The Harrison Racing Outboards - Legendary Birmingham Metal Products Alky Outboards

[smittythewelder]

Back when the idea was new to Reg. 10 racers, and the first experimenters were cobbling together their homemade water systems, Jim Hallum, as usual, went for extra sophistication. Instead for trying to spray water through a jet (or just a hole!), he came up with an agricultural spray-head (for insecticide, I suppose) that had a little spinning deflector inside that would break up the water into a nice fan-spray patter. I don't think he used it on Anzanis, but on the 125cc and other motorcycle conversions. For Anzanis, he had the exhaust valves.

Ed Karelson, whose son John (a good boat-builder and a very bright kid who would have been a force in this sport) was lost to us in a testing accident, told me about the trouble they had had with a C Yamato John was running. Ed said the water injection worked fine for getting on plane, or out of a slow corner, but that the water wouldn't clear the pipe completely for up to a lap and a half, so they quit using it. It didn't occur to me until a while later that what must have been happening was that once the flow was initiated, it would continue to siphon water up the line until the siphon was broken or the supply tank was empty. The cheap fix would have been a very small hole in the line to admit air, breaking the siphon.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

I was talking to Jim Hallum about the stack water injection system tonight. He went right back to the basics on how it worked and how they went about trying out and testing it back then using automotive plastic tanks, windshield washer pumps, various nozzels and hookups. There is no evidence to show that Bill Tenney ever ventured into water injecting the stacks on Anzanis in the Midwest USA either and it was very much the same with Anzanis in Region 10 NorthWest USA. They went after trying different exhausts systems, like gated exhausts eventually leading into expansion chamber racing exhausts. You can only wonder what could have been, had they got into water injecting early expansion chambers?

[epugh66]

I was talking to Gary about this thread today. I reminded him that he was perhaps the last one to try to qualify a Harrison "B" engine at a national championship.

At the worst APBA National Championships in the 20th century, LaCrosse, Wi., Kay had brought a Harrison engine to run in the new RB class. Gary was unable to get it on plane. After Todd Brinkman ran into a storm drain and Cheney Street was nearly run over by a tug boat and barge, the race was postponed and run at Acworth, Ga. (a place with it's own set of problems) The Harrison RB engine was not brought back.

[ProHydroRacer]

I was talking to Gary about this thread today. I reminded him that he was perhaps the last one to try to qualify a Harrison "B" engine at a national championship.

At the worst APBA National Championships in the 20th century, LaCrosse, Wi., Kay had brought a Harrison engine to run in the new RB class. Gary was unable to get it on plane. After Todd Brinkman ran into a storm drain and Cheney Street was nearly run over by a tug boat and barge, the race was postponed and run at Acworth, Ga. (a place with it's own set of problems) The Harrison RB engine was not brought back.

Eric,
You forgot my son Bob, at the time called “the Head” it was nearly his first race. All you see of him was a head sticking out of the Boat and a large rooster tail of water blowing thru the bottom of the Boat as he sped by.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Just got some basic information on the water injection system pictured. Depending on the twin nozzel sizes on a Snowmo sled 2 cylinder racing engine the system was designed to give a 10 to 15 second jet nozzel burst of pressurized water from the water tank via the system's pressure pump to each pipe that should theoretically empty the water bottle. The system is not mean't to siphon nor will the water control solinoids allow any leakage siphoning when the power is cut to these water controls.

Given that these racing sleds engines would be wound up past 10,000 rpm running around 100 miles per hour at the end of the 1/8th mile drag race, would that the current water bottle be enough water for a 350 to 500cc Alky outbaord raceboat coming out of a turn down to the end of an average straightway?

How big were the resevoirs mentioned like the Mazda windshield washer tanks? What amount of pressure time and water volume with what discharge nozzel size/pressure did the pumps used by outboard racers supply to the raceboat engine before it was shut off again?

Seems this water injection for 2 stroke exhaust pipes even from a well developed kit without the basic instructions in its complexity is not for the fiant of heart! There must be a lot of cut, paste and testing that would go on even for a kit like this one for a sled and one whole lot more for a racing outboard.

I may have tracked down hookup and electrical diagrams I will be getting next week to post. That should make this 2 stroke pipe water injection kit one lot more interesting yet!

[Mark75H]

A windshield washer tank would probably NOT be big enough. I have water injection set up on my FEH and it uses a little more than 3 quarts in a normal race, a long course would need more than a gallon.

For a while I just let the tank run out, then I hooked up a refill/over flow arrangement, but it was hard to vent and fill - sometimes I filled the boat instead of the tank. I settled on a 12 volt solenoid between the pipes and pressurized water from the lower unit, simpler and less water & parts in the boat

[Prop Rider]

The lodite logo on the Harrison Racing Parts refers to a casting process used by the foundry that made most of our castings. The Lodi Foundry in Lodi, Ohio. Most of the castings were made from a material called AL Mag has a # but i don`t remeber it right now but it`s a comiination of magneisum & alum. Pistons were made out of a high silicon material # A132 and heat treated.

I suppose I have Lodite imprinted on me pretty bad because now that I am looking for it its found as a single imprint on the Harrison HRP cast aluminum outboard racing products. Sorry, but I thought it was you that came up with the name association and alloy explanation to it. I kind of remember that other alloy a bit too but that was a while back in posts.

[smittythewelder]

All right! Kay Harrison, the ultimate source and settler of arguments, has just checked in!

Mr. Harrison, I'd like to hear about one of your creations that never appeared in Reg. 10: the bottom-steering towerhousing. For those who didn't see it, and all I've seen is the photo in the company brochure, this was a cast aluminum towerhousing with the usual provision for kick-in/out, but with the powerhead fixed and only the lower unit being swiveled.

We here had a couple of speculative arguments about this tower. One side assumed that the motivation for building it was to greatly reduce torque at the steering wheel. The other side said, no, it just makes it easy to run the pipes forward into the boat instead of hanging them out back as usual, and that there would be no reduction in steering effort. Please enlighten us!

I'm hoping John will acquire and photograph another of your innovations, the early bounce pipe towerhousing that had the pipes built into a big tank (was it for fuel? Water? We never saw one of those out here either).

You would have enjoyed seeing the pack of onlookers surrounding Buzz Thorsen when he showed up at an Oregon race early in the 1966 season with the first Harrison we had seen. Those were good times.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Wow! Having the builder, Kay Harrison here is a pure pleasure. Thank you and then some more! Having acquired some of your engines to restore for posterity is a recent dream come true for me with the help of people I have never met in person who saw I had the drive to do something I could not afford or obtain in my youth but still wanted to do. I was just a kid helping out, pitting and meeting Alky racers at boat races when Anzanis and Harrisons were mixing it up with engines that didn't have crescent shaped exhausts that made Anzanis and Harrisons so unique and memory imprinting on me. I had no idea that Harrison and Anzani were associated until recently but I always loved their pipes and to see them run, beginning, with just being a help at the races and being a pitman for my neighbor who got me into outboard racing too.

Like Smitty, I too heard about and seen from time to time different engine towers on Alkys that were nothing like those found on anything C-Service or Mercury Q and H series racing engines I was getting used to locally. Names like Anzani, Harrison, Konig, Quincy/Merc (engines), Quincy pipes and Curtois pipes and towers along with the smell of the burn't methanol fuels and caster oil were so exotic and un-available to us up here comparing to number 1 leaded pump gasoline and Mercury Quicksilver Formula oil stock outboards used. I like Smitty and many others here are going to enjoy your prescence and participation. It sure is going to help me amongst other things to restore with better accuracy what you at HRP did for racing.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

I just acquired some technical information on water injection for 2 stroke engines. It is for that pictured system and it turns out that it is from 1995.

With that it is more appropriate and fitting to get this water injection for 2 stroke pipes subject out of Harrison and British Anzani engine threads which go back way further in history and return this subject to the Technical threads of BRF to be shared with readers there. That is where I will immediately post Electrical as well as Flow diagram aspects of the 1995 "TA" *tm system I acquired recently for readers to see there.