Racing

CV Products Factory Tour - Dirt Rider Magazine

October 15, 2010

When you see the CV4 logo on the shrouds of your favorite motocross and off-road race teams' bikes you might just think those teams are using the more visible CV4 products. Things like the company's ultra-trick silicone radiator hose kits grab the eye, and more observant moto fanatics can spot its CoolFuel under-tank insulation. But just like friends, greeting cards and dessert, it's what's on the inside that counts most.We took a tour through the CV Products (parent company to CV4) expansive Thomasville, North Carolina, manufacturing facility and found all sorts of warm, fuzzy and hard-core horsepower parts being pumped out. After all, they are way bigger than just motorcycles._

Jump on board this high-power factory tour and you'll see that there is more to CV Products than hoses.

CV's Xceldyne valvetrain components are found in F1, Sprint Cup, Nationwide, Truck, IndyCar, NHRA, IHRA, APBA, AMA MX and ATV top factory teams and more. How do you handle the demand for those titanium valves and components? With a lot of raw material inventory. So much so that you need off-site storage just so you can insure the millions of dollars' worth of titanium stock.

The facility even has room for CV's distribution company. It supplies off-road motorcycle and ATV parts like Leo Vince exhaust, Joe Gibbs Driven oils, Hotcams, Cometic-pretty much all the banners here.

The floor of the massive CV Products facility is neatly crammed with dozens of CNC and other manufacturing machines. It's also laboratory clean and full of energy. On our tour, many of the technicians explained their stations and were incredibly knowledgeable about the entire product line.

CV's manufacturing plant produces components for many mainstream, high-end automotive brake, drive system, cooling and lubricating companies. You see a lot of logos in here.

Every workstation has intricate quality control measurement tools like these. Precision is off the charts.

Here, a freshly cut valve "puck" gets ready for some CNC time before it's stuck to a stem.

Xceldyne produces two-piece valves where the pucks are stuck to the stems in a crazy process called inertia welding. The result is a joint that is molecularly stronger than one-piece, forged designs.

Finish-machined Xceldyne valves also go through a high-temp coating treatment that involves nitrogen and hydrogen, some O2 and a dose of jet fuel! BBQ time!

Based on our tour of the CV Products compound, it's obvious this logo means someone is serious about being on the racetrack.

After their inertia meeting, the rough valves go into an autoclave for heat treatment.

CV Products also houses an entire anodizing factory. The company manufactures parts for automotive, bicycle and other industries from raw material to finish-anodized goodness.

On every factory tour, there's the temptation to peek at off-limits stuff. Under these covers are top-secret valve components for a race team we can't talk about. It could be a Ferrari Formula 1 team or the JGR MX squad.

The automotive racing legacy of North Carolina is introducing new products into the motocross world, such as CV4's CoolFuel products.

From aluminum blocks to high-flow oil pump components in one step.

Yep, this is NASCAR country. And CV Products is deep into all aspects of four-wheel racing. Brian Vickers has an on-site museum.

An engine block is tested (without the combustion business) on a machine to test valves, oil pumps and other highly abused parts. The valvetrain noise in this situation is supposed to be incredibly loud.

CV Products point man Rob Celendano was our tour guide. Here, he shows us one of the high-tech machines in the anodizing plant.