At Atlanta Speedwerks, where European performance meets precision repair, owner Todd Lamb recently joined Northeast Georgia Business Radio to share the story behind the shop’s success.
In this engaging interview, Todd dives into his Detroit roots, lifelong passion for racing, and how his experience behind the wheel shaped Atlanta Speedwerks into Gainesville’s go-to destination for European auto repair. From pioneering Porsche PDK transmission repairs to emphasizing the value of proactive maintenance, Todd explains what makes Atlanta Speedwerks different — and why that matters for your vehicle.
Listen to the full episode here.
Whether you’re driving a Porsche, BMW, Audi, or Mercedes, or just curious about what it takes to keep a European car running strong, this interview sheds light on the craftsmanship and care behind every repair we do.
Read the full transcript below to get to know the people — and the passion — behind Atlanta Speedwerks.
Tom Sheldon: From the Northeast Georgia Business Radio X studio, this is Northeast Georgia Business Radio. Welcome back folks to another exciting edition of Northeast Georgia Business Radio. I’m your host Tom Sheldon and yeah we’re coming to you live from the beautiful Empower College and Career Center of Jackson County.
I have with me yet another great guest. I have with me today the owner of Atlanta Speedwerks. I have with me Todd Lamb. Todd, welcome to the Northeast studio.
Todd Lamb: Tom, thanks for having me on Business Radio X.
Tom Sheldon: How are you, brother?
Todd Lamb: I’m doing great.
Tom Sheldon: Yeah man, you’re a car guy like me.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, I grew up in Detroit, so I had lots of experience with cars, lots of exposure to cars, and my dad was a car guy.
Tom Sheldon: I think there’s a law if you’re born up there. You have to be into cars.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, with the Woodward Cruise and everything going on in that area, you absolutely have to be into cars.
Tom Sheldon: Your dad was into cars as well.
Todd Lamb: Yep, yep, he was a racer way back in the day.
Tom Sheldon: You’re a racer as well.
Todd Lamb: I am, yeah, I’ve been racing since I was 10.
Tom Sheldon: Wow, quarter midgets?
Todd Lamb: I started off in go-karts and somehow made a professional career out of it.
Tom Sheldon: You drive to this day?
Todd Lamb: We do, yep. We as a shop have a champ car program, so we do it just kind of on a fun level. So, in a couple weeks, we’ll be up at Watkins Glen up in New York.
Tom Sheldon: Nice.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, racing up there.
Tom Sheldon: Beautiful country up there.
Todd Lamb: Oh, it’s lovely. The Finger Lakes area is fantastic.
Tom Sheldon: Yeah, yeah, and for a road course a very fast track.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, yeah, very, very fast track. One of my favorites in the country actually.
Tom Sheldon: Is it really?
Todd Lamb: Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: So you’ve raced all over the country?
Todd Lamb: Yeah, I’ve been to every professional track in the country, and yeah, a lot of the sort of amateur level tracks, club level tracks.
Tom Sheldon: Now what series did you say you’re running?
Todd Lamb: Champ Car.
Tom Sheldon: Champ Car, okay.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, it’s very kind of grassroots level, kind of a fun thing we do. We race some Porsches there. We won the championship a couple years ago, but it’s kind of a, you know, gentlemanly racing, but still a lot of fun. So very entry-level, you know, people can get into that without even having a racing license so it’s a lot of fun.
Tom Sheldon: Hey, you just want to go fast, right?
Todd Lamb: Mm-hmm. Go fast, take chances.
Tom Sheldon: Turn left, turn right.
Todd Lamb: Yep.
Tom Sheldon: Or you’re in trouble.
Todd Lamb: Absolutely.
Tom Sheldon: All right, segue, you mentioned Porsche. You run Porsches.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, yeah, we run Porsches mainly because we’re a European repair shop and so therefore we want to make sure that we’re running something that we know and work on.
Tom Sheldon: That’s what I was getting at, yeah. You’re not running Camaros.
Tood Lamb: No, no, no Camaros. Not that there’s anything wrong with Camaros.
Tom Sheldon: Oh no, well, I’m a Mustang guy.
Todd Lamb: Okay, there you go.
Tom Sheldon: If it doesn’t have a blue oval on it …
Todd Lamb: Ford versus Chevy. That was a movie, right?
Tom Sheldon: I don’t know. Ford versus Ferrari, I think, when Shelby ate their lunch or something like that. Oh yeah, yeah. See, I was indoctrinated my formative years with David Pearson and then of course Bill Elliott and, excuse me, Davey Allison, of course.
Todd Lamb: Neil Bonnett, Alan Kulwicki.
Tom Sheldon: And it has bloomed from there to Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano.
Todd Lamb: Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: And (Ryan) Blaney, see? That’s my life in a nutshell. Throw in Dale Jarrett, Ernie Irvan in the middle.
Todd Lamb: There you go.
Tom Sheldon: That’s my life on a different level. People listening are like, what the heck is he talking about? Who are all those old guys?
Todd Lamb: Why are they name-dropping old people?
Tom Sheldon: Yeah, really. All right, let’s talk about the shop. European cars.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, yeah, we work on European cars. Anything from oil changes to, you know, full-on engine jobs.
Tom Sheldon: Now, European cars, Porsche?
Todd Lamb: Porsche, BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Mini, Jaguar, Land Rover, and a host of other ones. We work on – we will work on other vehicles as well. We have, you know, Chevy trucks and Ford trucks and you name it, but we specialize in European.
Tom Sheldon: In European, and I imagine there’s no decline in business because they’re everywhere.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, we’ve actually …
Tom Sheldon: Well, all the big tariffs lately, you know, the big T word. It’s scaring everybody.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, well, I think that’s running into where people are no longer buying new cars right off the bat and looking to maintain their older vehicles.
Tom Sheldon: Maintain what you got.
Todd Lamb: Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: Yeah, long run’s cheaper.
Todd Lamb: Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: What’s the hardest thing to work on? That’s not a fair question.
Todd Lamb: Hardest thing we work on? Land Rovers are tough.
Tom Sheldon: Are they really?
Todd Lamb: They’re pretty tough, yeah. There’s nothing normal about them. Generally speaking, people have a difficult time spending the money to take care of them properly.
Tom Sheldon: Expensive repairs, or just maintenance?
Todd Lamb: Yeah, maintenance …
Tom Sheldon: … is expensive.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, they require a lot of maintenance and people sort of defer that and overlook it.
Tom Sheldon: Oh really?
Todd Lamb: Then it becomes a big problem, so.
Tom Sheldon: Wow, wow. We’re gonna talk more about all the maintenance stuff here at the, toward the end of the episode, but I want to know about the, more and more about the shop. It’s in Gainesville.
Todd Lamb: Yep, we’re four blocks from the square in downtown Gainesville.
Tom Sheldon: Oh wow.
Todd Lamb: Right behind Gainesville High School.
Tom Sheldon: I know where you’re at. Yeah, we all do.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, we got a great facility there. It’s 20,000 square feet, so we’ve got plenty room to work and plenty room to expand.
Tom Sheldon: How many bays you got? How many guys you working?
Todd Lamb: We’ve got five guys working right now, eight bays, plus an alignment rack, so.
Tom Sheldon: Nice.
Todd Lamb: And again, plenty more room to expand, so our goal is to fill the shop up.
Tom Sheldon: Oh, of course.
Todd Lamb: Probably 15 to 20 bays, and yeah, I’d say probably 10 to 15 mechanics.
Tom Sheldon: Wow, how long has Atlanta Speedwerks been around?
Todd Lamb: We opened in 2014 over in Cumming, and then in 2018 we moved to downtown Gainesville.
Tom Sheldon: I got you, get closer to the Speedway?
Todd Lamb: A little bit closer to the Speedway, but more importantly, I’m a big lake lover.
Tom Sheldon: Oh, okay.
Todd Lamb: And being something …
Tom Sheldon: I did not know this part about you.
Todd Lamb: Yes.
Tom Sheldon: I must know, I must know, Lake Lanier, I take it?
Todd Lamb: Lake Lanier, yeah, as haunted as it is.
Tom Sheldon: You know, you brought that up, not me, but I was about to say you know it’s haunted.
Todd Lamb: And strangely enough, as many times as I’ve been in the lake, I have not seen a ghost.
Tom Sheldon: That’s because you’re looking for it.
Todd Lamb: That’s that’s probably it.
Tom Sheldon: I’m dead serious, you know it’s there. You leave me alone, I’m gonna leave you alone.
Todd Lamb: I haven’t ventured to the, you know, 100 feet down to look for anything yet though, so maybe they’re down there further.
Tom Sheldon: Yeah, I would, yeah, no. I’m afraid of Lake Lanier. I’ve been here my whole life.
Todd Lamb: Yeah?
Tom Sheldon: I’m dead serious.
Todd Lamb: Have you been swimming in it?
Tom Sheldon: Very, very rare do I let that water touch my skin. Isn’t that horrible?
Todd Lamb: And, so what is the, what is the concern?
Tom Sheldon: I do believe it’s haunted.
Todd Lamb: Okay.
Tom Sheldon: I do believe it’s haunted. You can be paddling along, swimming along, drifting along, whatever, in three feet of water and you swear something just grabbed you. I have had that happen. Maybe four feet of water.
Todd Lamb: The fish bite quite a bit. They go for the moles.
Tom Sheldon: They nip at you.
Todd Lamb: I found that out, yeah.
Tom Sheldon: They nip at you.
Todd Lamb: Yep.
Tom Sheldon: I don’t think, I don’t think I felt a fish, but anyway. And I know a lot of people that have seen really weird stuff on that lake. And maybe, maybe some adult beverages or something may have been a factor. I don’t know.
Todd Lamb: Most likely, yeah.
Tom Sheldon: Could be. Could be. And I’ve heard all the stories. I’ve written half the stories. No, I’m kidding. So you’re on the lake. You spend a lot of time on the lake. Now, do you have, do you have like a wind ship? You have this massive boat that does a thousand miles an hour across the water? You’re, you’re a fast guy. You race.
Todd Lamb: I have a bow rider just for fun, so just hanging out. Go out and take some friends out and go float in the lake for a couple hours.
Tom Sheldon: Look for ghosts.
Todd Lamb: Come back, yeah. Look for ghosts.
Tom Sheldon: Nice. So no big windship? No big.
Todd Lamb: No, no. That’s, blowboats aren’t really my thing.
Tom Sheldon: Oh hey, I’m with you. I’d stick to four tires myself. You grew up in Michigan?
Todd Lamb: Yep.
Tom Sheldon: Up yonder. Ford, GM, I guess Chrysler. The big three. How did you fall into European cars and Porsches and all the above?
Todd Lamb: That actually came from an evolution of the shop. So when I opened the shop in 2014, I was doing a lot of coaching for racing drivers and they were looking for somebody that would actually take care of their cars, which is not something I did. Like I’m an engineer by education. I’m not a technician. I’m not a mechanic. So I hired a mechanic, opened a shop.
Tom Sheldon: Right.
Todd Lamb: And we were doing Spec Miatas for the longest time, which is one of the best racing, the best racing you can see in the, in the U.S. Spec Miata racing, very, very close racing, very competitive. So we did that for about four years and then we created the Spec MX-5 series, which is a series that’s now gaining traction as a feeder series into higher things.
And then we were looking for the next thing and that was, okay, let’s start racing Porsches. So we started racing some Porsches and that just sort of snowballed into building a Porsche following. Porsche customer base. And then we were one of the first shops in the country to do PDK transmission repairs on Porsches. So that again snowballed into, you know, more and more things and more and more customers. And the next thing you know, we’re doing a lot of Porsche business and pushed all the Mazda business out and that led us into the European world.
Tom Sheldon: It just, it grew from there.
Todd Lamb: Mm-hmm.
Tom Sheldon: You actually work on transmissions.
Todd Lamb: We do specifically PDKs, PDK transmissions, which is the paddle shift Porsche transmission.
Tom Sheldon: Yes, that alone though, that’s a specialty in itself.
Todd Lamb: Yes, very much so. Yeah, it’s something that parts are very difficult to find. There’s no information from the manufacturer, so we had to basically figure it all out on our own.
Tom Sheldon: Now why is that an oddball if there’s nothing from the manufacturer?
Todd Lamb: With a lot of manufacturers, what they will do is treat engines and transmissions as a black box. And by that what I mean is if there’s an internal transmission or engine problem, they’ll just put another one in the vehicle.
Tom Sheldon: Okay.
Todd Lamb: And that could be very expensive.
Tom Sheldon: Oh yeah.
Todd Lamb: In the case of a PDK transmission in a Porsche, that can be anything from, you know, $20,000 to $40,000.
Tom Sheldon: Wow.
Todd Lamb: And when we can fix a transmission with a $10,000 repair, even though that’s expensive, it’s way cheaper than a transmission.
Tom Sheldon: It’s not 40.
Todd Lamb: Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: So are you basically getting parts from other transmissions?
Todd Lamb: We can do some of that.
Tom Sheldon: Cannibalizing other transmissions?
Todd Lamb: Some of that has to happen for parts that are not available. Other parts are available, but we have to get them directly from Germany.
Tom Sheldon: Wow.
Todd Lamb: Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: And you’re figuring that out as you go, but now you’re good at it.
Todd Lamb: Mm-hmm.
Tom Sheldon: I mean, originally you figured it out.
Todd Lamb: Oh yeah, it was a lot of trial and error and years of experience to figure it out.
Tom Sheldon: Wow. Very cool, man. I’ve played with the paddle shift one time on my gray Mustang, does that count?
Todd Lamb: Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: Probably not.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, absolutely.
Tom Sheldon: Probably not. Yeah, I’ll never do that again.
Todd Lamb: I mean, as a racer I was always a very purist, right? No ABS, no power steering, you know, no paddle shift transmission, all manual stuff. But the modern-day race cars, they come from the manufacturer – at the high levels – they come directly from the manufacturer with all that stuff already on it, and that’s just how it is these days. The manufacturers have kept up with the technology.
Tom Sheldon: Do you run paddle shift?
Todd Lamb: Not with what we’re doing, no. I have though in the past.
Tom Sheldon: Sequential or just the old four on the floor?
Todd Lamb: Both, I’ve done both.
Tom Sheldon: Oh really?
Todd Lamb: Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: Which one’s easier?
Todd Lamb: Well, sequential is very easy.
Tom Sheldon: If you remember sequential. If you upshift that thing accidentally, going the wrong way, you’re in a lot of trouble.
Todd Lamb: Most of them actually have a something that will keep you from doing that.
Tom Sheldon: Oh really?
Todd Lamb: A preventative thing.
Tom Sheldon: I guess it would have to.
Todd Lamb: Probably the wildest car I drove in terms of shifting was a Trans Am car, which is a TA2 car, and you don’t use the clutch, and you just jam it from gear to gear, and it feels like you are going to destroy it, and it goes right in like butter. But you’d think, oh my gosh, this thing’s gonna grind or miss the gear, and yeah. Straight cut gears, and just get it matched up and go.
Tom Sheldon: Match RPMs?
Todd Lamb: On the downshifts, yeah.
Tom Sheldon: Which you’re good at.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, a little experience.
Tom Sheldon: A little experience. You’ve been racing since you’re 10, so you’ve been racing what, at least 11 years? I know you’re 21.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, yeah, a good 11 years times a couple.
Tom Sheldon: Todd, we’re gonna take a real quick break, get in a community partner, and then folks, we will be right back.
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Todd, you still with me?
Todd Lamb: I’m here, I’m here.
Tom Sheldon: I hear you, man. Good deal. Hey, I gotta ask, back in the day, you mentioned Roush Racing. You know those guys, or knew those guys.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, back in the day, I was actually a flag man at Flat Rock Speedway, in Flat Rock, Michigan, and Roush, Jack Roush, would always show up with his kids, and they would race go-karts. And fast forward to many years later, when I had my publishing company, where we had a car magazine and a motorcycle magazine.
We were doing some work with Roush on articles on vehicles and different parts they were coming out with. Had a booth at SEMA, and we’re there in their booth talking with some of their marketing people, and Carl Edwards, just getting his start in the NASCAR world, was there just announcing his new truck program back in the day.
Chatted with him briefly, explained what we did, and about three months later, I got a call from an airline asking if we would be willing to do an article, because Carl Edwards had recommended that they give us a call.
Tom Sheldon: Wow.
Todd Lamb: So that was really cool.
Tom Sheldon: That is cool.
Todd Lamb: Super nice guy.
Tom Sheldon: He spoke well of you, because for those scoring at home that don’t necessarily know, Jack Roush, a lifelong, what, Ford engineer originally, I guess? Associated with Ford Motor Company since the beginning.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, yeah, lots of performance parts.
Tom Sheldon: And eventually had his own performance line, Roush Mustangs, IMSA, and NASCAR. Was Jack in anything else? Sports car, I think. Yes, sports car.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, they were involved in a lot of things. The Trans Am Series way back in the day.
Tom Sheldon: Yeah, I remember those GTO Mustangs.
Todd Lamb: Yes.
Tom Sheldon: And even the Cougars at one time. I thought those were cool.
Todd Lamb: And they dominated.
Tom Sheldon: Yeah, yeah. As an underclass, they won the 24 Hours of Daytona one time, didn’t they?
Todd Lamb: That I’m not sure of.
Tom Sheldon: I don’t know.
Todd Lamb: Very possibly. It would make sense.
Tom Sheldon: Yeah, those Mustangs were insane. I digressed, I’m sorry. We’re here talking about Atlanta Speedwerks, your shop. You focus on European cars. You’re a big Porsche guy.
Now I gotta … get down to the, to the work part of the portion, I guess. Just how important is maintenance? And maintenance, that’s a catchphrase. To me it’s a catchphrase.
Go do maintenance. Well, that could just be walking around the car twice, you know? Now you mentioned Land Rovers. They’re kind of a kind of a tough one, a tough bird to work with. But maintenance, what is maintenance?
Todd Lamb: So one of the things that we spend a lot of time doing is educating our customers on how maintenance and service will avoid costly mistakes, or costly repairs down the road.
Tom Sheldon: Failures.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, yeah. So something that’ll leave you by the side of the road, or be a really expensive, costly thing to take care of. What we’ve found, and you know, what the industry in general has has learned over decades of research, and just doing all those repairs, is maintenance is really important. You know, things like oil changes, maintaining your brakes properly, fluid flushes, all the things that, you know, some people have gotten a bad taste in their mouth about, because you go get your oil changed at a, you know, quick oil place, quick oil change place, and they will tell you, oh you need this, you need that, you need this. And it feels not right.
Tom Sheldon: Well, a dealership will do that too.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, the dealerships as well, but there is a huge element of truth to it, in that those things do need to be done on a regular basis, and those are the things that, if not done, end up leading to the expensive repairs. And especially on European vehicles. As vehicles have gotten more technological and more advanced, there’s just a lot more going on with a vehicle, and any one thing can be a catastrophic failure that, you know, propagates throughout the entire vehicle. So yeah.
Tom Sheldon: I’ll tell you, a lot of computers, a lot of sensors.
Todd Lamb: Yep, yep. Sensors, computers, and they all talk to each other. So when one goes down, the whole car starts to get upset.
Tom Sheldon: It gets confused.
Todd Lamb: Yep. Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: I’m always curious about brakes. Unless you’ve actually changed brakes in your life, which I have, I’ve changed brakes. Nothing on a Porsche or something like that, but I don’t believe people truly understand what amounts to a brake system. Doing maintenance on brakes, what is that? I mean, if they’re not squealing, they’re fine, right?
Todd Lamb: As long as the pads are in good shape, and that’s one of the things that, you know, we do as a shop, is we do a very in-depth inspection on every vehicle that comes in the door. So we take pictures, we do video, we note everything that’s happening, we measure brake pads, we measure tires, and we just make sure that we understand the health of the vehicle so we can explain that to the customer.
Tom Sheldon: Gotcha.
Todd Lamb: What you find on a brake system, generally what’s happened is the brake fluid hasn’t been flushed for the life of the vehicle.
Tom Sheldon: Does it need flushing?
Todd Lamb: It does, for a couple reasons. The main one is it’s, I don’t know if I’m gonna get this word right, hygroscopic?
Tom Sheldon: Hygroscopic.
Todd Lamb: I might have to look that up, might be hydroscopic.
Tom Sheldon: One of the two. It doesn’t like water.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, it basically absorbs water, absorbs moisture. So essentially what happens there is then your boiling point goes down, and if you’re on a long trip and you’re going downhill on the mountains, and you’re riding the brake, you could lose brakes.
Tom Sheldon: That gets your fluid hot.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, it basically gets the fluid hot. It doesn’t have the same boiling characteristics, so it boils at a lower point.
Tom Sheldon: Because of the water, moisture.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, because of the moisture, and then what will happen is you’ll get air in the brake lines, and then you’ll have a soft pedal, and then you’ll have no brakes.
Tom Sheldon: No pedal at all.
Todd Lamb: So things like that are, you know, they’re important. As well, you know, that moisture creates corrosion, and it can just wreak havoc within the entire brake system.
Tom Sheldon: See, hardly anyone thinks about that.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, and we learned about that from the racing world.
Tom Sheldon: I bet you did.
Todd Lamb: Where we’re actually flushing the brake fluid every weekend.
Tom Sheldon: Are you really? Yeah. I imagine you are. Well, the heat. You guys run in the rain, don’t you?
Todd Lamb: Yeah, yeah. Plus we run a very, very expensive brake fluid for racing.
Tom Sheldon: I can only imagine. Super high boiling point.
Todd Lamb: Yep, absolutely. So that makes a difference.
Tom Sheldon: Yeah, I can imagine.
Todd Lamb: And brake pads, it would be another thing in the system that, you know, it’s important. There are different qualities of brake pads. We know from the racing world, of course, you’ve got super high temperature brake pads.
Some wear well, some wear, you know, really fast. Kind of translates into the streetcars. You’ll have different qualities.
Some of them will be dusty, some of them will be squeaky. So you get different characteristics from. Some will last a long time, but you don’t have very good stopping ability. And some that wear really well will have great stopping ability, but they wear out super quick.
Tom Sheldon: Wow. See, I never thought about that. Okay, now I got to ask also, since I got you in here, synthetic or what is the other kind of oil? Synthetic oil? Can you get the old kind of natural? What do you call it?
Todd Lamb: Dinosaur oil. Mineral oil.
Tom Sheldon: Yeah, oil, oil. Yeah. Or is it all synthetic now?
Todd Lamb: Pretty much what everybody’s using synthetic or a synthetic blend. Usually, the old school oils are used for break-ins on new engines. But in general, the synthetic oils do a very good job of protecting the engine and keeping everything lubricated properly and have a lot of additives that have been really well curated over the years to be really, really good at protecting engines.
Tom Sheldon: So they finally got good at it.
Todd Lamb: Yep. Very good at it.
Tom Sheldon: And a lot of that stuff is tested in racing of all kinds, is it not?
Todd Lamb: Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of stuff that’s tested in racing that makes it into the real world. One of the things that hasn’t made it into the real world very well, which is for many reasons I’ll get into, but a lot of manufacturers are now getting into these 10,000-mile oil changes or even more potentially. The issue with that is that oil is breaking down all the time. And the reason they’re doing it is because they can then say, well, we have very minimal maintenance.
So your maintenance costs are going to be super low for the first five years you own the vehicle or however long they’re claiming that. They’re doing that for marketing and that’s fine, and they’re doing it because they’re going to guarantee that it’ll last through the warranty period.
Great for them. But what happens after that? And that’s where things come into play. So we recommend every 5,000 miles with a good, quality synthetic. That’s kind of the industry standard. It used to be 3,000 miles. We’ve, you know, we can now bump that up with the better quality oils.
Tom Sheldon: So oil’s getting better. But now a motor built today compared to 40 years ago, the tolerances are absurdly small inside that motor.
Todd Lamb: Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: And we just lost half of the audience by saying that. You and I know what that means.
Todd Lamb: Well, and what that boils down to is essentially they’re, they’re working for the best efficiency possible for that engine because they’re trying to also get through EPA, you know, whether it’s, uh, you know, smog rules, or if they’re trying to just get, you know, mileage up. So the tighter they can make everything initially, the better. But what that also means is they’re now recommending oils that are super thin.
And so those oils again, break down sooner. They’re not protecting the engine for 10,000 miles, but they’re kind of getting by. And again, those, those really need to be changed every 5,000 miles.
Tom Sheldon: So no more, uh, 20W-50?
Todd Lamb: Yeah. We’re, we’re seeing, you know, zero W-20, which is a really, really thin oil.
Tom Sheldon: I’ve heard that, yeah.
Todd Lamb: It’s, it’s almost water.
Tom Sheldon: It’s gotta be thin. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Maybe 3,000, 5,000 at the most on that.
Todd Lamb: Yeah. 5,000 will do it.
Tom Sheldon: Wow. Growing up, small town, right? Bunch of good old boys. They did it a certain way. It’s the way we’ve always done it, right? Gentleman that I looked up to a lot, he swore on his own grave, let alone anyone else’s, that it didn’t matter with the oil. You had to, you had to have a good filter, just change the filter, add some oil to it if you have to, and you’re ready to go. How far off? Cure a lifelong mystery in my mind. How important is that filter?
Todd Lamb: The filter’s important, and we’ve even seen degradation of filters from the same company year over year, if they’ve changed where they’re manufacturing the filter. I’m not going to get into the names, but there’s plenty of information out there on the internet, but you want to make sure you’re using a good quality filter, and you also kind of need to know where it’s manufactured.
Tom Sheldon: With anything, there’s like two companies that make all the filters. There’s more than two, I know. I’m being sarcastic. Two companies make all the batteries.
Todd Lamb: I mean, it is interesting. Like, yeah, there are, you know, in the automotive world, I’m sure most things, you know, there’s, you know, spark plugs are made by three, four companies.
Tom Sheldon: Yeah, just a handful. Yeah. They slap a different name on it.
Todd Lamb: They private label it and send it out, and, you know, so some of the time you’re just simply paying for the name because they’re branding it out there and advertising it. But, you know, you’re also, there is a, you have to be careful. There are many instances where the quality can drop off because part of that on the manufacturing side is they’re doing less quality control checks, and they don’t have to meet the manufacturer’s standards at that point, and so they can kind skip some steps. Yeah. So there is, there are things you have to pay attention to, and you kind of learn that over time.
Tom Sheldon: Oh, of course. Of course. Yeah. I never thought about an oil filter failing.
Todd Lamb: Yeah.
Tom Sheldon: Literally coming apart internally?
Todd Lamb: Not so much coming apart, but just simply not filtering as well or having areas where the oil can bypass the filter.
Tom Sheldon: Oh, lovely.
Todd Lamb: Just, yeah, not great stuff, so.
Tom Sheldon: Wow.
Todd Lamb: Yeah, and today’s oil changes too have become pretty complicated. It used to be, you know, you’d pull the drain plug and slap a filter in and fill it with oil and away you went, and pretty much every European vehicle these days, you got to hook up a computer to them and reset things, and there’s even a fill procedure on Porsches that you have to follow. And yeah, it’s quite complicated.
Tom Sheldon: Well, now some cars, you actually extract the oil, like out the top or something.
Todd Lamb: You can. There are cars that you can do that with a lot, and some shops will do that. We feel that pulling the drain plug and getting all the oil out the bottom.
Tom Sheldon: That’s what I would do.
Todd Lamb: You know, all the debris or anything that comes out.
Tom Sheldon: Junk goes to the bottom.
Todd Lamb: Yeah. That’s important. You know, at times, if a customer requests, we can actually cut open a filter and look for particles. We can send oil out for analysis. So over time, you can see the trend of how your vehicle or how your engine is wearing.
Tom Sheldon: Right.
Todd Lamb: And kind of get a sense of, oh, it might be time to think about fixing something.
Tom Sheldon: Well, Todd, did we get it all in?
Todd Lamb: I think so.
Tom Sheldon: I like it.
Todd Lamb: Cool.
Tom Sheldon: How do the folks get a hold of you? How do they come? Where are y’all at? You’re in Gainesville. You said earlier, where are you at again?
Todd Lamb: Yeah, we’re four blocks off the square, downtown Gainesville. We are pretty much right behind Gainesville High School, the back entrance, and people can reach us via our website, atlspeedwerks.com, and that’s spelled W-E-R-K-S.
Tom Sheldon: Right.
Todd Lamb: And as well, we’re on Facebook, ATL Speedwerks. We’re on Instagram. We’re on TikTok. We’re on LinkedIn. And I’ve missed one, I’m sure. YouTube.
Tom Sheldon: You’re on YouTube.
Todd Lamb: Yep.
Tom Sheldon: Oh, very cool.
Todd Lamb: A lot of this information is actually covered in the videos we do. So part of, again, what we do is educate customers on various topics that are automotive-related. So we do a lot of educational videos.
Tom Sheldon: And I have to say, if you Google Atlanta Speedwerks, your listing comes up, and I believe you can book an appointment.
Todd Lamb: Yep.
Tom Sheldon: Off of Google.
Todd Lamb: We have a really cool scheduler on Google and a really cool scheduler on our website.
Tom Sheldon: That’s super convenient.
Todd Lamb: Especially for repeat customers. You just type in your phone number and all your information pops up with the vehicles you own and start to select even things that you maybe said, oh, I’ll do that next time. You can pick those things or pick new things. And yeah, really easy.
Tom Sheldon: And you will basically work on any vehicle.?
Todd Lamb: Yeah, absolutely.
Tom Sheldon: Diesel?
Todd Lamb: We’ve done some diesel.
Tom Sheldon: Have you really?
Todd Lamb: We have a 60 Porsche in there right now. We have a 65 Fiat in.
Tom Sheldon: Nice.
Todd Lamb: We’ve got a Studebaker with a Hemi in it.
Tom Sheldon: Of course.
Todd Lamb: In the shop right now. Lots of wild stuff.
Tom Sheldon: Why not?
Todd Lamb: Yeah. So we do old stuff to new stuff. Yeah.
Tom Shedon: Awesome. Todd, if we got it all in, we’ll get out of here early, man. Thanks for coming in.
Todd Lamb: Hey, thank you so much.
Tom Sheldon: They’re going to play music and then I got to wrap up. And now there goes the music. Folks, Todd Lamb, the boss man at Atlanta Speedwerks.
Specializing in those European cars. Hey, he knows a lot about cars in general. Cool guy.
Great to hang out with. If you see him up on Lake Lanier and it’s not haunted, wave to him. I’m Tom Sheldon.
We’ll talk to you soon.
