultz

He had Weizmann build gears, and at that point, I went, I need to learn about gears.

[00:58:44.350] - Big Rich Klein

It's not rocket science.

[00:58:46.690] - Quinn Pultz

It can't be rocket science. And again, I ended up... I don't even remember how I ended up hooking up with him, but I ended up linking up with Jason Miles from T ubeW orks. Jason was really the guy that taught me gears and how to design a gear. And he's a really good guy. Jason basically Jason taught me all the basics that I would need to know to start going down that road of how do you develop a gear set, what makes gears strong, and why we do what we do. Super instrumental in getting me to where I am today. And again, life is about who you know. And Jason led me down the path that, ultimately, I guess, allowed me to take the next step and start developing my own stuff.

[00:59:51.990] - Big Rich Klein

And now your portals are your gears. They're your boxes. I'm sure you're not doing the bearings yourself. You're sourcing.

[01:00:04.700] - Quinn Pultz

Those, right? No, absolutely not. Yeah. I mean, we run all of our race stuff. We run S KF bearings. It's a German company. They're just a really high quality precision bearing. So no, I should never say never, but there's absolutely... Well, bearings are something that you don't dabble in. You set up an entire manufacturing facility just to make a bearing. And you can buy a precision bearing for 100 bucks or less. I have a full machine shop. I don't think I could ever make a bearing even with the equipment that I have. And I've got 15,000 square feet and we're loaded with machines. I probably got, I don't know, 17 CNCs. There's a couple of components that I don't make. And even if I can make them, I still won't make them. I don't cut my own gears in house. I blank them, I design them. We rough machine a gear. We hand it off to a gear cutter. They cut the tooth profile in it. They come back to us. We debur them. We take them through a tumble process, they go out to heat treat, they come back, we finish all the bearing surfaces in house.

[01:01:26.400] - Quinn Pultz

But I don't really have any desire to cut gears because it's not very expensive, and there's companies that all they do is cut gears. So I outsource that.

[01:01:40.380] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. And at what point did you say, These things would be great if I could just make them for bolt on for stock housings?

[01:01:50.050] - Quinn Pultz

Well, when I was developing the four gear race, which is what all the Ultra 4 guys are running now, I had one of those moments where... There's so much that I learned through prepping Cody's stuff. Cody was running tapered rollers on the upper gear, and tapered rollers in a portal are just a nightmare to set up because essentially on a tapered roller bearing, you really want to have a little bit of preload on that. And determining how much preload you have when you can't actually feel the gear at all is super hard. And so I went through all this process of talking to bearing manufacturers, and we would measure preload based on rolling resistance. And I made a tool that would measure inch pounds of rotational torque it took. And so we would sit there and shim each bearing to get to the point where it wasn't free spinning and it wasn't too much preload. And it was just like, sometimes it would take me an entire day to shim just the upper gear. And if you don't preload those bearings, don't expect to get a long life out of them. And there was just no way to easily do it because of some of the constraints that we had.

[01:03:20.800] - Quinn Pultz

It was just a pain in the butt. So I was doing all this and I just remember one evening where I was struggling getting preload set and going, It would just be so much easier if we could do it a different method. And because we were running a helical gear set at the time, a helical gear set, you can't not run the same bearing package that you would in a straight cut gear set. And Jason was like, Look, this was right about the time I started working with Jason. He goes, Look, a straight cut gear set is totally strong. They're running every single race transmission that's out there. In any road race, or you look at any sequential transmission that handle huge horsepower, they're straight cut gears. T he beauty of a straight cut is you can run a completely different style bearing that doesn't need to be preloaded. I was sitting there going, Man, it would be so much nicer this was easy to work on my solid oxal car, which runs a Spider tracks unit bearing. I went, Wait a second, why don't I try to develop a portal with a Spider tracks unit bearing?

[01:04:42.810] - Quinn Pultz

Spider tracks at the time, I think, had just come out with their Pro Series, which is a massively strong F650, 750 hub unit. I looked at designing around that, and the package worked really well. I started going down this road just in race but then I quickly realized that if you look at all the bolt on applications, on a front wheel bearing, every automotive manufacturer in the world runs a unit bearing. They do that because they come prepacked, pre packed, pre greased, they're super easy to work with. I designed a gear that would index into that unit bearing, and then the gear could become hollow and you could shove a needle bearing inside of that and get a three bearing lower package. I went, Oh, this is going to be super strong. But in the back of my mind, I was always aiming for mass market, but I'm of the mindset that there is absolutely no better way to develop a product than to build it for a race car first, because if it can live through racing, it'll live through anything. So that's how our four gear race portal developed was built around a spider tracts unit bearing, and we still do the same thing to this day.

[01:06:23.200] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. Very nice. And that same technology then and design that for the race portals is the same as the bolt on JL or TJ that would bolt onto those?

[01:06:45.310] - Quinn Pultz

I looked at... Right when we started doing all the race stuff and we worked out the bugs out of that, I started looking at bolt on applications and said, Man, I think I can scale this down. And about two years ago, I had the right people in place at my business to go, Hey, let's do a Jeep one. Because, again, I was a Jeep guy at heart. So we built the unit and I went away from the race design to try to make it more compact, which it ended up not being. But we did a one where we did hollow idler gears. And I did all of our gear calculations based on a solid gear, and we made it hollow, and I looked at the cross section of it and was a bit nervous. And I ran it by Jason at Two Works, and he goes, No, I think it'll be okay. And long story short, it was not okay. It was a catastrophic failure. I went out to Moab. I wheeled the thing and broke everything inside because the idler gears would essentially split in half. So we came back and did the math again and the gear was fine but the cross section was not thick enough and so these idler gears would just split.

[01:08:24.180] - Quinn Pultz

So we had a bunch of time and money invested in the design. I knew that the unit bearing design was good, and at this time, I had already applied for patents around a lot of this. And we took a step back and said, look, we know the race stuff works. Why don't we take the gear set out of race and scale it down as much as we need to to make it fit around the Jeep package? Which I knew that you got to run a 17 inch wheel. You've got to be able to have a wheel bearing that can take ABS, and you need to be able to keep the factory caliper. And it turned out that all we had to do was scale our race gear set down 10 %, change the ratio, and it all packaged. And so that's where we ended up. Now, I was a different geometrical pitch on our first iteration, which without going too deep into geometrical pitch, it's basically this dictates the height of the tooth, so it was a smaller tooth. Our race stuff is a bigger tooth. And as an oversimplified version, if you listen to the Mason Motorsports portal, it makes a ton of noise, but they don't care.

[01:09:52.970] - Quinn Pultz

And a lot of the noise that you're hearing out of that is not really the portal, it's more the transmission. But they have a portal that it winds quite a bit. I knew that I didn't want that for a road application. I did a bunch of research as to what produces gear noise. I thought I was going to be okay with the... We're a sixth geometrical pitch on our race stuff as well as our bolt on Jeep stuff. I thought it was going to be okay. I talked to Jason about this, and Jason educated me and sent me a bunch of down a path where I could do my own homework where we learned about what produces gear noise and why. And we just said, Well, let's try it. So we ran the race stuff, same geometrical pitch, same tooth profile. And I guess at the time I thought, Hey, we're lucky, we get no gear noise. But now I look back and I go, Well, I know exactly why we don't get gear noise. But that was a big concern when we were developing the Jeep stuff. We just made it as close to our race stuff as we could because, look, again, if it's good enough for race, a guarantee it'll work in a Jeep application.

[01:11:19.530] - Quinn Pultz

Fast forward two years, we've still, knock on wood, yet to have a single gear failure in any Jeep portal or Tacoma or Bronco for that matter. But the Jeep stuff was what we released first, and we run V8s and 40s on that. But knowing what I know now, that gear set's probably overbuilt, but I'm okay with that. Because it's funny. If you have a failure on, say, an axel shaft, it's perfectly fine because everybody breaks actual shafts. But if you have a failure on a gear, it's going to be junk and it's crap and portals don't work. Because it's a tech that people have either preconceived notions or misinformation on why something would or wouldn't work. I think it's an evolutionary process. I am of the mindset that if you're going to fail, fail quickly and then fix it and make sure you're not failing over and over again on the same things. Our gear set that's in all of our Bolt on applications is the same gear set. A ll we have to do when we do a new application is does the ABS function? And that's fairly easy for us to work out because we use a unit bearing and then accommodate for breaks and other things.

[01:13:10.160] - Quinn Pultz

So the Jeep took us a while to iron out, but we started, beginning of this year, having zero for Bronco or Tacoma. I've got both of them now within six months. And we'll continue to develop on platforms. But it's just a lot easier now that we have a proven gear set.

[01:13:32.020] - Big Rich Klein

So then it becomes just the the mounting surface between axles to your portals.

[01:13:41.570] - Quinn Pultz

I make so many uprights. We've probably done 30 different iterations of uprights for people. So whether that's a two wheel drive uprise or for a portal or for whatever, that's something that as a shop, we're really good at. So we can design an upgrade and machine it in a week. And so if your gear set is the same, your bearing package is the same, and your box is virtually the same. You've got a different wheel bearing and you've got a different up right, and that's it. So for us to take it to a new platform is pretty quick. I think it took us four weeks to go into production or to go into a prototype for the Tacoma stuff from start to finish. And so we're able to kick stuff out fairly quickly.

[01:14:45.540] - Big Rich Klein

That's pretty good. I wouldn't have thought it was that fast.

[01:14:50.340] - Quinn Pultz

Well, part of it is because when you do everything in house, you're not waiting on a quote and then another machine shop to make your parts. When I get going on stuff, I like to be able to walk out and hand guys a job and say, I need this bill. How quick can we get it done? I think that's one of the big perks of having the right, I guess, having the right tools at your disposal. I think that's one of the things that set us apart was we were making aerospace stuff as it was. So I have all this super fancy equipment sitting here where I have a CMM, we can go reverse engineer things. I have three real high dollar five axis machines, super precision stuff. And more importantly, the guys that I have at my shop are just absolute rock stars. They're just really good machinists who you can't really throw a project at them that they can't crush. They're just... They're just phenomenal talent.

[01:16:04.100] - Big Rich Klein

Sweet. That's awesome. So on the automotive side, what should we be looking for is the next applications? Because now you have the Jeep, the Bronco, and the Tacoma.

[01:16:20.640] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah. So we've got Jeep, Bronco, Tacoma. I'm going to, this year, so there's a good chance I'm going to do 2024 Tacoma here shortly. It depends on if I'm going to get one from Toyota. I'm hoping to be able to try to build a portal for a 2024 Tacoma for Seamur. But that's dependent on Toyota. But there's a couple of other platforms I'm looking at, which is Chevy Colorado ZR2 and then Toyota Tundra, and that also crosses over to LandC ruiser 200 Series. But right now, we're trying to stay... So it's one thing to build a prototype. It's another thing to have all the documentation to be able to go into production on stuff. We're an AS 9100 machine shop, which basically means that we have the ability to be a tier 1 supplier for aerospace. T he niche that we fell into in aerospace is making parts that nobody else can really make or that other companies don't take. W e do a lot of really funky, hard materials like Rene 41, which is a nickel alloy. We do a fair amount of nickel alloy stuff and then titanium because my guys are really good.

[01:18:02.130] - Quinn Pultz

And if you find a niche that you're one of the only shops that goes after, you can make a little more money doing it. So we ecause of our aerospace background, we have a lot of stuff in place where we try and be extremely organized and documented. And so we're focusing on a super tight bill of materials and organization and all the structure that allows us to grow. And instead of... It's one thing to build five of something. It's a whole another ball game to build 500. And the jump from five to 500, I think, is extremely painful for people if the infrastructure is not there. So we've done our best to make sure that we have infrastructure to scale this stuff up. And so that's my next big step is I want to continue to develop for other platforms, but I really want to scale this stuff up so that I can... I don't want to produce ten of these. I'd like to produce a thousand. So I'm going to push for that. The other thing that I'm doing, and I can talk about it because I filed for a bunch of patent stuff around this, is for the Chevy Colorado ZR2, I'm actually looking at a one to one portal.

[01:19:40.210] - Quinn Pultz

Nobody's ever done that before. So every portal that's ever been made is always a gear reduction. The problem is when you look at There's a lot of applications like Raptor Bronco, Chevy Colorado, it's really hard to run a front only portal and match a gear ratio in the rear. The Colorado, I think, is a really good platform for a front only portal. And so we're looking at doing a one to one on that. I started doing research on the one to one and nobody had ever made a one to one. I wrote a specific patent around one to one where it's basically a four wheel drive Spindle lift. I filed for a bunch of stuff around that. And the first one to one that we'll do, we'll probably be at Colorado. But I don't want to get too far ahead. We've got Jeep, we've got Bronco, and we've got Tacoma. And they're all functioning operational. And I'm starting to go into production on the Bronco and the Tacoma right now. And so before I get ahead of myself, I really want to focus on dialing those in. And I'll probably wait till end of year to really go into more platforms.

[01:21:22.310] - Big Rich Klein

Cool. If you ever need a Gen 1 Raptor, let me know.

[01:21:28.170] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah. My one of my main machinists here has a Gen 1, and he's been saying the same thing. Most of the time when we develop for a platform, I'll just go buy the vehicle. I have found that there's a correlation. The more expensive the vehicle is, the more likely somebody is to put portals on it. So on the Jeep stuff, my number one seller is a guy that buys a 392 and says, Wait, you mean I can just bolt on a portal and run a 40? That's all I have to do? And I say, yeah, that's it. And we've got a handful of guys now who have done just well, one of your friends, Casey Shearer, same thing. He bought a 392, bolted on a portal, and goes and wheels the thing.

[01:22:20.210] - Big Rich Klein

That's pretty damn awesome.

[01:22:22.890] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah. So it's a long evolutionary process, but the more you do, the quicker it becomes and the better you get.

[01:22:34.280] - Big Rich Klein

Very true. L ast thing, let's talk about family. Yeah. You're married?

[01:22:43.800] - Quinn Pultz

I am.

[01:22:44.620] - Big Rich Klein

You have kids?

[01:22:46.900] - Quinn Pultz

I do. I've got two. My daughter is 11 and my son is eight.

[01:22:53.730] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[01:22:55.330] - Quinn Pultz

How.

[01:22:57.790] - Big Rich Klein

Did you meet your wife?

[01:22:59.000] - Quinn Pultz

Good story. I missed my flight and she was early for hers. And we met at the Gordon Biersch at the San Jose Airport. I lived in San Diego, she lived in Los Angeles. And we had maybe 40 minutes to... I sat down. The bar was completely full and I look over and I see this good looking lady at a table and I went over and, Hey, is this seat taken? Nope. So I sat down and just casually shot the shit with her. And at the end of it, she was leaving and I was like, Hey, we should continue this conversation. So I got her phone number and we dated long distance for a couple of years. She was in LA, so I made a ton of trips up there. I was in Ensenadis. She would come down and yeah, it just... It was a good fit. Fast forward, I mean, been married for 11 years. Been together, no, 12. Shoot, I should know this. I'm going to get in trouble. I think we've been together for 16 years together, and I think 12 married. Very good. Excellent.

[01:24:33.490] - Big Rich Klein

And what do you see in the future? You're going to stay in Ensenadis and run your business in California forever? I know Cody keeps saying that, that he's never going to leave California.

[01:24:48.180] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah, I mean, it's tough. California is about the most unfriendly state to the type of business that we are in. But the reality is my roots are just too deep here. I could see myself, I've been traveling lately to Montana and Wyoming, and I've been looking at stuff up there, but I don't see that as a viable option for me to move my business. The talent pool is really good down here. And quite honestly, I can't do what I do without the people that I have around me. Right. And so no, I'm in California's I can bitch about it all I want. That they don't like my business, they don't want me here, etc. I'm just whining about it. I'm not going to move. There's not much I'm going to do. I'm here for at least for... Nothing's permanent in life, but I'm here for a while. It just costs more money and it is what it is.

[01:26:01.270] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:26:02.860] - Quinn Pultz

Okay.

[01:26:05.440] - Big Rich Klein

So do you have anything out there that's, well, in Skunk Works? Is there something we can look forward to? You just tell me yes or no.

[01:26:21.850] - Quinn Pultz

Yes. So I believe that if I'm going to develop a product, it's got to fall into one of three categories. The first one is somebody makes it, but it's ridiculously expensive for no reason, and I think I can crush it and make it for a fraction of the price. I do think it's a cool product. That's one. I try not to do too much stuff in that field. The second one is nobody makes it, and I think that it would be cool to make. I like those products. Or three, somebody makes it and it's not a good design, and I think I can drastically improve on it. And the second one is my favorite. I somehow, inadvertently, have found myself in the steering game. I got requests from guys about the Bronco steering rack, and I started looking at that. And anytime I'm going to look at improving on something, the first thing I do is take it apart. And I take the thing all apart and went, Oh, I know why this is breaking. All steering racks that I've put my hands on in an OE application have, essentially, the mesh between the rack and pinion is held in place by a spring.

[01:27:48.100] - Quinn Pultz

And as you shockload that steering rack, the spring can compress, and now your rack and pinion, which are a wedging gear set, can come out of the mesh and either skip teeth or break. And so we saw this on the Bronco, and we quickly developed a Bronco steering rack which is selling way better than I had ever anticipated. And as I was developing this, Tacoma guys, and I don't know the Tacoma market at all yet, but Tacoma guys were screaming at me saying, make a rack for us, make a rack for us. And that is in the horizon is as soon as we get through with ironing out the bill of materials on Bronco and Tacoma, we've already started. We've done all the reverse engineering and we started initial designs on a steering rack for the Tacoma stuff. So I somehow found myself in a market of I'm going to make steering components. But it falls into one of those categories, which is nobody made a steering solution for the Bronco, and nobody makes anything for the Tacoma. So we're going to do steering racks for the Tacoma. And because Toyota is such a friendly platform to develop on because the steering rack that I'm going to do for Tacoma is basically 2003 in a 4runner and 2005 in a Tacoma to the current model.

[01:29:27.040] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[01:29:28.620] - Quinn Pultz

And if you do Tacoma, then Tundra and LandC ruiser is just ever so slightly different. And I guess we're going to start making steering components. So I don't really have a business model where it's like I make bumpers and skid plates. A portal and a steering rack are totally different components. I like to solve the problem that nobody else is solving as long as it's answering in a question that people are actually asking, if that makes sense.

[01:30:04.950] - Big Rich Klein

No, it makes total sense.

[01:30:07.670] - Quinn Pultz

Then the biggest hurdle is how do you bring the product to market? Because nobody's ever seen it before? I got to give, on the portal side of things, I got to give a lot of credit to Jesse Haynes because what he did in rock crawling was a huge huge service to us in the sense that he basically developed a portal based around an existing application but tailored it to rock crawling. And what that did for us, I feel, is that it brought awareness to what is a portal because for the longest time, I was making this stuff and I'm trying to explain it to people, nobody had any idea what it was. And Jesse deserves credit for bringing the portal to rock crawling. I don't know how many of those he's sold, but he sold a ton. And I felt that about two years ago at trail hero, the conversation shifted from what is a portal to, oh, I've seen those. That's a portal. And I go, yeah, because getting through that hurdle when you're trying to develop a product that the market hasn't ever seen is really hard. It's hard to sell a product to a customer who doesn't even know what the product is or isn't.

[01:31:42.000] - Big Rich Klein

Familiar with it. And they're not looking for that solution to something.

[01:31:46.500] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah. P art of that was Jesse on the rock crawling side, and then some of that was Mason Motorsports on the trophy truck side. And then I found a niche while I make stuff and I have portals on trophy trucks, I found a niche in the Ultra 4 world because all the guys that are in Ultra 4, they're buddies of mine from wheeling. I've known all those people in that industry. I've known Dave Cole since, I think, 2003. Dave was on that forum, Jeepaholics as well as Pirate, and we would wheel Johnson Valley. So that market was just an easy one for me to get into because I already knew these guys. And it took Mason and Jesse and myself a long time, I think, to develop a market that really wasn't there. You go to Europe and portals are fairly I don't want to say they're fairly common, but they've been there for 70 years. Short of the Humvee, there was nothing here in the States. And unless you're in the military, you don't really know the Humvee because they're not on the road. Other than Arnold Schwaringer had one, right?

[01:33:10.070] - Quinn Pultz

Right. Market awareness has been a challenge but I think we're finally past that hurdle, which I think is huge. Customer education is a lot of work and there's a lot of people, I guess, concurrently working on that. And they've helped us with that.

[01:33:34.290] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect. Excellent. Well, Quinn, I want to say thank you so much for coming on board with the conversations and sitting and talking about your life and the development of the portals and everything else that you're doing. I found it absolutely intriguing. I didn't do a lot of talking, especially in the last half, because I'm trying to absorb all the information that you threw out there.

[01:34:02.530] - Quinn Pultz

Absolutely amazing. Thanks. I warn everybody when I get on a podcast, and a lot of times I'll do it ahead of time, is just fair warning. You get me talking on a topic that I'm passionate about, I could talk for it forever.

[01:34:17.860] - Big Rich Klein

Right. I understand.

[01:34:21.830] - Quinn Pultz

Because it's been a big portion of my business and my life for the last five years. It's something I really enjoy doing. I guess final words on some of that is, if you find something that you love and you enjoy doing, it's a true statement. You'll never really work a day in your life.

[01:34:46.980] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Perfect. I appreciate it. I really hope that at some point we get to meet one on one, face to face type thing. I'd love to see your facility. Yeah.

[01:35:00.250] - Quinn Pultz

Hey, if you're ever down in San Diego, absolutely. I'm on the same street in El Cahone as like Cisco. I'm right around the corner from Macmillan. I'm directly across the street from Jack Graff or CTM.

[01:35:17.060] - Quinn Pultz

Okay. And score, Accutune. There's a bunch of people on this same street. Door's always open. You're always welcome. And I will see you, I'll chase you down at Trail Hero this year.

[01:35:29.960] - Big Rich Klein

I'm not necessarily going to be at Trail Hero, but I'm trying.

[01:35:35.790] - Quinn Pultz

One of my favorite events, I've been to every.

[01:35:38.660] - Big Rich Klein

Single one. Oh, very good. I was at the first three, I guess, putting on the rock wall during that for my son. But since then, we've been really tied up into the rebel. I've not been able to do the both of them because of the start dates and the end dates on on one and the other. This year, they're separated by a few days, and so we may make it down there, but I got no guarantees. But if we're there, we'll definitely want to hook up.

[01:36:12.810] - Quinn Pultz

Yeah, and I'll talk to definitely. I'm sure I'll see Rich out there. If I do, I'll ask about you.

[01:36:18.730] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely. Sounds great, Quinn. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And I'll let you know when this airs.

[01:36:25.650] - Quinn Pultz

Awesome. Thanks, man.

[01:36:26.570] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Thank you. Talk to you later. Bye. Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have, or if there's anybody that you have that you would think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the Gusto you can. Thank you.