British Anzani A & B Stock & Alky Racing Engines

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Clearly he is having a problem understanding here that racers then used ideas and concepts from a myraid of other engines not necessarily racing ones, OMC ones too to look at, adapt or get their technology from. Sometimes racers also re-invented the wheel as a matter of speaking to bring something totally new out of it and sometimes got ideas and products from unrelated industries and products. There was that kind of thinking and flexability back in those days not un-unique we find today......so what are you talking about?

[Mark75H]

When it came to bearings systems it was OMC that led the technologies that introduced roller and caged roller bearings systems to engines like Anzani and others around the world.

Its just wrong.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

So you say or they say. People working on Anzanis back then that Jim Hallum had experience with where he cited examples of systems back then that influenced what they did and and did't do. He also gave out info on older OMC stuff from the 1930s where outboard systems had their problems and were inadequate and were changed like a slot screw to mount the big end of a connecting rod to the crank?? Using an OMC fuel pump instead of gravity feed via DelOrto fuel bowls and so on. Depends who you talk to and what perspective to the subject they gave from their position of their experience. Do you think I am going to argue any of your points with him? I am doing this as a historical chronicaling with him based on engines, parts, assemblies, pictures, movies and me standing in the mud or sand helping back then and I was hundreds of miles away with a totally different bunch. To ask just why they did that then for this Anzani thread knowing there are others still around that had something to do with them that could contribute here but for what ever reasons its not happening so the experiences here are quite limited though very large too on a per person basis. Things in cases could be different but neither you nor I can argue something where other people tell us from their perspective in a period when we were just in development where they were already there. End of argument and your point is taken though there are other points of view.

[smittythewelder]

I'll second Sam on a couple of points. First, not everyone thought caged rollers were best for racing. Christner told me crowded rollers (no retainer) were superior. One reason for using a cage or retainer, having nothing to do with performance, is that it makes assembly easier at the factory. Second, the cage has mass and inertia, which isn't helpful. But crowded rollers might not always be best. Ron Anderson told me back then that he had looked up the engineering specs on the drawn-cup bearings that Mercury used to support their Quicksilver propeller shafts and founded that they were rated at a maximum 2500rpm or some-such! Back to retained rollers, the cage is an additional part that can and does fail. Bike racers learned long ago to silver-plate their retainers; their gas-and-oil engines put more heat into the retainers than alky burners. If there is a final word on caged vs. crowded rollers, we might ask somebody who has knowledge of the last of the factory 2-stroke grand prix bikes. What did they use? Anyway, I think you guys may be talking past each other a little bit. "Full-Jewelled Power" referred to the elimination of any plain bearings. Jim may have been referring to something about caged rollers; the Evinrude 4-60 had some of these, though it had plain bearings at the rod small-ends (as did Konigs of the Fifties). Sam, wasn't the 4-60 an OMC factory racing engine of the '40s and '50s? I ask in all innocence, even though I have a few 4-60 parts.

As for elliptical pistons, the idea is that the parts of the piston with the most mass will expand most, so those parts have to be tapered and relieved most when machined cold so that the piston expands to a round shape when hot. If you buy semi-finished blank pistons, you first taper the skirt by turning it in a lathe with a taper attachment, or by offsetting the tailstock. The hand-filing Hallum told you about was to relieve about a 1 1/2" by 1" area over each wristpin hole. The factories do this by a process called cam-grinding; look closely at a stock Merc piston. Again, this is an area of extra mass which would bulge out when hot, if not relieved. Cylinders can be cold-machined to come out round and true when hot by the use of torque-plates and hot-honing. Hallum and Anderson were hot-honing in the Sixties, and they were also decking blocks to get a tight squish dimension, two techniques that most hot-rodders didn't hear about for another ten or twenty years.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Smitty:

It is great to hear a differing perspective on what has been going on here. It is tapping what you know and saw others do. It is appreciated that it has been a long time for those that were there working these motors to recollect things they were doing, you and Jim both.

Jim admits that his memory and recollections after being away from it all so long and retired dulls things so I am acting as a trigger to pop loose information dormant in Jim for such a longish time. Some of it was or why it was done while other discussions were experiences with other engines that had some idea or relativity. I can't and won't argue with anyone much on this as I am simply examining and chronicaling something to read here knowing the accuracy is clowded by age and time.

I was then (1966) a new DSH driver waiting to race while helping other racers and their pitcrews getting there Alky rigs off a running or retrieving them back to the pit after their race heat, I heard and complied with the instructions to toss the started boat forward, complaints and breakage results about the Lucas magnetos, engine too rich, too lean, float just sunk flooding the engine, a better way of leaning them out once reving and a big worry about getting water up the bottom pipe that could hydralic the engine breaking it. I knew more about my KG9 than anything else but not even the engineering involved with it, that would come later as I got older.

Jim's recollections of bearings systems, development and evolution spanned many engines as did the reasons for pistons and what was done to them. It was my triggering his recollections by looking at scads of parts before phoning to talk and then post soon afterward as my shorthand stinks. Jim had the access to machines and machine tools to do the work no different than Ron Anderson years before and still does now. That others took to some of the methods in other motorsports goes to show that outboard racing was more innovative that many imagined. Jim didn't mention the observation you gave of how far adanced they were in relation to other motor sports. That was maybe because he didn't notice but others did. I would have never known here if you didn't say it so its from the perspective and experience you have. Being here and filling in the gaps with extensions, reasons and corrections is what this is all about in getting these recollections on these engines run so long ago.

By next week I will be getting ready to talk with Jim again on the subject of the little puff or boost ports put on the pistons skirts above the transfer windows sometimes in 2s on each side, sometimes in 4s and all manner of small but different diameters. They were run that way and extensively but all the whys and where fors this was done specifically to Anzanis needs explanation.

Similarly I am going to go into why huge ports were cut into Anzani blocks and their correspnding piston skirt faces right under the rings to make 6 intake port per cylinder loop Anzani blocks from what is obvious? Hopefully! Since Bill Tenney is no longer with us looking at reverse engineering thinking to get to the apparent original reasons? Maybe that will trigger other readers to give more insight that might have done the same in other engines?

Don't worry about Sam, he will always be contraversial from other perspectives himself or some one else might give him food for thought. One liners do not say too much. They are just one liners that could use some infill to give more information. That is helpful and that is what I would like to see here, more help, information exchange, the passing on of technological know how or ideas.

[Tim Chance]

Back at the end of the era for Quincy Loopers, I was driving for Ross Gibson and Bill Collins. I believe that one year at the NOA World Championships Alan Ishii and I were the only two to qualify Flatheads for the finals amongst a full field of Konigs.

Anyhow about loose needles vs. caged bearings. At that time Bill told me that the Flathead with a Mercury crank could never turn the high rpm of a Konig because the loose needles would start to skid against each other and the next thing a rod goes out the side of the crankcase.

Incidentally, at the above mentioned World Championship I never made the start in the finals as I put I rod out the side of the crankcase on the five-minute gun.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I only had one rod break in the whole time I raced, and that A Konig didn't even have needles bearings. It was a used motor, and I think it may have the the cast iron block Konig we got from Randy Johnson. I either sheared a pin or twisted one of those skinny 9mm or so drive shafts and when the rpm's skyrocketed, the little end on the rod broke and slung that top piston into the head. It was enough force to break the water seal and bend the head so that as I was coasting to a stop, water sprayed all around in about a 6 foot arc like a spread peacocks tail feathers. I was just learing mechanics then. When I tore the motor down, I found the little end only had brass bushings. We were probably turning it somewhere around 9,000 to 9,500.

We never had failure from either loose or caged needle bearings in our Konigs. Even on one that turned 11,800. We did have a number of failures of the caged roller bearings on the crank however. Especially with the D's and F's. The rods never came apart though. When the aluminum cage started to disentegrate, usually enough powdered aluminum and pieces got up into the cylinders to cause a piston to stick. Also, the rods would scour aluminum off the inside of the crankcase. We had one that got pooched out enough it had to be patched.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Big end bearings on Anzanis with its one piece connecting rod and pieced together crankshaft, used an alloy retainer to space very tallish about two thirds the width of the rod, roller bearings from all the parts here to be examined including failed ones. Failures seem to show that the retainers at 9,000+ rpm withstood the operations impeccably but where the oil slot was ground into the rod to make sure the big ends saw lots of lubrication the bearing would stop rolling where a ketch in the rods bearing surface where the oil slot was machined in became bad enough to make it happen.

A skid to a stop big end bearing in an Anzani usually did not destroy the rod completely where like in Alky Deflector Mercs or Quincy Flatheads it would get hot enough to weld the rollers in a ring around the big end of the crankshaft meaning big damage and big replacement but it would mean in the Anzani a new connecting rod, a new small end bushing, a new replaceable big end pin, an alloy bearing retainer and some if not all big end rod bearings.

The Anzani small end used an oillite bronze bushing bearing. So far I have only seen one hairline cracked but even then it did not fail but was noticed and changed out.

The worst explosion I have ever seen with an Anzani was a 2 carb version that exploded on start owned then Gene Strain of Calgary which I got later for parts whose cast iron block with ripped out ports is pictured in the Anzani section here. The engine explosion from being started and dropped on using squirts of pure nitromethane into the intakes was was not just a report but akin to a longish 12 guage shot gun blast with metal fragging spraying people within a 30 foot radius with metal. The piston crowns exited the block smashing off the cyinder head. The aluminum crankcase halves blew up into several sections with crankshaft material and crank can stuffers fragments exiting from same taking off and flinging it the primary Tillotson HL rotary valve carb off the side of a crankcase section one guy caught in his shirt as it ripped through to bruise his chest. Everyone at the moment was too stunned and frozen in their tracks to even comprehend what had just happened. Then everyone woke up and ran around whigged out. Even through that the bottom end bearings didn`t fail even though the rest of the engine sure did.

I keep hearing that the Mercury crankshaft and bearings systems could no longer support the Quincy Flathead too but from all the Flathead 4s and Quincy-Merc Alky Deflector 4s I have examined or restored and there were lots the one thing I did not see was that kind of bearing failure on the big or small ends. Did see some pretty awful heating where the big end bearings and rods looked kinda blue but they did not fail and looked changed out and left for future trash. I saw some of the same on the small ends so it might be safe to deduct that the ignition timing seemed to be the extreme problem involved there as the piston wrists showed signs of ovalling and you know how heavy duty they made Quincy Flathead pistons.

The one thing Jeff Cirves, Madison, WI mentioned about Flatheads his father worked was that he paid attention to rod bearings surfaces in that he would hone them to take the polish off to make oil adhere and the bearings roll knowing the Flatheads could produce power at high rpm. Their thing was not to keep using the same crankshaft for too long either without seeing to servicing the bearings systems as part of regular maintennance as the Flatheads by comparisson to other Alky engines were very high maintennance that if you wanted to keep them running you just had to do.

[smittythewelder]

I think the 4-60 had phospher-bronze retainers, a good material except for the weight. Wayne's A Konig had some kind of soft recycled-beer-can aluminum retainers, or anyway this is what we always said about Konigs. Zak got to moly-coating these retainers for longer life, but I don't know if he ever machined his own retainers from some better alloy, as he did for the B/C/D Konigs. Those poor A Konig cranks were designed for a mid-'50s 25hp motor, and by the mid-'60s they were putting out 35hp and up, and had at least three common modes of breakage, all of which I experienced.

I wish I had got more detail from Mr. Christner about those crowded rollers, but it was at a big meeting of some kind, and lots of guys wanted to talk to him. I should have phoned him up later; the man was certainly generous with his ideas, and it's too bad people like him can't go on and on.

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

Smitty:
Regards your question/comments about Harry and his work with bearings and retainers.

I never saw any retainers that he "moly" coated, although since he used it on almost everything else, including coating the outside of sleeves to tighten them up in Konig blocks (as many were working loose and causing water leaks around the exaust ports as well as other problems including heat transfer) I am sure he probably did try it there also. I would be very surprised if he did not.

He did make big end bearing retainers himself for both Konig and Yamato cranks. I don't know about the material per se, but I'm sure it was better than what was being used, in his opinion, or he would not have spent the time. He had 3-4 drill presses set up in a row, each one with a different size tool, so as not to have to change anything from a raw cage to a finished one. As I am sure you know, he also had most all of them silver plated from at least the late 70's/early 80's on until his death in the early 90's.
As far as the cranks/bearings for the two cyl/250 Konig, He did a lot of things with Bob Olsen, who lived in the Quad City area, and 250 Runabout, or A as it was called then, was the class that Olsen pretty much specalized in. I would imagine they colaborated on lots of things on the 250 two cyl motors, although that was a little before I got to know Harry well, so I can't relate anything about that. I do remember an engine he had in the basement that had early expansion chambers on it and multiple (more that two) carbs. It was something he had built right after the two cyl Konigs first came out. and had been on display at a Quad City marine dealer, I think.