By Matt Trulio

You've heard this one before: An experienced performance-boat owner decides to make the move to big power. He buys a pair of blown 1,000-hp engines for his catamaran. But the engines break every other time he runs the cat, and he's off the water for most of what is an already-short Midwest-boating season.

Usually, this time-honored tale ends with something like, "He sold the boat, took up something less expensive—like golfing in Scotland—and lived happily ever after." But golf is a little slow for Brad Zastrow of Chicago, so he kept his boat and found an engine builder who could deliver a reliable, big-horsepower product. Call him patient, persistent or even stubborn, Zastrow, 47, doesn't quit easily.

"At first I thought, 'Maybe this is just the way it is with 1,000-hp engines,'" he says. "I have friends who have them, and the same kind of things happened to them."

When his engines broke the first time, Zastrow had ATECO Engine and Dyno Shop in Waukegan, Ill., do the repairs. Bill Lawson, the 61-year-old owner of the engine shop, urged Zastrow to do complete rebuilds, but Zastrow said he was in a hurry and just had the engines repaired. The second time they broke, as Lawson predicted they would, Zastrow had them repaired once more. When they broke a third time, Zastrow was ready to invest in serious rebuilds.

"Bill said, right from the start, 'Something is wrong, please let me rebuild them the right way,'" Zastrow says. "After the third time, I listened. Everything about the original engines was wrong.

"You hear people say that anyone can make horsepower, but it takes a special builder to make it live," he adds. "Bill is that guy. He's a genius."

According to Zastrow, those engines, which he had in his 35-foot Motion cat for four years, are still running strong. He sold them almost two years ago and bought a pair of 1,350-hp ATECO mills, which were originally slated for his Motion.

The combined 2,700-hp turned out to be a bit much for the 35-footer, so Zastrow bought a full-canopy 39 MTI race boat and converted it for pleasure use. He installed the engines in the cat and, in a unique setup, made its canopy removable.

The 1,350-hp engines have run for two seasons—the first in the Motion and the second in the MTI—without a problem. The 39 MTI reportedly can reach 175 mph, though Zastrow rarely takes it there.

"I'm one of those guys at the poker runs going 120 to 140 mph at two-thirds throttle, and I haven't had a lick of a problem with those engines," Zastrow says. "And what I like about Bill is that he takes my calls, answers my questions. As much as I paid for the engines, I almost wonder if he lost money."

An industrial engineer with a degree from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, Bill Lawson cut his teeth building engines for USAC Midget race cars. But his attachment to the water goes back even further. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, he water-skied with his parents on Diamond Lake, and in 1978, his parents moved to Florida and bought a 26-foot Formula. That piqued Lawson's interest in performance boats, and not long after he bought a 30 Scarab and, later, a 38 Scarab.

By the mid-1980s, Lawson's ATECO (an acronym for American Tool and Engineering Company) shop was building for a Chicago-based outfit called Auto Marine Graphics. Eventually, ATECO phased out almost all of its automotive engine business and replaced it with new and rebuilt engines for the high-performance marine market.

The seven-employee outfit, which has an 8,000-square-foot facility with a complete machine shop and dynamometer, offers naturally aspirated and supercharged engines from 650 to 1,350 hp. All of the company's models are carbureted, though electronically fuel-injected offerings, says Lawson, are not far down the road. In fact, ATECO's latest project in development is a closed-cooled, 900-hp EFI engine with twin turbochargers.

ATECO builds about 30 from-scratch engines a year. But the company also has a huge—as in about 150 engines annually—rebuild business. On the new-engine side, Lawson currently is working with Konrad Marine to pair its ACE drive with ATECO's blown 850-hp engine as an ultrareliable propulsion package. "They've done their homework on it and seem to have it priced right," he says.

"I've kind of got my different engine 'packages,' but we're a custom builder so we find out first what the customer wants to do," Lawson says. "What is his budget? Does he want to go faster? Does he want more reliability? Does he want it to be economical to operate? Is he going to run in freshwater or saltwater? We try to tailor our packages to each customer. It's always a give and take.

"We watch the details—we don't leave any stone unturned," he adds. "Being a smaller shop, we deal one on one with our customers, and quality is very important to us. With all the aftermarket stuff available these days, people think they can just buy it and bolt it together. That's not the case."

Prices run from $10,000 to $75,000. Limited warranties are included.

CONTACT Information
ATECO Engine and Dyno Shop, 2103 Washington St., Waukegan, IL 60085, 847-623-2737, www.atecoengines.com.