Pit Stop Performance...

Sorry Folks but these posts are out of order. Please see my post, seventh below, and then come back here to follow the thread.
KZQ


Glad you're feeling better, and hoping you can keep doing what you love. The really knowledgeable guys here have always had nothing but good things to say about your business (including Larry, of course).

Thanks for posting.

I tried to say Thanks but it says I am banned. But Thanks anyhow

Nothing wrong with Kwik Way valve equipment. Its just old school. Still it works great, and a lot of people still use them.

The God of Horsepower, Smokey Yunick used Kwik Way to do his valve jobs. Need I say anymore!!!!!

In my opinion.
A one million Dollar tooling machine operated by theoretician can not be better than a good mechanic with years of experience and a good hand tool!!!

I want to thank Joe Hooper for making this post so we as members of KZRider can have the straight scoop.
As a moderator here I have to remind Joe and other business owners that only a paying vendor can use there own business name in a post here on KZR. The staff will be cleaning up the post to conform with site rules.. That said officially we as a staff thank Joe for his post and hope he will continue to be a member in good standing .
Now there is nothing in our rules keeping me or any member here from mentioning that Joe Hooper is my go to guy as his shop
PIT STOP PERFORMANCE IS A GREAT PLACE TO DO KZ BUSINESS. .
Sooooooooo Enjoy your Sunday and thanks Joe for your posts.

Dave

Thats really stangup of you Dave.

Not just here on the site but life in general we are loosing the old school KZ guys the one's that
have been riding, racing and repairing them since they came out.
Guys like Joe, Larry, Jay, Jeff I wish they would spend more time on here.

I have received this message from Joe Hooper. I thought it best to post it here in this older thread.

Pit Stop Performance history

The business was established in 1974. I had been wrenching on cars with my father since I was a pup. He flew B17’s in WWII. He was always taking apart something in our driveway on the weekends and some of my earliest memories were of watching what he was doing and, of course, asking the dumb questions that kids always ask. My father was one of the most meticulous people I ever met. When I got old enough to do anything useful, he would let me do it while looking over my shoulder. Naturally, I wanted to be just like him. He taught me more than I have ever learned from anyone since.

In 1968 I bought my first motorcycle and had the top end off the first weekend. I fell in love with motorcycles very quickly. I worked on all of the motorcycles that my friends had, whenever they needed anything done, they came to me. Most of them, at that time were singles or twins. It didn’t matter to me, I wanted to work on all of them. In early 1974 I bought my first Z1A. After working on that along with others purchased by friends, I opened my business. At first, I would work on anything. Within two years, I was only working on Z1s as I did not have time for anything else.

At the same time, I had started engineering school at the University of Central Florida (UCF) taking classes in Mechanical Engineering. UCF now has the second largest campus enrollment in the US.

After graduating I took a job at the Kennedy Space Center as a systems engineer working on the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) system. I did that for 29 years. For the first three years, I continued to run my shop in the evenings until the dual work load got to be too much.
I had started drag racing my Z1 almost from the day I got it and continued to do that while working at KSC. I also continued to work on drag racing bikes for my friends who had Z1s and KZs.

When our esteemed president decided that the US no longer needed to be at the forefront of space exploration, I saw the writing on the wall, I went back into the motorcycle business full time. I knew that the KZ engine was basically the small block Chevrolet of motorcycle engines, but I was surprised at the continued popularity. I started off by selling a few parts on Ebay and offering machine shop services.

In less than a year, I could not keep up with the demand. I hired my best friend John. He had been a Nissan master mechanic for many years until he had a stroke and could no longer work at a regular job where they wanted you working all the time. He and I had drag raced together for many years and I had taught him how to assemble the KZ motors. John is very conscientious and a very good mechanic. John does all of the head setup, ring end gapping and engine assembly while I do the machine work and the parts business.

In the late 2011 I started to have heart problems. It was not long before my atrial fibrillation brought me to my knees. My stamina went to zero and I had to hold onto benches as I made my way across the shop while my heart felt like it was going at 200 BPM. I was in much worse shape than John. I needed to find a way to continue the business. I ended up hiring two different guys.

The first guy was to perform valve jobs. He had a good resume of machine shops he had worked in doing this type of work on automobile heads. His references checked out, so I hired him.

I showed him, on several valve jobs how I wanted things done. I do not have a seat and valve machine like a Serti. I use a Kwik Way valve grinding set that uses stones. This setup requires a little more finesse on the part of the operator. It has a gauge to check concentricity and when you find a high spot, you need to lean ever so slightly on the pressure to get it true. After showing him how I wanted it done, I watched him while trying not to fall off the stool for three complete valve jobs. Satisfied that he knew what he was doing, I moved on.

The second guy I hired was a laborer to do cleaning and bead blasting. At PSP We go through a big song and dance to bead blast a head. When beads get inside, you can’t get them out. We use a plethora of special fixtures to keep the beads out of the head. It is my fault that he did not follow the procedure. I showed him how to set it up one time and figured that was enough. After all, it was pretty basic and he could read, so I figured he could perform that task.

Before my first heart surgery, I was feeling so bad that I had to leave running the shop to John and running the parts to my wife. Both of them did the best they could.

After my first heart surgery, I was feeling a whole bunch better and thought I was cured.

I came back to work and started to evaluate where we were. There was too much going on for either my wife or John to keep track of. The first thing I did was to observe my valve job guy in action. I stood there and watched him do a complete valve job without saying anything. He never used the concentricity gauge once. When he was done I asked him about it and he replied that the pilot would keep it straight and it was a waste of his time to use the concentricity gauge. I wrote him a check for his time to that point and he has not been back since.

Based on that, I watched my laborer and saw him putting a head into the bead blaster without all of the fixtures attached. I stopped him right there and asked why he was not using the fixtures as I had showed him. His reply was that he would put the head in the cleaning tank and let it soak, then clean it “really good” making the fixtures not worth the effort. I wrote him a check for his time to that point and he has not been back since.

I then told John and my wife that there would never, ever, be any more employees at PSP. Our only option would be to raise prices to reduce the amount of work.

I do not want to bore anyone with my health problems, but I had a second heart operation along with a titanium knee installation and am now feeling a lot better.

To close this narrative, I want to say that I will put PSP cylinder boring and engine assembly up against anyone. I will admit that Larry Cavanaugh knows more about valve jobs and porting than I do and can more than likely do a better job. Porting is not our primary focus and we don’t do it for all out racing bikes, we only offer two stages of porting based on what we know to get the most for a buck.

Joe is good people. I chose him for my lower end and cylinder work. Putting the engine back together now. There were few people I would trust to do it.

Cory

Now thats the Joe I knew from the past. I was glad to read that. It explained why some customers were unhappy in the past but I never believed that it was Joe that did that work.
Stay healthy Joe.

Dr. Gamma wrote: Nothing wrong with Kwik Way valve equipment. Its just old school. Still it works great, and a lot of people still use them.

The God of Horsepower, Smokey Yunick used Kwik Way to do his valve jobs. Need I say anymore!!!!!

Smokey is a legend and one of my heroes too

Dave

Street Fighter LTD wrote:

Dr. Gamma wrote: Nothing wrong with Kwik Way valve equipment. Its just old school. Still it works great, and a lot of people still use them.

The God of Horsepower, Smokey Yunick used Kwik Way to do his valve jobs. Need I say anymore!!!!!

Smokey is a legend and one of my heroes too

Dave

Most of my motor assembly techniques came from Reading Smokey's books, and many of his articles like the ones that used to be in the old Circle Track magazine!!!!!