Page 4 of Tuning Parts Catalog by Techtonics Tuning

our history techtonics tuning opened it s doors in 1981 however our involvement in vw tuning goes back many years techtonics founder darrell vittone became a vw enthusiast at the tender age of 10 when his father joe vittone brought a shiny new beetle home in 1954 not only did he buy the car he also obtained a vw porsche franchise and started economotors in riverside california two years later the legendary vw accessory and tuning firm empi was formed by joe empi developed produced arguably the best parts accessories ever made for the air cooled vw s today the parts are collector items with some selling at 30 times the original prices even the catalogs and literature are worth an amazing amount of money darrell s first duty at empi was packaging okrasa kits okrasa was the name used by herr oettinger for his darrell tuning his modified 36hp air special cylinder heads and dual carb kits for the 36 hp vw cooled vw on the dyno in 63 air cooled engine by 1963 darrell was competing at the five years later and more than double the power darrell ran 11.5 et 115 mph in 1971 and was the #1 car in it s class local drag strips with his 56 bug he found out quickly that just bolting on a bunch of speed equipment doesn t always give the best results however empi had just bought something that eliminated the guesswork this device was an engine dynamometer this started darrell s love affair with dyno testing darrell used to remove the engine to run dyno tests on the weekend and reinstall it for getting back and forth to work during the week this went on for months at a time eventually the car was modified to the point it was no longer streetable and later became world famous as the empi inch pincher drag sedan in 1971 empi was sold to a large conglomerate and darrell left to head up a small tuning firm called the raceshop the raceshop set new standards in vw performance darrell built a fiat 850 spider with a vw engine that was light years ahead of the competition the car eventually ran over 130 mph in 10.3 seconds for the quarter mile and this was well over 20 years ago this kind of performance would not have been possible without the help of another device in addition to the dynamometer that device was an air flow bench twenty-five years ago you had to build your own and even then they were expensive the cylinder heads developed produced at the raceshop are still sought after and are worth more than they originally cost new darrell built his first water-cooled vw engine in 1978 using an oettinger 90.5mm crankshaft the darrell s vw powered fiat was never defeated in it s class and ran 10.3 et 130 mph in 1975 4

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