About ATK

The Story Behind Affordable Turbo Kits

Affordable Turbo Kits didn't start in a warehouse or a boardroom. It started with an old Honda, a drag strip, and a desire to go faster without spending a fortune.

Before ATK, I spent 14 years working as an automotive technician. In 2007, I started taking my own car to the drag strip. Like just about every other car enthusiast, I wanted to go faster.

At the time, I had a 1991 Honda Accord. Eventually, I moved on to a 1993 Prelude Si and swapped in a JDM H23A VTEC engine. Then I got the idea that it would be even better in a Civic chassis.

That led me down a rabbit hole of engine swaps, turbo systems, tuning, testing, and plenty of trial and error.

I built my first turbo Civic with one goal in mind: make it as fast as I could while spending as little as possible.

I didn't have an unlimited budget, so I had to figure out what actually worked and what didn't. That car ended up going through six different turbo setups. I started with a basic, inexpensive setup and upgraded it step by step as I learned more and wanted more power.

Eventually, that Civic was consistently running high 10-second quarter-mile passes with a stock F22 non-VTEC engine.

But the most valuable thing I gained wasn't the timeslip. It was the experience of figuring out how to build a fast, reliable combination using affordable parts.

Other people started noticing.

Friends and local enthusiasts began asking me to put together turbo kits for their cars. I started building kits for people locally, using what I had learned from my own car.

Then the requests started coming from outside the area.

Soon I was getting messages from people all over the country asking me to put together custom turbo setups for their Hondas.

At that point, I kept getting the same question:

“Do you have a website?”

The honest answer was always, “No.”

That eventually became a problem. People wanted to know that they were dealing with a legitimate business and not just some random guy selling turbo parts out of his garage.

So I built a website.

And Affordable Turbo Kits was born.

 

From One Honda to Thousands of Customers

What started as a way to help a few local people build affordable turbo cars has grown into thousands of orders shipped to customers all over the world.

And I still run ATK myself.

ATK has grown while I've continued working my full-time job. Outside of those hours, I run the business—answering customer questions, taking and processing orders, sourcing parts, putting kits together, packing orders, and shipping them around the world.

I've also been fortunate to have two close friends who are talented fabricators and have been a big part of helping ATK along the way. From fabricating parts and helping bring ideas to life to lending their experience and expertise when I need it, their help has played an important role in the growth of ATK.

ATK may be a one-person operation when it comes to running the business, but it hasn't been built completely alone.

A Lot of People Helped Me Get Here

One thing I've learned over the years is that nobody builds something like this completely on their own.

Throughout my time working on cars, racing, fabricating, and building turbo setups, I've had a lot of people take the time to teach me something, answer a question, lend a hand, share an idea, or help me figure out something I didn't understand.

Some of those lessons came from experienced people who had already been doing this longer than I had. Others came from friends, fellow racers, customers, and people I met along the way.

Some taught me things that worked.

Others taught me things that didn't.

Both were valuable.

Every one of those experiences helped shape the way I approach cars and ATK today. I'm grateful to every person who has shared their knowledge, helped with a project, offered advice, or simply took the time to point me in the right direction.

I could never name everyone who has helped me without leaving someone out, but I want those people to know that I haven't forgotten it.

A big part of what I learned came from people who were willing to share what they knew with me. That's something I try to carry forward with ATK—taking what I've learned through the years and helping the next person who is trying to build their car.

To everyone who has helped me along the way, thank you.

And to everyone who has trusted ATK with their own project over the years, thank you as well. Without the customers who took a chance on a small business and helped spread the word, ATK wouldn't be where it is today.

Why “Affordable”?

Affordable doesn't mean cutting corners just to make something cheap.

It means finding the balance between cost, performance, and what actually works.

That's what I was trying to accomplish with my own cars long before ATK existed.

I learned by building, racing, testing, changing things, and doing it again. ATK grew out of that experience.

The goal is simple:

Help people build the turbocharged Honda they want without spending money where they don't have to.

Whether you're putting together your first budget turbo setup or building something much more serious, I want ATK to give you access to the parts, knowledge, and experience to make the combination work.

After all, that's how ATK started in the first place.

One Honda.

One turbo setup.

And the question every car enthusiast has asked at some point:

“How fast can I make this thing?”