ULTRA Cart Dual Deck Arrives at Daytona

The buzz around this weekend’s IMSA 24 Hours of Daytona is starting to get louder! The first teams have begun to pull their haulers into the infield, beginning with Mazda Team Joest, who put on an impressive show at the ROAR just two weeks earlier. On pit lane, Michelin has wasted no time making a statement with their new ULTRA Cart Dual Deck, which is now located at the very front of the grid!

The arrival of Michelin’s new ULTRA Cart Dual Deck at Daytona Intl. Speedway marks the very first time this revolutionary new pit cart has ever been set up at the track for a race weekend. After making its world debut at the 2018 Performance Racing Industry show just a month and a half ago, the new ULTRA Cart Dual Deck is ready to go to work and show the world what the new standard in pit lane observation is going to look like. Presented almost exactly as it was set up at the show, the view from the expanded deck towards start/finish line is simply stunning. Thanks to the expanded deck, more engineers, sponsors, and guests will be able to take advantage of the unique view pit lane observation decks can offer.

With IMSA entering its 50th year of sports car racing, they’re no doubt looking to kick off 2019 with a bang at the Rolex 24. A record 19 different manufacturers are set to compete in IMSA this year, with 13 competing in the 24-hour race alone. The rest of those 19 manufacturers are set to make their debut in the Michelin Pilot Challenge season opener this Friday. With more entrants comes increased levels of competition, and the race on pit lane will be more important than ever. It’s no secret that success behind pit wall translates into success on the track. As teams battle for position and against the clock during the grueling 24-hour race, they will no doubt be looking at Michelin’s new ULTRA Cart Dual Deck and wondering what’s possible with this new pit lane asset.

With Michelin becoming the new official tire manufacturer of IMSA competition in 2019, their team of engineers is now responsible for the tens of thousands of tires that teams will utilize throughout the race weekend. Typical of series-supporting tire manufacturers, Michelin works with each team on an individual basis to ensure that their race tires are working correctly at any given time. That effort entails monitoring tread wear and tire temperatures after a session, and advising the teams about different tire pressure settings and setup tweaks that may help them achieve the performance that they’re seeking.

Of course, the work doesn’t stop there. As a title sponsor of the newly-rebranded Michelin Pilot Challenge, the folks at Michelin are also aiming to entertain a wide array of guests while at the track. Sponsors, team owners, and other high-end guests will be invited to take advantage of the best seat in the house; on Michelin’s new ULTRA Cart Dual Deck. Judging by the view looking out of the front of the dual-deck towards the start/finish line, it’s going to be a popular place! Michelin is also aiming to take advantage of the expanded promotional space on the cart itself, which will make a bold statement on pit lane. You’ll notice right away that the large panels secured to the outside of the deck railing provide an increased amount of promotional space facing the TV cameras and crowd. Michelin has elected to display their logo on those panels. In essence, Michelin’s new pit cart is serving three main roles in this configuration:

·        Provide an unrivaled hospitality experience for guests

·        Serve as a pit-lane headquarters for engineers and staff

·        Spread Michelin’s brand awareness through its presence on pit lane

The CTech Story | 25th Anniversary Edition

Like many great businesses, CTech Manufacturing was born from necessity. In the early 90's, CTech Founder and long-time drag racer Jim Greenheck realized that the storage options currently available for his race trailer just weren't going to cut it. Trailer cabinets at the time were sub-par; they didn't save much weight, overall quality was poor, and they weren't very durable. Jim knew he could develop a storage system that was lighter, stronger, and higher quality. Thus, CTech Mfg. was born!

As an engineering and manufacturing company, CTech has earned the respect of a wide range of industries for not just providing the highest-quality storage products and services, but for injecting fresh innovation to storage products that have been in service for centuries. Our approach has allowed us to work with other industry leaders such as: Caterpillar, Ford, Knapheide, Chevy, Norfolk Southern, NFL, PGA, NASCAR, U.S. Military, and many others. As the world relies more on the concept of efficiency than ever, CTech remains committed to leading the storage industry in engineering long-lasting storage products that keep up with the rest of society’s technology. Moving into our second quarter-century of business, our goal is uncompromising; to provide better products, faster, and with better service than any other manufacturer in the storage industry.

Unlike any other manufacturer in the storage industry, CTech products are a top-tier choice for both mobile and stationary applications. Our company roots begin in Jim Greenheck’s race trailer. Like many other Motorsport enthusiasts, Jim needs to haul a large amount of equipment from event to event. From nuts and bolts, to spare transmissions and drag tires, everything that needs to be brought to the drag strip must also be stored and organized in the trailer. Of course, you can only haul so many pounds/kilograms of material on your trailer, storage system included. Thus, it was decided that Jim’s first trailer cabinet was going to be made of aluminum. 5052 aluminum, an aerospace-grade material, continues to be the base stock for all CTech products. Its strength, and most importantly, its light weight, make it the perfect material for mobile applications.

The next engineering marvel Jim had to tackle was the actual construction of his new trailer cabinet system. Traditional metal storage systems are assembled via welding. Welding results in a rigid storage system, but highly susceptible to fracturing over time through rough travel. When that happens, the entire storage system must be replaced, which is costly and inconvenient. Jim realized that this wasn’t the method he was going to use to create his dependable trailer cabinets, so the next revolution in CTech product development was the introduction of fastener construction. Building CTech cabinets with fasteners gave the storage system just enough ‘flexibility’ to survive rough travel while fully loaded, and also provided the added bonus of being able to easily replace individual panels and assemblies of the system in case of incidental damage.

With CTech trailer cabinets quickly taking shape, the next innovation to be introduced was the MotionLatch™ drawer handle. Drawers and cabinet doors that are installed in mobile applications must remain securely latched while not in use, otherwise they’ll fly open and unleash whatever contents that were stored in them. Here’s the catch; those drawers and doors must also be easily accessible by the user at a moment’s notice. The more accessible, the better. MotionLatch drawer and door handles were engineered with a dual-latch design to keep stored items secure during transit. The handle itself provides a full width area on the drawer/door front for the user to access, and the best part; the user has to take no extra steps to “unlock” or “unlatch” the drawer or door. Just pull anywhere on the drawer face, and you’ve gained access to stored items. Since the introduction of MotionLatch technology, many other companies have attempted to copy the design, but none have been able to duplicate the superior accessibility and durability that MotionLatch doors and drawers provide. A funny story behind the origin of the full width extrusion is, Jim put on a welding glove and filled his hand with tools and said I need the handle to work in these conditions.

With Jim’s new trailer cabinet solution already proving to be a step above the competition, further innovations were introduced; including Adjust-A-Loc shelves. Traditional cabinet shelving utilizes ‘floating’ shelves that are held up only with pins inserted into the cabinet assembly. In a mobile application, this would fail to keep the shelf and its stored items from shifting around during transit. CTech’s Adjust-A-Loc technology utilizes small clips that securely fasten the shelf to the cabinet chassis, preventing it from moving up/down and left/right. The clips can be removed with a single bolt and adjusted at 1” increments along the cabinet walls to adjust the height of the self itself, ensuring that the cabinet system can easily adapt to changing storage needs. Thanks to this innovation, Jim’s shelves wouldn’t be jumping and moving all over the place on his way to the drag strip, and his stored items would be much more secure as a result.

Anyone who’s tried to maneuver around the tight space in a fully-packed trailer has probably bumped a knee, head, or elbow or two. Cabinet bases and overhead units are then “just another thing to run into” on accident while your maneuvering in a trailer. To eliminate this, CTech introduced Radius-Edge cabinet ends. The rounded corners seen on our Ultra Series cabinets essentially get rid of the hard, sharp corners that would be left on a traditional cabinet unit. This innovation also provided a sleek, aesthetic look to the cabinet unit that has lead to our cabinets being used in many showrooms and design-inspired areas. Form and function both improved thanks to CTech engineering!

The culmination of all this innovative thinking was a trailer cabinet system that was so far advanced compared to anything else on the market that CTech Mfg. was formed to carry that same spirit to many other forms of storage. Pit carts were the next storage system to be revolutionized by CTech, a product line that has since become a huge part of the brand and has developed alongside the motorsport industry to support championship-winning race teams. MotionLatch technology was found to be so revolutionary that an entire product line was devoted to simply manufacturing drawer units to go inside service trucks and other applications. Tactical storage units are the most recent storage domain to be revolutionized by CTech. With the introduction of CopBox tactical storage cabinets, trunk storage for law enforcement and emergency response professionals has never been so easy, dependable, and efficient.

As we begin our second quarter-century of storage innovation, we’re better prepared than ever to continue providing the best-of-the-best in products and services for our customers. Our manufacturing potential is mightier than ever with our recent 80,000 square foot expansion, and our newly-commissioned Research & Development center will allow us to bring further storage solution innovations to you!

Re-Imagining Pit Lane

Pit carts and the equipment they compliment have become a staple of pit lane. There’s no denying over the years they’ve become steadily bigger and more complex, but it’s been decades since a single pit cart has come along and really changed the way professionals, fans, and sponsors fundamentally view pit lane. The new Ultra Cart ‘Dual Deck’ does just that. On paper, it seems to be way over the top. Then again, much of the racing business is.

What originally made the Ultra Cart so popular was its size and method of organizing equipment as well as people on pit lane. The ‘business of racing’ explains a lot about why teams do the things that they do. Pit lane isn’t just about changing tires and fixing race damage; it’s also about hosting and applying a growing bank of real-time data, entertaining sponsors and guests, and making sure that crew members have everything they need throughout the duration of a race.  There’s always more going on behind the scenes of the big show, and pit lane is no exception.

The new Ultra Cart Dual Deck was designed with the business of racing in mind. Nate Birkenmeier, our Motorsports Product Line Manager, has collaborated with some of the world’s top racing organizations (Penske Racing, Richard Childress Racing, Stewart/Haas, and many more) to bring this next generation pit cart design to fruition. The expanded upper deck allows more working crew to concentrate on crunching numbers and coordinating race strategy, while additional bench and swivel seating allows for more sponsors and guests to enjoy a one-of-a-kind racing experience. The cart chassis itself is designed to sit perpendicular to pit lane as opposed to parallel to it, which is traditionally how they’ve been oriented in the past. This allows for hands-on crewmembers to move from the rear of the pit box to pit wall without having to go around the cart itself. Lightweight panels hung across the upper deck railing provide expanded promotional space for sponsors as well. These are all advantages that promote better business for race teams as well as improve performance on race day. Both of which are paramount to racing glory.

The first Ultra Cart Dual Deck to ever be produced was seen by the public eye for the first time last Friday at the Performance Racing Industry show (PRI) in Indianapolis. It’s only fitting that the first example was the centerpiece of our booth. Adding to the spectacle, it was a real working example that was to be shipped to its recipient; Michelin Tire, at the conclusion of the show. With Michelin stepping further into their IMSA competition partnership this year, it was paramount that they had a pit cart of this stature to support the incredible engineering efforts that come with providing thousands of tires to an entire world-class racing series every weekend.

Underneath its skin, the Dual-Deck Ultra Cart houses a vast array of electronic, networking, and pneumatic distribution technologies. All of which have been refined from the original Ultra Cart design and will be configurable based on the buyer’s requirements. As it sat at the tradeshow, Michelin’s “Ultra Cart Dual Deck” was sporting 13 solid-mounted computer monitors, capable of being independently operated or linked for multi-screen viewing. Expanded chassis storage, nitrogen cradles, MotionLatch® drawers, counter space workstations, and LED lighting round out basic features found in the cart chassis itself. 4-wheel steering, 4-wheel hydraulic disk brakes, and FlatFree tires ensure that the entire ~3500LB cart remains readily mobile. At the tradeshow, a single person was able to maneuver the cart into place on carpet, thanks to the use of ceramic bearings. Another interesting fact; the two decks are self-supporting during setup and take-down thanks to a clever counterbalancing system. That means one person can easily take out the supporting poles and ease the entire deck back into its stowed position and vice-versa. Our Project Manager and Engineer, Brad Oberbeck, was instrumental in the design and construction of this new cart, and we can’t say enough about his efforts!

Our commitment to staying ahead of the curve and placing emphasis on innovation is what made this incredible new cart possible. As we enter our 25th year in business, we’re proud to look back on our past projects, but we’re especially excited to look ahead to what the future holds! 

Another Successful Year At “The Big Show”!

The Performance Racing Industry (PRI) show, our company’s longest-running annual tradition, has come and gone once again! The 2018 show was extra special, as we pulled the covers off our largest and most innovative pit cart to date; the Dual-Deck Ultra Cart. 2019 also represents our 25th year in business, and the show made a perfect platform to kick off that special anniversary in style.

Each year we show up to the PRI show with a completely new booth layout, and new featured products. Few other companies can say the same. That’s a reflection of our commitment to continuously improve our product, and our presence. The Dual-Deck Ultra Cart served as an excellent center piece for this years’ booth. We also had a custom shop cabinet setup at one end of the booth and a pair of pit carts at the other end. Visitors were quick to take advantage of our expanded product giveaways for 2018; which included a Service Cart and three BlackLine Accessories per day! We also had several kiosks set up around the booth with quoting capabilities, so that interested buyers could have specific product information sent to them digitally without having to carry around extra literature.

On the opening day of the show we were ecstatic to welcome Car Craft Magazine and Circle Track Magazine into the CTech booth for a couple Facebook live sessions, where we were able to go over our new Dual-Deck Ultra Cart in detail for the masses online. Our Marketing Director, Darrell Martin, also spent some time on Friday chatting with NHRA reporters about our latest developments and racing efforts.  

Outside of our own booth, CTech products could be found at nearly every end of the show floor! Browell Bellhousing sported a pair of CTech Caster Carts in their booth as a part of their display located in the Green Hall. Racing Electronics also had a CTech Display Cart and custom trailer cabinets on display in their booth located in the Yellow Hall. We were also lucky enough to have a few of our incredible dealers showcase custom CTech cabinets in the trailer exhibit, which was moved indoors to the Lucas Oil Stadium for the first time. PRI’s decision to move the trailer exhibit indoors was praised by exhibitors and attendees alike, who were glad to sidestep the cold midwestern weather. Over 50% of the trailers on display this year either had full CTech cabinet systems, or CTech Tool Drawer inserts. We genuinely thank RPM Trailer Sales, Capitol Renegade/Capitol Custom Trailers, Chico Truck & RV, for representing CTech at the show this year, and we were blown away with the trailer builds that they brought!

Planning for next years’ PRI show starts less than a week after this years’ show ends. No doubt, we will be trying to out-do ourselves yet again! A special ‘Thank You’ goes out to everyone who took the time to stop by and check out our booth. We look forward to seeing you again in 2019!

THANK YOU ALL!

Happy Thanksgiving Eve from everybody at CTech Manufacturing! 🦃 2018 has been a whirlwind of a year for us, as I’m sure it’s been for nearly everyone else. We’ve taken many big steps as a company, and none of it would have been possible without our incredible customers, dealers, employees and partners! From a major building expansion, to the debut of a brand new product, we’re ecstatic to see what 2019 has in store.

It’s been very inspiring to see our at one time ‘planned’ building expansion slowly come to fruition. The increased capacity, and added equipment it’s brought along with it has already helped us stay multiple steps ahead of our competitors during a major surge of business. As we close out the year, our lead times continue to shrink while our competitors fall further behind. CTech Manufacturing is an industry-leading manufacturer, and we’re better prepared than ever to provide superior service and unbeatable products to new and future customers.

In just two short weeks, we will be unveiling a brand-new product at the Performance Racing Industry show in Indianapolis, Indiana. Everyone who’s watched a NASCAR race has inevitably seen our Ultra Cart in action along pit lane, including the Monster Energy NASCAR championship-winning Team Penske and Joey Logano’s pit! This year, we’re flexing our innovative engineering and design might by debuting our new Dual-Deck Ultra Cart. This cart will revolutionize the ‘pit lane experience’ for professionals, owners, sponsors, and special guests alike. Be sure to stay tuned to our Facebook page December 6-8 to catch the first glimpse of it in real life!

You see, we’ve got a lot to be excited about! Luckily, before the big show we’ve got a couple days to reflect on things and let you know that we wouldn’t have been able to do it without you!

CTech Manufacturing PRI Preview 2018

It’s already been 25 years since Jim Greenheck started CTech Manufacturing, and although we’ve grown to serve many different industries over the years, we never forgot our racing heritage. With the 31st annual Performance Racing Industry trade show only one month away, we’re looking forward to kicking off our 25th year in a big way!

The PRI show features 1,100 industry-leading companies who offer the latest and greatest racing & engineering products. CTech has been attending PRI for many years, and every year we do something to improve our presence at the show and better engage with attendants. Among our new attractions and activities, the debut of our brand new dual-deck Ultra Cart will serve as a shining centerpiece for our busy booth. Pushing the limits of innovation and manufacturing, this groundbreaking cart will sit high and mighty, fully expanded for all to see.

CTech booth visitors will also have the opportunity to enter our product giveaway drawings. We’re planning on giving away one Service Cart per day, along with three BlackLine Accessories. Visitors will also be able to engage with our new 3-D interactive product catalog, and a wide variety of our standard products from our cart, cabinet, and tool drawer product lines.

We will be located deep in the Green Hall, booth #2625 near Motor State Distributing and Cometic Gaskets. We hope you’ll join us for this exciting gathering of technology and racing expertise!

CTech will be located at the blue dot!

Blackdog Speed Shop Finds a New Home

SCCA World Challenge Champions and CTECH proponents, Blackdog Speed Shop, recently outgrew their 20,000 square foot race shop and moved to a brand new facility just on the other end of the block. The move comes after a tumultuous 2018 racing season, in which the Blackdog team secured the GTS Sprint Team Title in the highly competitive Pirelli World Challenge Championship series.

The new facility residing in Lincolnshire, Illinois, is roughly triple the size of their old shop. With their full-service Hot Rod shop in high demand, in addition to recent growth in the racing program, moving was unavoidable. The new space is configured to comfortably host Blackdog’s three major divisions; the racing team, customer-dedicated Hot Rod shop, and performance vehicle dealership, all under one roof. The Hot Rod shop features a full-size dynamometer, alignment bench, ample machine shop, and plenty of well-equipped workspace to provide speed shop services to a growing customer base. Blackdog currently offers speed shop services ranging from basic maintenance, to custom fabrication and ‘turn-key’ vehicle building.  

The race shop’s dedicated area features more than enough workspace to support the team’s current two-car effort as well as ‘arrive and drive’ programs. Trailers and transporters are also accommodated in the new space, along with an engine room to keep their 6.2-liter Chevrolet small block V8s in prime condition for the racing season.

Of course, investing in new storage furnishings and equipment is also inevitable with the size of Blackdog’s expansion. Incredibly, all of the CTECH cabinets that the team had installed in their previous facility have moved along with them into the new building! However, new cabinets and countertop units needed to be commissioned to fully equip the expanded Hot Rod shop, and the services that go along with it. Each stall in the shop is surrounded by three individual Ultra Series cabinet/countertop units. Each provides ample, and adjustable storage for parts and equipment. The GasketLoc countertops on each unit are built to whithstand the rigors of automotive work, as well as keep spills contained to the surface of the counter.

We were lucky enough to have been invited to the open house and ribbon cutting for the new Blackdog Speed Shop headquarters. There were plenty of cool collector cars, as well as racecars, on display, which really looked impressive alongside all the shiny new cabinets! Safe to say, Blackdog now has one of the best looking and well equipped shops around!

Fall-Out #3 Beats The Heat!

CTech Manufacturing-sponsored ‘Rock Falls Raceway’ celebrated its third annual ‘Fall-Out #3’ event this past weekend, bringing nearly 150 of the nation’s finest vintage drag racers to the scenic northwestern Wisconsin drag strip. The big show featured an impressive collection of 1966 & Earlier Hot Rods, Super Stocks, Gassers, A/FX, Altereds and Vintage Front-Engine Dragsters.

After a record-breaking Fall-Out #2 in 2017, the hype for Fall-Out #3 was high! However, mother nature had slightly different plans, forcing those at the track to break out winter clothes during the chilly two-day event. Regardless, racing was never interrupted by the elements throughout as racers went head-to-head all day on Friday and Saturday. Most racers reported getting over 30 passes each, giving the fans plenty of opportunities to pick out a favorite car and driver!

Highlighting our second day of The Fall-Out #3, a semi-impromptu burnout contest brought cheers and smiles to everyone who could see giant plumes of vaporized rubber floating into the sky. Skip Hjortland in his 1955 Chevrolet brought home the honors in that contest, smoking himself out to such a degree that he had to stop about 60 feet down the strip to let his cabin air out. Cheers from the crowd, and the prize (a CTech Service Cart), made it worthwhile.

With the temperature just barely making it into the mid-40’s we were lucky to have plenty of hot food around, as the Rock Falls Raceway concession stands and Big Girl Street Foods food truck were very popular with folks at the track on both days. Vendors from as far away as Georgia made the trip for the swap meet, held in the pits. With everything from vintage steering wheels, to collectible model cars, the growing swap meet is another great addition to the Fall-Out program and is projected to get bigger in 2019!  

In late 2015 it was announced that Jim Greenheck, President and Founder of CTech Manufacturing had purchased Rock Falls Raceway with intentions to boost the programs and facilities to a world-class level. Partnering with the Meltdown Drag Association and Vintage Drag Racing 101, ‘The Fall-Out’ has grown into a fitting encore event for the Meltdown Drags; the single largest vintage drag racing event in America. That gathering is held at Byron Dragway, and attracts nearly 500 entrants. CTech is proud to support this grassroots racetrack located near beautiful Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Our company roots are deeply embedded in racing, and we do whatever we can to make sure that sportsman racing not only continues, but gets bigger and better!

CTech Joins the "Made in Wisconsin" Program

We have a lot to be proud of in Wisconsin, especially at CTech. Not only are our products manufactured at our headquarters in Weston, WI, but they're also designed, engineered and assembled under the same roof. Recently, that roof got about 80,000 square feet larger thanks to a growing demand for our high-quality aluminum storage products. We were born in Wisconsin, and there's no other place we'd rather be!

With the 25th anniversary of our company coming very near on the horizon, we're excited to announce that CTech has joined the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation's "Made In Wisconsin" program. This means we've been authorized to display the program's official logo on our marketing and production materials. We consider it a badge of honor and an ode to our heritage, as it says much more than just where our products are made!

CTech Manufacturing Represented at the Goodwood Festival of Speed

The world's most talked-about celebration of Motorsports and car culture wrapped up its 25th anniversary this weekend in West Sussex, England. Those in attendance (both in-person and online) were treated to a variety of racecars, hypercars, classic cars, historic planes, motorcycles, driverless cars, electric cars, and many others of the like in a gathering that could not, and isn't put on anywhere else in the world.

The Goodwood festival is regarded by many as a "bucket list" item, and a few CTech products were lucky enough to make it to the historic festival grounds thanks to a couple well-known figures in the sport. Steve 'Baggsy' Biagioni put on one of the more exciting shows during the entire festival, running his Nissan GTR drifting machine up the hill. Baggsy is a popular (and extremely talented) drifting competitor from England, and he recently received a new Service Cart from CTech. If he sounds familiar to you, that's because he was featured on the hit Amazon show "Top Gear" in an episode where he was tasked with teaching Richard Hammond how to drift!

A CTech Mini Cart could also be found under the Winston Cup Museum tent, who were running an array of historic NASCAR/Winston Cup stock cars in the hillclimb. One of them being the Interstate Battery Chevy Monte Carlo piloted by Bobby Labonte in the 1993 Winston Cup series. The racecars themselves were supplied by JKS Incorporated, a respected marketing firm based in the U.S.