Rev it up: Air Flow Research brings more horsepower to high-speed world.

IN the world of hot rodding, horsepower's the thing.

Enthusiasts seeking to boost the power of their factory engines look for a modified cylinder head that mixes air and gasoline at just the right speed and volume to spark the best bang.

That's where Air Flow Research Heads Inc. comes in. The family-owned Pacoima firm isn't the industry's largest manufacturer of high-performance cylinder heads, but it's considered among the most forward-thinking.

In 2004, the company was the first to come out with aftermarket cylinder heads that were "EO certified," meaning they met California's demanding auto emission standards. That meant Ford Mustang and Chevy Camaro owners no longer had to sacrifice performance to be street legal.

The design tweak can add up to 90 horsepower and 2 mpg to a typical mid-'80s to mid-'90s 260-hp Ford Mustang, while allowing owners to switch to regular gas from premium. And with gas hovering at $3 per gallon, the company is attracting more attention from customers and the trade press.

"We started out as a racing company and got into the street legal part and now it's more than 80 percent of our business," said company vice president Scott Sperling, son of founder Ken Sperling.

Air Flow's primary design innovation was deceptively simple: carve precise, thin grooves in the cylinder's intake ports to create a tumbling effect that optimally atomizes the air-fuel mixture. Too much air and the engine stalls. Too little air and performance falls flat.

Since the early 1990s, the company has used automated manufacturing to get consistent, uniform results for each cylinder head. Each rough cylinder head used to be tooled by hand, a skilled craftsman's job requiring time-consuming stops and starts to measure progress against a customer's specifications.

Now, the company employs sophisticated computer programs to operate shape-cutting machines that can finish a head to precise specifications every time. (These machines have been around since the 1980s, but many of Air Flow's competitors do not use them to their full extent.)

By next spring, when the company relocates to a 28,500-square-foot plant under construction in the Valencia Commerce Center it will add robotics to further streamline production

"They're among the best of the best," said John Barkley, associate publisher of Chevy High-Performance magazine.

Garage mechanic

Ken Sperling, a hot rod enthusiast, started out hand-tooling heads in his Granada Hills garage in the 1960s and began the company in 1970, selling to stock car racers, speed boat racers and hot rod enthusiasts.

As early as the late 1970s he tried to automate the process, using old-fashioned tape drives to operate an automated cutting machine. But he also relied on his sons Rick and Scott, whose after-school job during their high school years was helping out their father.

The brothers pursued other work after graduation but came back to family business in the early 1990s. And when their father died suddenly from leukemia in 1996, Rick inherited the business and formed a partnership with his brother and longtime chief engineer Guy Tripp to run the business.

Then, the shop was still doing mostly custom work. But with the installation of more computer-controlled shape-cutting machines, each new design could be scanned, digitized and then produced in large numbers for the retail market, leading to major growth. In 1996, the company sold 1,000 head sets and had l0 employees, but by last year it sold 6,000 sets and had 40 workers.

"They listen to their customers and make a product that we can take out of the box and use, which isn't the case with a lot of companies," said Jim Grubbs, owner of Jim Grubbs Motorsports, a Valencia-based custom engine maker and longtime customer.

The company's growth has prompted the need for better management of production. Air Flow last year switched to bar coding to track orders from start to finish. That has enabled stockpiling of inventory of partially completed production models, with the goal of cutting in half the four to six weeks it used to take to fill a standard order.

Air Flow still makes custom heads for stock-car, boating and specialty racing, but street-legal production models now make up about 85 percent of orders. The company intends to offer aftermarket heads for nearly every General Motors and Ford performance engine on the road. It is also exploring the growing Japanese performance market.

Another open question: whether ownership will pass to a new generation of the family. Rick and Scott's oldest sons are both hot rod enthusiasts, and are pursuing college degrees in business and engineering.

"It would be great if it was ultimately what they want to do but there's no pressure," said Rick Sperling.

Air Flow Research Heads Inc.

Year Founded: 1970

Core Business: Designs and makes engine cylinder heads for high-performance vehicles

Revenues 2003: $6.5 million

Revenues 2004: $7.9 million

Employees 2003: 36

Employees 2004: 40

Goal: Expand product line to include aftermarket heads for every GM and Ford high-performance vehicle

Driving Force: Desire of hot rod enthusiasts to have a performance edge