gear driven oil pump and all the internals inside of a Number six, and making it all work seamlessly is a little more complicated then it comes across in text. He also rebuilds them for customers, services them, and sets them up "correctly."
Vern performs these upgrades and does Drive Work for a lot of guys and businesses across the country, as you would imagine the work is exceptionally specialized and the customer lists are pretty short. He splits his time between just doing drive work, and more or less maintaining and managing about ten of the West Coast's top boats for discriminating customers. Those boats range anywhere from 160'ish mph to over 200 mph for the top of the field guys, and include names like Gary Smith, John Roth, Mike Bobbitt, and former Skater owner Chip Romer.
All the absolute "Elite" hardware from the West Coast is in and out of his shop at some point or another when events like Desert Storm, or LOTO come upon the horizon. For the guys that are running shoot outs competitively and looking to be # 1, they are on par with full on SuperCat race programs. These boats just happen to get used for recreation on occasion as well. Spare Drives, Spare Engines, Spare Props are all part of it, and to put this into perspective for a lot of readers just the props alone go for 7,000 - 17,000 a whack.
While we were down there Kirk Steven's had stopped in to check on his boat, and get it prepped for LOTO as well. Kirk is the proud owner of gorgeous 40 Skater SS. It's a little larger boat then the 388's and is primarily used as a pleasure boat. In Kirk's words "I'm not going out there to try and be the fastest or # 1, we just want to go out and have fun." He purchased the boat a year and a half ago it sports a pair of Carburated 1250 Sterling's with some "tweaks" done by Carson Brummett for Power, and Stock SSM # 6's.
I got to talking to Kirk, and found him to be a very down to earth and humble guy, whom was more concerned with reliability and fun then the top speed number (which is currently 156 mph if you're curious). I was a little curious how he came to own this pretty remarkable boat, and we tracked his history of boats backwards from this 40 SS, to the boat before this one which was his first Skater that was a 32 with Stock 575's and # 6's. Before switching to a true tunnel he owned a DCB F-26 with twin 300's, Preceded by a DCB Mach 26 with twin 280's. His first boat was actually a "Barefoot Warrior" made by Ski Centurion with an 200 Black Max, and a Bob's Machine jackplate that would run around 60 mph.