|
|
|
|
|
|
24 years of high performance automotive cylinder head and related parts engineering, design and manufacturing can be found here at Advanced Motorsports Technology and its subsidiary SoCal Diesel. Our President Guy Tripp started his career as a high performance engine builder and Automotive machinist in 1980 while studying Mechanical Engineering at Cal State University Northridge. In 1982, Guy accepted a position at Airflow Research as a machinist. At that time Airflow Research was recognized as one of the top cylinder head porting companies in the country. They were the only company at that time that was capable of CNC porting cylinder heads. During the early to mid 1980s AFR was under contract to General Motors to design the ports and develop the small block chevy aluminum cylinder head for use in Nascar Winston Cup racing. In 1986 AFR installed a state of the art Superflow 901 Engine dyno cell and Guy was chosen to manage this R&D aspect of the company as well as supervise the day to day operations in the machine shop. Drawing on Guy’s talents as an engine builder AFR quickly expanded into building competitive racing engines for many of the West Coast’s top racers in both NHRA and Nascar. In 1988 AFR began to redefine their business model and move away from a porting service and into foundering and manufacturing their own SBC cylinder head casting. The next few years Guy and his team would be very busy refining and perfecting the cylinder head manufacturing process. These cylinder heads later became the first emission legal aftermarket aluminum cylinder heads available in the country. Featuring a 55 RWHP increase and staying within all applicable emission standards made these a very popular choice with performance enthusiasts all over the world. In 1994 Guy and AFR further expanded their machining abilities to include simultaneous 5 axis CNC porting of their complete line of small block cylinder heads. At this time there were less than a handful of companies that could accomplish this very difficult machining operation. In 1996 Guy was granted his first United States Patent for a hydraulic roller valve train stabilization device known as the Hydra-Rev. This device is still manufactured and marketed today by AFR. Also in 1996 in recognition of Guy’s considerable contributions to the company, Guy was offered a chance to purchase a 29% ownership in AFR which he gratefully accepted. In 1997 Guy pioneered the fixturing and programming of a Haas HS-1R horizontal machining center for simultaneous 5 axis CNC porting of cylinder heads. This machine and fixturing would become the industry standard for this type of operation for many years to come. In 1998 Guy and his team at AFR put their innovative engineering skills to work and released their small block Ford line of cylinder heads to the market. Again, as the first in the industry to offer an emission legal high performance cylinder head the Ford community quickly became huge AFR fans. In 1999 Guy designed and implemented the first of many Mazak pallet changing CNC machining centers at AFR. These machining cells were capable of processing 20 cylinder head castings at one time. In 2000, Guy and his team at AFR designed, manufactured and released their Big Block Chevrolet line of Aluminum cylinder heads to the market. This line of cylinder heads quickly rose to the top of the industry and raised the bar for other manufacturers to try and meet. In 2001, after spending many years in the dyno cell and at the race track testing and proving the products that AFR marketed, Guy realized a life long dream of competing in a Nascar stock car. He began his driving career in the Modified Four division at Irwindale Speedway in California. The 2001 racing season saw Guy set many track qualifying records and win the series championship in only his first year of competition. The 2002 racing season was more of the same. In 2003, Guy and his team at AFR designed, manufactured and released their LS-1 Gen 3 aluminum cylinder head line to the market. These were the first aftermarket aluminum cylinder heads for the Gen 3 engine, they were emission legal and featured many innovative qualities. Once again these cylinder heads quickly became the must have item for any serious LS-1 build up. Also in 2003, constantly challenging himself, Guy and his racing team moved up to the Late Model stock car division at Irwindale Speedway. Guy qualified second in his second race in this brand new car during an open comp race at Mesa Marin Speedway in Bakersfield California where more than 60 cars were trying to make a 30 car field during the October Classic. This was a ½ mile high banked track that Guy had only driven once before. The 2003 racing season saw Guy take the “Rookie of the Year” honors in this very competitive division at Irwindale Speedway’s extremely fast ½ mile race track. In 2004, Guy discovered his passion for Diesel performance by modifying his 2003 Chevy Silverado Pickup powered by a Duramax Diesel and Allison transmission to over 500 RWHP. Since then Guy has applied his technical knowledge and experience to furthering the performance of the Duramax diesel engine. In 2005, Guy designed the first Robotic CNC manufacturing cell to be used at AFR. This cell would feature four 630mm Horizontal pallet changing machines fed by 3 robots. The cell would be capable of running completely unattended by humans for days at a time and would include, in process quality control inspection using a state of the art CMM. Literally, raw castings would be stacked at one end and complete machined and inspected cylinder head castings would be fed out and automatically stacked at the other without human intervention. In June of 2006, Guy left AFR and launched “Advanced Motorsports Technology” and its subsidiary “SoCal Diesel” in order to apply many of the concepts and technology that Guy has pioneered in his career, to the Diesel Performance Market. SoCal Diesel was the first to release CNC ported Duramax cylinder heads to the market. SoCal Diesel also worked very closely with the EFILive team in New Zealand in order to make Duramax engine tuning software available to the general public. The results of Guy’s efforts in Duramax performance can be further explored on this web site. Starting with CNC ported Duramax cylinder heads, and a complete line of supporting parts, SoCal Diesel has established itself as the #1 place to come for your Duramax Diesel performance needs. Thanks for stopping by and come back often to see what Guy and his team are up to next! Questions? ...........Click here to send us an email |
|
|
|
|
