Wasn't S class a stock race motor class and U class was the modified motor class?
Mark Nelson
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Wasn't S class a stock race motor class and U class was the modified motor class?
Mark Nelson
That doesn't stop them from running in U regardless of it being legal in S
Originally "S" just meant single ... from the days of R, S, T, U and X
R was restricted
S was single
T was twin
U was unlimited
X was experimental
In Canada, I think U and S class were evolved into Mod 100 about 1975 or 1976. Before that U was always considered the under class to S and if memory serves me right the s class competition records were always slightly higher than U class records.
Again in Canada, Merc and OMC had their best drivers in S class and the U class drivers were independents (with some factory support). Mark Rotharmel could probably verify or correct this.
I for one could never tell the difference on the outside of a T-II, Stinger or Strangler whether it was a U class motor or S class motor.
Here are some records from the 1974 APBA Rule Book.
Mark
peterse90 said it right, U was one step below S. An example is the 1250 BP.....it was a limited production Racing engine. One hundred had to be built and they were made available for sale to the public. When an independant bought one he went racing in U class. At the same time, the factory driver was running a version of that engine with some internal changes, a speedmaster and stacks in S class.Quote:
Originally Posted by MN4V
Same with the Twister I.....an independant bought it and raced U class while the factory driver was running a C6 in S. One hundred of the 100 inch TI's had been built, but only a few of the 100 inch C6's existed. The S class in the states was the ON class in Europe. The factorys had their single engine battles in S and ON until the cubic inches went past 100, then OZ became the playground.
Hiya Willabee, once your out of that slumber mode, you get to singing like Patsy Kline.!!!!!!! I learned more about what went on and where, and the different rules for foreign fools, S for you and "ON" for me etc. Bet you could put that to music and a no.1 hit would be right there. Sei-la-vie. The minute "OZ" came into the equation it was the beginning of the end of formulated racing. Basic Rules no longer apply, because there are no rules or limits to anything.!!!!!! It's an open ended formula. It's like taking a Kaleshnikov to a fist fight. I just wonder if anyone ever learned from the fiasco that ensued when that particular can of worms was opened.? But stay awake O most learned one and tell of deeds that were done, by those who found glory, and others that should not be mentioned, but undoubtably WILL BE. OOLUVSYA BABY. jw
Did a little checking and found that the Race Team did run TII's at Miami. The torque problem they had experienced in Paris during the debut of the T3 last fall had not been resolved yet and the TII-X had not made it's first appearance.
There was a little breeze Sunday morning, but Peacock and I decided to run Lil Blue anyway. I still remember that sight..... the gun goes off, the boats come into view from the south end of the stadium, and then you can see Peacock. He appeared on the inside of everyone else and it was amazing to watch that little boat just roar past the entire field.....very big lead when he went behind the island. He had an even larger lead as we watched him go back up the backstretch, but then it started getting rougher outside of the stadium. His lead began to shrink and a few laps later, he brought the Twistercraft back to the trailer rather than take a chance on busting it up in the rough water.....we really enjoyed that while it was taking place :cool: :D :cool:.
Although no one ran away from the pack, the race turned out to be between Billy Seebold and Reggie Fountain. They exchanged the lead several times and Reggie was in front when an embarrassing event took place. Going into the very last turn, it was Fountain, Seebold, Bentz, Tim Briggs, Stevenson and Art Kennedy. Then it happened.....Seebold and Bentz went dead in the water.....out of fuel !!!!! Bentz did manage to get restarted and it ended Fountain, Briggs, Kennedy, Bentz and Stevenson. Engineering had forgotten to mention that the TII burned a little more fuel that the C6.....we were lucky we finished at all :mad:. Without that mishap, Fountain would have won anyway, so he had put another notch in his new gun.
So, the TII's had proven to be strong and reliable....I don't recall any failures testing or during the race. They were plenty for the competition in U class. But, like any other performing animal, you have to know how to properly feed them :rolleyes:.
Doug Pearl won the Sport J class.....here's a shot of Pearl (and his ponytail) in his Scorpion, Stevenson (who was a real pleasure to work with) in his Kitson and Fountain/Seebold in their Molinari's battling for the lead.
So we head for the site of one of the best races in the world once again, Parker, Arizona. This year was the first time the race had been reduced from 9 hours to just 7, due to the energy crisis. It seems that OPEC was upset again and decided to limit oil production. The result was that unleaded regular which had sold for an average of $.385 per gallon in May of 1973, shot all the way up to an average of $.551 by June of 1974!!!!!
I think this is the last race that the Merc team participated in until the OZ World Championships in St. Louis in August, citing the energy crisis as the reason. The team boats ran the TII-X for the first time and the support team boats ran the TII. I don't remember exactly how we were teamed, but Seebold was with Cees van der Velden, Fountain was with Brett May, Hering was still busted up from a bad flip and didn't race and I don't recall if Bob Spalding ran with Bentz. The support team had the usual cast of characters including the Berghauers, Bob Holloway and Jock Horner, Bucky Morris and Lee Sutter. Gary Peacock chose to run a KT, maybe for Speed Marine, but broke early in the event.
Maybe someone can help me out here, OMC entered a pair of V6's at this race. Jimbo and Woods ran the Evinrude and Sanders and Posey ran the Johnson. What I am thinking is that this is the first run for those engines. Merc's V6 showed up in Paris in the fall of 1973, and maybe OMC had their V6 there also, but I don't think so.....anyone know for sure?
Here are a few pictures from Powerboat......the winning Molinari of Seebold/van der Velden, those two drivers and the Director of Mercury Racing, Gary Garbrecht.
To be continued......
I have told you about the impressive 1st lap performance that OMC had put on with their rotarys in 1973.....well, it was deja vu, only difference was this time they used their new V6. That same feeling of excitement as you wait for the gun.....everything out there clean, steady and ready. Bang - Roar - Smoke....they're off :cool: :D :cool:. They disappear, the smoke clears and the water settles down and if you weren't already wet, you stand as close to the water as you can to get your best look at who will appear first on the back chute. A few minutes more and then, there, a rooster tail....oh, oh....two of them, running together and alone. Sh-t, I've seen this show before! Just as they had planned it, here are Jimbo and Posey in their shiney new Scotti's, running side by side and waving to the crowd. I couldn't help but to smile and wave back, it was again really really cool :cool: :) :cool: .
It had never entered my mind that they would be able to pull off that spectacular start again. Some time later I got to thinking about it and said to myself that I had sacrificed Peacock's entry of Lil Blue at the wrong race. I think a new TII-X on that boat might have given those guys a real run for first lap honors. It wouldn't have been able to run more than a few laps, but the the 1st one would have been interesting.....would sure like to have that opportunity back to do it a little differently the second time.
In a race that only a few years earlier had been dominated by the inboards, now their numbers were really diminishing. Because many of them didn't show, only 76 boats started this year and only 26 finished.....and remember, this race was two hours shorter than normal. I guess you would have to attribute that to the fact that everyone was going much faster and, consequently, putting more strain on all of the equipment.
Here are the highest finishing inboards.....Karl Koster in a Eliminator/ JET! in 15th, Ed Irving in a Nordic GN in 16th and Bill Curtis in a Bandi/JET! in 17th.
To be continued.....
As a side note, I should have mentioned that, when I was with Merc, we never made a plan to try to be the first boat back on the 1st lap. We just set our stuff up to, hopefully, run for nine hours and if one of our entrys got lucky and came back first after the start.....well, that would have been great. When I started attending Parker, the !st lap honor always went to an inboard. There was a 7 litre hydro, Gummy-A-GoGo I think, that won it several times. I had always heard that there was a lot of Vegas money bet on the 1st lap, but I thought that story was probably a wives tale.
Prior to this race, almost 100% of the super speedmasters that were run by the Team and Team Support boats were built by the racing team. Chuck Mettner built most of them and Denny Robbins built the balance. However, Hi Performance Products had been started in 1973 and the Team Support boats were now the responsibility of that department. So, this was the first race the the SSM's were built by Hi-Perf, and my younger brother Rick was the man we had trained to perform this task.The same was true of the rigging requirements and the powerheads, all now being done by Hi-Perf. Jim Schlichting was our lead man in the powerhead department and Jerry Kohnke headed the rigging group. I didn't really feel any additional pressure being the guy in charge of that department because these were all very capable men, very good at what they did, and I had the same responsibilty when I was with the Racing Team, just a different title.
We generally started testing the Monday before the race and had our driver arrivals staggered so that we didn't have to do all of the boats at once. Some time about mid-week, someone blew a SSM.....propshaft gone. I thought it was no big deal, but as we were looking at what was left of that unit, someone blew another one. Oh-Oh, now I'm starting to feel a little added pressure. It wasn't long and another one popped.....now I know we are in very deep sh-t :(. We can't learn anything from the blown units because the bottom ends of them are in the Colorado river. I called Oshkosh and alerted everyone that would listen to see if they could figure out what the hell was happening. People went over to Hi-Perf and watched Rick build the units, thinking it was an assembly problem. Did he torque this, use a michometer on that, etc...... nope, that wasn't the problem. After all of whatever checks they made, no one had an answer. We have a 7 hour race in front of us and we have some lower units that didn't last 7 minutes.....what are we going to do?
To be continued.....
In the picture below, Rod Flint, Powerboat West Coast editor, says I'm giving a traditional victory sign, making you think this was taken at the end of the race. I'm pretty darn sure that picture was taken as the OMC V6's came by, leading that 1st lap and waving to the crowd. You know those guys came over to the pit side of the river and looked hard into the Mercury pits for reaction. I just couldn't help but smile and wave back and that is what I'm doing in the picture. When I saw Jimbo and Posey later, they both smiled and said they had gotten a kick out of seeing that as they went by :).
[QUOTE=willabee;1204491] We have a 7 hour race in front of us and we have some lower units that didn't last 7 minutes.....what are we going to do?
Bill...this is another one of your priceless recollections of the "wonder years." I am getting sweaty palms just reading this. I can't imagine the pressure with Mr. K. looking at everything and everybody through a microscope. I am looking forward to the continuation....Regards...Bob
Thanks Bob V, the story continues.....
Now it's friday and I know the cavalry is not coming to the rescue. We had blown some more speedmasters and still, no one knew why. I started going through the pits with the gearcase lube pail and began flushing the units to see if I could see anything in the lube that might give an indication that something bad was about to happen. When I got to Seebold's Molinari, Grandpa Seebold (Billy's Father) was there and a number of spectators were looking at the rig and talking with him. As I started to pull the lower unit plug, Grandpa asked what I was doing. After quietly telling him what I was up to (we never wanted the public to know that anything on a Mercury ever broke :rolleyes:), he said that they had just checked it and things were cool.
I said I was going to check it anyway and when I started flushing the unit, some strange colored, different smelling gunk started to ooze out. I'm thinking maybe I've stumbled onto something that might shed some light on the mystery. As I start to comment, Grandpa says " Oh there's nothing wrong with that lube, that's what I put in that unit." Surprised, I asked what he was talking about. He told me that it was some lube that they used to use with their stock outboards and that he thought it was a good idea to run it at this endurance race. :eek: :eek: :eek:
I always liked him, but I just exploded (apparently the pressure was really on now).....I couldn't believe that someone had decided to put an untested product in our equipment, especially now when we are having the worst lower unit problem I could remember (no, I haven't forgotten about the BP's). We had one heck of a loud argument and it ended with me shouting something about when he starts paying for this stuff, he can run anything in it he wants to .....until then, hands off! Those spectators sure heard some stuff that they shouldn't have :o. By the next day we were fine again, we apologized.....well, maybe it was that I apologized and he accepted :). Anyway, it was over and he did take the time to give me a little you know what when that boat came home first.
Well, we are definitely in a "run what ya brung" situation. All that was available to us now was to try to develop a strategy that might get us through the race. If they blow while up river, by the time we could them going again, there would be no possibility of a win for that rig. So, do we run a certain amount of laps and pit for a new unit, do we change units as the boats come in for fuel or, since that unit hasn't blown yet, do we leave it on and just hope it goes the distance.....lot's of stuff to consider.
To be continued.....
Now it's Sunday morning, the sky is clear and bright. No more screwing around, it's time to put these puppies in the water and find out what everyone really brought to this barbecue. One of the entrants I thought had a good chance of pulling an upset was the Molinari/TII of Bob Holloway and Jock Horner. It was a newer boat, everything on it was fresh and we had made some big performance gains during the testing process. I figured Jock would hold position while Bob would push hard to gain positions, a nice combination.
Here come the goosebumps, there goes the starters gun and we're in business. As I said, OMC duplicated their 1973 start, with Posey and Jimbo running side by side, way ahead of the pack. It was soon obvious that if those two boats run for 7 hours, we can go ahead and blow all of our lower units and it won't matter, we weren't going to beat them anyway. Posey went to the front and ran there for 10 laps with Jimbo running behind him. Then, on lap 11, Jimbo came back first and Posey was no where to be seen. Turns out he lost his flywheel at the other end of the course.....scratch bogey #1 :). Jimbo and Barry Woods kept the remaining V6 in the lead until the 35th lap and then had to hit the trailer. They discovered water was leaking into the block and couldn't continue.....scratch bogey #2 :D.
Just a FYI, it took just under 8 1/2 minutes to complete a lap on that 13 mile course. So, another way to look at it is that Posey lead for almost 1 1/2 hours and Jimbo lead for the next 3 1/2 hours....much improved over the rotary performance of the previous year.
The strategy that Garbrecht had decided to use on our lower unit problem was to just let them run, no scheduled changes. That seemed to be proving to be a good move, we had only lost one or two since the start and we were almost three quarters of the way through the event. The race behind those two boats was mainly between Seebold/van der Velden, Holloway/Horner, the Berghauers and the Briggs brothers. Holloway took the front spot when Jimbo retired with Seebold behind him. Then, Holloway doesn't come back around and we find out our problem is alive and kicking..... kicking propshafts out of lower units :mad:.
There are still about two hours left in this race and Garbrecht is rethinking the gearcase strategy ......
To be continued.....
Garbrecht is now concerned that we have completed 5 hours of this race and then lost a SSM. He knows that the lead boats of Seebold and Berghauer have 2 to 4 laps on the next four guys, but those next four are all OMC's. We have three more in the top ten, but they are at least a lap behind those OMC entrys. If our lead boats pop a shaft, we can't fix them fast enough to keep the lead and we don't know if our remaining stuff can get back the laps they are presently down.
The way I remember it, the next two events happened within minutes of one another. With just under an hour to go, Seebold has to come in to replace a damaged prop and it looks like Gary wants us to replace the lower unit. At the last second he changes his mind and Seebold returns to the course just in front of Berghauer. Then, believe it or not, Berghauer blows the shaft out of his SSM!!! No doubt in my mind that if Berghauer had done that just a tick earlier, we would have put a new SSM on Seebold during that stop, and no one knows if the new one would have lasted to the end.
As it turned out, the unit stayed together and Seebold and van der Velden won that destruction derby. They averaged almost 93 mph for the 7 hours, a speed helped by some very fast pit stops. The next four finishers were OMC's, 2 to 4 laps back. Holloway lost an hour because of the SSM replacement and still managed to finish 8th. Posey also lost about an hour having a new flywheel installed and came home 9th.
Here's the Posey/Sanders V6 and the 2nd place finishing Briggs brothers, both Scotti's.
To be continued.....
Here's the way I remember things happening when we returned to Oshkosh. Per standard procedure, we disassembled all failed parts for inspection by the engineers. We did this in the engine shop at the Race Division. This inspection did not reveal anything new in regards to why we failed so many SSM's. A couple of the engineers said they wanted to go to the Hi Performace build room just to see what they could see and Chuck Mettner (the man that built the SSM's for the race team) took them.
While they were looking at a number of things including empty housings, it was Chuck that noticed something peculiar on Rick's work bench. Rick remembers it as being the front propshaft bearing that had a step in the i.d. that wasn't supposed to be there. I remember a thrust washer that was supposed to have a chamfered i.d., but didn't......maybe it was both. In any event, Chuck pointed this out to the engineers and that got them started down the right rode. A few days later it was determined that those parts, by themselves, wouldn't have caused the problem. However, when used in conjunction with a improperly heat treated propshaft, bam.....a place for failure was born.
The gearcases run at Parker were built at two different locations. While Rick was training with Chuck, they built several using the parts from Racings existing stock. Simultaneously, new parts were ordered to fill the stockroom at Hi Perf. Hi Perf either ordered or received one or two incorrect parts as well as a batch of bad propshafts. The balance of the Parker units were built from that stock. The unit that each driver received was just the luck of the draw, we did not know that there was any difference when they were installed on the boats. I did try to communicate that finding to Grandpa Seebold, but he wasn't having anything to do with that "story".....it was his lube that had saved the day :D :rolleyes: :D.
This story reminded me of a "uncool" trait that too many people have, me included..... If we would not have failed any SSM's and the race results would have turned out exactly as they did, not one soul would have said "hey, I understand that this is the first time that Hi Perf built all of those SSM's and none failed.....who actually built them, I want to congratulate those guys on a job well done." But, since we did lose a bunch, people did want to know who built them. Initially, a lot of fingers got pointed for the wrong reasons at the wrong people. Of course, everything quieted down when the verdict came in, I just didn't appreciate the experience. I think we're quick to criticize, and need to remember to give "a job well done" equal time.