British Anzani A & B Stock & Alky Racing Engines

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Greetings!! It is very nice to hear from a kindred spirit on these engines from the other side of near Highway 59 concerning these engines. Seems that at least 3 corners of the continent are identifying with these amazingly early engines into the Loop Charged world of outboard racing we take for granted today. All my XXXXs live in Texas! (my wife of 33 years might say something about that! LOL!)

When I was little in the late 1950s these engines really came on strong and by the mid 1960s if you didn't have a A or B Anzani, Harrison, Quincy Flathead or Konig loop engines and most were, by then in Alky you were in deep deep trouble. I woud sure like to see some postings here of pictures from that era where engines were developing gobs of power with prop, raceboat and safety racing to change futuristically to what the engines were producing power wise.

If anyone does not have the scan equipment to post pictures here from albums etc. I do and can do that will be returned by mail to the holder once scanning and posting with your story and picture are done. Anyone with pictures and stories for posting Anzani engines at work???

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Here is a novel approach a racer at some point took to control 2 banes of the Anzani B Alky engine with their heavy cast iron blocks and traditional problems of weight added from the overhanging exhausts systems.

One bane was to get water in the bottom pipe from the backwash as a racer would come back into the pits. Water would come up the bottom pipe and frequently wet down the cylinder unless the driver almost vaulted over the cowl keeping weight as far forward as possible to prevent this condition that would require purging and a fresh sparkplug to do anything more. There were some reports of water getting into the cylinder from the backwash causing hydralic damage to the engine that would require engine teardown and repair.

The second bane was the overhanging weight othe exhaust system with its pipe support struts added to this overhang that could break the top off the cast aluminum and machined midsection tower and could and frequently did case cast iron block mounting flange cracking. The midsection tower no one could re-weld successfully and were replaced. Cast iron block brazed back on block to crankcase mounting flanges seemed quite common and proved reliable.

The following class B Alky Anzani pictures following shows a simple exhaust system instead of sweeping back in the classic crescent shape were made to fire 90 degrees opposite piston travel throwing the exhaust to the "crowd side", so spectators could literally hear it blasting at them as it came by on the race course. Because the pipes were set to 90 degrees off piston travel the extra weight to the overhang was largely eliminated and in fact concentrated forward and on the opposite side to the big Vacturi carb, extra exhaust pipe bracing was eliminated and the pipes in the pictures never had any vibration cracking requiring extra welding to show repairs. Truly a step in the right direction.

Enjoy the pictures.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

The Anzani B Alky with offset exhausts.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Looking at the Anzani engines it seems quite normal to use a near 350CC cast iron engine block for B Stock gasoline racing, so why were the B Alkys only 322CCs? as opposed to using the near 350s used by the gassers?? In looking at the large bore of the 350 stock racing block, you would think with its bigger bore making the engine geometry near oversquare operating condition as that of having more revs and more power? Were the speed record engines of the 1970s the 350s or the 322s?

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

The odd email still come in concerning these cast iron blocked engines from Great Britan asking for information or pictures and sometimes the odd bit of engineering information comes in already seen on them when they had some prominence. What came in one mail was a old creased section of drafting that showed an addition of twin ports right below the exhaust port to what seems to be an effort to blow boost of intake gases to blow residual exhaust gases out. Checking the old blocks here found that Bill Tenney seen those and tried that in one "A" and one "B" Alky block but they went through the garage fire he had and if that was a success or failure is hard to judge as the engines bores are already worn and bored to oversizes.

Another hand sketch from a deceased Anzani engineer came my way from a family relative that shows a rear wall set of 2 squarish boost ports directly opposite the bridges exhaust port and these ports lay lower down and open lower than the main cylinder side intake loop ports that are ninety degrees off the exhaust port. The same sketch shows the exhaust port a little wider at the top than lower down with the circular block outlet found on the latest cast iron A class block. There are no dates on any of these fragments but taken against what is known today as modern porting shows they were going towards more intake ports and wider ports on both the intake and exhaust side as direct crankcase fed "boost ports" and there were examples of this thinking already turning up in what Bill Tenney and his associate engineers were doing from the old blocks on hand. One can only wonder if the crankshafts could be up to these extras when some racers were running up to 40% nitromethane in their methanol fuel mixes? I wonder what the effects if that garage fire has on that kind of cast iron even though the bores check out straight with melted aluminum from engine parts still melted into block ports and crevices remains there even now?

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

Recently from Region 10 USA NorthWest, a "T" exhaust ported British Anzani 322cc Class B Alky block turned up that mirrored the kind of 2 stroke port(s) work Quincy Welding led in the development of to improve the performance of their Quincy Flathead loop engines in later years of refinements. Seems that Quincy's ideas were infectious to other race engine builders as a result? That block is being cleaned up for future pictorial sumission on this Anzani portion of this website.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

From fables to realities X 2!

From 1961 to 1964 Bill Tenney (Crystal Bay, Minnesota, USA) of British Anzani fame built and had campaigned successfully an Anzani twin block coupled (250cc X 2) Class C Alky runabout engine that just disappeared at the end of the 1964 season and from what information is available, the engine was never beaten when it was raced taking championships time after time until it disappeared. As of Christmas 2006 and with the technical and pictorial help coming from veteran racer Tim Chance that engine has again come into being from the same bank of components that produced it. It will be shortly featured here as a historical and pictorial submission to BRF.

Similarly in 1968, according to veteran enthusiast Smitty the Welder just recently, Bill Tenney back then in 1968 supplied some major components to North Western racers/engine builders (Region 10) Jim Hallum and Ron Anderson who cooperated in producing a British Anzani coupled twin block Class D Alky engine (322cc X 2) for racing runabout. This monster effort required no less than 6 pitment including 2 starters (4 pitmen to lift the raceboat and one starting pitman on each engine's flywheel ropeplate) to lift the raceboat and get the monster with its combined horsepower (reputed to be over 200+ horsepower) for its time engine going! So far details of this effort are coming in for its re-creation as a whole engine again. Unlike the sucessful Anzani twin block Alky C of 1961 to 1964 , this NW USA 1968 effort in producing a Class D Alky version caused numerous components failures due to the horrendous horsepower outputs that eventually led to the abandonment of the project. Never the less the class D British Anzani engine was a reality and its pictorial and actual re-creation will be featured here as a historical submssion to BRF as it develops.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

The intake and exhaust porting on this cast iron Anzani engine block that survived the garage fire at Bill Tenney's back in the late 1960s leaves one scratching your head as to what they were thinking?

It took a while to separate this block from the other sludge of what was a complete powerhead that melted together in the fire that was hot enough to melt all the aluminum, steel innards and cast iron block of the powerhead into a kind of an irregular blob. It took some forge heating to extricate what there was into separate parts for this picture.

This engine block of 322ccs (Class B Alky) has all the appearances of having been run extensively with 6 ports within the cylinder walls. To add to that there is a class A (250cc) Alky Anzani cast iron block with these SAME 6 ports in one cylinder only that could have been for testing the theories behind that kind of porting that then resulted in the 322cc block being produced and then also run later, seems logical but will we ever know? What power in terms of rpm and horsepower is also unknown.

Enjoy the pictures.

[Jerry Combs]

John,

That porting looks like what was done to my dad's A in 1968 or 1969. We were only running 10% nitro and never did get it to run as fast as it had before the port work. Wish I knew where that engine was today.

Jerry

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

The engine in the picture is the 322cc Class B. The class A block I have features it done, the trick porting to only 1 cylinder but not the other, I suspect must be a test block, so there is a 3rd one, your Anzani and maybe other ones too with this porting update somewhere out there? The key to that porting apparently is using a whopping increase in nitromethane in the fuel mix to make it all work and by the wear on the cylinders of the block in the pictures and as well in the A block the porting must have worked. Question is why didn't you or your Dad not know about increasing the nitromethane content in the fuel mix? Some might say it was a racer's secret not to tell but to experiment yourself to find the right combo? Some might say the porting was useless without the nitro compensating and maybe just increasing the nitro without the porting would have been okay? None of the North West Anzani engines I have feature this revised porting. I do not know if Anderson or Hallum ever tried adding more ports to Anzani cylinders like this? Lots more carbs? Yes! but extra ports, Smitty??