Loyal ENEOS user since 2008; SUSTINA user since 2015
Best Quote: “…the [ENEOS SUSTINA] 0W-50 is great with cold starts and it’s perfect when the car runs hot. It runs clean. After taking it out [the oil] looks clean…. What we recommend is what we use.”
Age: 41
Location: Chicago, IL
Profession: Garage Owner/Performance Builder/Tuner
Specialities:
- Honda and Nissan
- One-off custom fabrication
- Turbo kits
- Engine rebuilds
- Dyno/stress testing
How many years spent as a mechanic?
25+ years
How many years spent as a shop owner?
8 years
How did you first become interested in cars?
“When I was 4-5 years old, I remember gravitating toward certain toys like remote control cars. I took them apart and couldn’t put them back together. In grade school, I read Motor Trend Magazine, in the back they featured the fastest 0 – 60 cars, and I was fascinated with the sports compacts, and how their 4-cylinders could perform compared to a bigger displacement engine.”
It’s all in the family
“My father is a mechanical engineer, originally for Boeing, and later taught at Lincoln Technical vocational school. I went to Lincoln and took classes in the automotive engineering industry, (and) spent the weekends working on cars with him… doing oil changes, handing him wrenches. He told me to find a profession where I didn’t have to get my hands dirty.
I did not follow his advice.”
How did that transition into what you do now?
“I’d look at how many horse power I could get per liter or cylinder… I’d look at what the V6s would do, and then what overhead cam or fuel injection would do.
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“We have made a lot of things that have only been made once or twice in the life of the business; sometimes we take things on just for the challenge. A lot of what we sell is what we use and have tested in the shop.”
Looking from a mechanical standpoint, a stock engine will only do so much, so then the need becomes going deeper to improve the performance… make the engine go faster, make it compete with an engine with four times the displacement. The mechanics are involved with the speed and the racing. There is always room for improvement, and I always want to see how to reach the limit, get to that maximum efficiency level. For years, being a mechanic was a hobby until it became a living.”
Racing Team:
RS3 Racing (Title Sponsor)
Racing Background:
“Starting in 1998, I was involved in bracket racing at the Great Lakes Dragaway. In 2000, they came up with Import Wars, and I was involved in that as well. I was involved with Battle of the Imports (BOTI), NOPI, Import Drag Racing Circuit (IDRC), Local Drifting, Autocross, and Road Race. I never got into the aesthetics, for me it was always about performance.
More recently, it’s been sponsorship of other local racing teams in front wheel drive drag racing, and local drift teams – all semi-pro. The Honda Challenge grassroots road racing; and Chump Car racing, which is Road America and bigger courses with 2 12-hour sessions, 4 drivers, a lap timer and mandatory pit every 4 hours. It’s like lemons racing, and each team has a budget for their car, with penalties if people go over the budget (but they still go over).”
What cars do you run?
- RS3 Racing and iLL Garage SFWD 2015: a Civic Si purchased in 2000
- Personal: ’98 Honda Civic hatchback, an original outlaw/sports compact car from ’06 – ’12. It will be a FIS (Force Induction Sports) car for local racing.
On using ENEOS:
“I had always used ENEOS since 2008 in everything from daily driver to a race driver. I started using ENEOS SUSTINA when I found out about it in 2015.
ENEOS SUSTINA works well in colder temperatures
I have noticed ENEOS SUSTINA tends to work better in the midwest because of the lower temperatures. 0W-50 is great with cold starts and perfect when the car runs hot. It also runs clean. After taking it out it [the oil] looks clean. It is top rated and does very well.
What we recommend is what we use
Both ENEOS and ENEOS SUSTINA is what we put in our cars. We do the oil changes every day and see the cars doing 30,000 miles per year and still running very clean. The lower weight works great with smaller cars. We don’t just put ENEOS in our customer cars, we recommend it because we use it, too.”
ENEOS SUSTINA works well in colder temperaturesSome of Armando & iLL Garage’s special projects:
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Although Armando and iLL Garage have a fine legacy, there will be many adventures ahead for this crew. We look forward to hearing (and hopefully telling you) about it!
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