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  1. #571
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    Hiya Old Fibreglass, You really don't want to know 'bout the leisure time of a frisky old bunch of boat racers let loose in a foreign country. No, you don't want to hear about the tenor who wandered the streets of Como singing his rocks of about one polliacci . Or about Lilo Lil or Como Clara outside the seaplane hanger after midnight. Or the trip down the autostrada from Como to Milan to see which of the ladies of the night had the best bonfire. I don't know much about these stories-------only what senior company executives told me.
    Nah !!!! i just know you would prefer to hear about the lay out of a paint shop in a Como lakeside setting .

  2. #572
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    Quote Originally Posted by jackie wilson View Post
    Hiya Old Fibreglass, You really don't want to know 'bout the leisure time of a frisky old bunch of boat racers let loose in a foreign country...... Or the trip down the autostrada from Como to Milan to see which of the ladies of the night had the best bonfire.
    I couldn't agree more, you really don't want to hear.....People, if you have ever trusted me, trust me on this one! If Jackie gets to yakking about his "free time in the evenings", you will quickly discover that any discussion about paint drying can be very interesting indeed. By the way, the bonfires were not on the autostrada, s35 sounds like the correct road.

    Here are a few shots of the 16' sprint we sent back over from the states for the Paris and Berlin races. We have determined that it came to the U.S. and raced with cable steering. It won the Miami 225, a marathon in St. Mary's, Ohio and set a closed course record at the Miami Nationals before having ride-guide steering installed and returning to Italy. I found a good picture of it being readied to ship that very clearly shows the steering, I'll post it later.

    It was the fastest boat we had in testing, but proved to be just a bit too small for the water you had to get over in Paris. Jim Merten and Bill Sirois were to co-drive, but Mert nosed it in during his first stint and suffered kidney damage. Tom Stickle took over for Mert and ran the you know what off of that boat. A great drive, especially when you consider that he had never been in one before.

    Here's the boat after launch (hoist cables hanging down), warming up and Merten returning from a good run.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails LAUNCH 16' SPRINT COMO.jpg   TESTING COMO 16' SPRINT 1970.jpg   MERTEN COMO 1970.jpg  
    Last edited by willabee; 04-10-2008 at 03:14 PM.

  3. #573
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    Hiya Old Fibreglass, You really don't want to know 'bout the leisure time of a frisky old bunch of boat racers let loose in a foreign country.
    Oh, but we do........we'll still love you in the morning honest.....

  4. #574
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    Quote Originally Posted by willabee View Post
    I couldn't agree more, you really don't want to hear.....People, if you have ever trusted me, trust me on this one! If Jackie gets to yakking about his "free time in the evenings", you will quickly discover that any discussion about paint drying can be very interesting indeed. By the way, the bonfires were not on the autostrada, s35 sounds like the correct rode (that's what I was told ).

    Here are a few shots of the 16' sprint we sent back over from the states for the Paris and Berlin races. We have determined that it came to the U.S. and raced with cable steering. It won the Miami 225, a marathon in St. Mary's, Ohio and set a closed course record at the Miami Nationals before having ride-guide steering installed and returning to Italy. I found a good picture of it being readied to ship that very clearly shows the steering, I'll post it later.

    It was the fastest boat we had in testing, but proved to be just a bit too small for the water you had to get over in Paris. Jim Merten and Bill Sirois were to co-drive, but Mert nosed it in during his first stint and suffered kidney damage. Tom Stickle took over for Mert and ran the you know what off of that boat. A great drive, especially when you consider that he had never been in one before.

    Here's the boat after launch (hoist cables hanging down), warming up and Merten returning from a good run.
    Yeah !!! Well, !!!!! With a friend like Willa who needs ---------- but don't you dare come the goody two shoes bit. I was just testing you on the Autostrada bit. Was it really the s35 ------that little back road to _Lugano where you and Pruett and Merton got into--------------enough already, i was an innocent abroad and then met you guys.
    Back to boats------Was bad enough trying to haul the little 16' sprint around with decent steering, but putting that ride guide crap on to a race boat was criminal. It told you NOTHING, there was absolutely no feed back from it, and when Mert stuffed it, i hope you took notice. That stuff is o.k. in the right place like birch bark canoes and ocean going liners but had no place on a 16' sprint Molly. Even if it was " Made By Mercury".
    Stickle always put in a good performance and when all else failed he would come through, You remember his 'Briefcase Bar'. 4 glasses and a choice of whisky,vodka, gin or tequila,??? He was nutty as a squirrels fart in those days, but just like me -----LOVABLE-----AND ---HANDSOME.

  5. #575
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    Quote Originally Posted by Old fiberglass View Post
    Oh, but we do........we'll still love you in the morning honest.....
    HIYA OLD FIBER
    THE LAST TIME ANYONE SAID THAT TO ME , I WOKE UP IN THE MORNING AND I'D SIGNED FOR MERCURY

  6. #576
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    HIYA OLD FIBER THE LAST TIME ANYONE SAID THAT TO ME , I WOKE UP IN THE MORNING AND I'D SIGNED FOR MERCURY
    You must have felt really well loved in the morning by Mercury...Ride Guide and all

  7. #577
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    Lake X Testing, 1970.....

    mbd29 found some contact sheets in his treasure chest and sent them to me to play with, just thought I'd share what he sent. These were taken at the Lake prior to the 1970 Maimi 225, to be used for future PR. I believe that Dick Klaywitter took the shots and that Stickle and Merten did the driving for those that hadn't arrived yet. I don't recall if these were ever used, but these are the boats that made up the full page shot used in Powerboat.

    This is the Powerboat shot and a couple of the 16' Molinari sprint assigned to Bill Sirois. I named this boat Tuff Turkey after an expression that Bill was fond of using at that time.....we had received our first three 16'ers for this race.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Power%20Boat%20Mag%20037.jpg   SIROIS 16' SPRINT.jpg   SIROIS 16' SPRINT 1 LAKE X.jpg  

  8. #578
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    LAKE X TESTING, 1970.....con't

    Here are a few of the boat that won that 225, Jim Merten in another 16' Molinari sprint named Wet and Wild after the Switzer Wing he ran with the same name. We were talking about the noise a stacker made a few days ago. I remember being with Mert immediately after the 225 as some journalists came to him for an interview. It was quite humorous..... as they would ask him a question, he would look at me with an expression that meant "what the hell did he just say" . I would answer the reporters question, all the while looking at Mert and him nodding whenever I did. He couldn't hear a thing for a couple of hours.

    Oh, I should mention that it is using cable steering for this race.....we put the ride-guide in later that summer, after a few failures on other boats of the cable system that had been supplied by Molinari.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails 16' SPRINT LAKE X MERTEN.jpg   16'SPRINT MERTEN.jpg   LAKE X MERTEN 16'.jpg  
    Last edited by willabee; 02-28-2008 at 02:46 PM.

  9. #579
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    LAKE X TESTING, 1970.....con't

    This is the third of the 16' Molinari sprints. This one did not make the race as Renato blew it over while testing at the Lake. This is probably the last boat that he painted green for himself to drive.....he blew his green twin over at Havasu, his last trip to the U.S. before this race!

    One thing I remember about his flip was how he reacted after hitting the water. Two things were immediately obvious.....he was okay because he made his way back to the floating boat by himself and he didn't like the idea of sharing the water with Wally Gator . Renato sat perched on the exposed bow of the boat and kept a 360 degree lookout for that big mouth reptile. If there was four square inches of wood exposed, that was where he squatted. As the boat would change positions, so would he.....looked just like a perched pelican in search of food .

    Maybe this one was left at the Lake and later sold/given to someone who got it repaired and it became one of that large group of 16' sprints we were talking about .
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails RENATO 16' SPRINT.jpg   LAKE X RENATO.jpg   16' SPRINT RENATO.jpg  
    Last edited by willabee; 02-29-2008 at 11:15 AM.

  10. #580
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    Quote Originally Posted by willabee View Post
    As I recall it, this was the 1st generation without the ballast tanks. Do you know if Dick had an 18' Molinari rocker that was red/orange and had yellow lightning bolts painted on the rear cowl and decks.....1970 maybe?

    Sorry it took awhile for this answer......I missed the question and found it while I was looking for Jackies' comments about GG buying a Miles boat.

    Yes.....this does sound like Dick's boat. As I said in an earlier post we had it modified and and sent to Toronto where we sold it to Ludy Schindler.........I never drove it but Ludy was pretty happy to have a real Molinari to hang that white thing on!

  11. #581
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    GG buys a Miles!!!???

    [quote=jackie wilson;1303012]Hiya Brian, At the Liege race Freddy was pissing all over everyone in dog nasty race conditions,[something like 2 laps up on 2nd place]. The boat just skipped across everything. At the 2nd changeover, Wilf Gregory came into the pits far too quickly and smacked the wall head on and wrecked the boat. Garbrecht bought the boat ,there and then, as was. He shipped it back to Oshkosh and Willa can probably fill you in on the rest of the story.
    quote]

    Ha! I finally found the post from Jackie!
    Willabee.........do you recall what happened with this boat?

  12. #582
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    Quote Originally Posted by T2x View Post
    Further updates to the above:

    Fred Fincham's Miles- I believe was a Canadian made copy

    T2x
    Fred Finchams Miles was our 3rd Miles and our first Picklefork Miles. I ran it very successfully with a C6 and thru Valkovics' "Flying Quarter" in Region 2 at 113 MPH!
    I helped Fred convert it to an FJ set-up and recall testing it with him on Buckhorn lake late one cloudy,rainy, cold fall day. We had a "gentlemans'" agreement that he wouldn't let Lorne Pinel copy it, however they did and produced Mod 50 (!!???) boats from it. (Musta been turkeys with so little power, and Lornes heavy construction!)

    If you folks recall we also had a twin "T" Molinari with the engines set out at the sponsons. This went to South Africa with our second Miles single.

  13. #583
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    Hey Brian,
    Need to fix a few things. The first 2 Pinel boat weren't copied from your Miles boats. The cowlings may have been, but not the boats. They weren't too bad on wieght but the cockpits were too far forward, and lacked enough lift for the SE motors that were run on them. All the problems were corrected on the 3rd SE Pinel, and was a very good boat.
    There are pictures of them are somewhere on the board here.

    Zonkercraft
    Vintageopcracing@aol.com

  14. #584
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zonkercraft View Post
    Hey Brian,
    Need to fix a few things. The first 2 Pinel boat weren't copied from your Miles boats. The cowlings may have been, but not the boats. They weren't too bad on wieght but the cockpits were too far forward, and lacked enough lift for the SE motors that were run on them. All the problems were corrected on the 3rd SE Pinel, and was a very good boat.
    There are pictures of them are somewhere on the board here.

    Zonkercraft
    Vintageopcracing@aol.com
    Thanx....I stand corrected.........I'm not sure what happened to that boat after Fred had it. He's still around so I guess if there was an interest someone could ask him.
    We started out with a 21 ft Glastron dual. It was sold to Paul Fingold and raced at Havasu, Driven by Don (?). I understand that Paul eventually took it to his place in Florida.

  15. #585
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    LAKE X TESTING, 1970.....con't

    Here is Bob Hering in an 18' Molinari marathon, I think he named it Spooker. It was the first boat that he raced for Mercury and he sure liked to run them high. His career with Mercury had a strange beginning, it went something like this.

    Late one afternoon I was in the yard at Racing when Garbrecht and a stranger approached. Gary introduced me to Bob and said something about he wanted Bob to run one of the 18' Molinari's just to get a feel for what they are all about. I took him to one I had been running and showed him how the stuff in the cockpit worked. It was going to be dark soon, so we talked briefly about how to drive one and then put the Molinari and a safety boat into the water. I led Bob out to a short two buoy course we had on the river and told him to start with easy laps around that course.

    Well, it became quite obvious that Bob had a very different interpretation of the word "easy" than I did. He was pretty much on the loud pedal right from the start. He got the nose up a little higher with each lap until I saw the boat do the "death quiver" coming down the backstretch. I waved for him to stop, but he didn't see me and made another lap. I don't know why it didn't go over on his next lap, but he got away with another one so I went onto the course and got him to stop.

    He pulled next to me, flipped up his face shield and revealed a huge grin. He asked what was up, why did I stop him. I asked him if he noticed that the nose was quivering as he came down river and he said sure. I asked what he did when it did that and he said he just has to back off a little to settle it back down. I tried to explain that his fix was not long term, and that if he continued to run that way he would be in the drink soon. He just smiled and asked if he could run a few more laps before it got dark. He did manage to get a couple more laps in without blowing over before we had to put the boat away. Gary asked how it went and I gave him my version, then he and Bob went somewhere to talk.

    Soon after, Bob became a Team driver and his first race was St. Mary's, Ohio. They used a pace boat start and Bob was determined to be with the boats in the front row when they dropped the flag. Well, he did join the front row boys, but had the dubious distinction to blow over before they dropped the green flag.....surprise, surprise .

    His next race was another bummer, he decided to do a "No-No" and changed spark plugs after testing was complete. He switched brands and we didn't know about it until just after the start when his engine did not fire. With a start like that, I wouldn't have been surprised if his career was over before he ever completed a lap! Well, Merc kept him and that sure proved to be a wise choice, he turned out to be one of the best.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails 18' LAKE X HERING.jpg   HERING 18' MARATHON.jpg   HERING LAKE X.jpg  
    Last edited by willabee; 03-05-2008 at 10:18 AM.

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