Full disclosure: Jeffries Performance & EVO Powersports helped us out with deals on the products they offer.

Before Andrew even bought his Can-Am, he was trying to figure out which model made the most sense, as he knew he’d be upgrading a lot. He reached out to Jeffries performance with some questions: Can I buy the 120hp Base model and give it 200hp? Jeffries tuned our friend Adam Castenada’s BITD race X3 and it’s been reliable and fast, so after helping Andrew with his questions, he picked up the base model and then decided Jeffries would be the tuner for the vehicle.

This is a VERY important decision! If you’ve watched our “So You Want To Go Racing” series, our race RZR has had a ton of issues, many of which stemmed from sending it to the wrong tuner. Now, we are installing a new motor, and found the right tuner, but we could have saved so much time and drama had we chose the right team for the job.

We picked RJ’s brain about all things performance, he’s fun to talk to and really knows what he is doing. The team at Jeffries Performance work very closely with EVO performance, the biggest name in the SxS game for horsepower. So if you are like Andrew and own/ considering a new unit, we talk through the potential of the X3 platform, which belt they prefer, what they’ve got for RZR owners, the future with beltless transmissions, and more.

Transcription:

Anybody who really loves this and isn’t in it for monetary value that’s going to be your successful companies what’s happening everybody nick olsen chupacabra off-road i’m here with andrew what’s going on and we’re here with richard jeffries jeffrey’s performance here in phoenix arizona and um you guys have been following the channel uh andrew’s got a x3 race vehicle and started off with the base model 120 horsepower and we’re getting it up to 200 horsepower yeah as you guys know 120 is not going to cut it and we figured we’d come to the experts at our jeffree’s performance here so so first off we’re getting into all your knowledge with x-ray tuning in general once you give us a little bit of uh feedback where you guys started from how did jeffrey’s performance come to be you know jeffrey’s performance uh we had you know the jp brand was born about a year ago just coming up on a year and uh prior to that we had another company but we were working close with evo and evolution power sports since day one actually jim and todd were a big influence into what we’re doing today they had kind of brought an idea to the table for us to do tuning on the west coast for them and become proficient in their product and it’s been a great it’s been a great relationship um you know evolution powersports provides what we feel is the most safe and reliable horsepower that you can get on the market today which benefits not only us um but our clients as well for longevity and their motors so I know um on southwest the big talk horsepower you know is all about planets doing crowd that’s everything a lot of your customers are a lot of them doers like what’s your kind of your average customer do they ride all over the place like what are they looking to be at yeah you know what I would say we have a great assortment of customers everybody who we have guys that live in payton up in the trees we obviously arizona and california is a big mecca for everybody to go to the dunes but i think those guys transition into all of the other riding that you can do um and you know you know you talk about the big horsepower stuff I feel like the big horsepower stuff is popular right now but what’s been popular for a long time is doing something like you guys are doing with the race car and going from a base model and upgrading into that big horsepower package or at least a safe reliable horsepower package that is great for racing and the longevity of something like that yeah you know we’re starting off with 120 horsepower baseball and andrew did a lot of the math and we were just talking about it before we started filming there’s so many models of x3 i’m gonna buy an extra I asked richard which one would you buy you know um I like to ride everywhere you know the smart lock is a big priority for me but getting into the horsepower seems like the 120 base model is really like the best value builders are on the market where if you don’t ride in the dunes but you’re gonna own your car for a few years you’ve got so much life you can put into that car so what would you you know a guy who wants to start off he’s got a 120 how would you direct them if he wants to ride everywhere he dunes a couple times a year how would you uh kind of guide them you know first and foremost uh I tell everybody it’s you know octane is is your first derivative like if you’re ready to run race casters the world opens up to you if you want to stay on 91 octane which I would encourage people to why because it’s readily accessible everywhere and you can get a great amount of horsepower for it um starting with the base model like you said it’s a great platform to start up it has all the parts that you need to start realistically you want to add your your intercooler your charge tubes your blow-off valves and kind of go with a great tuning platform right there like evolution power sports has with the stage one or stage two and you can build on top of that you can also take if you had um you know the 18 and 19 fuel pumps if you put that inside of a base model you can go from like a 172 all the way to a 190 and then increasing your octane you can go all the way up into the 200s so I i definitely would say if somebody’s starting out they have a base model I think that it’s a great platform and you can do it one of two ways you can buy all aftermarket things uh aftermarket intercoolers charge suits and blow-up valves things of that nature and really go gumball or there’s guys that out there that are that are doing these conversions for a couple hundred bucks they found a guy that took their charge tubes off and went with the evo cartoon glove valve and they got the tubes for free they have a takeoff intercooler from a 17 or 18 and put that in and then simply did the tune so there’s a ton of different ways you can do it but it’s probably the most economic way to get to a horsepower range that you want to eventually so I think it’s a great platform to start off so the motor and the trends are the same no matter what so if you do want to just go up a little and build or you can be like andrew you’ve got to turn absolutely um it has all the same hard parts you would except for obviously your your intake tubes and your inner cooler so getting that and adding that as long along with the software is kind of the two crucial elements you need to do to kind of get to there um I would also start with some clutching after that but that’s you know that’s kind of down the line when you want to figure out what wheels tires and horsepower you actually want to land on yeah I was trying you brought up with clutching because I imagine most guys want to bump up to you know no matter which vehicle they’ve got 32-inch tires um you know maybe that is a 35-inch trend kind of dead on the I think the 35 it it peaked a little bit and everybody loved the big look but we also it robs horsepower and it’s really really not good on the suspension components um I think the middle of the line the 33s have been the ticket we’ve been running 33s for the last year now and it’s been phenomenal you know especially on winter parks and horsepower wise so clutching is a big aspect of that um i always tell people make sure that you don’t do both at the same time and the reason being is if we choose something and we go run it it could be perfect it could be perfect with tire size could be perfect with how the car reacted to the tune um until you know that but if you change both at the same time you’re not gonna know where you land or what you need to change so we always do those one and two in a and b um definitely with with tire size going up to 35 if you tune it um say you do a stage two on an x3 and you go up to 35s and you also have added weight to the vehicle it’s actually just leveling that playing field and going back inside i don’t think a lot of people understand that that you can add as much horsepower as you want but if you encounter it with weight it hurts you right so or it helps you get back to where you need to be so guys go you know which people they have to say they step up to 32’s they’re going to need some clutching do most guys just want let’s say they’re arizona guy they’re going everywhere they just want a nice clutch they don’t want to deal with it and then maybe on your personal car a second question would you clutch it for sand dune season and then would you or someone or does everyone just kind of want one stuff they can kind of set for you you know more popular than oddly and i think you guys will understand it’s weird that the cheapest thing that i’ve found for clutching happens to be the best um what we use is the evolution power sports the four-way system right so lighter primary and once we install it whether we do three or four it really helps us get to where we need to be rpm wise and it really is a set I didn’t forget it you know in a nutshell uh you know three-way and four-way application is a great starting point to clutching and I think that it probably exceeds what any normal consumer is going to want or need out of their car you’re essentially trying to get your car at a certain rpm rate to create a certain amount of boost cheaper power I think that they really nailed it with that kit and it really helps us out because it’s very simple kit and you don’t have to worry about a lot of the things when the customer leaves a lot of external parts or things that you’re not as confident in it’s a very turnkey kit to have so you know that’s about it clutching is is pretty simple on that aspect to try and get everybody on the same playing field seems like a lot of chatter can guys this belt that belt what built do you guys like what do you recommend what are you running your cars listen i you know the bell thing is crazy everybody has their flavor everybody has their religious way of of taking care of it or breaking in it i can only speak from experience and everybody’s like all your you know evil fanboy let’s not know you know the badass belt from me it started it started me and todd went to the dunes on it’s the very last trip of the year it’s the hottest trip of the year it’s like 120 at night and we went there at night linds you were with us right okay so I break I go and break three belts i’m running oem belts because I was one of those guys I was like yes todd grinning and he’s like just change it to this belt what is this belt he’s like just change it to it right so todd’s the type of guy like we have this great relationship but i’m like oh okay i’m gonna change this belt i’m gonna blow this up in two minutes we’re in the dunes powder like the the hottest softest sand i’ve ever been in a four seat loaded up and i’m i took this thing to the wood couldn’t break I could not break this badass though and from then on I use them and i’ve had great luck with them um on project x I went all through parker one belt never had an issue I think I actually sold the car with that belt on and i’m sure it still has the same one on it so we use the evolution power sports so the world’s best valve is what i’ve been using lately it’s what i’m going to be using on my new car so it’s kind of the way it can go you know I encourage everybody you go with whatever belt you think of me personally I haven’t been able to break them well you guys the experts so i’m sure you get a lot of that that feedback from people and that and racing too it’s been you know crucial bell life is is a killer you know and you are literally you’re 400 plus miles sometimes on a rubber band you have to have some sort of you know I think trust in what you’re running but then it comes back to clutch so it does i’m glad you said rubber band i’m actually a fan of cbt i’m not against this mythical new trance who knows the polaris may drop but i’m curious what you think I mean there’s a silver state 300 race last week phil burton beats every class 10 200 000 plus cars in a utv is it a good way to skin the cat are you happy is it giving guys as much power as they ever want I mean guys always want more what do you think I think there’s good and bad it’s the both I think if you you take like a honda pioneer with a direct transmission i personally hate driving I don’t like the way it feels and if it had more power I probably would like it even less i think a you know a properly set up cbt can give you everything you want out of something I do feel that no matter what it’s inevitable the entire market is is going that way it’s something that’s been talked about all the time but you know sometimes what you wish for isn’t what you ultimately want in the end because if we go to transmissions we’re going to have training problems so i hire msrp like i was thinking the same thing be careful what you wish for because you might get it exactly yeah so you know it’s one of two ways obviously with us we don’t really have the the choice to just stay back we’re always you know all of us are gonna have to start buying the cars that are there at that time and what comes out because we’re all gonna have to go through those crowds um so I think there’s gonna be bad support i’m so it just seems like these can-ams have amazing belt reliability for the power that you guys are throwing down on them and the racers and uh I mean it seems like I mean polaris obviously it seems like the xp pro is better but it just seems like can-m’s i mean got an amazing package no game has a phenomenal package out of the gate some of the most bulletproof clutches I mean you’re talking about we have cars on the dyno that are that are exceeding 350 to 400 wheel horsepower and this is on rubber bands and I think it’s great so proper clutching setup i think you could probably have more luck with the cvt and kind of go that route and more tunability you know we also have to wonder how are we going to change transmission to accept the power that we’re putting towards it you know is it going to go green is it going to be what do we do next so [Music] yeah speaking of spending money let’s talk about racing it’s like another race car i’m a hole in racing our friend adam castaneda took his x-ray to you he’s over the moon happy the guy rips I think he’s got some some fast finishes in his future yeah how would you guide andrew how do you think about setting up a car much heavier big fuel cell and how do you guide them you know honestly I think we go down the same road we did adam came to us and he wanted realistically he just wanted some power with longevity it’s what we do we don’t nothing leaves a shop here without us having the idea that that car is gonna last five thousand to ten thousand miles and we could possibly never see that client again it’s our goal same thing in the racing program especially with evo you know they don’t aim for the highest amount of horsepower they aim for what’s going to get you through that entire race safely the most amount of horsepower you can achieve in that realm they also do that with clutching as well so I think that everything basing you know us in in your vision of being able to get across the lake beds and at a high rate of speed or out of the hole pretty quick i think we go around the same thing you know we we add you know your charge tube to your intercooler things like that add you know we can do a 93 octane tune you already have a fuel cell so it’s going to be delivering more fuel the engine so we can take advantage of that and kind of go into that 190 to 200 round well final topic we’re sitting in front of a razor you guys follow the channel know that we’ve been pigeonholed as razor guys kind of but um i’m sure you guys are working on some razor stuff um what do you guys see with the razer crushers what are they looking for what are you guys working on you know what uh big turbo stuff right now big power uh evolution power sports released their dynamite turbo for the razors um actually that sure that a car right there sitting on the dyno is going to be lined up for that and launch control so they just release that so we’ve gotten you know it’s monday phones have been blowing up about that alone because that’s what they released this weekend so um you know we’ve been pigeonholed as the k m guys and we we love both brands very much it’s just simply what people were bringing to us and you know I think the turbo s is a great vehicle I think the xp turbo there’s a very big wave coming of people that have taken some ideas and executed it pretty well i’ve seen a couple really really nice xp pros lately I think it’s going to kind of sway that that direction so you know between those two things it’s simply adding power and you know creating some beautiful cars it seems like with the hype and the energy of the x3 like it’s led to so much more development especially with horsepower so it’s either i’m curious if that’s consumer driven or it’s just that the technology the motor is so good it lends itself to it but I mean it seems like the razer guys are gonna get or have been getting beat downs and can they and if I wanted to be the razer guy I wanted to hang with the guys the extra guys are all tuned and is this kind of like the package that they need to have to be you know the good thing is that you know one i always tell everybody that walks in you’re never gonna be the fastest guy in the hill right there’s always somebody there chasing you down and you can spend a million dollars trying to beat the classes got the hill um now razer versus can-am guys there’s there’s always that whether it’s it’s friendly campground talk or guys just seeing each other race up the hill there’s always gonna be that but the good thing is there’s platforms for every level on both sides to bring you up to that i would say that you can extract a good amount of power out of a razor motor safely and compete with those guys and beat them a lot of the times I mean we were just in uh utah and it was a buddy of ours wife she was racing her razor with a new turbo system from evolution power sports should be most the can-am guys out there really so there’s there’s a fair amount of stuff coming out and I think with the added launch control being able to build eight pounds of boost out of the hole that’s a that’s a big jump especially because you get out of the hole quicker and you’re lighter there’s your race question what do you think about you know three cylinder versus two so you’re a little better do you think that has a big part to play everybody’s gonna be like oh one more soldier oh my god dude the triple center road texas i think that the amount of power you can extract and from what i’ve seen on a stock motor and this is like from early development you know uh you know cotton gym and what they were pulling out of just simply a stock car that was sitting on the dyno that’s very like that that gets me excited seeing what you can do with a car without any changes it’s kind of you see what that motor is capable of um and I think that that gets me more excited than obviously the crazy [Laughter] and I hate it because there’s guys all the time great guys that just bought that like can you do anything like there’s nothing but there are guys especially like like you like where can am you see the guys there’s there’s a heavy amount especially in utah of black seas that will blow some doors off beautiful cars those packers guys yeah absolutely beautiful cars yeah so i think that there’s there’s a lot uh there’s a there’s a flavor in every category somebody’s kind of taking it i haven’t seen anybody do textron yet so i’m sure that’s coming yeah but I you know very lucky let’s go to show you right you guys aren’t pigeonholed as extra guys we’re not razor guys no no we’re an equal brand we love this sport yes we love we’re excited we’re just talking about what we hope polaris comes out with we hope to speed utv lives up to be it’s great for all of us it gives us all more options to drive prices they could could level everybody up that comes out is what and what do you know expect from that it’s gonna be great to watch yeah sure um you know and I just posted something i can do today like i’ve owned like five razors before I go to k m so like I have a special place in my heart for what got us started yeah you know no no so you definitely between razer and canada you’re sure you go can I i have it personally I go k n and it’s the way i like to drive i like sitting more low to the ground when I get in a razor i feel like i’m driving a school bus now and that’s personal preference everybody like you know some people get in the x3 and they absolutely hate it my driving style just is a lot more x3 like and i’ve come to love and are you more dooms or open desert southwest style rising two-seat four-seat there’s there’s so many conversations that we can have oddly enough so when I started the business I was i was in the desert every weekend then slowly transitioned to the only time i got to ride was in the dunes so I love the dunes because there’s something about when you cross the train tracks especially on this side you you roll the train traction at the kalama store it’s peaceful i I love the desert and I love bombing through the desert and that video we did in parker was so much fun but the dunes are probably my favorite yeah yeah yeah by the way no one gets the industry to actually go off-road we’re working too much it’s crazy it’s crazy like you know i used to go to the you just go to shows you just go to you know and walk around and have fun and then you started you you start a company in it because you love it absolutely love it and we’re just as passionate as we were when we started but it changes because your responsibilities in that start to drive you more towards you’re working it takes away from the weekends you wanted to go ride so and you’re playing is working still exactly you’re grabbing a photo here making sure the camera’s on at all times I mean we went duning uh there’s so much money sorry I could jump to get out the glam it’s like you can’t not get a photo for social or video or 100 especially you know lindsay lindsey she’s content content content no matter what we went riding out in idaho it was like so much fun and then like you’d catch yourself like you said oh I got this hit like let’s take a photo of it does it look good i’ll do it again i’ll do it again and you it takes it out but you can’t complain we’re in one of the most amazing industries and the amount of love and aspirate like that we have for it i think is what drives our businesses and I think that’s why you know anybody who really loves this for and isn’t in it for monetary value that’s going to be your successful companies that’s and that’s you know it’s definitely what we do yeah I mean I think ultimately the dollar to fund ratio of this sport you know like when I was younger I got to ride in a full-blown desert car and it changed my life past one car and not that this is a class one card but the the amount of fun you can have what they are how much you can beat on them and how much they hold up where you can do with them yeah probably probably coming soon um no and I think you’re right for say your average person spends between 20 and 30 thousand dollars you know coming from you look at everybody in off-road they spend hundreds of thousands if not millions to do and ride in some of the places we can still go riding obviously not to the level of the safety that they’re in but you know for you to be able to take your family out and go do experiences and get people outdoors i think this is one of the best sports and you see it right now with everything going on and clothing and things like that you know i’m sure most of us in this business we kind of held our breath the first week and the second week we’re like okay you know it’s more of a want than i need well it turned into a need because people needed to get out people needed to go out and do things with their families and we became one of the most successful industries in what i would say in the last 10 years is probably the biggest fallout so very exciting stuff and it’s it’s cool to see everybody move that way and I think that not only do they move that way to to being outdoors with their families like guys they take this and it becomes something else for them other than you know uh you know simply buying a toy comes a lifestyle exactly you know you roll into it and every day you’re scrolling through and you’re liking other people’s stuff and seeing what somebody’s done or you know you see this roof running it’s cool to elevate all the time some people get to their cars when they’re fully done just to strip them back down and do it again because they enjoy it so you gotta be all into this lifestyle man you gotta have the truck the trailer that’s what I love about off-roaders i mean you’re you’re in it oh yeah you can’t go ramp one here and there like you go to glamish you get hooked then it’s like okay I need a garage the next thing is purchasing well thanks for your time thanks for all the knowledge we’ll be back when andrew car gets put together I need to get some tuning done on it and i’ll lean on you guys again hopefully come back to some video we can see you guys riding yeah this season too uh if you guys want to learn more chat with the guys we’re going to put their description or their email website phone number everything in the description follow on social thanks tongue guys appreciate it I appreciate you guys yeah it’s gonna be a fun year if you guys like the content please like it subscribe you got a lot more coming your way Thank you.