David Localio owns Headgames Motorworks, a cylinder head shop in Princeton Junction, New Jersey. When he talked with host Kevin Dubois in the spring of 2016, Headgames was porting and rebuilding heads for import and domestic performance cars, shipping work to almost every continent, and taking on a new Viper head program.
David started the business in a 200 square foot room with no bathroom. By 2016 he had about 5,000 square feet and seven people, including a shop manager who ran the day-to-day so he could stay at the grinder.
This article covers how David built the shop, how he got through a near-collapse when the economy crashed, the lower-cost product that brought business back, and the changes to workflow, hours and job selection that made the shop more efficient.
From a paper route to the School of Automotive Machinists
David bought his first car, a 1974 Torino, with paper route money when he was 12. A test drive in a Buick Grand National hooked him on boost, and he and his dad built one into a 10-second car by his senior year. He street raced in Northeast Philly most Sunday nights.
A job at a local repair shop convinced him general repair wasn't for him. He saw an ad in the back of a hot rod magazine for the School of Automotive Machinists in Houston and moved there. When the school's owner saw David wasn't working to his potential, he gave him a job at the school so he'd be surrounded by the work all day.
The school's race programs won a lot. Its NMCA Monte Carlo set records and won so often that competitors tore it down nearly every race looking for something illegal, and the team eventually won a championship. David found his love for porting there, partly because the porting room was loud enough to excuse him from giving tours.
Learning to grind, and getting fired
After school David went to work for Pat Musi in New Jersey. His job interview was being handed a piston, shown how to gas port it once on the Bridgeport, and told to finish two sets before UPS arrived. He'd never done it before, and he made the deadline.
At Musi he learned to hand-port big heads that started with tiny ports and ended up huge. He credited one instructor at the school with the theory and two porters at Musi with the hand skill. Then a slow day ended his time there. David asked if he could bring in a side job, Pat said yes, and when he saw it, Pat fired him on the spot. David packed his things, came back to thank him and shook his hand on the way out.
Through a customer he had worked with at Musi, David was introduced to a drag racer starting a program in the NHRA sport compact series. David rented a 200 square foot room with a flow bench, an air compressor and a bench. That team won 11 of 13 races. He saw there were very few skilled head porters in the import world, which was easier to make a name in than the crowded domestic side, so he started Headgames Motorworks. The name came from his nickname at Musi, which was "Head."
Surviving the crash with a cheaper product
By 2007 the shop was booming in 1,800 square feet with cheap rent and five employees. David was building a race car, had bought a Corvette and was about to buy a building. His friend Jeff told him to step back for a week or two and fall out of love with the deal first. In those two weeks the market crashed. He never signed.
The shop was mostly doing race work, and the NHRA sport compact series had just shut down. David let four of his five employees go and didn't pay his bills for about five months. His mother was battling cancer at the same time. Creditors called about his equipment, which was a year from being paid off, and his Corvette. Nobody came to take anything, which he put down to everyone being in the same position.
With free time on his hands, he spent hours on the flow bench and developed a pocket port. It works only the bowl area under the valve seat, the short side radius and the valve job. He said it picked up 30 to 40 CFM, close to what some people saw from a full port, for much less labor. For customers with no money, it was the right product. He advertised it on an Evo forum, business picked up and he paid his bills back. The late payments hurt his credit for years, which made it hard to finance expensive machines.
One thing racing taught me is, I don't play to survive. I'm playing there to win.
What actually made money
By 2016, full porting was the least profitable thing Headgames did. David said MSA's time tracking showed him that. The money was in pocket ports and rebuilds, and the most common platform by far was Subaru, at about four heads a week with only Facebook for advertising. Local dealerships also sent heads to be milled and pressure tested with about a day of turnaround.
He kept full porting because Headgames had a reputation for it. What he cut was a few specific heads that slowed the whole shop down. He stopped lashing RB26 and SR20 heads. He'd still do the rest of the work, but customers had to lash them themselves or take them somewhere else.
You have to learn to say no sometimes.
He also did free development work with suppliers. After cracking several B-series heads, he measured and found that guides sold as factory size didn't match. A valve guide maker started producing guides to his specs, with shorter lengths and other changes. Since Headgames worked on so many different heads, he chose to give the R&D away in exchange for being able to order the right part.
Systems, people and hours
David never wrote a business plan and only planned a year ahead. What changed the shop most was workflow. His friend Jeff pushed him to rearrange the building, and the shop became an assembly line. A head comes in one door, moves around the perimeter, gets boxed up and goes out the same door. In about 5,000 square feet, carrying a head back to the same spot a couple of times had been wasted time.
He was honest about management. Managing wasn't his strength and organization was something he totally lacked, so he made Tiffany Havel, who had been with him almost 10 years since she was 18, the shop manager. She had full say over hiring and firing. Letting that go was hard, and he called it one of the best things he ever did. His hardest problem was hiring people who were reliable, passionate and free of ego, willing to ask what you can teach them.
He also changed his hours. He used to work from about 10:30 in the morning until 8 or 10 at night, like a lot of people in the industry. After his girlfriend and her son came into his life, he started getting up at 5. He worked about 60 hours a week, six days, and he felt he had wasted years working late. His action item for shop owners came from that change. David got to the shop at 7:30, and the phones stayed off until 10, so the first hours went to uninterrupted work.
Marketing and the next step
Headgames never had a sign or local advertising. David said Facebook was what brought the business out of obscurity. He had stopped advertising on forums after they were bought up and wanted his ads done their way, and Facebook ads, a business page and Instagram worked better for almost no money.
For the next year he wanted to hire two more people and was weighing a CNC machine. He had looked at one at PRI and was taking a CAM course, but he admitted that after the crash, buying a machine and watching the economy dry up again was the one thing he feared.
Key takeaways
- Step back from a big purchase for a week or two before you sign.
- A cheaper product that delivers most of the result can keep a shop alive when customers have no money.
- Track time by job type, because the work you're known for may be the least profitable.
- Stop taking jobs that slow the whole shop down, or take them on your terms.
- Lay the shop out so work flows in one direction.
- Guard your first hours of the day and keep the phones off until the real work is done.
Seeing where your shop's time goes
David said My Shop Assist helped Headgames see what it was putting time into and what it shouldn't. In MSA, techs clock time against each task on a job, so you can compare a full port against a pocket port or a rebuild and see which one pays. Zones and kanban boards make a one-direction workflow visible, QR codes let the crew scan a job as it moves, and customers and the shops that send you work can log in to check progress instead of calling. Text messaging and QuickBooks export cover the rest.
See how My Shop Assist works for performance and racing shops, or start a free 30-day trial.
