Introducing Dan Roberto

Posts: 7

Hello Steve,

I am honored to be your first guest speaker and I welcome any and all questions from your band of merry men and women. Just to give you some background on myself, I started out in machine work back in 7th grade and never left it. About 47 years ago! You do the math on my age!!! A buddy and I built a dual engine (that’s TWO lawnmower engines) go kart and were doing 60 mph on wheel barrow tires. Seriously folks; I got serious about cars and the like doing foreign car engine rebuilding in junior college for about

five years and went on to doing aircraft engine overhauls at Long Beach Airport for another five. I later work for Southern California Edison in power plant maintenance as a machinist and then an Engineer III (designer) for another 7 ½ years during which I started my off-road parts business and raced amateur and pro in local and Mickey Thompson and SCORE races. My start was with the Mini Baja Team for CSULA (back in 1980) where I currently hang my hat so to speak. During the mid 80’s thru the mid 90’s I supplied the Mickey Thompson racers, primarily Briggsbuilt cars, with gearboxes, rack and pinion units, hubs, axles, and later CVT clutch parts and units.

I feel fortunate to have been a part of the seven consecutive national titles won by HRD Racing, Nature’s Recipe, and Briggsbuilt Cars in this series. I went on to supply the SODA group in Minnesota with speck gearboxes and now supply people like ATV Racing, Desert Dog, and Big Pines Sports as well as individual builders primarily with gearbox units which handle as much as 300 HP reliably.

I sincerely hope people are using there cars and doing so safely as I have had and been witness to some serious mishaps driving off-road. An appropriate helmet, full harness with hand restraints, as well as backflow devices on the gas tank are a good start.

I say this after driving a car with a 500 cc engine (YZ 465 heavily modified and using a CVT) in a 450 lb car at over 90 mph on dirt at Riverside Raceway back in the late 80’s. My partner and I drove one of the few cars that could double jump like the motorcycles although not getting anywhere close to that much air. I broke my knee NOT making one of these jumps. Our reliability and our speed is what put RPM on the map as we seldom broke and usually won most races we entered. People looked at our hand made gearbox and asked it they could get one as their Honda units regularly failed and cost small fortunes to repair. HRD Racing went thru 19 Honda gearboxes in one season!

This can go on for a lot longer but for those who are still awake, I will stop here and get back to work!!!

Truly, Dan Roberto (RPM)

Posts: 6278

Welcome to Buggynews Dan.

Thanks for taking the time to post here.

Posts: 9836

Welcome. You certainly have a lot of experience. The pictures I've seen of your gearboxes and look awesome!

=Steve

Posts: 803

Would love to see the gear box. James Lee

Posts: 32 · Bronze Member Joined: 25 Mar 2006 Posts: 32 Pictures: 0

Hello Dan, we have talked on the phone and via email. Your gearbox is a work of art. I was one of the first web surfers to your web site. Do you have a price list with photos?

Posts: 1744

Welcome to BuggyNews Dan. Hope to hear some more of your stories and hopefully you will pass along some of your experience/knowledge as well.

Posts: 7

Too James Lee;

If you have a snail mail address I can send you a page with pictures of my stuff and we can talk price later if have any interest. Thanks...

Dan

Posts: 9836

Dan,

If it's okay, I could scan in and post the image of the page you sent me. Just let me know.

-Steve

Posts: 7

Steve,

That would be OK as I'm not one to take many pictures, thanks...

Dan

Posts: 7