What about one of your engine heaters? I'll take at least one!

Mark thanks for the response. We could talk about the border but we know where that goes.

Sorry Rally, those heaters have been discontinued for a few years now. There is a little story behind it. A local guy started making them for tractor pulling and he came by the track one day and showed us what it does and I loved the concept of preheating the engines before start up to prolong engine life by relieving the mechanical pinch reducing the wear on the crown and it also got the engine closer to race tune by heat saturating the engine so by the 2nd or 3rd lap of warm up, you knew what the engine was going to run like the remainder of the race instead of thinking its good and it steadily leans out as the heat builds. Great concept, great product, so I asked him if he had any distributors and he said no so I said you have one now and he made them for me to sell. The downside was it was very simplistic, therefore it looked primitive and with the metal bands exposed, it took some responsibility to operate. People need something to be shiny and cheap to be happy. They weren't shiny but they were cheap and they worked well if taken care of and used with your head as you could burn yourself or melt other shit if you left them plugged in and left unattended. So began the comments of they look cheap, they look jimmy rigged, I wouldn't pay $65 for that thing blah blah blah. Some people did pay the money and were very happy with it and the ones that complained and said it wasn't getting as hot as advertised didn't understand how electric outlets work and they were trying to draw power from the same source as the rest of the racing world and current is divided when multiple sources are used. Once they called me and I told them to isolate the power source, they were happy.

Then competition heat comes along with their shinier but more expensive heater. By this time I was tired of all the BS from trying to sell my version and making a whole whopping $10 a heater so I got together with competition heat and said that I would discontinue our heater if I could become a dealer and that's what I did. So now we have a more expensive, better looking product but now the same crowd that said they wouldn't pay for the $65 version because it look hooky, started bitching that this one was too expensive. They were trying to jew me down but part of the agreement was that all dealers were supposed to sell the heaters for the same price as not to start price wars among us. So the $100 a heater was my limit which I didn't mind because my cost was $65 shipped a unit so now I was making about $30 a unit out the door instead of $10. Now I tripled my profit and I didn't have to do a thing other than put a label on the box and send it. A win win if you ask me lol. So now there were no options and no competition to keep prices low so the racers got what the racers sewed. Like the old saying goes, there is no such thing as cheap, fast and great quality in the same sentence. No matter what companies do, there will always be unhappy people because racers as a whole are cheap ass crybabies and they always want champagne performance on a beer budget. They are their own worst enemies most times. I can say I am glad I am not in business anymore. It was a hassle and a headache and wasn't worth my time anymore. There were some really good guys out there that spent whatever it took and could tune and drive well and that part of it was great but there were more cheapass crybabies that were never happy and couldn't tune for shit and it was always the engine guys fault than there were guys who could tune and would pay what shit cost. It made me hate the hobby I loved for so many years so I decided to take a break from it all. Not to mention I was seriously looking to change jobs and relocate to the southwest but that didn't pan out. I'm still in buffalo with the Sheriffs Department and I'm cool with that. When I want a few extra bucks, I work overtime. No more 10-12 hour days of porting on my days off from work to make a couple hundred bucks. Now I just work OT without all the hassle. I do not miss the phone calls at 1am on a saturday or sunday night from people 3-5 hours behind me in time zones asking for my help because they are trackside and their shit is all messed up and they want me to tune it over the phone. It's 1 am and I have to be up in 4 hours to pull a 16 hour shift the next day. No respect, common sense or common courtesy. It's always all about them and they always had this attitude that no matter what time or day, my ass better be there to help and I got sick of that so I had to make "business hours" where I would answer the phone and field calls and anytime else, I would turn it off or ignore it. So after a couple years of falling off the grid, I got back into rc racing just for the fun I had when I was a kid and not to make money. It's when you start to take a hobby and make it a business is when the fun stops and I didn't like that and I didn't like who I was becoming so I stopped before I drove myself crazy and the people around me crazy. The End lol

I still use your heater every weekend. It heats up engine twice as fast as the comp heats and gets hotter. Plus it has the danger factor

Nice to hear from you Mark. Still never seen anything like those crazy proto grp crank mods you did.

My favorite mod engine still to date was that Grp .28 that you did the crazy crank to. It sounded like a turbine engine running down the straight and ohhhh was it thirsty. My pit guy needed another qt of fuel in the 30 min main. I had just broken it in and had little idea how to tune it (I'm sure it had more in it). I told him to pit at 10 mins and it was out of fuel at 6 min. What a blast to drive it turned heads down the straight with that turbine sound. Isold it to an oval guy that said it was a rocket.

Enjoy

So as Mark is not anymore on the modding bussiness I'll got to put my dremel on work to have that turbo crankshaft in my picco boost...