The Market Grows
In 1976, shortly after the introduction of the Accel Turbo-Sonic product line (which utilized Garrett-AiResearch turbochargers), Echlin purchased an up and coming industrial aftermarket turbocharger “copy-cat” house by the name of Roto-Master in California. Roto-Master had by then established itself as the principal aftermarket source of remanufactured industrial diesel turbochargers and components in the U.S. and probably the world. This purchase enabled Accel to produce its own turbos for the Turbo-Sonic product line and firmly establish Roto-Master as the leading producer for the aftermarket performance turbochargers. Roto-Master’s Chief Engineer and VP of Engineering was the ubiquitous Macinnes and Keller became Roto-Master’s Chief Engineer of Turbochargers Systems. In the late 1970s, Detroit enthusiastically “discovered” turbo charging, the threat of a serious fuel crunch as 1980 approached as well as the then severe CAFÉ requirements imposed by the government forced automakers to develop small engines that delivered great fuel economy but which were woefully underpowered. In order to restore some resemblance of performance to these small, displacement engines, auto manufacturers applied turbochargers earnest, so much so that by the early 1980s, essentially every auto manufacturer from Ford to Mercedes had multiple families of turbocharged vehicles in their line-up, much to the delight of Garrett-AiResearch, the major supplier at this time. Aftermarket retrofit and performance turbo-charging became more of a political subject than a technical subject when government regulations imposed by the Clean Air Act of 1977 and California’s Air Resources board made it extremely difficult and costly for retrofit turbocharger kit manufactures to produce economically viable products, which could be sold legally. Some houses did take on this challenge, however, and were able to demonstrate that a retrofit turbo could provide that extra desired “kick in the pants” and satisfy emissions requirements at the same time. Spearco, Dina Engineering, Custom Automotive, Gemini Turbo systems, BAE, Advanced Turbo systems, Gale Banks Engineering, Turbonetics (created by Keller after he left Roto-Master in 1978) and others have proved it can be done by obtaining executive orders from the California Air Resources board that declared, after extensive testing and engineering review, that the product was in compliance with all emission requirements.
