British Anzani A & B Stock & Alky Racing Engines

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

It was pointed out to me that the clamps/tower on the right side that seems near twice (2X) the width of its brother on the left side is the older one. The right being older has been that identified so from some brass cast components that only came on earlier engines. Compact is one thing, but, that real narrow engine mount proved at times to be very hard to keep there in one place with the engine given its heavy rotating internals and castiron block and components weights being held up that high at what we call standard height was no help and almost like waving a top heavy metal club when in operation.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

The Gene Strain racing family of Calgary, Alberta, Canada had this very straight forward British Anzani "B" Alky (an another one he didn't talk much about and was not hung up for view at this boathouse on Chestermere Lake, AB) running out west, into the North Western USA (Montana, Washington and Oregon) and Central and Northern Alberta, Canada prior to 1980.

In exhibition racing, just to show the other racers and the public what an Alky could do, Billy would just sit comfortably upright in the 12 ft MacDonald conventional hydro and more than lap a full field of D-Stock Hydros, running on the extreme outside of all of them, not much different than an odd visiting Super C Crescent 500 Stock racing engined boats would do in their increasing lonliness. In fact that at times was the lonely a competition when those two were around. Everything was either stock racing or tunnel at that period.

Calgary, Alberta based, Gene Strain was well known for his C-Service and stock Mercury racing outboards (from B through D) and son Billy drove the stockers, the Alky boats and later on very successfully as well as the very fast and ay bigger OPCs of that era in that area.

When all the racing pretty much ended and the engines just sat. By 1981 Gene decided to sell me the engine pictured here. A typlical Anzani Alky B, from Bill Tenney of Crystal Bay, Minnesota. It originally came with its twin overhead remote DelOrto gavity feed fuel bowls. It was not that long that the influences from either Hallum, Anderson or Sutter down South at some point changed the Anzani from DelOrto gravity feed to the OMC pump with floatless Vacturi the flow through back to fuel tank styles that were used by those three leaders previously mentioned.

In 1985 he told me he still had that another one??? He told me that he didn't think it would be of much interest to me because it was the one that was blown up at that race, that saw the engine scatter itself, even parts hit people and could not be fixed! He sold it to me anyway, in parts, in the several sections. It was that the spare tower housing or gearcase would be the only things of much use and priced them accordingly. By then Gene was over 80 years old he would still take the odd ride by himself when he decided to do it in Billy's D -Stock Giles pickelfork hydro. He loved that new pickelfork techoology he sure did! A remarkable man with a remarkable family they were. Through this engine they are remembered by many others like us who knew him and whose endearing term for old Gene (the late and great Gene) as its seems for the many other senior racers of that era most beloved and endeared was the nick name of "Pap" or in his case, "Pappy Strain".

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

It is with great expectations now with enough spare parts now, that the second British Anzani of the late and great "Pappy" Gene Strains from Calgary, AB. whose powerhead and crankcase were badly blown up at a race that there are now enough parts to recreate it back to where it was in one piece all over again. It was a Hallum, Anderson, Sutter inspired to some degree Anzani with 2 carbs and fuel pumping system setup the same way as seen on Roger Wendt's hybrid but retaining the older Lucas gear driven magneto ignition, 1st generation crankshaft with tapered big end pins and general appearance as most Anzani class B Alkys would otherwise, right down to the heavier all steel crescent shaped megaphone pipes with supports.

It does have a quirky crankshaft though. To squeeze the crankcase volumes even tighter/higher the crankshaft had carnkshaft enclosing cans machine screwed to the hardened crankshaft plates they wrapped around and covered it/them to mimic it being full circle.

All crankshaft extreneuos holes in the various plates where filled in and cemented/coverd (otherrthan the rotary valve outlet holes in the crankshaft center body) to reduce crankcase volume subtantially again and this is how she ran with her one Vacturi (main block and crankcase carb) and one Tillotson HL directly aimed at the crankshaft rotary valve opening ran until she blew up that day. She was plenty fast and tangled with Roger Wendt's hybrid 2 carb and the others when she did run in those parts, West and Northwest.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

The Gene Strain owned at that time single carbed Anzani pictured here of the pre 1981 racing era had other quirks. It too had a Fairbanks Morse FM magneto discharge coil in it to make it run better instead of its original "hand wound like unit". Part of it was the FMs increased voltage and it had an internal grounding show disconnecting a spark plug wire would not burn and short holes directly through windings nearest ground, burning out the original Lucas coil and the fact that it fell right into the Lucas magneto housing as if it was made for just that. Gene was convinced he discovered that coil interchangability first? Maybe he did.

During that period Roger Wendt also had a 2 carb Anzani. An ignition change was done there too. The Lucas magento was retained but those points were removed and some kind of Ford Model "T" type points, thank goodness with spares were installed. Lucas points of that pre-1981 era were notorius for point bounce from the high rpms of an engine that was not supposed to do that on gasoline! It wasn't gas though. It was not uncommon to run into Lucas magnetos with their arm springs doubled from another Lucas point kit to stop that point bounce causing high speed misfires.

[David_L6]

It would be interesting to see someone try to run one of those motors on a short tower.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

It could be done on a custom built tower, that I have but too. The concern was then as is now about getting water up the lower pipe and into the cylinder hydralicing or wetting the cylinder for another start using the stacks that were popularly configured at the time. I have seen that happen. but there are differing ways of configuring the exhausts to even setting up expansion chambers configured to avoid/minimize that at any time is quite possible.

The way for getting these water ram feed specials is to have prop out of the water to start rev and kida throw it forward at the same time with driver far forward over the steering to get on plain real fast and that worked well.

Coming is was very much get off plane fast and near the pits keeping your body forward of the steering so as not to ingest the backwash into and up the bottom pipe to keep the cylinder dry for the next heat or just to bring her up and pack up for home after you have run a rich gas/oil mix through them to take away any residual methanol/lube/nitro in the engine that could oxidize the engine parts if residues are left in contaminating the metal innards.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

When Gene Strain's Anzani blew up at the race site, just starting it and reving before drop, it went off like a grenade exploding. The pictures of its block with a major port/cylinder wall blown out and it is a cast iron block that is repairable with a cast iron sleve machined and installed tells the reader little of what happened to the rest of the complete engine.

The blast broke both connecting rods, bending over and destroying the crank parts of of which exited for parts unknown, both crowns came off both pistons destroying the cylinder head. The crankcase broke in two major parts (it was 2 to start with, that made it four sections) with all kinds of pieces of crankcase alumium spraying people with schrap 30 feet around it. The crankshaft stuffing cans that were screwed to to crankshaft bob weights got mangled like so much thick tin and there was a momentary fire from its fuel load to go with the grenading!

Am I going to repair this block to re-create this second engine of Gene Strain's? No, people that see it pretty much realize the strength of the cast iron block when you tell them they were and could take on big nitro loads in the methanol and still take more suffering next week, next month or next year. Amazing metal, Amazing racing outboard.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

There are several perfectly good cast iron Anzani blocks with similar welding here, braze welded no different than this, where the flanges and even part of a cylinder next to the brazed on flange is the braze welding material so clean amd flaw free a weld there are no bubbles in the metal pool and perfectly good for more use over and over again. Compliments to the welder who did the work. All the welds all look like they held up and are still holding up with time on them and more to go. They were even line bored for re-use as was the original bore when the engine was new. The block with its bore destroyed you would think would have broken that weld when the engine blasted but obviously did not and no sign of any damage to that weld showing any hint of letting go.

Smitty-the-Welder??? Just how did they do such block repairs by brazing? It could not have been simple?

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

They apparently braze welded on a new chunk of metal to then finish it off to previous specs or if needed, milled the block down to a shorter size and installed an aluminum gasket like spacer to the machined down bloc to retain port height relativities before the breakage occurred.

Some of the Anzanis used head gaskets in Alky but not the original gasoline composites that would leak. Instead they made copper sheet gaskets and used CopperCoat *tm to coat the head gaskets for installation for Alky use. At some point there was some leakage near 40% nitro loads in the methanol so some real fine machine work was done, plus some trick added pressure boltins to equalize pressures around the cylinder head to block compression contact points around on the block and head and the engine just used CopperCoat *tm as a sealant buy itself and like Konigs went headgasketless with little problem and great success.

Good sealants those CopperCoat *tm products.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

It seems from all the pictures of these heads they tried a number things with them. The used them with a composite gasket on methanol, they leaked. They used them with copper sheet gaskets and CopperCoat *tm and that was good to over 25-30% nitro in the methanol. Needing something better and knowing that Konigs didn't use head gaskets just sealant, they carefully re-machined the heads dead accurate. They took out the water jackets casting plugs/caps, threaded the casting holes with a blocking plug and centered them with a fine thread 1/4 inch for Allen bolts. They would coat the cylinder to head/combustion chamber mating surfaces with CopperCoat *tm, install and torque head bolts and then install the Allen bolts and torque to press against the aluminum mating surfaces below between the head bolts from above equalizing the seal between the head bolts. You had head bolts pulling and between them Allan bolts pushing to attain a better sealed gasketless head to block seal. It worked well with the highes nitro loads in the methanol fuel mix.

Some pictures show the blank casting of for making high compression Alky heads. Still another head show that they tested using lower compression with high nitro loads with increasing ignition timing, more BTDC. The head of a pure stock B Anzani 350 gasoline burner had a belled head quite different from all these racing heads, but they all looked the same from the top changing all over the place when you fipped them for final machining.