Off-Road Racing and Omegasonics

Located just west of the Las Vegas Strip, Wik’s Racing has been building and repairing racing engines and custom engines for built-to-order and sophisticated street machines for over 10 years.

About 90% of Adam’s business consists of working on off-road engines which need frequent maintenance. These engines are put to the test across the American Southwest and Mexico in off-road races that include the Parker 425 and the Baja 1000.

The engines range from air-cooled VW four-cylinders to water-cooled small-block Chevy V8s for trophy trucks, and Corvette 427 LS1s for unlimited class 1 cars. Every race or two, customers’ engines head back to Wik’s to be repaired, cleaned and made ready for the next match.

“These engines have to go out like they’re brand-new every time,” says owner Adam Wik. His racing team clients expect a high quality of workmanship because the demands of off-road racing pack oil and carbon deep into engine parts. His team soon gained a very good reputation in the industry. However, Adam was faced with a problem. He used a solvent recycling service that came to his shop and exchanged his multi-gallon drums on a regular basis, and combined with hot water spray tanks, his process for cleaning engines all adding up to wasted time, additional manual labor, and costly chemicals.

Adam learned about the benefits of ultrasonic cleaning and began doing research. “I looked into a few manufacturers but I was impressed with Omegasonics’ reputation. They stood out,” said Adam. “They have a great machine and were real easy to deal with.” After a hands-on session with Omegasonics products at a tradeshow, Adam purchased the Omegasonics Super Pro with a 45 gallon capacity and 4000 watts of ultrasonic power. For his cleaning solution, he chose OmegaClean, an Omega Chemistry product that removes oil, carbon, and contaminants from a variety of metals. OmegaClean’s buffers protect aluminum finishes and its silicates guard against flash rusting.

Adam had a long list of difficult, dirty parts destined for his Omegasonics. Every carburetor went into the bath, along with pistons, crankshafts, rods and oil lines. “There’s nothing like it for fine cleaning,” Adam attested. “It gets into places you can’t see.” Foreign material washes out of ring lands and carbon deposits lift off of piston tops. Overall shop productivity has improved with Omegasonics. As an example, Adam estimates one hour in labor savings when cleaning a piston set. “Anything you want clean … it goes in that tank,” he said.

The news about the cleaning power of Omegasonics has spread to other power sports racing outfits in the area. “We have teams sending us their custom oil coolers, transmission coolers and radiators,” Adam revealed. “That’s a nice piece of extra business and a vote of confidence in Wik’s Racing, thanks to Omegasonics.”