JV Brotherton, Part 2: The Foundry and Birth of BRODIX
Although it sounds like a fairy tale, I guess the birth of BRODIX began when I went on a blind date. The year was 1964, and a friend of mine who was a little homely wanted to date a nurse at Sparks School of Nursing. She would not go out with him unless they double dated. He said he would buy the burgers for a week if I would go out with this girl’s roommate on a double date. The girl’s name was Paula Dix from Mena, Arkansas which was about 75 miles south of Fort Smith. After our first blind date, Paula and I dated regularly. I would take her out to eat, and she would load all the extra crackers, and any other condiments on the table, into her purse and take them back to the nurse’s dorm. I think the nurses were starving. I suspected Paula went out with me because I fed her well.
I eventually met Paula’s mother and dad. I was sort of a shock to them because they had never heard of hot rodders and hopped up cars. Francis, Paula’s father, desperately tried to understand why I wanted to race cars. I did not have a good answer because I was not really sure myself. Finally a friend in Chicago explained to him that “I was trying to commit suicide.” This explanation seemed to be acceptable to him, and he was very concerned about his daughter and me after that.
I moved to Mena to work with Paula’s father in his foundry. I could write a large book about Francis Dix. His family had a history in the foundry business, and he had a small jobbing foundry in Mena making whatever came along in castings. He was a special, generous person with very little fear of financial consequences. He had the unique talent of operating on the edge of financial disaster without going nuts. I was illiterate in the business world and thought this was normal as I had operated this way all my life. He made me a foreman immediately which was a huge mistake. I thought castings grew on a tree or something like that. Paula and I were married in 1966, and we struggled for a couple of years in the jobbing aluminum foundry business. This was a hard, back-breaking business which was extremely competitive. We had a cranky old patternmaker who was not busy all the time so Mr. Dix told me to find a new product to make. I was always enamored with cylinder heads because that is generally where horsepower comes from so that was a logical choice. We made our first head around 1970; it was a Mopar aluminum Hemi head that was a total flop. At the time, Mopar had discontinued the aluminum Hemi head and said they would not produce them again. We spent a year in part-time work to produce our head. Within months, the factory produced another version and started giving them away to a lot of racers. Obviously this was a disaster for our sales.
During this same time, a couple of local fellows asked me to partner with them on a circle track car to race on a new very small track here in Mena. They had seen me at the drag strip in Fort Smith and thought I knew something about racing. After a year of spinning out and crashing, they moved on and left me with a beat up and worn out ’57 Chevy. I persevered with a lot of stubborn pride and a little help from Speedy Spiers, one of our early customers. I eventually could go around in a circle without spinning out every lap. I raced dirt track cars for about 16 years after that and then retired for a few years. In 1990, one of my original partners wanted to race again, and asked me to find him a car and build him an engine. I declared he had better find an acceptable driver; he assured me that would be no problem. We got an old car and new engine, but he had no driver. I think I got “conned” as he asked me to dial in the car. We dialed the car in for around 4 more years. After life on the dirt tracks, I went drag racing with my sons, Jeff and Greg. We all had dragsters, but after 3 years I finally quit racing for good. As hard as it was, I enjoyed every minute of it. I feel it helped me through some of the more stressful times building a business and raising a family.
In 1972, Francis and I decided to make a small block Chevy compatible head in aluminum. There was a giant learning curve which we had to endure with never enough funds. Finally, after great perseverance, we brought the first aftermarket aluminum small block Chevy compatible aluminum head to the market approximately one year later. We had no money and no marketing expertise. Lucky for us, the cast iron heads were not very reliable when ported to the max. We did not make as much power, but ours were more durable and repairable. With the success of those first Chevrolet compatible aftermarket heads, Paula and I began the company known as BRODIX, Inc. Over the years, we have made many modifications to our cylinder head castings, and horsepower is no longer a problem.
Through a freak set of events, we ended up with a few heads on a couple of ASA sanctioned cars. Bob Senneker and Ed Howe were the first on pavement to run our heads. In the East, a few sprint cars bolted some on and were happy. French Grimes, Dub May, Van May, Bobby Allen, and Rick Ferkel were among the first to run our heads on dirt. Special recognition should go to Bob Trostle and Loren Woodke. When times were tough and bank payments that I could not meet were looming, I could call them and they would send advance payments for heads that they did not have sold yet. These were very special men in the history of BRODIX. There were others who helped tremendously, but I cannot list them for fear of leaving someone off the list.
In the middle 1980s, we were approached by Pontiac Motorsports about putting a part number on our heads and trying to get them legal in NASCAR for General Motors cars. After a heated battle, we put the Pontiac logo and a part number on our heads, and NASCAR accepted them for their Winston Cup Division. This lasted several years until politics took over and Pontiac and Oldsmobile racing divisions were dismantled. During this time we made the Pontiac Pro-Stock drag racing head which dominated Pro-Stock drag racing for several years. Dan Gurney used our heads on his stock block Chevrolets and actually qualified on the outside pole for the Indianapolis 500 one year.
BRODIX makes numerous designs for the small block Chevy with different angles and spacing. We have a head for virtually any application for a small block Chevy from canted valve heads to CARB legal street heads. We have many big block Chevy compatible designs and versions for almost any big block application. The latest big block head shows the single best horsepower improvement that we have seen in a basically standard racing application. We also have Chevrolet compatible engine blocks ̶ small blocks, big small blocks, and big blocks ̶ that can be built to over 700 cubic inches. The success of our current product line is due to many years of successes and failures. I believe we owe the successes to our loyal customers and a lot of tenacity from my family and faithful employees.