Andy Weyenberg began designing...
Andy Weyenberg began designing a low-cost airgun after other racers complained about the price of Nextel Cup-quality guns on the market.
Zilinek's Track Fresh 1 filter is simple, effective, and costs just over $200. It uses a small fan (like those normally used for brake cooling) to draw air through a catalytic filter designed to work at very low temperatures. It filters about 60 percent of the carbon monoxide and nearly 100 percent of airborne pollutants, he says.
Zilinek designed the system to let the driver add to the components as he or she progresses to a larger system, and a cooler can be added to reduce the heat in his or her helmet.
"Even if drivers don't use it for the safety aspect," he says, "they should be using it because it allows them to stay up on the wheel at the end of a race, when their competition is beginning to get fuzzy. Having clean air in the helmet means a driver can make better decisions at the end of the race, when they really count.
"I think a lot of what we need to do is educate drivers about the danger of carbon monoxide," he says. "I don't think drivers realize what bad things can happen and that sometimes the damage can't be reversed."
Andy Weyenberg can build a $1,400 airgun for you that will be the match of anything used by a Nextel Cup team. He does it all the time.
But if you race on a short track or in a development series, he can also build a $349 gun that will do everything you need.
"About $1,000," he says with a smile.
Weyenberg is an amateur racer who knows how to get by on a budget. He never had the money to buy the best equipment on the market, so he often made his own stuff.
Weyenberg is Miller Electric's manager of motorsports and serves as the company's liaison between the manufacturer and race teams. He also is in charge of the Miller-sponsored stock car that the company brings to shows for fan pit stop competitions.
"I built the airguns for the pit stops and people kept asking me where they could get one just like it," he says. But when he told them about the $1,400 price tag, a lot of potential customers just walked away.
"It is just too much for a weekend racer."
Much of the high price was in the airgun used as the foundation for the race version.
So Weyenberg found an overseas foundry that would cast housings for him at a reasonable price, and he began building his own version of the over-the-wall tool in his shop in Charlotte.
"A lot of the tools being sold today by American companies begin as castings from overseas," he says.
Weyenberg polishes and ports the tool to meet the demanding needs of racers and adds his own innards and special synthetic lubrication.
"It's probably just a bit too slow for a Nextel Cup team," he says. "Those guys have such speed and hand-eye coordination, they need the fastest guns on the market. But for anyone else, they'll probably never be quick enough to be faster than my gun.
"If they buy one for $1,400, they are spending about $1,000 on speed they'll never use."
The innovations reflect the genius of racers, crews, and fans who use their creativity to solve problems and make racing safer, more competitive, and more affordable.
The problem solving on a short track team is the same as that of a Nextel Cup crew, but the only real difference is the level of technology.
Often, the difference between someone who simply solves a problem and someone who markets their solution is the courage to take the same chance in the marketplace that they take charging into Turn 1.
Jerry F. Boone can be reached at Jfboone@aol.com.