If you grew up on the East Coast with interest in cars it would be a natural transition to be involved in NASCAR racing. As a California native growing up in So Cal with all its desert terrain it was only natural to be involved in Off Road Racing. So it was only natural to spend every other weekend at places like Glamis, Dumont Dunes or Pismo Beach riding dune buggies, motorcycles, ATC’s, quads and jeeps, basically anything off road with wheels.
My Dad had a domestic repair shop but became a VW enthusiast in the early 60’s. I used to help him rebuild the old VW crashbox transmissions and engines. I can remember having a full Okrasa 36HP that just screamed for its time. My first full syncro trans came from one of our buggy friends with a broken first gear he gave me to rebuild when I was about 12.
Starting at age 14, I began earning a living rebuilding VW engines and transmissions which started a life long passion with the automotive industry. At 19 I opened up a successful VW repair shop specializing in custom VW transaxles and as one of the early custom transaxle rebuilders was rebuilding them from all over the country. I have worked at a variety of well known shops such as Barrett Enterprises, Redline Weber, Esslinger Engineering, California Gold Racing, PPI Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing. My years at PPI Motorsports I built the driveline for Ivan “Ironman” Stewart. As a driver I also have 2 driving championships from the well known Mickey Thompson stadium racing series.
Keeping UP with my passion for transmissions I have been running the gear room at Joe Gibbs Racing for the last 8 years full time building transmissions for drivers such as Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, Joey Lagano, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch. At the same time I have also been providing the service of doing VW transaxles and fabrication on the side in the evenings to help people out here on the East coast where there are not many choices for VW transaxles. My side business has become so busy and trying to do this work while still working full time has become to difficult.