An Amazing Story

[Master Oil Racing Team]

..........two hours. Man....you start thinking about different scenarios. What you could have done differently? What if you make a bad start? Will the motor and/or lower unit last? New plugs. Sometimes you get a bad one. Recheck all electrical connections. Go sit down and talk with pit crews and fellow racers. Get back up and check something else you thought of. Make sure motor is secured. Remember what happened to Tim? Get a slug of Gatorade from Bill Van. Check the time. Still more than an hour to go. Go sit down again. Not much to do if everything is ready. Or is it ?. Jack's double checking everything. Doesn't get much better than Jack handling wrenches. The others are all doing the same thing. Going through and double checking or maybe even major motor work. Sometimes gathering in little groups and chatting about whatever. Isn't this fun?

[Master Oil Racing Team]

........we watched the Unlimiteds race their way to the finals.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

The trophy for the Unlimiteds was on display at the podium. It had some fine lines. It was hard to pass by without stopping to admire the beautiful sculpting.

[ronus747]

Hell Wayne, I was there and you've got me all goose bumply again...
Keep it coming

How's Andrew doing ???

[Master Oil Racing Team]

......just a couple of days hanging out at the hospital. Seems like there were a couple of other cases. One girl the grade below him went in with the same symptoms, got released the next day then went back with it worse a couple of days later. Their white blood cells had gone up half again what normal was and acute abdominal pain, but the CAT scans were iffy. After everything turned back to normal, they were both released.

Our football team is going to the regionals tommorrow to play at the Alamodome so we're getting ready to head out for that. More on the story in a day or so.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

One of the things D Konigs did was move a lot of volume of air and fuel with the given displacement and the RPM's we were turning. It had been more of a problem than with the smaller bore engines. When you pop the cap of a fuel tank on a D Konig it would go POOOMPH! Then you would see an atomized fog of air and fuel swirling around inside. There was a serious problem with the Konig style carbs when dealing with this kind of internal pressures.

We went back and forth over the years between the standard Konig system with a crankcase pressurized fuel system pumping into the fuel tank through a checkvalve versus electric fuel pumps. Either system had to deliver massive amounts of fuel to keep these D's pumping out the horsepower. And that was another consideration.

The Europeans were used to running longer distances and were therefore more in tune with fuel requirements. The race at Dayton was more top speed and which means more fuel use than European racing, but we were running 20% further than our standard races in America. We needed 5 gallon tanks to go the distance. Actually I think we went to a 6 gallon tank, because we were getting only a little better than 1 mile per gallon of methanol.

The primary weak link were the carbuerator floats. Regardless of which system you went with, the fuel regulators were ultimately the floats, and in the D's there was a lot of pressure involved.

The first post is part of my test sheet D-16 indicating a float problem. The sheet after that was D-17 I had posted previously with the rotary valve housing stain on it. If you look back you will note we had worked on that problem.

The next pic is Tim working on adjusting his check valve. It was just a simple check valve with a brass tube coming off the side with a spring and ball bearing to relieve some pressure.

[Ron Hill]

Marcel Belleville told me he blew in the wrong line of his Konig tank at Valleyfield, and when he pulled the line out of his mouth, the alcohol fuel squirted into his eye. He raced the next heat, but later went to the doctor. The Canadian doctor, gave him something for his eye, and it was was not the right right stuff... Burned his eye out. That is why Marcel only has one eye...


Some how, Wayne, I've known all a long that you had some pictures like that one above, nice trophy.....for sure!!!!

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I never knew that's what happened to Marcel's eye. Man, I don't see how he could have driven after a shot in the eye like that. The methanol sucks up all the water, then you have to open your eye for it to evaporate. What pain. I guess it would soak into the tissue though if you kept your eye shut. It happened to him then before I met him, because I always knew Marcel to have only one eye.

And on the previous photo Ron..... The editor of Motorsport told me to always keep an eye out for such subjects He said it helped sell magazines. I don't know one way or another, but it just became a habit after that.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

From the April 73 Motorsport

[Master Oil Racing Team]

....& now back to the waiting for the final heat.

Tim was setting on 1025 points with two firsts and a third. I was the only one able to beat Tim if I could win the final heat. I had a second to go with two firsts. Jerry Kirts could only finish second overall with 1000 points if he won the final heat. Dan did not have enough points to finish in the top three even with a win, but between himself and his brother Jerry, they still had enough speed and will to become a spoiler.

During the two hour wait I did some calculating, as I suspect the others did too. In order to defend my title, I had to win the final heat. If Tim finished second, I had to beat him by 5.7 seconds. If he finished third or lesser, the championship was mine. Up until now, Tim and I were running only a couple of seconds apart with the exception of when his transom assembly was loosened up. My Marshall Grant Konig was running at its peak, and the Ron Anderson Konig of Tim's was too. It meant that unlike my normal style of racing where I could back off if I had a comfortable lead, I would have to push for all its worth if I broke out in front. I didn't like that, especially with a D which was very hard on a lower unit. You can't win when that motor suddenly revs very high and your throttle hand tells you that you have 150 horsepower that has thrown its shoes. A fantastic motor ready to put out and a great prop ready to receive, but no communication.

Of course I could blow the start. Dan, Jerry or both would be hard to get around. Tim was almost perfect. One bad heat. How could third be bad? A lot of things to think about. And the water was not settling down. We could still run fast, but you have to think about holes in the turns where you could trip a sponson if you were pushing to the max. I guess thats why I quit taking pictures. Just try to settle down and sip on Bill Van's Gatorade.