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Speed Records......continued
I'm not exactly sure how the next series of events came about and Boob Hetzel isn't going to join us to help, so I'll have to wing it myself. Hetzel is probably the only one alive that knows the actual detail. But, now that I think about it, he probably has forgotten it anyway (he's older than me).:eek:
So Charles Alexander lets the troops know that he wants the S & U records back. I imagine that Garbrecht and Merten do a little arguing about how to go about it. Mert wants the Berghauers (he was close to those guys) to set them in a new Twistercraft sprint like Lil Red and Gary wants a Molinari with a factory driver, Bob Hering. They end up with Hering in the Koblenz Molinari going for the S record and Duane Berghauer driving the Twistercraft looking to set the U mark. They also decide that they can get in done close to home, in Kaukauna, Wisconsin.
One other thing I believe they discussed was the single engine record. Since OMC was advertising that they owned all three, they decided to go for the 3rd one and to keep the attempt a secret until they knew they could accomplish their objective. As a matter of fact, initially they didn't even tell me about it and when Garbrecht finally did, I admit I was a little hurt and a little angry. When I look back at that time, it's easy to see that completely different driver/boat combinations would have made more sense. But, people always have their own private agenda and it is obvious that Mert wanted to set the single engine himself. I will add that he took one hell of a chance in doing so. He had been busted up pretty good in Galveston and then ended up with kidney damage from a nosedive in Paris. If he would have flipped that hydro, it's a fact that nothing good would have resulted.
Barry Woods ended up owning the two records for all of three months :rolleyes: ......here is the photo that Merc used to announce that Hering had set the S mark at 118.441 and Berghauer had upped the U to 113.271. If memory serves, Herings numbers were within one mph of the twin engine record that I think was set by Kitson's wing! The other photo is a shot of what frequently happens when drivers go for kilo records :eek:.
To be continued...............
Speed Records......continued
A few guys decided to get their 100 MPH patches that year. I'm trying to remember if that was an OMC promoted deal or Gulf.....I'm not sure, but Dick Summerfeldt and Brian Smith were among the guys that did go over the century mark. :cool:
Back to the single engine record attempt......This is where I could use Hetzel. To the best of my recollection, sometime in May, Jim Merten, Jimmy Kubasta and Boob Hetzel loaded up some equipment and went out west, it may have been to Parker, I don't remember. Their secret mission was to get the hydro they took with them to run better than Jerry Walin's 130. This brings me to a question.....how much modifying of an existing hull must be done to it before you can claim it is a hull of a different manufacturer?
Remember, this was a secret project and I wasn't let in on the secret initially. However, I will say that I don't believe that Mercury built that "Twistercraft". Carl Stippich did do some work on it in the boat building shop in Oshkosh, but how much he did I don't know. I think it is a Ron Jones that someone had run in the drags out west, had been returned and sat on a rack in our storage building for some time. I simply didn't pay much attention to it because it wasn't something I was ever going to be working with. mbd29, what do you know about that boats history?
Again, I'm not sure, but I think they were gone for 5 or 6 weeks (time flys when you're having fun). They came back for a couple of weeks and left again. A few weeks later was when Gary told me what they were up to and that they had suffered many delays because they had to wait on proper conditions to test. At that point, Gary said that it looked like they were going to have to give it up because they just didn't have enough power to be positive they could set the record if an official event was set up for Kaukauna.
Here comes NED :) , to be continued..............
Speed Records......continued
Writing about this has made me do some thinking and, after a mere 33 years, I may have just figured something out :o. I had mentioned back on post #164 that I got fed-up in 1973 and ultimately turned in my resignation. Well, this was the approximate time frame that I was the unhappy camper. So I just got to thinking that back then, being the worldly person that I was :rolleyes: (I hadn't turned 27 yet), I probably wore my dissatisfaction around like a badge. Those guys may have noticed something was wrong and decided that until whatever it was gets resolved, they would play it safe and keep the record attempt to themselves. I probably caused that issue all by myself.....what a dummy :(.
Anyway, Garbrecht tells me that they're probably going to abandon the project for now. I ask a bunch of questions about what they are using for power and how close they were , etc. Gary answered and then basicly said they're close, but no cigar. I didn't tell Gary right then that I had something that I thought might put them over the top. I was working on something that wasn't authorized and I needed to figure out how to tell him and still get it built in the timeframe now required. They had a couple more things they wanted to try, and then were packing up. If Gary wanted to try it, it would need to be shipped in the next couple of days and a new powerhead from scratch couldn't be built in that time.
One of the things I was unhappy about was the way a particular driver was being treated. I decided to build a special powerhead for him to use at the next race, hoping that he would win and attitudes would change for the better. In order to get it built, I "borrowed" a 1400 block and started grinding on it at home. I slowly but surely collected most of the parts I wanted to use which included the twin pipe exhaust system I told you about earlier. At this point it needed a couple more hours of block work and was just about ready for final assembly. I don't recall for sure where I had come across that exhaust system, probably off of one of those powerheads in Europe that had about 57 carbs (that was for Mark75H :)), I just remember that I had stored it above my office when that powerhead got torn down.
Typically, I'm getting windy......to be continued
