About Me.My name is Ron Reader. I have been in the automotive business since I worked in a gas station at 14 years old. I opened my own auto parts store in 1959 at the age of 21 and have been in the business ever since.
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Established in 1961In 1961, I started street racing and by 1962 I had so many tickets I was in danger of not being able to drive on any streets. I decided to take my racing to the drag strips and eventually met and sponsored over 20 drag cars at a time. In the process, I met many good racers and mechanics that taught me a lot. I also built a machine shop to machine and build my own engines, as well as engines for many other street and drag race enthusiasts. I owned and operated a race shop call Midwest Auto Parts / Booth Arons Racing. We had an American Motors contract from 1970 to 1980 and were very successful beating many names you will remember in pro stock at least in 1976 & 1977.
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My GoalBack in the day, I liked building engines better than the racing or the travel time it took to be top notch. In those days Dick Arons & Wally Booth did my racing for me. After 34 years in business, I retired and quickly got bored. I went back to work a year later. I built engines for other people and sold machine shop equipment for a while. In 1998 I went to work for John Vermeersch at Total Performance. Even though I was not a Ford guy originally, John taught me a lot about Ford engines and Ford Racing. I've always been grateful to John for those years.
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Pro Stock AMC race car 1970-1980 Wally Booth/Dick Arons Ron Reader at Midwest Auto Parts
We raced in Pro Stock with AMC 1970-1980 with Dick Arons and Wally Booth. In 1977 won 5 of 7 major meets. It was our year just - could not do anything wrong. We also campaigned with many other (20) cars.