The Harrison Racing Outboards - Legendary Birmingham Metal Products Alky Outboards

[Master Oil Racing Team]

It was great to see Kay post something. Hey Kay....I got my e mail working again.

John, Debbie was clearing out a bunch of old videos and throwing them away and almost trashed some boat racing ones because it wasn't labeled. I had them transferred from old 8mm to VHS about five years ago. When I was looking at them this morning there was one race course I could not figure out, but it was a national race because numbers were from all over. Right at the tail end of one segment just before the film ended was a white hydro with either an Anzani or a Harrison with the same pipes you have on the motor in your avatar. I couldn't find a remote with a pause button to ID the driver, but I'll see if there is a way I can get it transferred to DVD.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Transferring the VHS to DVD will allow you to lift the image and transfer it to the Harrison of Anzani threads. Would be great! To me it is always a paradox when there were so many of the crescent shaped stacked engines around so few of the racers, the pitman and even their families took so few pictures because they were so busy racing them and helping others who were racing something else. In my home town (Selkirk) archives there are years worth of black and white negatives from Howard Robinson Photography who religiously year after year photoed the racing scene here from the 1950s into the mid 1960s that I am hoping to get into with a pair of silk gloves some time soon. I saw them once when I was around 20 when they were being transferred to secure storage and there were negatives into the hundreds of pictures of outboard racing then with everthing imaginable being run of which the Anzani and Harrisons were the easiest to pick out. Here is to luck into hoping we can all succeed into getting this history out and getting it into computer storage and then posted.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

I have been examining a later model heavy duty Harrison crankshaft that is the version that is full circle and used Phelon points type flywheel ignition, aluminum flywheel with Harrison logo on rope plate with cast in magnets, Konig connecting rods with wide roller bearing top and bottom bearings. It is the same type installed in Roger Wendt's hybrid 2 carb Anzani. In Wendt's engine the Anzani crankscase was machined at the end caps to oversize to fit the bearings systems of this crankshaft that fit into the Phelon ignition system and on the bottom a special end cap was machined to replace the Anzani standard bottom endcap.

The Questions are? Was this crankshaft the first or second generation to machine fit specifically a Anzani crankcase before Harrison came out with their own crankcase? or was this a retrofit to the Anzani crankcases after Harrison had their own crankcase casting to also fit Harrison's own A or B Alky blocks?

I am trying to figure out where this crankshaft and ignition assembly fit into the scheme time order of things to be able to re-assemble a specific A or B Harrison using which crankcase and with how many carbs? I have no idea of how many Harrison A and B variants there were and how each may have looked or did look like other than the ones pictured in the thread now.

To make the confusion clear, Wendt's hybrid Anzani block spray painted aluminum to cover its cast iron resembles so closely a Harrison aluminum block in so many ways including its aluminum plugged and then machined round outer exhaust outlets when its assembled with that crankshaft, its Harrison elbos and then Harrison aluminum stacks and that ignition it would seem some one retroed an Anzani to look like a Harrison?

To make it more confusing I have NOS Anzani cast iron class A blocks that have original cast round exhaust ports (not rectangular as earlier version that required aluminum plugging to make square) that resemble Harrison but there is no way of telling if those Anzani class A blocks are older or newer than the rectangular cast in exhaust outlets that required the aluminum plugs to make them square or the Harrison A or B aluminum blocks! Its very much a situation of having parts but no date order of production and no pictures to make up engines that are copies of the variants running at that time when Anzani and Harrison were running together confusing people because they both had similar crescent shaped exhaust stacks systems. Confusing and confused? Yes, very!

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Pictured here appears to be a class B Alky Harrison or Harrison/Anzani hybrid engined hydro at speed. The make of the hydro is unknown but it is a Region 10 USA Northwest raceboat. Close photo scrutiny of the engine shows the individual ignition coils clamped and mounted typically Harrison B block aluminum casting like right next to the sparkplugs. There are also 2 of the front mounted and spray shield covered Tillotson HL pumper carbs identified that were in addition to the block side mounted 3rd carb of this three carbed Harrison B class Alky engine.

[Prop Rider]

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Pictured here appears to be a class B Alky Harrison or Harrison/Anzani hybrid engined hydro at speed. The make of the hydro is unknown but it is a Region 10 USA Northwest raceboat. Close photo scrutiny of the engine shows the individual ignition coils clamped and mounted typically Harrison B block aluminum casting like right next to the sparkplugs. There are also 2 of the front mounted and spray shield covered Tillotson HL pumper carbs identified that were in addition to the block side mounted 3rd carb of this three carbed Harrison B class Alky engine.

[Prop Rider]

Sorry guys had some of your questions answered and about the time i was going to send it it went to never never land will try again tomorrow night.

Kay

[smittythewelder]

Buzz's boat was built by McDonald or MacDonald in Oregon, who also built one or two of the last Starflite Kilo boats, driven by Gerry Walin to set the X Outboard kilo record for OMC. Entrop designed those kilo boats, I believe.

There were local boat-builders all over who, like McDonald, didn't build in great numbers and maybe didn't get a lot of national recognition, but who are fondly remembered by the old guys in their region. Often their boats were fully competitive with the big name builders like Swift, Sid-Craft, Marchetti, DeSilva, Karelsen, Hedlund, Butz, and Craig-Craft. And it was always fun when a racer in your region showed up with one of these unfamiliar boats from somewhere else. Charleton was a builder in the Southeast, I believe, so when Bill and John Myers brought a Charleton hydro to Seattle, it got lots of attention (Bill, in his fifties at the time, about 1967, ran a deflector B Konig on it, which added to the wow-factor).

One hopes that in each case at least one example of the work of these local boat suppliers has survived and will be kept in good shape.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Gene Strain had a MacDonald and it was a real good handling hydro. His son, Billy demonstrated one of Gene's Anzanis by running it exhibition with the D Stock hydros where Billy just ran the outside of the course at high speed and lapped the whole field. Where they did 3 laps with the DSHs, Billy completed the 4th lap. He just kneeled sitting there on his heels bolt upright in the wind otherwise right up at the wheel and lapped them all. He looked like he was out for a Sunday drive.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

This is what has to be found to be able to restore these engines, be they Harrison, Anzani or any other vintage racing engine. Sometimes it just plain luck that people put their hand up and say I got some of this stuff sitting there gathering dust. Who wants to acquire the stuff? One well known from the Midwest USA racer who got an Anzani 348 stock B racer managed to get new gearcase new shafts with gears to overhaul his back into running condition that way. There are numerous examples of this happening and I hope that continues. Its something that restorers and collectors can help each other out on to pool parts from time to time to restore vintage engines.

What I find worrisome to the sport if how much of this stuff has gone by the wayside by those at times inheriting old motors, thinking them junk and the parts ending up at metal recyclers getting melted down. In one case a few years ago in Chicago 2 complete Quincy 4 cylinder Flatheads ended up at a pawn shop where they were found and saved by pure accident where the buyer ended up with them becoming collectors pieces again with that new owner who appreciated them for what they were and then after shows them since to the public at events. That was pure luck all the way around.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

This closeup shows just how tough Harrison built their tower and clamps tough for A and B class Alky engines. Unlike Anzani that used heavy cast iron blocks and very narrow clamping across the transom and snapping off or cracking their midesctions at the tower's neck flange at the crankcase bolt to tower section quite often Harrison (HRP) went heavier still on their designs irrespective with their engines being lighter on that overhang rearward side by using aluminum blocks with ferrous cylinder liners. You never heard of a Harrison ever having that cracking or breaking off problem Anzani did.