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089: Marty Staggs of Turbosmart USA explains how he helped bridge the gap between Australia and the US Jan 16, 2017

Show notes

Marty Staggs was born into drag racing. Both his father and grandfather raced meaning that he was always around fast cars. As a child, Marty helped his dad build dune buggies in the garage and learned to weld at a very young age. He pursued an education in mechanical engineering but never got his college degree. He met his wife and quickly started a family so he got jobs working in commercial controls businesses. But he was always building stuff for cars and focused on the VW platform. Eventually, he stumbled upon a Turbosmart Wastegate and loved the product! In 2006, Marty went to SEMA and met with the owner of Turbosmart. They started to hang out and formed a friendship right away.

Marty found out that Turbosmart had a US distributor and they stayed in contact over the years. This friendship turned into a business partnership when Marty was asked to take over the US market of Turbosmart as the Vice President & General Manager. Since 2009, Marty has grown and expanded the business with proper planning and passion to make it more successful.

088: Frank Rehak tells how he transformed his family auto shop to Driveshaft Shop over several decades. Jan 09, 2017

Show notes

Frank Rehak grew up working at the family's shop and initially thought he was going to find a career as a motorcycle mechanic. He got a few jobs working on motorcycles and realized it wasn't as great as he hoped. So he went back to work with his dad. He started at the bottom cleaning the machines and sweeping the floors. Frank worked his way up and eventually had quite a lot of responsibility at the shop. He had a few ideas about doing exchanges with customers and boxing up product to sell them anywhere and slowly began implementing these ideas.

He started to transition the shop to doing more CV axle rebuilds. But then the market was flooded with new replacement parts from China and he had to reevaluate his business model. So, he began offering upgraded drive shafts. Now, things have become very serious! They own a 50,000-square foot facility in North Carolina and employee 29 people.

087: Cody Loveland of LoveFab and Affinity Aero shares how he went from Honda's to NSX's to tube-frame carbon-bodied race cars. Dec 19, 2016

Show notes

Cody Loveland worked on bicycles during his early teens but realized cars were way cooler when he turned 16. It didn't take him long before he was piecing together turbo kits for his EK Civic and quickly had a group of people asking for him to make parts for their cars. His step-dad loaned him the money for a tig welder and Cody never looked back. While he was working as a package sorter for UPS, he started LoveFab, Inc in 2002 and worked both jobs for several months. But he quit his job and decided to not go back to college to focus his efforts on LoveFab. He was working out of a home shop from 2006-2012 and transitioned to working on NSX's.

He eventually began renting a 7000 square foot commercial space and quickly realized how difficult it is to run a large-scale operation. He encountered some miscommunication with a customer that ended up costing him tens of thousands of dollars. At the same time, he had a daughter and realized that he needed to downsize his operation. While he didn't close LoveFab, he scaled it back and returned to a home/shop style space where he continues to fabricate turbo kits and work on cars.

His latest passion project is called the EnV8 and is a tube-chassis, LS-powered race car that he hopes to produce and sell in the future. He is still modifying the design and testing his work, but he is excited to unleash the full potential!

086: Franco Ganino of Alliant Insurance talks about their Garage Keepers insurance plan called Installers Edge Dec 12, 2016

Show notes

Franco Ganino has been working at Aliant Insurance for 23 years. Being a car guy, Franco was excited when given the opportunity to work with Bob Corwin to work with SEMA and provide insurance. At the time, Bob was risk advisor for the NHRA and they become instant friends. They worked together to create an insurance product specifically for the SEMA members. They created "The Specialty Equipment Insurance Alliance" (SEIAinsuance.com) with the initial goal of proving manufacturers with product liability insurance. After 10 years, they started to add plans for garage keeper's insurance. What they came up with would be known as "Installers' Edge."

He has spent years collecting, restoring, and racing cars so he understands what shops do when the install aftermarket parts and tune them for higher horsepower. This helps him cater insurance plans for his clients and ensure that they are fully covered. With Aliant being an insurance broker, they are connected to every insurance company out there and work with providers to insure the shops.

085: Gidi Chamdi exposes the real truth about what it takes to chase the 6 second quarter mile with his GTR. Dec 05, 2016

Show notes

Gidi Chamdi was born in Israel and immigrated with his family to the US in 1985. He wasn't really interested in cars until he stumbled upon a magazine showcasing the R35 GTR. He became intrigued and bought one in one in April of 2013. A friend turned him onto a Shift Sector event in Willow Springs and got a tour of the track from Jason Huang. At the end of the event, they did an impromptu roll race and Gidi won it. From here on out, he was addicted!

He did some research and picked ACG Automotive in San Diego to install the AMS Alpha 10 package. He competed in another Shift Sector event and won that one as well. So he upgraded to the Alpha 14, then the Alpha 16 where he won the Buschur Shootout, then the Alpha 18, and finally the Alpha 20 package.

He has now built the infamous Alpha G which AMS Performance uses as a test bed to go fast. It was the first car to get their billet block and receives all of the prototype parts from AMS. They are chasing the elusive 6.XX pass at the quarter mile and it is just in reach. His best run to date was a 7.14 at 212 mph.

To add to his resume of fast cars, Gidi also has a pair of Underground Racing TT Gallardo's. He races one at the half mile events and has jockeyed for first place with another UGR customer. His current fastest is 244 mph (fastest is 247). But he thinks they will do 250 at the next event.

084: JP from Radium Engineering tells how he concentrates on design and outsources the manufacturing. Nov 28, 2016

Show notes

Jeremy Powell (aka JP) grew up in Florida and his family couldn't care less about the car culture. JP spent his early years skating and building ramps. When he graduated high school in 1995, he bought a Honda Civic and started to modify it with an intake and some headers. After feeling zero performance gains, he decided to bolt on a turbo kit which really woke the car up! From here on out, he became addicted to performance. During college, he decided that he wanted to work in the aftermarket automotive industry. He mailed a copy of his resume all over the country to various parts manufacturers in hopes of landing a job. After a few weeks went by, he received a voicemail from AEM and ended up getting an interview! He landed the job and began development on their first ECU which became known as the AEM Series 1. A few years passed and he received a job offer from HP Freaks in Oregon. His new job was to design and manufacture parts for BMW's. After a few years, he decided to start making totally unrelated parts on the side and unofficially started Radium Engineering. Fast forward to 2015 and they decide to make a legit business out of it and go full time.

They started into the fuel management system while upgrading a Lotus. It had really bad starvation problems and had a fuel pump that was very difficult to access. They decided to make a surge tank for the car to get around having to deal with the stock pump. This is how they got started down the path of making fuel systems for various cars! Radium Engineering is still just 3 people and they are now in Portland, Oregon and rent a 3,000-square foot facility. They outsource all of the CNC machining, laser etching, anodizing, and powder coating and have no plans to ever buy their own equipment. This allows them to focus on the design, assembly, and shipping their products.

083: Zach Denney explains how he brought ECUMaster to the United States Nov 14, 2016

Show notes

Zach Denney started his career in the automotive industry by working at Discount Tire. He also participated in the auto tech program in high school. Zach went off to college for engineering but he couldn't really get motivated and ended up leaving school. He started working at a shop that bought and sold Supra's. After that, he began working at ATS Racing working on MR2's and honed his fabrication and tuning skills. Zach then went back to engineering school at UNT in Denton, TX and became involved with the Formula SAE program. He started building wiring harnesses and became very familiar with the electronics of the vehicle.

During this time, he discovered ECU Master out of Poland and was intrigued by their products. He bought one of their products and was very pleased with how it performed on their Formula SAE car so he reached out to ECU Master and proposed becoming their US distributor. To his surprise, they said yes! With a little seed money and some guidance from his brother-in-law, Zach was able to begin importing the products and setting up a sales platform to get them to potential customers. With the aftermarket ECU market being very competitive, Zach has made a point to provide whatever customer service is needed to help the people buying the products.

He is excited about the release of the EMU Black ECU which is more compact and has many new features. Zach also manufactures several wiring harnesses, boost controllers, and sensors to compliment the ECU. He rents an 1800 square foot facility which is mostly office space bud does have a place with a lift to work on cars. He hopes to hire a full-time employee in the middle of next year to help with manufacturing and order fulfilment.

082: Matt Beenen tells us how he climbed the ranks to become President of GrimmSpeed Oct 31, 2016

Show notes

Matt Beenen has always been interested in how things worked and his parents facilitated this fascination. As he grew up, Matt was interested in vehicle technology and pursued this passion by getting a Mechanical Engineering degree in college. He got involved with the SAE Mini Baja team at college. This gave him insight into teamwork, scheduling, and actually manufacturing a race vehicle.

After college, Matt got a job at BAE Systems and worked as a systems engineer. On the weekends, he modified and raced his 2006 Subaru STI. This is where he met some of the GrimmSpeed employees. An engineering position opened up at GrimmSpeed and Matt jumped on the opportunity. Matt was doing engineering work for them and also manage their product development path. He stepped up and worked to improve the operations of the business and began bringing on other engineers and developing processes at the company.

GrimmSpeed now has 13 employees but keeps a very entrepreneurial working mindset, meaning that each employee may perform various roles throughout the day. They recently moved facilities and currently occupy 18,000 square feet. This facility is where they do the R&D, marketing, fabricating, inventory storage, and shipping. They are expanding their products to more platforms and will be introducing stage upgrades with parts and off-the-shelf tunes.

081: Jud Massingill, founder of School of Automotive Machinists, tells us how he built the coolest vocational school around! Oct 24, 2016

Show notes

Jud Massingill was born in Houston and has lived there his whole life. He attended the University of Houston and met his wife there. They have been married since the 70's and she was the person who motivated Jud to make The School of Automotive Machinists (SAM). Jud got started racing at the circle tracks and caught the eye of an investor who wanted to back his racing team and open up a machine shop. This investor decided to spend his time and money elsewhere and offered the business for Jud to buy. He jumped on the opportunity, hired a few guys, and took a swing at running the own engine machine shop.

One day, Jud and his wife were eating dinner and he was commenting on how hard it was to hire skilled employees to run the machines. His wife suggested he open up a school and actually teach people to do it! So, she spent a couple years filing paperwork and submitting to become an accredited teaching institution.

Over the years, Jud has kept it as a family business. His wife still runs the day-to-day operations, Jud teaches many of the classes, his son does the marketing and drives one of their drag cars, and his daughter handles and advises the students. They have worked very hard to make the school as good as possible and recently designated A National School of Excellence by the accreditation committee. This is something that less than 1% of vocational schools have achieved, and they've done it two times in a row!

They currently occupy 30,000 square feet but have ambitious plans to double their footprint. They employ around 30 people at the school and have around 200 students. The SAM courses include; Block Machining, Head Machining, Engine Block Combination, CNC, EFI, and Associate Degree program. Students can take one or all of these classes. Jud is very proud that they are among the top 1% of vocational schools when it comes to job placement.

080: Jason Dienhart details how he created Global Time Attack Oct 17, 2016

Show notes

Jason grew up in Orange County, CA and has always enjoyed going fast and being involved with fast cars. He was particularly fond of the late 80's and early 90's import tuners cars. In 1995, Jason purchased a brand new Honda Civic hatchback SI and began installing parts before he even brought it home! Things got extreme pretty fast and before he knew it, Jason was swapping motors in his Honda and in his friends' cars. Jason became a crew chief for one of his friends and found a skill in organization and planning events. He used this skill to get a job at Super Street Magazine to produce the events they held.

In 2004, Jason and the guys at Super Street had the grand idea to hold a Time Attack style event like the ones they saw in Japan. The plan was to hold it after SEMA in hopes that a lot of the professional Japanese teams would stay longer and participate. A lot of the rules were created around what Jason knew best, and that was drag racing. That is why the event has no power limitations, but instead uses tire width and tread wear to break up the classes. They held several events but Jason later left Super Street to pursue jobs at other automotive enthusiast companies.

Fast forward to 2010 and Jason is once again excited about hosting his own Time Attack race series. He teams up with a partner and holds a press conference at the SEMA show to announce Global Time Attack. They team up with NASA (National Auto Sport Association) to bring some legitimacy to their program. He has since broken out to run the series by himself. There are 3 main events: Road Atlanta, NOLA Motorsports, and GTA Super Lap Battle. Jason also organizes some Pro-Am events local for the California people throughout the year.

GTA Super Lap Battle is still the largest and most publicized event. It is held the Thursday & Friday after SEMA and draws a huge collection of cars, spectators, and media!

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