Began to experiment with:
- Big-valve heads
- Camshaft testing
- Larger displacement
- Dual side-drafts
- Electronic and knock sensing ignitions
- Most basic vehicle operations

Had noted tunerTechtonics build me a beefy stroker motor with a goal set to turbo charge my early Scirocco to the max. Here is where my love of turbo-charging began.

Try this on for size:
1.9 liter 8v at 8-9 psi of T04 turbo making 200-210 horsepower on pump gas. No electronics at all, this really makes you need to learn how the mechanicals work. Did 13.6 et's on street tires at 99 mph's. To put this into perspective a Porsche 944 turbo S did the quarter in the low 14 second range which was at least as fast as the era's Corvette. Began to work on other local cars, selling tuning products, and my services in the local papers (as this was before the Internet).

Big Front mount intercooler, hand made 3 inch turbo back exhaust, four additional injectors controlled by a piggy-back controller.

This set up was able to support over 20 psi of boost, which yielded well over 300 horsepower and a trap speed just shy of a 110 mph. This was tremendous fun, as I could now embarrass turbo Supras, Porsche 930s, and stay neck to neck with RUF 930s from 30-100.

This is where I started to learn about the “Weakest Link Theory”, which led to my learning of harmony and balance. The “Weakest Link Theory” is, the more you push it, the more you will geometrically find the weakest parts.

Some of the casualties included:
- Numerous broken “High-Performance” clutches
- Three to four gear boxes in a year
- A Quaife differential.

The current state of this car was extremely overpowered for the chassis and brakes. This is where I started to learn the disadvantages of having a car that had a poor balance between the engine, suspension, brakes, and driveline. Looking back, this was definitely no longer a car you could drive and enjoy daily.

It soon became clear that working two jobs would no longer be possible. With the help of a partner, Velocity Sport Tuning, Inc. was formed. The “shop” in my garage was moved to our first location in Lawndale, California. Our daily business consisted mostly of installation of performance products, and service. Long dirty hours with all kinds of greasy things falling in my hair were spent at the shop. Velocity became a Bureau of Automotive Repair (BAR) licensed shop, they would later ask us to trouble shoot common vw complaints that they were receiving. Two magazine articles this year featured cars built by VST, this is where our notoriety would begin. The effect of the magazine features on business was huge, but I was now spending more time on the phone dealing with sales and tech support. This made service a challenge, as VST was still a two man operation at this time. Still, technical support was a priority to us, this and customer service were something of a rarity in those times.

Began to market Peloquin/Velocity differential shim kit

VW Trends 07/1994 “Back in Black” By Clark Emery. This was one of the first feature articles on a car that we had prepared.

European Car 08/1994 “Street Rats” By Les Bidrawn. Our first feature article in European Car magazine. This article featured a two liter Golf 2 and a 2.1 liter 16v Scirocco. The Scirocco boasted the largest pistons, that we knew of, in a VW motor.

EuroSport Car 7/95 “Full Throttle Body” An article on the installation of one of VST's big throttle bodies.

European Car 2/96 “Thug Mentality” By Vincent Donizetti and Les Bidrawn. A turbo charged Golf 2 with stand alone engine management and some unique ideas. The car was plenty fast and during the photo shoot the magazine hot-shoe took it out and spun the teeth off one of the gears. Please re-read the “Weakest Link Theory.”

European Car 10/96 “Tech Analysis: Volkswagen Testing a group of performance brake pads” By James Sly. Testing of eight different sets of performance brake pads in many different categories. This was a very formidable amount of work to get the data and gained us much respect from many and borderline hatred from those who did not like the results.  

Volkswagen Sport Tuning for Street and Competition , Robert Bentley Publishers , By Per Schroeder. We contributed many photos, tech information and elbow grease to this really thorough book. We were very proud to be so prominently displayed in a book that is published by Bentley Publishing. That is the same company that publishes the factory VW and Audi service manuals. This book is still sold in 2003 as a great source of information 6 years later by most of the tuners. Our friend Per even sent us a signed copy!

Import Automotive Parts & Accessories 08-09/98 Many of our products and lines that we carried were offered in this wholesale trade publication.

VW Power Fall/99 “The VW Power Tuner's Guide”. Gave a brief bio and recommended modifications for different budgets.

In the beginning of the year we had our best month ever. In anticipation of a really great year we hired another person and got ready for the impending sales booms. Middle of the year sales were mediocre and in September the terrorist attack in New York pretty much put a major halt in our, and everyone's, business (major portion on our customers were from the east coast). Velocity was very extended, as was I. I had to let one of our staff members go due to poor sales, I was more broken up than he was.

European Car 01/2001 “Big Corrado Brakes on the Scirocco 16v” By Peter Wu. A combination of how to article and review of a braking package using components from Velocity, Momentum and Ferodo .

European Car 01/2001 “Tech Letters / Corrections to a previous article on 16v cam testing” By James Sly.

European Car 03/2001 “Advertisement” This is one of our favorite ads and showed quite a spirit of fun and fight. Thanks to our friend C. Lee for the ad.

European Car 05/2001 “Vic's Stealthfighter” By Matt Hayashibara and Henry Dekuyper. This article featured a car owned by Vic K. and our friends at Eurosport . We supplied the super sexy pistons for the very special motor the Vic put together.

European Car 07/2001 “Project A4 1.8 Quattro, Part III: The Finale: upping the ante” By Shiv Pathak and Les Bidrawn. We volunteered a set of our larger A8 based brake kit. The author was very please and recorded a very substantial improvement with our humble honest brake kit.

European Car 10/2001 “Screamers” By Les Bidrawn. A trio of beautiful and fast 16v VW's. I was very proud of this article as the cars represented many things that I have always loved about a sporty car. Simple, well balanced, and subtle.

European Car 04/2002 “Project GTI16V” By Les Bidrawn. Velocity contributed a lightweight flywheel, clutch assembly and some advice to help with this project that was put together by our friends at Eurosport Accessories.

European Car 05/2002 “Project Boxster R, Part 3, More power and cool trim bits.” By Les Bidrawn. We supplied a GIAC chip and some minor suspension work to this project.

The irony of both of these magazine articles came to press after the close of the business. With the three-month editorial lead-time nothing else could be done.

Took 6 of the ASE certification tests and passed all of them:
- A1 Engine Repair
- A3 Manual Drive Train and Axles
- A4 Suspension and Steering
- A5 Brakes
- A6 Electrical/Electronic Systems
- A8 Engine Performance

Had an opportunity to take a road trip with some good friends. It was on this road trip that I met the staff at Stasis Engineering. We hit it off immediately and I have great respect for their ideas. I called an old friend of mine at Koni to do some background checks on Stasis. He was very positive about what Stasis is doing. The road trip had given me time to collect my thoughts and work on a new plan of action.
I started Torque Factory, Inc. soon thereafter. Initially I had plans of just selling GIAC, a company which I have a strong trust in and a long history with, software to local enthusiasts. But after thinking strongly about it, Stasis offered me the opportunity to be one of their select dealers.