Van Pelt Spring Lake Mi

[RichardKCMo]

Does anyone know the time span of Van Pelt boats?
I mean when they started and quit making stock utilitys?
Richard

[Tim Chance]

Roger Dykehouse might know. I have his e-mail address somewhere, I'll tlry and find it. He is an ex-pro racer from Michigan now into the antique stuff. You might find him on the antique site. He worked for a piston ring company in the '60's and came up with the L-ring (dykes ring) for the Quincy Looper. NIce guy, very knowledgable, and lives in Michigan and raced in that era.

[Jack 38 M]

I don't know th exact dates but i was racing in 57 and they were there then up unitl 1960 when i joined the navy.
Johnny Enenga was very good. And the Adams boy from there can't recall first name. any how from 57 to 60 there were around and a little ealrier i belive .

[Rog Dykehouse]

I grew up on Spring lake about three miles from the Van Pelt factory and watched their design evolution. Right after WWII Art Van Pelt designed and build many plywood "Crescent" sail boats and row boats. Soon we started seeing VP "water Scooters" and "Race Scooters" which were semi V bottom racing utilities initially powered by 9.7hp Erude Lightfours but later by KE-7, KF-7 and KF-9 Mercs . Around 1950 Art built the first of three generations of round bottom utilities which were shown with a 7.9 hp Champion Hot Rod in his promotional photos. My buddies and I ran a KG-7Q on one of these and were all infected with the racing bug. In 1955 Art introduced his most successful design which was a flat bottom beveled chine runabout. John Enninga won the APBA CU Nationals with one of these in 1957. A factory fire is the '60s destroyed most of the pattern and bottom molds thus ending any race boat production. Art Van Pelt died soon after and agroup of us local boat racers were pal bearers at the funeral of this innovative friend.
BTW,
I worked at the Sealed Power Piston Ring Co where we supplied most of the "L" rings for the Quincy Loopers. The Original Patent on this type of pressure backed ring was originally issued to a European named Peter d' Dykes
Thank for the nice comments Tim.
Rog Dykehouse

[tkmracer]

Hi Roger,

Thinking back on history on the runabout you and Davey built, I thought there was some ties to Van Pelt. I was fairly young at that time, you two were the ones to beat. A few years later my Father had Dick Byers build a fairly close copy but it had a frame vs your design which I recall was more of a stressed design with few frame members. Many very good memorys of those boats. I still have my runabout, orginal paint and all. I kept the "A" Champion so some day for the fun of it will take it for a ride again.:) -Mike O.

[Tim Chance]

Roger, I think O.F Christner himself told me that you were the dyke in "Dyke rings", and now you have ruined a perfectly good urban legend. Hope to see you this summer.

[Rog Dykehouse]

Mike:
It's nice hearing from you as we had a ton of fun racing each other. I'm glad you had the good judgement to preserve your A Mod racing rig as both the boat and "A" Hot Rod have lot of history in them. That motor was one of four prototype A Hot Rod conversion Kits sent out by Lyle Swansonin in 1962 and it was the first one to win a Nationals in 1963--by Dave Welton on the Reeths boat "Dynamite" .

Van Pelt racing runabouts used a laminated plywood bottom built in a mold as the main structural member. It was 3/4" thick up to about the center deck and the thickness dropped off progressively toward the bow. Al Reeths was one of several VP employees and when Art V P Quit building race boats
after the fire, Al built four runabouts using that same type construction.
"Dynamite" was his third attempt and his first success. It was patterned after John Alden / Arnold Nicolette's MC Donald design. Mike, please email me some time at Rogdybljj@msn.com
Tim:
I worked in Engineering at Sealed Power Corp in the 1960s where we were supplying L rings for many racing applications including Chrysler's V-8 Street Hemi engines. In 1966 my A Quincy Looper "grenaded " and Christner sent me a new set of pistons with L rings.The L rings were very crude so I called Chris who said he was looking for a reliable ring source." With a straight face", I convinced our management to build the tooling to make the various size L rings for Quincy Welding. Due to the low production volume of the Quncy Loopers we never recovered the tooling costs of this mis-venture but Chris got his rings and I got another "Black Eye" with my boss. This is a lot funnier now than it was at the time. LOL
BYW, This L ring tooling has long since been scrapped so don't waste your time trying to get L rings form this source to restore a Quincy Looper. I tried.

Great Memories, Rog Dykehouse

[Tomtall]

Ronald Lietha (BRF's "buff5") sent me the following restoration pictures of his Van Pelt.
He said the following about its history.

I am now deep into a restoration on a VERY rare 1950 Van Pelt "Racing Scooter". A boat identicle to the one that Johnny Mueller won the Top-O-Michigan Marathon in 53, it at this time, is the ONLY one known to still exist. It was built as a "A" boat, (9' 6" long), but could handle a B motor as well & of course is of the Phillipine Ocume Plywood construction with double cockpit. The unique thing about the Van Pelts was there were NO ribs as it was built with the "stressed plywood" Moulded bottom which was actually a two piece bottom sandwiched together. The inner bottom was only a partial bottom in the rear of the boat.
As found, boat was raced in the Midwest Power Boat Assoc out of Minneapolis in the early 50's with a KG7Q by Albert Reichard with the # G-7.

Thanks for sharing this very nice restoration Ron! :)

[Tomtall]

Ronald has sent me some more pictures of his Van Pelt restoration project to post. Love that Wizard Ron! Looks likes it's shaping up nice.:)

[redsput]

I have a VanPelt and would love to find out more about it. It measures just shy of 12' and is a tiller steered model. There are numbers on the inside of the transom "53 52" which I assume may be the build year and week? I got the boat about 13 years ago when my grandfather passed away. We found this all covered up under a big military WWII tent in the attic of his barn still on the trailer which was sporting a 58' plate. I repainted and repowered with a modern 15hp, but the interior is still original and nice. Fun boat - runs about 25 mph (according to my other boat speedo) with just me in it and is a rocket out of the hole. Any information that could be shared would be greatly appreciated - not much available on the web that I've found. I'll try to find a picture to post.

[redsput]

http://webpages.charter.net/srfisher/vanpelt.jpg

[Tomtall]

Scott - Nice boat. I see you have a Michigan registration. If you don't mind me asking what part of the state are you from?

[redsput]

Holland

[Ron Hill]

These two guys show up at my dad's house, 1959 with two funny looking BU (Van Pelt boats, no ribs, molded plywood) and Champion Hot Rods...Say they come to California to stay...

John gets a job at the Texaco gas station and I don't know what Roger is doing...

John buys a new 1959 El Camino...four barrell carb, stick shift...red, goes street racing and quarter mile drag racing...We have a race in December or January at Newport Dunes, Newport Beach, California... Roger and John bring their Van Pelts out and race. I've never seen one, and when they get to the corner, they layed them on their sides to turn, prop out of the water, turning super cool...First heat out Roger gets to the turn first, Johnright on his butt, Roger lays the mother over on its side, it hooks, rolls to the outside and John drives right through the boat....Only two Van Pelts I'd ever seen and they get in a MAJOR wreck....knocking **** out of both boats. Neither driver was hurt, but lots of wood flying...

Spring comes, they both go back to Michigan...I don't see John or Roger til Beloit, Wisconsin the summer of 1960...I never see John again...Roger moves to California and races B Outboard hydro and invents something like the floppy disk and makes a few bucks...Roger and John were good friends of Paul Kalb, they helped start the Modified Division of APBA.


Just seem to remember them as cool boats...Stayed the night at Phil Van Sycke's house, I think on Spring Lake, 1956, and bought an A motor from him....

[buff5]

Redspot: Send me some pics of the boat & I will try to identfy it for you.
Ronald
buff10@charter.net:)

[buff5]

Great story Ron.:)

[Tomtall]

Well - Ronalds Lietha Van Pelt has had the winter restoration completed and here are some pictures he was kind enough to share. Pic #1 is,as bought. Pic #2 is,as done on trailer and Pic#3 is bottom picture after replacement. Looks great Ronald !!! :cool:

[Tomtall]

Well it seems as though Roger Dykhouse of Michigan has raced a few Van Pelts in his day also. Rog sent me the following pics and stories. For those of you that don't know Rog he is a true craftsmen of both boats and engines.(see posts on page #1)

Tom,

This is an old photo of an angled chine Van Pelt runabout on a stand . I started racing with a rig just like this.

[Tomtall]

Tom,

This is how we all turned the angle chine Van Pelt runabouts. There was six to ten local guys racing VP boats around 1955 to 1960 when Art built this style boat.

[Tomtall]

Tom,

This is a shot of my first V P 144M with a Hot Rod in a turn.

The next shot is the same rig at a NOA Semi Pro (Mod) race with megaphones on the engine. The Van Pelt runabouts started getting " Hairy" as we learned to modify the Champs and gained speed so we soon switched to a MC Donald designed boat. Three of the guys tried running Van Pelts with alky burning Champs which proved to be more than a handful. --Scary!!

I doubt if any of this style boat exists today as most developed dry rot within a few years.

Rog

[Tomtall]

Ronald Lietha has lauched the restored Van Pelt listed elsewhere in this thread. He has sent me the following information and picture.

Tom - So far the boat runs very straight & calm at speed with NO porposing whatever, It gets out of the hole, VERY fast, about 2 seconds. Boat stays on plane quite far down in the speed range & corners sort of different, but then I am running a full length 3/4" deep keel strip with a small turn fin mounted at the rear of the 7' afterplane about 8" to the left of the center keel strip. It does not respond immeadiatly when you turn the wheel but "hooks up" real quick in a second or two & then comes around, real quick & very smoothly. I am still trying different tilt pin set ups etc. Had to run the gas tank on the steering bar in order to get the "nose up" but I will next test the tilt at hole 4 with a Keller 'half step" as the nose is still running to low. That is one hole more than I ran the same motor on the Sid. It exhibits NO tendency to go nose up, but rather stays right where it runs, no matter what the wind or wave conditions were & I ran into about a 12-15 mph, north wind with fairly good wave actions. I am working it up slowly as the water is still VERY COLD & I dont want to be swimming!!! LOL. I have run 3 times now with about a 15-20 mins run time. I figure about 15-20 test runs till I get it where I want it & am comfortable with the way it performs.
Ronald

[Bruster]

I grew up on Spring lake about three miles from the Van Pelt factory and watched their design evolution. Right after WWII Art Van Pelt designed and build many plywood "Crescent" sail boats and row boats. Soon we started seeing VP "water Scooters" and "Race Scooters" which were semi V bottom racing utilities initially powered by 9.7hp Erude Lightfours but later by KE-7, KF-7 and KF-9 Mercs . Around 1950 Art built the first of three generations of round bottom utilities which were shown with a 7.9 hp Champion Hot Rod in his promotional photos. My buddies and I ran a KG-7Q on one of these and were all infected with the racing bug. In 1955 Art introduced his most successful design which was a flat bottom beveled chine runabout. John Enninga won the APBA CU Nationals with one of these in 1957. A factory fire is the '60s destroyed most of the pattern and bottom molds thus ending any race boat production. Art Van Pelt died soon after and agroup of us local boat racers were pal bearers at the funeral of this innovative friend.
BTW,
I worked at the Sealed Power Piston Ring Co where we supplied most of the "L" rings for the Quincy Loopers. The Original Patent on this type of pressure backed ring was originally issued to a European named Peter d' Dykes
Thank for the nice comments Tim.
Rog Dykehouse


This is one of the few times I wished I was older. I remember Grandpa bringing race boats to the lake house to run 'em on the weekend. I spent endless hours boating and fishing in a VanPelt "Bluegill" and later playing in one of the 10' utility boats with a 10 Chris Craft that survived the fire.
My mother said as an adult, I was like her dad in so many ways it was unreal. :D :D