Midwest racer of the 50's

3-11-2020
A little more history of the 1950's. My KG9 was made up of many parts. Some Johnson/Evinrude, 20H Merc, some KG9, and lots handmade stuff, kind of a mix which I thought worked for me. The KG was not really as heavy a built engine as the 20H so the more HP you built in, the more failures came. I still liked my KG the best.
I had the block re-done for the Quincy “Mumps”. I was not real happy about the performance after that so I had to make some changes. It had lowered the torque of the engine which was detrimental when coming out of the corner. I put on a smaller venturi Carter Carb which increased the air velocity and that seemed to really help the torque of the engine coming out of the corner at a lower RPM. Strait away RPM Varied dependent which prop I chose for the conditions at race time.7,000 to 7,900 RPM. I could turn it faster but if I did I would bring it home in a “bushel basket”. Learned my lesson earlier on that one!!
I had machined the flywheel down to near nothing to where there was hardly a rope wrap on it.( I broke the crankshaft off at the top with the heavy flywheel a couple of times) After the small flywheel I broke no more crankshafts.
The only problem with that was starting the KG. I had to have a couple of men hold up the boat to get it started and then clear the engine of excess alky before setting me back on the water.
I drilled many holes in the piston skirts to reduce weight and weighed each piston for balance. I ground and enlarged he ports to change the intake timing and the exhaust timing also. I put petcock valves on the intake plates to change the air ratio as needed for the race day, this worked well but a different mix of fuel was needed to make it work right , depending on the humidity etc., and of course a change of carb adjustment needed each time. Quincy Welding had put pads in the cylinders and I lined the crankcase with my home made padding “which took a LOT of time”.
I used a mix of alky, nitro methane, ether, hydrogen peroxide, and Bakers castor oil.
Here are my notes on the mix depending on the weather, length of straightaways etc. Kind of hard to interpret my notes even now I am not sure what some of the scribbles meant!! HA HA
Old Bill