Trick Titanium Gets A Quality Boost From Noonan

Corporate buyouts in the racing industry often make people nervous. Especially if it’s one of their favorite brands, we have all seen good brands get swallowed up by conglomerates, only to see the quality tank and the customer service disappear.

Trick Titanium is now operating under the Noonan Inc. umbrella, and instead of cost-cutting, the focus has been on a massive injection of engineering resources. The operation has moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the integration of Noonan’s world-class billet manufacturing standards is already paying off for engine builders.

Bill Vinton, the director of sales at Trick Titanium, was eager to explain why this transition is a win for racers. The core product was always good, but the association with Noonan has allowed them to refine the manufacturing process to an obsessive degree.

Vinton noted that they have applied the lessons learned from Noonan’s billet block production directly to valve manufacturing. This means tighter tolerances, better finishes, and a level of consistency that was hard to achieve previously. Every valve is now laser-checked for dimensional accuracy, ensuring that what you order is exactly what you get, down to the micron.

A major part of this upgrade is the partnership with Industrial Hard Carbon for coatings. In the high-stress world of drag racing, a titanium valve is only as good as its coating. If the coating fails, the valve galls, and your cylinder head is trash.

The new processes ensure these valves can survive the brutal environment of a nitro engine or a high-boost Pro Mod application. While drag racing remains the primary market for these components, Vinton mentioned that the improved durability is opening doors in the circle track world as well.

This is not a reinvention of the wheel but rather a perfecting of it. The material and design fundamentals remain, but the execution has been elevated. For a builder, this translates to peace of mind. You know that the valve dropping into the seat has been inspected with the same rigor as a billet Hemi block. In an industry where a single failed component can cost tens of thousands of dollars in damage, seeing a company like Trick Titanium double down on quality control is the kind of news we like to hear.