Tim grew up on a farm in rural, Southwestern, MN near Sanborn, where it all started, using seasoned parts from various piles of iron in the grove I started building go-carts with a 3 hp Briggs engine and later graduated into larger carts using 2 & 3 cylinder snowmobile engines. I built many carts for the neighbors and friends and I guess that is how my career started.

Tim graduated from Sanborn High School and attended Willmar AVTI where I graduated with honors in Diesel Mechanics. I also hold a degree in Automatic Transmission Technology.

After Graduation in 1980, Tim started my own business in Springfield, MN thus the beginning of Tim’s Automotive. Servicing anything from farm tractors, cars, trucks and a few local race cars.

We started racing late models that year and continued until 1983 when I started building engines and began racing sprint cars. We won several track championships, point’s titles and a National point’s title in 2000. I have always had an interest in affordable racing and tried my best to offer a fair price to the racer.

In 1995 Schwanke Short Blocks was introduced. We started producing short blocks in production and found that we could save the racer even more money based on our volume buying and are now doing approximately 200 short blocks a year of which many are now complete engines. Only seven people, five family members and two friends who are now employees complete this task.

We have had a strong desire to develop an engine program to level the playing field in the engine department and allow multiple season use without servicing the engine. When the 2000 5.3 liter engine came into production I felt this engine would appeal to the masses in the racing world. We have put reliability in this engine package.

We now have engines racing in all 50 states as well as 6 other countries. We also strongly promote Ethanol products. We have two race cars that are two seaters that we take to speedways all over the country to help with this promotion.

Our newest venture is Schwanke Engines “Kartin’ in the Park” LLC where we will have a go kart track running this summer starting riverside Days through Labor Day, Friday and Saturday 6:00pm-8:00pm for your great, local family entertainment.