Burris Racing Information

The story, however, starts long before that. As a teen, Mike Burris began racing karts in 1958 and with access to his father's machine shop would make various parts for his own kart as things failed. As time went on, his competitors began asking if he could make the same pieces for them. So in the evenings Mike would produce the various components and sell them to support his racing. Eventually, Mike went to work full time at Burco Manufacturing in Hawthorne, CA near the Los Angeles Airport. The Karting side of the business was a small part, but paid its own way. The bills were paid by the specialty machining and government jobs that Mike's father Bob had relied on, but that was soon to change. One of the items that Burco produced was clutch replacement parts for a new style oil bath designed clutch that was on the market but had some weak links. The new Burco parts made the clutch better then what was originally designed and they sold well. This lead to a complete clutch design that was marketed under the Burco name - which would become the dominant clutch throughout karting for many years. In the early 1970's, the combination of Mike's growing family and escalating cost of real estate in the Los Angeles area prompted him to move to the growing suburb of Orange County. This was a common trend, and commuting from OC to Los Angeles was a real task due to the increased number of people commuting from their homes in the OC to Los Angeles. With the daily grind of spending 2-3 hrs a day commuting wearing on Mike, he and his father decided to divide the business and Mike would establish Burris Racing in a 1,500 sq ft industrial unit in Santa Ana. The initial product line consisted of pistons and rings for the McCulloch and Italian engines, Mikuni Carburetors and motor mounts. In the early days, Mike was the book keeper, shipper, packager, janitor, sales department and anything else that needed to be done. His son Kurt would ride his bike to the shop after school and help where he could with packaging, sweeping or ...