Heres another pic of this cool boat!
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Heres another pic of this cool boat!
Thanks Pat and Jeff for the pictures and info on the drag boat. I remember Tim telling me about the drag boat successes, and I thought I took notes of what he said, but I couldn't find them. Seems like there was another guy from central Texas that had great success with a Butts drag racing hydro in Texas and Louisiana. I did find this note however, that I am not sure I ever passed on. The first boat he built was bought by Karl Williams and the last he heard, was still in Canada. I believe Tim built it for himself and then later sold it to Karl. It had a cloth deck and Tim described it has looking like a Dubinski, or a bull nose DeSilva hydro. He built two like this in 1967 and 1968. The first Aerowing was built in 1969. Joe Barto bought the first two picklefor Aerowings and the Quincy loopers that Tim ran on them.
Looking forward to more drag hydro info.
Jeff, I have some more around the house somewhere, found these which should give some insight of the Unlimited Outboard Class between 1978-84 when I raced. The seventy's was N.D.B.A and eighty's was newly formed A.D.B.A. sanction. Some of the other boats that were very competitive that I found are also shown. Speeds hovered around 118-130mph and ET's around the 11's to low 10's. There was another Butt's Aerowing that raced just before I got out is also shown, to my knowledge this was the only other Aerowing that he built for drag racing. I hope this was what you wanted. Take care.
Pat Golba
I have to admire his guts..........an Evinrude CCC was the Mod U motor of the day, and was wicked fast!
This is what i think is a little known Butt's Aerowing fact. In the late 70's I talked to Tim a lot,He loved to talk about racing on the phone. One of the things he told me was that he built 350.Yamato Hydros 1 inch shorter than a 350 Konig boat. He said this was to help the Yamato because it did not have the torque a Konig had. I think this was about the time he built the boat's for the team from from Japan to run at the Pro Nat's at Hinton.
Thanks to Pat Golba for sharing his pics :)
Here is a recently restored 13 footer I was breaking the rings in on a 44. Running slow, so don't get too excited about the lack of headgear...Tim designed some interesting sponson running surfaces. You can make out the steps on the right hand sponson...I will try to post a shot of the whole bottom. Every thing was asymetrical. I have a 650xs powerhead on a Quincy/SSM foot, I plan to try out on it in the next couple of weeks..gg
The first boat I know of that Tim started doing was weird stuff to the sponsons was my fairly new 350 Butts in 1978 shortly before the UIM OB World Championships. He added two additional steps to each sponson knowing that some of the propriders shipped over from Europe plus the enlarged field was going to make for some choppy racing. Dieter had brought me over a brand new Konig he had tweaked and it was very powerful, but those sponson changes had made the hydro wild in the turns. It was all I could do to keep it right side up in the turns, and I wasn't able to make a typical fast and stable corner like Butts' were well known for. I loaned the boat to Guiseppe Landini and he put on a 3 bladed Rolla cleaver, and I have never experienced such a dramatic change in my life in the way the boat handled. He came close to winning all the marbles, but because he didn't understand English, he got tossed out one heat he won for a local rule infraction. Tim may have played with the sponson surfaces on some other boats before that, but I don't believe he did any of that prior to 1978. Mine was the first I knew of. After that he continued to experiment more with the sponson changes and we started buying three bladed cleavers to run on some of the boats. His experimental sponsons for our boat Tex was designed for rougher European courses, and while it worked great testing in Texas during a 30 mph blue norther, it did not do good on river courses with currents and rollers. It would rebound hard and throw you into the air a couple of feet above the boat.....high enough for the kill switch attached to a Gentex to pull the plug.:eek: By the time Tim started building the laydowns, he was getting quite good at sponson modifications, and what would work good. Our final Butt's , Vibora de Cascabel, was a laydown with some stepped surface, but they were symmetrical. I don't know when he started with the asymetrical stuff, but he was always thinking of new things to try, and his boats evolved. His "wings" at the transom went from thick to thin between 1976 and 1977, then disappeared altogether. His afterplanes evolved. It was very fun working with Tim while he tried to keep up with the demand for stability as horsepower and speeds increased. Looking forward to your pics of the underside. Do you know what year your boat was made? Tim says Bruce Mariouneaux has a warehouse full of his boats....some never in the water. It would be cool to see what changes occurred from the oldest to the newest.
Hey,,,I gotta run, but I found these old files of the bottom. I will try to get some recent photos showing a close up of each sponson. But you can see the difference between the two...wider on the right side...I was in the process of refinishing the boat...gg
Wayne, could this be what was called the outrigger Hydro, seems like i heard about it in 78 but don't remember seeing one or hearing much about them.. Some one told me that they ran good in the rough water at the San Antonio Tex. Nat's. The last new Butt's i remember seeing was what looked like a Wind Walker that Jimmy Adaholt (sp) had at the Pro Nat's in Ackworth Ga. 1984.
No Danny, the outrigger looked almost like second sponsons at the rear attached to the cockpit. I posted some pictures of that way toward the front of this thread. There has been so much confusion regarding the windwalker, I would have to go back and refresh my memory since that was after my time.
These sponsons show above were way more radical than anything I ever ran. It's hard to tell, but from the shadows it looks like the outside sponson was for pounding and softening the blow in rough water and the inside designed for helping keep on track in the turns as well as softening the pounding. I never had one with the aft bottom built like that either. Good stuff.:cool: