I Emailed Fred Hauenstein About 2.0 Liter OMC Motors
I have been reading this thread with much interest, but felt I knew little of the facts, So I haven't "JUMPED IN". But I did ask Fred Hauenstein what he remembers:
Re: OMC 2.0 FROM Fred Hauenstein
Hi Ron:
I do remember that Cees van der Velden dragged some of the old OMC 2.0 liter looper V-6s out of the Waukegan warehouse and tried to race them in the '90s. They weren't too successful because they didn't have a lot of parts to work with, the parts were old (16 years old sounds about right), and the Mercs had gotten better over the years; but they were still competitive! They were "earth shattering" in the mid '70s, winning the ON worlds and APBA titles, etc, several times.
That engine is a 90 degree Vee 6, not 60 degrees. By the way, the 6x2bbl carb/crankcase setup on the Evinrude CCC (like the one we won Parker with) and Johnson RS 2.5 L cross-flow race engines came from this 2.0 liter looper project. The same 90 degree 2.0 liter (122 CID) looper block also had 90, 98, 135 and 143 CID versions, but the entire project had no more than ~37 total cylinder blocks ever made.
The 2.0 engine was not developed further than a race-only engine because that was what the project was - race only. The blocks, etc, were sand cast only. Even the first pistons were sand cast!
I developed the engine in the mid 70s and the first prototype won the UIM ON class World Championship in 1975 (Cees at Cardiff). Jimbo also won the APBA nationals that year with that same engine in both MOD 120 and MOD U. It was clearly better than the Mercurys of that era. When I went to Mercury, I was amazed at how little power the Merc 2.0s had (~12% less than my 2.0 OMC loopers). The difference that made them competitive was that Merc had boats that were ~33% lighter!
I believe Leo Molendyk was managing the MERCURY performance center in Liege, Belgium, in the '80s. Then he did the OMC performance support in the '90s. But I think I remember the 2.0 liter OMC loopers were run out of Cees's operation in Holland???
Just a few memories of the old times.
Fred