Speed Techniques

As a fifth generation finish carpenter, Jared McCoy understands perfection. “The first impression everyone has of a home or commercial building is based on the finished carpentry work,” says McCoy. “That perfection was my main concern over the many years of my career as a carpenter.” McCoy owned and operated McCoy Trim Carpentry LLC from 1998 to mid 2010. The desire for perfection has translated into his new career as an auto tuner. Jared is the owner operator of Speed Techniques Inc. just outside of Sioux Falls. The business was started a couple of years ago. “I have always been into cars,” says McCoy. “My first one was a ’68 Camaro and my second was a ’72 Nova. I drove the Nova all through High School. My senior year I found the Nova wrecked where I had parked it on the street. Unfortunately a garbage truck ran into it and basically totaled it so I decided to build a racecar out of it and it all started from there. My racing interests started as a young child. My uncle is Bob Sherwood who is known around the area for his many high caliber racecars. Whether he knows it or not Bob was one of the most influential people in my racing career. One of the first cars I can remember working on was one of Bobs. My Dad had a body shop when I was a kid and we did all of the paint and bodywork on Bob’s ‘71 Corvette, which he has raced for many years and even set a few records with. After I got out of High School I went to work for my Uncle Doug Sherwood for a couple years as a finish carpenter. Doug taught me a lot about business and life as well as how to do things right. I still to this day seek Doug’s approval in the back of my mind on the many things I do. He helped breed the perfectionist I am today. For that I will be forever grateful. Doug decided to retire and when he did I started McCoy Trim Carpentry LLC. We did commercial interior finish as well as a lot of high-end residential work. The business was going great until the construction slow down a couple years ago, which the whole industry felt. I was faced with a tough decision, do I ride it out or try something new. After many years of being passionate about cars, I decided to make a change in my life and make it my career. March 1, 2010 I opened Speed Techniques Inc.”

Through the good years of being in the Construction Business I was able to feed my passion for learning along with my passion for cars. Engines have always fascinated me and I always want to learn more on how they truly work. “If you don’t know how something works you can’t fix it or improve it for that matter.” I spent many years traveling the US in a quest to learn how to properly tune an engine as a hobby. Always needing and enjoying challenges. I have tuned cars, diesel pickups and even tractors. My goal is to be one of the best fuel injected guys in the US and I won’t stop until I am there. I hold certifications through many of the industry’s top Tuning Schools. EFI University in both 101 and Advanced. I am MOTEC version 3 certified. Advanced GM Tuning Certified through Calibrated Success. Duramaxtuner Inc. certified for Duramax Diesel trucks. I am also a Pro Tuner for Cobb Tuning. I am very happy to be able to say that I have spent numerous weeks training with one of the best tuners in the World, Shane Tecklenburg. He has taught me more than I can ever thank him for. All of this training has given me a well-rounded education to apply to my craft of being a quality tuner.

“Speed is our business. We make cars go faster,” says Jared with a smile. “I have always liked going fast and now I can make a living at it. When we started, it was Dustin Eliason, a long-term friend, and me. Dustin is a very talented fabricator. We worked together for the first year and he now works at Classic Import Auto Repair. It was an opportunity for him to move on and improve himself. Today I have one part-time mechanic, Ryan Christensen. He is an ASE certified technician. He is an excellent mechanic. He does a lot of the heavy mechanic work as well as most of the wiring and electronics.”

“We are a true speed shop and have the region’s only All Wheel Drive Dyno. I purchased the Dyno in October of 2010. I had built up a lot of my equipment over the years working out of my home garage and have been buying equipment ever since high school. I have always been kind of a “techno geek”. I think it is important to have good equipment to help improve your craft. There is so much out there to buy. We don’t have it all but we have a lot of it. I truly believe you need good equipment to produce a good finished product.”

“With our investment in equipment and training we need to drive a lot of business. We try to do this by reaching out beyond the immediate area. One way we do that is our website www. SpeedTechniques.net. The first year we built the website it generated business for us immediately. We still get a lot of our business from our website. My customers come from all over the United States. I have tuned cars from Des Moines to Minneapolis and Rapid City to Omaha. I traveled to Bonneville to help some land speed racers as well as California to assist a Baja1000 race truck. The land speed car I had the pleasure of helping with was a very rare piece. It is a Ferrari Enzo with twin turbos and every MoTec piece available. This car is the only Ferrari Enzo in the world to have these modifications done and I am extremely proud to have been a part of it. I have an opportunity to attract business from outside the area because I have a piece of equipment that most shops do not have and the knowledge base to go along with it.”

The whole business is built around the thought “We could go faster”. “I will not let a car leave our shop until I am satisfied as if it were my own. This philosophy started when I was in the construction business. As a finished carpenter, your work is the first thing people see. The job is judged by the first impression the customer gets from finished product. It has to be able to impress people. I believe in the same philosophy for STI. ”

As a business owner for most of my life I have been in a position of leadership. However, this business has been a little different. I have had to lead by example to show my employees and customers how to do things. I do not want my people to learn at the expense of my customers. It goes back to my Subaru. I own one and learned about them working on my own car. I spent hours on the dyno with it and Road Raced it all over the Midwest. You can learn so much how a car performs on a road racecourse. You are in and out of the throttle and going in and out of turns. It has taught me how to make things last because of the extreme conditions. You are running full power for seemingly forever. I have also done lots of drag racing but I really like road racing.” My ultimate goal is to compete in Time Attack. It is the ultimate in racing because it is combined speed and durability. It is basically a drag race with corners. I have yet to win big at these races. I am more of a tuner than a driver. I focus more on the engine and car and making it go faster. As opposed to a driver that just cares about beating everyone else. Most good drivers just drive. I am learning and hope to be good at both someday.”

I am still very passionate about drag racing. I own a Honda Civic (now retired) that I have raced all over the United States. I spent a lot of time at Thunder Valley testing new ideas and hardware. This car incorporated some of the cutting edge technology that I use today. The car was very fast and made huge power with a best E.T. of 9.68@167mph. The car is FWD and is still a full streetcar with power windows and a full interior. It uses a MoTec ECU to control many things on the drag strip. The car used full-fledged Traction Control along with a very extensive boost control system to get it down the track. I built the car in my home garage. I did however seek the help of my long time friend Joey Keyman from Excessive Autosports. Joey was very influential in the building of my Honda. I asked him many questions and he always answered to the best of his ability. I will always be thankful to him for that. I traveled many places with the Excessive Crew when I was racing it. Joey and I were two of the first people in the area to race imports at Thunder Valley.

After many years of racing this car I was hungry to try something new. That is were my Subaru Sti came in that I race today. Subaru’s are one of the most advanced cars there is today. Computers run everything. They are one of the most challenging cars to tune. After buying my car and playing around with it on the streets it became evident to me that this area was in need of an AWD dyno and Speed Techniques Inc. was born.

I believe Subarus and Mitsubishi Evos are the new muscle cars of today. They appeal to a wide range of people. They are used in road racing, rally racing, and drag racing and they need an AWD dyno to be tuned correctly. My fascination with Subaru’s started with a YouTube video, Roger Clark Motorsport’s GoBstopper. The GoBstopper is a Subaru Sti 22b that is raced over seas in Time Attack. It is one of the most impressive cars I have ever watched.

Our dyno will work for every make and model on the road today. Including motorcycles and quads as well as any of today’s smart cars. The term smart car refers to some of the new cars that need all four wheels driven at the same speed, basically a rolling road. Our Dyno is one of 15 in the world that incorporates a LYNX belt in to the system. The LYNX belt is a belt that links both dyno rollers together to produce a rolling road just as if the car was driving down the highway. Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Mercedes and BMWS just to name a few, are some of these smart cars.

Although it may seem as if STI is mainly focused on imports, this is not the case. “We work on many domestics on a daily basis. We are able to tune GM’s and Fords along with some Chrysler products. I am helping Mark Wudel from Billion Automotive who has a 1980 Chevy Malibu that is one of the more powerful cars in the area, it has maxed out my dyno, states McCoy with a smile. Anybody can make 1500+ horsepower but if it doesn’t go down the track and live what good is it. The key is to not just make it fast but make it get to the finish line first. This is not possible if the tune is incorrect. Tuning an engine not only makes more power but most importantly it makes things last.” Mark drag races regionally and plans on doing some traveling to some major event down south.

“One of the many things we do is to incorporate fuel injection into nostalgic muscle cars. We can give the same muscle car sound but give it the technological advances of fuel injection. We are also big into turbo chargers. Turbo charged cars basically have two engines. You have the engine and you have the turbo. The turbo has to be looked at as an engine. An engine is nothing more than an air pump. The turbo is one as well. You have to know how to make the engine and the turbo run in unison. The mark of a good tuner is knowing how to give an engine what it wants when it wants it. I have decade of experience of how to do this with the training to back it up. My goal in life is to learn something new everyday as well as improve my craft on a daily basis.”

“I strive to continue to grow the business (including building a new shop in the next couple of years). Trust is an important ingredient to growing my business. My customers normally do not know as much as I do so they need to trust my judgment and recommendations. I plan to continue to purchase equipment that will help me improve my business. My ultimate goal is the satisfaction of my customers.”