An Introduction....

[HRD-Don]

Hello one and all- I figured its about time I introduced myself to the community. My Name is Don Walker, and I own a small performance shop in Denver, Colorado, I have been working as a professional racing technician for the last 15 years. I started racing as a hobby, and won a few regional autox championships before going road racing, first in a MG Midget, and then in a Porsche 924 in GT3. I had mediocre success, and seemed to do better preparing the cars than racing them. After a few years working on my own doing track prep and minor restoration I went to work for a friend of mine at a Porsche specific race shop in Mooresville North Carolina.We built and prepared cars for PCA,POC, HSR, NASA, and SCCA Club and Pro racing.Everything from 356 Carreras and Speedsters to 956/62's all the way up to the 996/7's. 935's were my favorite and a bit of a speciality, and I am probably one of the few left around that know how to properly set up the mechanical fuel injection. I worked with some of the most talented Porsche people in the country, and our cars did very well. We took a class win at the 24 Hours of Daytona, and have run at almost every track in the country. I left there to go Pro racing with Mirko Racing in the Speed World Challenge racing Mazda 626's with David Leslie driving. In the three races I was involved with the team we achieved 1 pole and 1 outside pole, a marked improvement for a team who hadnt qualified higher than 5th. After leaving Mirko I did contract work for various Porsche Club and HSR guys, mostly weekend track events and between race car prep. I also did contract work for a BMW team in the World Challenge. However I was getting tired of the constant travel involved in "mercenary" track work, so I started to change my goals a bit. Shortly after that I was hired by 3R Racing/Automotive in Denver, and moved here. In the nearly four years I was with 3R I started to take yet another direction, wanting to work with more "street" cars than the pure track cars, about a year and a half ago I left 3R to go to work for myself. My experience is mostly with racing cars, and mostly with Porsche's, a few BMW's, a lot of prototype/sports racers/formula cars( I still own a Formula Vee, and build them on occasion). I own or have owned many of the cars you do- I am on my second FC RX7 and have an FD RX7 as well, I have a Talon TSI that put down almost 500whp on pump gas, I just sold my MK3 Supra Turbo(conversion) and traded my 240 way back when to get the MK3. I have also owned 944's(na and Turbo) 911's, Fiats-X 1/9's and Spiders, Alfa's, MG's - B's and Midgets, Triumphs- Spitfires, TR7's, and TR8's. My current daily drivers are a 1997 328i BMW and a 2003 EVO 8- very mildly modded, I also own a 1990 TSI, very highly modded, made 489AWHP on a Superflow dyno on 91 pump gas @21psi, a Stealth RT/TT (pretty much for sale now) and a FC RX7 being prepared for the coming Nopi drift season.

The name of my shop is Horsepower Research and Development, and we can be found on the web at hrd-performance.com.

Cheers!
Don