Drag Illustrated Issue 147, August 2019

PARTNER PROFILE R yan Hunter seems to be pur- pose built for the performance industry. We’ve heard this so of- ten but it’s just the fiber of our industry. For Hunter and his family-owned company, SCE Gaskets, it really all starts in 1990 in his dad’s garage. There are some pic- tures on the wall that give you a clear indication that they’ve always been car people, destined to leave a mark on the industry. D rag I llustrateD sat down with Hunter at SCE Gaskets’ new facility in Mount Pleasant, Tennessee, to discuss the company’s history and what comes next for the family-owned gasket manufacturer. Where did this all start? It all began with my grandfather, who made side money during Prohibition by modifying cars for bootleggers. From there, the car guy thing was a part of our family heritage. My dad’s first car was a ‘32 Plymouth coupe that he bought for a few bucks, got the engine running and drove it to high school. Then, like so many others from that era, Dad horse-traded up with dozens of other cars. He just started wrenching on crap and from there all three of us brothers picked it up. I’m the middle child – all of us got our hands dirty and still to this day we each have car projects going. Later, my brother Scott and I put together a blown gas flat-bottom drag boat. From this project, the opportunity presented itself to go into performance manufacturing and I did the craziest thing. I was like, “Hey, I understand blown drag racing engines, let’s start selling gaskets to NHRA Top Fuel teams.” What could go wrong, right? So, I kid you not, I was at Pomona for the Winternationals the year after we started SCE Gaskets, and I’m sitting in the stands watching these fuel cars going down the track. And I’m thinking, “What the hell did I do? I’m putting gaskets and parts into a bomb that carries with it a lot of liability.” That’s where we started, at the top of the heap. Actually, now we’ve worked into regular drivers, so we kind of went backwards. Did you enjoy that challenge? Though it was daunting, yes, I did. Our job as manufacturers is to solve your problem. If you’re complaining about something, it’s my job to fix it, because you as the customer have the right to request everything: “I want it cheap, I want it fast, I want it now, I want it to work perfect.” “OK.” My job is to supply that. Do I get to make a profit? Absolutely, I get to make a profit if I can meet all your needs and if I do, then I win the contest. So, in this fashion, we set out to solve the NEW HOR How did you get started in manufacturing? All through high school I pretty much followed my dad’s leading and horse-traded cars. I had some junk and some nice stuff but my ’65 Malibu SS got me hooked on the drag race thing. I fiddled with my stuff, wrenched a bit on a NASCAR Winston West team, wrenched on a Top Fuel dragster team and various others. Then, as a young man I read a book that asked this question; if I could do anything in the world, what would it be? Not what can you do to make a living, or what can you afford to do...what would you love to do? I answered, “manufacturing performance-related parts.” 100 | D r a g I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com age-old complaint that copper head gaskets leak coolant. We invented what we branded as the Titan Copper Head Gasket, the world’s first self-sealing copper head gasket, which is pat- ented. Later, we added to that by inventing the integral combustion seal, a self-sealing copper head gasket with built-in O-rings. Though our product line now includes much more, early on we did a fairly good job at main- lining copper gaskets. Prior to the mid 1990s, copper head gaskets were a boutique item that only a few people knew about, and fewer knew how to get, for your blown whatever-it-was that you were putting together. We made cop- per head gaskets readily available to high-end consumers by bringing them into distribution – then created the embossed copper exhaust gasket product category, which we branded as our Pro Copper Exhaust. I’m always interested in this process, as I look at all the drag racers, they know how to develop parts, they know how to test them. That’s very true, the “edge-of-the-envelope” nature of our racing customers has forced us to make sealing solutions that are pretty robust. We didn’t start out making gaskets for Briggs & Stratton lawn mowers, we started out making gaskets for Top Fuel dragsters. For example, our partnership with Doug Herbert for many, Issue 147

Drag Illustrated Issue 147, August 2019 | Page 100