Until 1993, meaningful research into valve train testing was not possible. It was only when the first SpinTron emerged, a revolutionary new valve-train test machine, that profound inadequacies in pushrod design were revealed. The amount of column deflection of the conventional thin-wall 5/16in diameter pushrods, and the lofting of the flat tappets as they became airborne while traveling over the nose of the camshaft lobes, amazed SpinTron creator Bob Fox and his collaborator the late Randy Dorton, tuning wizard at Hendrick Motorsports. Pushrod design was about to change irrevocably. Fox had established his pushrod company, Trend Performance, in Warren, Michigan, in 1988, after having worked as a tech representative on the phones at nearby Diamond Racing. While at Diamond he became aware of troubling quality issues in pushrod manufacturing: pushrod lengths varied and their ends failed—both ends.