WHO IS HAC?
A Message From Michael Hornback, J.D.
I think it would be fair to say that I have been fascinated with engines for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are of holding an exhaust pipe under my late father’s 1977 Ford Thunderbird as he welded on a new muffler and taking the cylinder head off of his Briggs & Stratton powered lawn mower when I was seven because I wanted to “see a piston.” While the latter story led to him having to keep his tools locked up while he was at work, he did help me finish my project and then stayed up all night to put the engine back together. No small feat considering I was not the most organized seven year old. Needless to say, he was a huge influence in my life, and for that reason, I chose to use our last name for this company.
In 2004 I was given unlimited access to a chassis dynamometer, a laptop, HPTuners, and a 2000 Trans Am with a heads and cam. It took me 13 hours to get it to start and idle, which I can now say with pride, because we all have to start somewhere. I have come a long way since then, having tuned over 4,000 vehicles since then. I have done development some of my own camshaft profiles and have done product testing for many other companies. These relationships have led to some of the most memorable parts of my life, such as doing 138mph on a 37′ Fountain boat with twin naturally aspirated 600+ cui Mercury engines, clutching a taped together laptop so that it would not go overboard. Then there was the time I was given three LS7 crate engines and an engine dyno for FAA certification for experimental light aircraft use. We were told that two engines could be tested to failure, the third had to go in the plane.
In 2012, I took a step away from tuning to pursue a law degree. In 2015 I returned to tuning on a part time basis and realized not how much fun tuning was for me again and how much knowledge I have that if I did not share, would be lost forever. In 2018, I began developing a class to teach a small group of people at a time the basics of engine calibrations, interpreting data, and the logic Engine Control Modules use. I hope to begin sharing this knowledge in 2019, and I hope that I can make your project a success.