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CCW Member Profile –Don Redmon
Firing on All Cylinders
Don Redmon has been a professional dealership line and race team mechanic, racing engine builder, and
Air-Flow Specialist for 49 years. Starting with an AA degree in motorcycle mechanics, he went on to
receive specialized training from Mercedes Benz, GM, Honda, Ford, Kawasaki, and others. He built
engines for NASCAR Winston Cup series, and he was a member of the 1992 Championship NASCAR
Winston Cup team, IMSA GTP class (International Motor Sports Association Grand Touring Prototype
series), CART/IndyCar (Championship Auto Racing Team/IndyCar series), and the NHRA (National Hot
Rod Association) Professional TF/FC and PSM and Sportsman categories, among others. Don jointly
holds at least four Land Speed Records. However, he has another passion.
“I’ve always loved books,” he says. “So, I guess I always wanted to make one of my own.”
Don’s first published piece, a drag-racing themed adaptation of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping By
Woods On a Snowy Evening,” was published in junior high school in 1963. He studied writing at
Hollywood High and UCLA Film and Camera School, and he wrote the first student-authored play for
Pasadena City College’s drama department. But most of his writing has been technical with an emphasis
on race engines and cylinder head airflow and porting for trade magazines like Motocross Action, Mazda
Sport, D-Sport, Lagonda U.K. magazine, and MotoIQ (https://motoiq.com/modding-the-bmw-2002-
head-part-1-beyond-porting). He was the first American to win the Lagonda Club U.K. Gostling Award for
an annual series of technical articles.
Currently, Don researches, designs, and develops cylinder heads for vintage and modern motorcycles
and automobiles to improve their efficiency for racing and other high-performance uses. He even
worked on the original Battlestar Galactica Jet Cycles (which were actually Yamaha DT-1 dirt bikes) and
the car-trailer mounted motorcycles (KZ-900 Police Model) for the original CHIPs TV series. He is
finalizing his redesign of a 1956/57 Porsche 547 DOHC cylinder head, the first copy of which debuted in
Germany late last year.
Notwithstanding his high-speed technical ventures, Don maintains his love of writing—whether he
writes in books or on scraps of paper, on envelopes, or on his computer. He admires 1950s-era
American authors like Nelson Algren who wrote “The Man with the Golden Arm” and other tales about
the gritty underbelly of society. In 2014, CWC’s publication Fault Zone: Shift, a San Francisco/Peninsula
Branch anthology, published Don’s short story titled “The Watch.”
Don relocated his membership to the Central Coast Writers Branch in September of 2023. To his fellow
members, he says, “Keep writing, and don’t give up your day job…”
Don’s website: www.replikamaschinen.com; Instagram.com/replikad/; email: replikad@gmail.com.
Central Coast Writers
PO Box 997 - Pacific Grove, CA 93950
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