Winters Foundry , Snowflake logo

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

Never heard that about Buddy Barr and Edelbrock. They did cast parts for Ford, though. Much like Winters did for GM. In fact, that's who I associate with BB the most...Ford.

Yes, they did casting for Edelbrock.
There was a time many years ago, that if you went through the pattern storage area at Buddy Barr it was like a museum of history of aftermarket engine castings. They got rid of most of them at one point around 2006. Most of them were wood and falling apart anyhow.

I actually did find some stuff to support this after you posted this. For example, it appears that the Edelbrock OL4B Olds intake manifold was cast at Buddy Bar. I'm sure if there's 1 style, there's likely more. I appreciate the info. Learned something new today.

I was a Senior Design Engineer at Edelbrock until couple months ago. (The drive in LA traffic got to be too much).
Anyhow, Edelbrock was a big customer of BB.
It is amazing how much went through there.

[engineguyBill]

Just curious . . . . How much of their product line does Edelbrock cast at their foundry in San Jacinto, compared to third-party suppliers?

[JoePorting]

Yes, they did casting for Edelbrock.
There was a time many years ago, that if you went through the pattern storage area at Buddy Barr it was like a museum of history of aftermarket engine castings. They got rid of most of them at one point around 2006. Most of them were wood and falling apart anyhow.

I actually did find some stuff to support this after you posted this. For example, it appears that the Edelbrock OL4B Olds intake manifold was cast at Buddy Bar. I'm sure if there's 1 style, there's likely more. I appreciate the info. Learned something new today.

I was a Senior Design Engineer at Edelbrock until couple months ago. (The drive in LA traffic got to be too much).
Anyhow, Edelbrock was a big customer of BB.
It is amazing how much went through there.

I always thought working at Edelbrock would be cool. Has anyone talked about moving the company to somewhere employee friendly like Kansas or Texas? There current location at "Hell" LA, CA sucks. The traffic was bad 30 years ago. Now it's bad X 10.

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

Just curious . . . . How much of their product line does Edelbrock cast at their foundry in San Jacinto, compared to third-party suppliers?

All of the heads and manifolds that I know of. I didn't pay much attention to those operations unless an issue involved one of my projects. There are too many parts to pay attention to stuff outside your sphere of concern.

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

I actually did find some stuff to support this after you posted this. For example, it appears that the Edelbrock OL4B Olds intake manifold was cast at Buddy Bar. I'm sure if there's 1 style, there's likely more. I appreciate the info. Learned something new today.

I was a Senior Design Engineer at Edelbrock until couple months ago. (The drive in LA traffic got to be too much).
Anyhow, Edelbrock was a big customer of BB.
It is amazing how much went through there.

I always thought working at Edelbrock would be cool. Has anyone talked about moving the company to somewhere employee friendly like Kansas or Texas? There current location at "Hell" LA, CA sucks. The traffic was bad 30 years ago. Now it's bad X 10.

The location is a big problem. Too Expensive to the west to gang infested too the east. Good employees have to come from too far away. I was driving 2+ hours each way some days. It is a fun place (if you work in R&D) but it is a tough challenge to improve on late model cars.
With 3D printing and 5 sun is with real good calibrator to run your testimg a lot of things people think they know get proven or debunked daily.

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

I actually did find some stuff to support this after you posted this. For example, it appears that the Edelbrock OL4B Olds intake manifold was cast at Buddy Bar. I'm sure if there's 1 style, there's likely more. I appreciate the info. Learned something new today.

I was a Senior Design Engineer at Edelbrock until couple months ago. (The drive in LA traffic got to be too much).
Anyhow, Edelbrock was a big customer of BB.
It is amazing how much went through there.

I always thought working at Edelbrock would be cool. Has anyone talked about moving the company to somewhere employee friendly like Kansas or Texas? There current location at "Hell" LA, CA sucks. The traffic was bad 30 years ago. Now it's bad X 10.

The location is a big problem. Too Expensive to the west to gang infested too the east. Good employees have to come from too far away. I was driving 2+ hours each way some days. It is a fun place (if you work in R&D) but it is a tough challenge to improve on late model cars.
With 3D printing and 5 dynos with real good calibrator to run your testimg a lot of things people think they know get proven or debunked daily.

[ClassAct]

I was a Senior Design Engineer at Edelbrock until couple months ago. (The drive in LA traffic got to be too much).
Anyhow, Edelbrock was a big customer of BB.
It is amazing how much went through there.

I always thought working at Edelbrock would be cool. Has anyone talked about moving the company to somewhere employee friendly like Kansas or Texas? There current location at "Hell" LA, CA sucks. The traffic was bad 30 years ago. Now it's bad X 10.

The location is a big problem. Too Expensive to the west to gang infested too the east. Good employees have to come from too far away. I was driving 2+ hours each way some days. It is a fun place (if you work in R&D) but it is a tough challenge to improve on late model cars.
With 3D printing and 5 dynos with real good calibrator to run your testimg a lot of things people think they know get proven or debunked daily.

LOL I'm thinking what the hell is 5 sun? I'm thinking some slang for how sunny it is all the time. Kinda like keeping it 100 or whatever they say now.

5 dyno's makes much more sense.

[makin chips]

I always thought working at Edelbrock would be cool. Has anyone talked about moving the company to somewhere employee friendly like Kansas or Texas? There current location at "Hell" LA, CA sucks. The traffic was bad 30 years ago. Now it's bad X 10.

The location is a big problem. Too Expensive to the west to gang infested too the east. Good employees have to come from too far away. I was driving 2+ hours each way some days. It is a fun place (if you work in R&D) but it is a tough challenge to improve on late model cars.
With 3D printing and 5 dynos with real good calibrator to run your testimg a lot of things people think they know get proven or debunked daily.

LOL I'm thinking what the hell is 5 sun? I'm thinking some slang for how sunny it is all the time. Kinda like keeping it 100 or whatever they say now.

5 dyno's makes much more sense.

Lmao! Good catch. I missed that completely. When I saw that it looked to be exactly the same as the previous post after the first few words, I skipped it.

Guess I need to learn to not do that. I could miss valuable info that way.

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

LOL I'm thinking what the hell is 5 sun? I'm thinking some slang for how sunny it is all the time. Kinda like keeping it 100 or whatever they say now.

5 dyno's makes much more sense.

That auto spell checker makes a mess of some common words.

For those that are interested, working in Edelbrock R&D is an interesting job.
The Engineering office uses NX CAD which is a very good software (much better than Solidworks that many places use).
To succeed there you need very good CAD skills and understanding of how to design for casting / cost efficient foundry tooling.
One of the most advantageous things they have are very good 3D printers that can print full size manifolds that are run on the dynos.
I was encouraged to test anything I wanted to without restriction. It is particularly convenient to be able to have as many castings to
experiment with as you want and engines to dyno test with as much as you want. You can get any parts that you want to test with.
They have very good calibrators with OEM experience so testing is much more professional than what you find in many places where
emotion clouds the direction of tuning and the interpretation of results. For the most part, engineers, don't even go to the dyno room
when their stuff is being tested. If multiple engines being tested on the various cells are different enough, you can still hear when your project
is being pulled in the engineering office, it is kind of pleasant to hear during the day.
They have a good staff that assembles the engines and does the configurations/parts swaps.
They have a good policy of isolating R&D from production when it comes to testing.

[sd396]

Where was Winters located?

Canton Ohio.. If you look up the "Factory of Terror' in Canton Ohio, It will give you an outside view of the Old Foundry Building.. The Building and Haunted House is owned by John Eshlish

[sd396]

Winters cast much of the GM high performance aluminum parts, such as intake manifolds, some heads, water pump housings, etc. A very few of the Holley offerings.


Buddy Barr foundry is located in Southern California and does much of the aluminum casting for manufacturers in the area such as Offenhauser, Weiand (prior to acquisition by Holley) and others. I think that they may have cast some Edelbrock parts before Edelbrock opened their own aluminum foundry.

The Original Winters foundry building is now a Haunted house attraction in located in Canton Ohio.. It is called the "Factory of Terror". The Inside Displays of the Haunted Factory contain many of the Original Sand Casting Molds used as backdrops to originally produce the Cylinder Heads and Intake Manifolds for many of our Beloved GM Muscle Cars!

[DCal]

The investors that own Edelbrock bought Comp Cams and will be moving Edelbrock to Tenn. I bet Curt Hooker knew this and retired and it's probably why they laid off Dr Rick Roberts.
Arias used Buddy Barr almost exclusively which was way more business than most people were aware.

[HDBD]

I have seen the snowflake patched in on forgeries.

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

The investors that own Edelbrock bought Comp Cams and will be moving Edelbrock to Tenn. I bet Curt Hooker knew this and retired and it's probably why they laid off Dr Rick Roberts.
Arias used Buddy Barr almost exclusively which was way more business than most people were aware.

Who says Edelbrock in moving to TN?
I don't think anyone in Edelbrock knew about Comp at the point Hooker left.

[DCal]

The investors that own Edelbrock bought Comp Cams and will be moving Edelbrock to Tenn. I bet Curt Hooker knew this and retired and it's probably why they laid off Dr Rick Roberts.
Arias used Buddy Barr almost exclusively which was way more business than most people were aware.

Who says Edelbrock in moving to TN?
I don't think anyone in Edelbrock knew about Comp at the point Hooker left.

Hmmm Where is Comp located? Many people in Mooresville are talking about it too. I personally think that its been in works for some time as Vic has been out here numerous times.