Roush Racing's Former NASCAR Shop History Tour: Mark Martin & Jeff Burton's Glory Days Built Here!

so you may have heard of Sri before but did you know that their building used to be Roush racing Rambo here who you've seen in our other videos used to work here and he's going to be our tour guide we started this deal in uh the exide batteries with Jeff Bart 1997. we call it Rouse racing South this was originally dick moroso's building in 1996 I put the Horseshoe up and it made it out here and it's still up and I think that's pretty interesting where'd you get the shoe I found it in my yard mowing grass what is that and I pulled up the old rusty shoe I come in here sandblasted painted and put it up when Ralphs come down here and said I'm gonna start a team in Mooresville I was oblivious now I'm listening to all these guys talking on the podcast and I've talked to Mark Martin and some other people they freaking hated us Jack told them we're going to do it this way buddy parrot come in and then it was just like do not help them guys in Mooresville do not give us them exactly right you know what I mean all right and it was us against them and and I didn't realize and I was working here and I didn't realize how bad it was I've been selling steel to all the race teams since 1996 so we were coming here when it was Roush racing when they ran the racing out here and selling steel to these guys so this building's been involved Racing for a long time I acquired a business called Roush Yates performance parts so it was a working race team then it was a performance parts business much like it is now so we made some changes in here you know in kind of the Aesthetics of the place I was like we got to paint this floor and then I had somebody come into court to quote to paint the floor and I thought the floor is just fine blue none of these offices were here when I came in so we installed these offices for the executive team so they kind of get a view on it they just built on top of the service yeah we were going to take the turf plate out and the guy goes man that'll be really expensive to take that out of there before it just kind of goes this and up and then over and down it's different now because the offices were up against the wall and then the walkway was in front of them so they sort of moving them around and the reason why I know that for sure is when I was back here in 0.607 something like that I had an office and it was right here and I had a window I had to come in from the hallway so these little stubs here kind of where the walls were the individual offices I think yes and then the walkway was down the front and it actually had glass just like Bahari did it had glass in the front where you could uh go in there was a opening to come in the front and then you could walk down the hall and look into the shop you work here two different times yes interesting these offices were this area was still there and it was just overhang started here and went that way yes okay so the front of the building was still the same width yes okay yes and then the wall was here we come in the surface plate is still here yeah believe it or not and that's that's where we did our setup and we literally from here back to that wall for sure was this was our um this was our assembly area this is all we had we just had this right here and then we had a suspension room probably still there just something different now so Jeff Burton's first cars at Ross were set up on that plate right there yes the cool thing about that is we were probably about right here and I love the story because Jeff Jeff was really Hands-On Frankie Stoddard get the cards off the plate I'd bring him over here and I'd bump steer them we'd nut and bolt them put them on a truck well that particular night Jeff was here and me and Jeff were bummed steering the car he was underneath changing slugs I was running the numbers and we bump shared the car and and then we took that car to Texas and we won the race so the first thing Jeff says to me is I guess I'm gonna have to bump steer out of cars because if we finally won the race I mean we knocked on the door a bunch but when we won Texas um he actually did help me bump steer that car and that's one of my coolest memories ever when you know you see Jeff Burton nobody can really look at him and look as he's a Hands-On kind of guy but he was 100 percent a Hands-On kind of guy and as good a mechanic as anybody we had in here because he did it himself for a long time and I really respected that everybody respected it Lance Hill Lance romance he had a suspension room I'm gonna say this is probably the same because we did have the parts room up there and we had two parts guys up there but I'd have to say that one of these rooms which is now an office was his suspension room and if that's all it was was just a concrete building and we did the front and rear suspension stuff Lance was in here Scott deal worked in here as well and he also went on the road was it all the same layout whenever you came back to work here later yes except that part was added it's a whole lot more crowded there was a surface plate here a metal surface plate that laid in the floor here and Buddy Parrott and Tommy Morgan worked on that thing trying to get it to where they wanted to level it and I bet you to this day because somebody had picked it up and put a bow in it and they tried to level it and this was like a year project this thing did one like oh let's work on this him and Tommy worked on it worked on work on it and I bet you to this day wherever that Plate's at it's sitting somewhere it's not level it's got a bow in it somewhere because they never did get that thing squared away and we know I gave him a hard time about it then you come through here and it's pretty much the same and this was our Fab shop and uh well cars were in here the second time you worked here second time we were here I worked with uh Matt Kenseth Mark Martin and Jeff Burton on the All-Star the nine car with Pennzoil and then we did uh Bush cars there with them so this was the Because by then the cup shop was in Concord yes so this is perfect Truck Yeah okay and we had uh Brad parrot was in here with me he had Greg Biffle and then I had uh they're rotating drivers and there were I'm telling you we had cars piled in here like you wouldn't believe but it's all it's all pretty much pretty much the same Bobby Hudson run the Fab shop that's a name I've heard before yeah Bobby's Bobby's done a lot of stuff good fabricator good all-around guy I probably don't do a good enough job of explaining to you guys the lengths that I go to to find some of these pictures that you get to see in these videos for example those ones are the Jeff Burton car I found that there were some really grainy pictures and like a really crappy scan of this Popular Mechanics magazine of those pictures and it was from March 2000 so what I had to do I went on eBay and I found one of these and I bought it just to open it up find the page take pictures of the pictures to use them as b-roll for a grand total of maybe 12 seconds for your enjoyment I did enjoy flipping through these old magazines are pretty neat okay here it is it even comes with a big little poster that's it that's the page all these pictures were taken inside this shop in 1999 this area right here is underneath where the mezzanine is and you can see those stairs back there you go up there and there's just just like parts of stuff but this is all I mean this is probably back in the uh back building which you'll see later in the video if somebody wants this magazine if you order a hat or a shirt from Staples and autoworks.com and you send me an email with your order number the first person to do that we will sign this and put it in your package because I don't know what I'm gonna do with it now I can remember having my welder in here are we in your way I'm so sorry um they had a welder in here and stuff this right here is where I realized I think that's probably about 40 years old I was welding something and I couldn't see it and I finally realized and I still remember this setting that I realized that I was gonna have to get glasses that's what this reminds me of out of all the stuff that's going on that's what this reminds me of and like I said it wasn't that deep because that Wall's moved out and I mean it wasn't it wasn't really that big and we had some you know we had some equipment in here and our furniture room was literally that that little Breezeway up there I'll wait whatever you want to call that mezzanine that's a big word and that was it and everything else was stuffed in here I mean what I'm telling you we didn't have nothing we didn't get nothing from Liberty everything we did we did on our own and we didn't have nothing with and the way buddy pair and if you heard about Buddy parrot nobody parrot he's a freaking Miracle Worker I don't know how he did it but we got our stuff together and we come out of the box and we were running we were running real good when did the they eventually move Mark's team to here wasn't that like 98 or something yeah 98. that's that's what's happening and I was like Peace Out Boys is that what drove you to go somewhere else or yeah pretty much pretty much and then uh this was The Body Shop and this is hard this is hard to uh this is hard to tell because they put the mezzanine and everything out but what I remember is we had a we had a body shop in here where you could work it wasn't near this big and it had a paint booth back in the corner I think you can still see where it was in the floor yeah I'm pretty sure there's uh there's a surface plate there it still says Roush on it so what's the what's the red paint story but I don't the red paint story I told you the red paint story I don't think the camera was on though oh that's good no I just um first of all I'm a little confused because we went on the front of it and that Wall's in a way to come on the front of it looks like it was right there and I think it was steel not not epoxy but anyway I painted for some reason we had to paint the red around there and see this wouldn't have been it because this when this guy puts these plates in he colors them and when we this one that we had over there was steel and we had to paint it so I painted the red on it and I put jack stands up with a rope around it and the guys kept going through and stepping on it so I thought it would be funny I went and I got a stool and I sat it in the middle of the plate I went and got my shotgun out of my truck and I sat in the middle of the plate holding the shotgun daring somebody step on my paint and everybody laughed they thought it was funny but um that come back to haunt me in different ways I don't want to mention but it did somebody remembered that down the road yeah I'm pretty sure the body shop was there because that was it was the body shop in the next one over did they have it here originally then add it and then move it down because there's definitely Body Shop there's like paint on the floor still back here but this from there to here was it you know what I mean this was outside for over here back in 97. this was outside I'm pretty sure I mean I'm not saying that they didn't is that a downdraft booth yeah this is what I was wondering what this was here yeah you know I might could be wrong with that that chop was but yeah you can see where the walls were bolted down and yeah look at all the paint back there must have been where they mixed it yeah yeah so maybe I'm mistaken maybe it was a little deeper than what I thought looking for some type of ventilation he had a big uh big pipe there and there this well I mean you look at the floor and you look at this right here this was definitely the this was definitely the the body shop so I was wrong I guess it did come back off I want to know what's under there wouldn't you say I had a small paint so this was a downdraft must have been or something I don't know I don't I don't know yeah and it goes over there probably into that one the duck thing yeah and then they come out of the floor here and then go up out of the yeah it's right above that yeah that would make sense that'd be the updraft then yeah yep sure enough interesting and it's like we're ready to go again you just put the ducting back in absolutely yeah paint booth again there's definitely paint residue in there dust I wonder when the last car was painted here where they took it out well you know they don't pay cars no more yeah you know what I mean I mean you don't even need a paint booth so is this Pennzoil yellow probably some Super Chips red there's probably some Valvoline in there what did what did Madonna have on his car do you remember DeWalt yeah so maybe that's DeWalt yellow yeah there's like no metallicness to it the pencil card for black that could be Scott's green you know when we was here Carl Edwards was running the truck out of here remember that when I come back the second time I have a theory here and I want your input on it I was thinking why am I so fascinated by this classic NASCAR stuff why does it Captivate me so well and I don't know if any of you guys ever thought about this I know most of you watching this video have watched us before so we share the same Affliction but my theory is with all the craziness and all the negativity that is in your face on a daily basis these days it seems you know digging back into this race against free when it seemed like the world was simpler it was almost like a type of comfort food I feel like for me it you know reminds me of being a little kid whenever I didn't have to worry about anything whatever was going on and the world was not my concern all that mattered to me was do I have my toy cars do I have a place to play with them that's it what do you think am I onto something here am I crazy have you ever thought about this maybe I do a lot more reflecting than the average guy but I don't I don't know maybe you should think about it let me know what you come up with what what's in there what what's the seed at the same time you can't keep your head buried in the sand and neglect for the present day otherwise you're no different than the guy who talks about high school football when they're 45. the another big reason why I like this history and hearing these people's stories is because I like to learn things from them that will help me in the present and Beyond because somebody like Rambo here it could have taken him five years to figure something out whether it be dealing with people or something Technical and he could explain what he learned in those five years to us in one minute would you not listen to somebody for one minute to save five years of struggling on that note be a good person don't be a turd hold the door for people um the average guy out there is not bad the worst ones are the loudest and it got it got crappy one person at a time it can get better one person at a time I firmly believe that and car guys are some of the best guys to do it so let's do it yeah there's where a lift used to be in a Dream It's like a wash pit yeah I had a drain and you see how it's like that was this wash pit when you were here I don't know I don't remember it maybe this map over here says what that used to be oh yeah it shows you where the paint boots used to be and how cars were oriented and parked in here surface place I guess there was another surface plate in the front room look at that that's the front surface plate remember I told you the offices were up against the wall yeah and then this wall went right here where you could look in that's what it's showing right there and then this was the lobby and then there was a comfort room but it was long ways but that's the lobby and then the opposite see how they're up against the wall yeah well now they're not either no they're not but that's that's about the way it was then see what I got confused with is then we had the Fab shop but we had a little another room and then the body shop with the shirt with the um the paint booths back there and then you can see the trucks outside and see this truck's on the other side of the fence because they had that building and that's where Junior was with the chassis Dyno but he paired such a joy to work for I mean you you go tell your son you say buddy I was racing me and Frankie would race some rental cars back to the airport buddy I hit a damn traffic barrel and scratched uh run a car up I think they're going to charge us and Buddy being buddy he's like scratched around a car that ain't nothing let me tell you about the time I parked the rent a car in a mo in a motel room I said okay we're good and that's the way everybody was oh he's had a better story and and you never had to worry about it and you always had your back we used to have we used to um at the end of practice you always we were on happy hour from the end of practice you get a tire sheet somewhere not close to the garage practice is over you've been going all day this is back when you changed Motors did this did that your burn up you're hot you're tired and you'd walk out there and push the car back well we'd start walking out there and now everybody in the garage is the same way everybody's dragging ass everybody's like I've had enough you know it's it's a long day happy hour is over buddy gets on the radio and says first one the car gets a hundred dollars so all these guys are dragging us out here comes the 99 crew running fast as they can blow by everybody and go up there and whoever gets to the car first gets a hundred dollar bill and I thought that was pretty awesome we had a break room right here I remember about the break room more than anything it was in this corner and what I remember about this break room more than anything his buddy caught us all in there and told us that Harry Hyde had died now buddy worked for Harry for a long time and I mean thought the world of him and he come in there and told us that Harry Hyde had died he said that was either 96 or 97 wow and that's the first time I seen buddy really shaking and upset but um that happened right here in the break room and like I said they've they've moved some stuff around so but I know it was in this back corner I know that and it you know obviously when you get a building you know when Greg come in here he's like I need officers here here here and here we had Joe Werner show car Joe driving a truck nobody living in here this time nobody living in here you gotta give a shout out to Tommy Rigsby I mean he got in the truck and went to California with me and I never drove a truck before except in the military and I mean I know what it's like now since I've had my license since 1989 putting a new guy up in the truck I know what it's like I don't know what he was thinking I mean because I about got the hang of it about Hickory on the way back and you know and how he decided I'd go with him but that's back when I'm truck drivers they drive 20 hours all you had to do is let them take a nap or motors from Liberty or not Liberty I'm sorry from Livonia but we still had a motor shop Bob Rinaldi was back here and our tuners are back here and we had some machinists and stuff and um I'm not exactly sure what all they did I know that they didn't build Motors because we were getting our motors from Livonia and um you got the keys that this place never changed and if you do some research it might have been um this might have been where Bob Rinaldi did his Motors because he did the motors for um Moroso oh so this the engine shop may have already been here yes and they just kind of you know yeah exactly they dress the motors they've done some you know some different stuff pretty interesting story in the politics and everything that went on but Bob built a motor we put it in and went to Michigan it's always something I remember like it was yesterday we put that motor in Burton went out before he went off to qualify he called…