JOSHUA RAIMOND

Fast forward a number of years, and when he left the United States Marine Corps after four years of service, Joshua decided to pursue his passion and make a career out of working on Porsche racing engines. He went to work for the renowned SoCal shop, ANDIAL. Formed in 1975, ANDIAL’s name is an anagram made from the names of the founding members; the late Arnold Wagner AN; Dieter Inzenhofer DI; and former PMNA president and current consultant Alwin Springer AL. Porsche Motorsports North America purchased the brand in 2013.

“That’s how I got into motorsports,” Joshua recalls. “ANDIAL has a fantastic history racing Porsches and when Porsche Motorsports bought the racing side, it was literally me walking across the parking lot. I worked at Porsche Motorsports North America for six years. That’s where I cut my teeth.”

While there, a manager told Joshua if an engine needed to be built quickly, it did not necessarily go to him (Joshua), but if it needed to be built unquestionably perfect (like for a 12 or 24 hour endurance race) he was indeed the guy. Despite the high praise, Joshua moved on, deciding to attend college where he majored in physics at Cal. Unsurprisingly, upon graduation, he found his way back into the motorsports industry, this time building racing engines at Hasselgren Engineering. While there, he created and managed Hasselgren’s first Porsche race engine program running three teams, brought into commission and ran the AVL test cell, programmed Bosch Motorsport and Pectel ECU’s, traveled to support Daytona Prototype data acquisition and engine support. Truth is, he did a little of everything.

“I’d go to the track and do track support,” he says. “I would run the test cell, calibrate the ECUs on the dyno, build the engines, etc. I’ve just really been entrenched in motorsports most of my life.”

Things changed, however, in 2008, when the economy went into the wall. “Folks weren’t spending as much on motorsports,” he laments. “I ended up moving over to what used to be called Cleeves Engines, founded by Monty Cleeves, which he later changed to Pinnacle Engines. It was here where I started the design phase of my automotive career.”

Joshua relied on his engineering and physics background, as well as his previous motorsports experience, and began contributing to the design side. After seven years, he has contributed to three clean sheet engine projects: the first two were for a scooter project, while the current one is a 235 cc engine for the three-wheel market.

I ask him how his reputation for slow, meticulous work (dating back to his Porsche days), adapts to the Pinnacle Engines environment and Joshua laughs. “I’ve always been a little slow,” he says. “At ANDIAL, the ethic I was taught was that perfection was what it was really all about. I was just so obsessed with getting it right and took to heart all the detailed lessons I was taught, so I ended up being a slow moving engine builder who guaranteed that everything was right—clip orientations, ring gaps, all clearances proper and all measurements were methodical and well documented. It just became my reputation to be the slow guy that didn’t mess up. The work really was an art. Emphasis wasn’t on turning out work quickly and bringing in a lot of money. I never felt that ANDIAL was ever about that. It was about executing the rigorous work ethic, attention to detail, more artistry than some job that was shopped—turning around cars for cash.”

From Builder to Designer

By the time Joshua arrived at Pinnacle, where the company’s primary focus is automotive (specifically the three-wheel and two-wheel markets), he wanted to transition to design, but forty percent of his work was still focused on building. However, in his design hours, one of his first projects was a flow bench rig for Pinnacle’s novel sleeve valve engine technology.

“It took a little cleverness,” says Joshua. “I designed a rapid prototype printed system, a nice encapsulated little unit that took the sleeve in reality and was able to move it with a measurable and consistent amount of lift.”

It was trial by fire, but his work garnered notice throughout the small company which was always on the lookout for design talent. “Valvetrains are my jam,” he laughs. “With my physics background, they’re a good fit because you’re doing a lot of physics—active mass, inertias, forces, springs, contact stress, integrals and derivatives, complicated moving geometry-- when you’re designing valve lift profiles. You’re creating acceleration profiles and there is so many ways to do it. I just started getting in there and doing it.”

Joshua credits mentor Simon Jackson, PhD, an experienced motorsports expert who earned his stripes at Cosworth. Jackson also specialized in valvetrains (among other things) and from him, Joshua learned the finer details of a functioning valvetrain. With an engine under his belt, there was no time to rest on his laurels. Another project (with a slightly different architecture) quickly followed and Joshua just kept on going to where he is today. “I’ve done a lot of valvetrain design and development,” he says matter-of-factly. “I designed my own spin rigs with the whole sensor suite and data acquisition. I did a piston design as well. I know what it’s like to develop a skirt profile, the barreling and ovality, get into the details of ring packed dynamics, or the volume game you play to try to get the rings to stay stable for a certain period of time before the pressure causes the rings to shuffle. It’s a small company, so I take on any design task that’s required.”

While at Cal, did Joshua dream of one day designing engines? “I didn’t even know it was possible,” he admits. “Frankly, if I did, I probably would have got a degree in mechanical engineering. I thought I had exhausted my career in engine building. I really just focused on physics and transitioning my career. I went skydiving for a couple of years and thought about what I really wanted to do. It was awesome, but base jumping was crazy. I only did nine of those and they were scary as hell.”

After this “living on the edge” foray, Joshua re-discovered his passion for motorsports. While trying to determine how to transition to a new career, he started building engines again for money and while doing so, discovered a non-functioning AVL test Working in the Hasselgren dyno - 3.2 L short stroke 911 engine cell. He managed to get it working again and with the guidance of an experienced mentor, began teaching himself how to calibrate ECUs, how to do launch control and rev-limiter PID, and how to properly map an engine. Joshua was satisfied for a while, but still wanted to move on when good fortune smiled. “Frankly it was just luck that Pinnacle Engines wanted to hire me,” he admits. “I saw an available design opportunity and wanted to see if I could fill it.” He joined a company of 30 employees with a testing facility in San Carlos, including a main building for design and simulation. There is also an office located in India.

Joshua also considers himself lucky for the guidance of his career mentors, chief among them Tony Wilcox and the aforementioned Simon Jackson. “They really gave me an opportunity to thrive,” he says. “The Pinnacle work environment promotes self-learning. It’s a bit autodidactic–about becoming an expert as quickly as possible in the many different tasks at hand.”

Joshua relates his Pinnacle experience to the AMC series Halt and Catch Fire. “There’s a really quirky programmer and someone from a major computer corporation offers her a job where she will have all the resources she needs but she says, ‘Why, so I can sit in a cubicle and be a drone and work on some long, boring project that doesn’t do anything?’ She’d rather work at this little company that is doing something innovative where she has autonomy. There’s a great Car and Driver magazine article where the writer basically destroys our company for launching a product. He said something along the lines of us pulling this off were as likely as a Sasquatch playing a Stradivarius while riding a unicorn over a double rainbow. So there are people who think that what we’re doing is nuts and not very likely. There are a lot of the big folks who have seen us and say well, maybe . . . but they’re not interested in the technology. However, in India, I find it interesting that they have shown themselves to be capable of absorbing a real amount of risk for a real amount of reward. We’ve demonstrated the fuel efficiency that we proposed to offer and we’ve demonstrated the emissions we purport to offer. We’re not kidding ourselves. Our technology is different. We look at our technology warts and all and then we share that warts and all with our potential customers and everyone has a realistic view of what’s possible. It’s an exciting time now. I think if you had asked me this question a couple of years ago I would tell you it’s really hard and it’s difficult to find someone to take on the risk and who wants to do it. But now, we have a great customer, great fuel economy, increasing emission standards, and the fact that we run so lean which enables us to have incredibly low NOx. Pinnacle Engines has carved out a little niche. It’s real good now.”

The Design Process

For Pinnacle, the design process begins when a customer has a torque and power requirement, and/or a fuel efficiency requirement that must fit into some package representing a vehicle with a specified displacement. From there, Jackson, the VP of Engineering, creates what he calls “an 80 percent solution.”

“By himself, Simon damn near creates the whole entire engine architecture,” says Joshua. He’ll create a camshaft, a crank, and a rod, etc. He whips this stuff up and creates a general architecture for the engine. Is the cam going to be above or below? Where will the ports be located?”

With rough CAD, some masses, and some early valvetrain design, Joshua begins producing forces using Gamma Technologies GT Suite to create a one-dimensional simulation—a mechanical simulation of the entire valve train. “I’ll build it, simulate it, and pull out those forces” he says, “run FEA on SOLIDWORKS Simulation, then refine CAD on the components that need it, and converge on a design that gives the desired dynamic lift profile”

Joshua also relies on a MATLAB script to narrow down what can be tens of thousands of possible valve spring designs. He specifies wire properties and geometry, spring frequency, the necessary load at installed and full lift, even the cost of materials. Ultimately, he arrives at a solution that works with all the other components, crankcases, and all the other things that define the space: including a Converge CFD combustion simulation, port design, and injector spray pattern—anything that is captured.

“It’s really up to the engineers to start working out the details and that’s where we get into the feasibility and the engineering issues of space claim and making things work,” he says. “It has to be designed for manufacture. The cost has to be low so you have to be careful about your features, materials, etc.”

And the manufacturing location depends upon the customer. The general intent is that the customer specifies the engine, Pinnacle designs the engine, creates the 3D and 2D documentation to take it into manufacture, and deals with tier one feedback, but the customer ultimately takes that data and mass produces the parts. So essentially, Pinnacle licenses the technology created and becomes the steward of it.