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That would be a great post.
That would great a great picture to get a hold of. Somewhere in the albums that were lost to an incident here I had a picture of Floyd Harris Jr. photoed in a big DeSilva runabout but the engine looked like a Quincy as I recall. Was that the same raceboat they parked the Twin Anzani on top of? If you could score a picture of it, the Anzani twin C being started by Mr. Kolosky too would be great and a momento to him and his ability to single handidly roping over the beast to start it.
John,
Back when my dad was racing AOH with an Anzani in the late 60's we had a saying for Lucas that was very appropiate to me since I was the one lifting..........Left Us Cold And Standing.
Jerry
Would you have any pictures you can donate too see that?
Are there any pictures you could scan and put into these pages to show some of that standing in the water stuff? Racers and pitmen then as now were notorious for not taking many pictures of stuff like that happening. Does not matter if they are black and white, if not color either or if they were shot through a lense of a camera back then the grade like the bottom of a glass Coke bottle, so long as there is some definition and contrast. Do you have or can get any?
Originally Posted by John Taylor
John,
The best that I can do is a picture from after a race, the boats and everything were already loaded. Like most racers we didn't take many pictures at all. Dad sold all of his and my equipment shortly before he died in 1996 to someone but I don't know who. I was sick when I found out he had sold my A and B Koenigs as well as his Anzani. Dad's Anzani had been owned by Wade Terrill and dad bought it when Wade had a heart attack and thought he was done racing. Dad and Frank Zorkan had a lot of very close races. Dad flipped it on day and it didn't run right afterwards. He sent it to Tenny and had the porting updated etc around 1968 or 69. We never did get it to run fast afterwards, my Koenig (VA if I remember right, it had been Marcel Belleville's A motor) outran it by a wide margin and dad just lost interest in racing.
Jerry
FYI, John, the photo that appears under your name was obviously not a Seattle-area engine, because it uses the factory (or Tenney) style of pipe-bracing. All the Anzanis here ran the bracing to a bracket bolted to the center of the cylinder head. I believe Lee Sutter was the first to do this.
Anzani guys I remember in this area included Sutter, Walin/Hallum, Mike Smith (who I think drove Walin's stuff a couple of times, and held a record at Yelm), Ron and Don Anderson, Ron Magnusson, Duane Wallick (who also had a Harrison), Mike Flynn, and Roger Wendt. Also Buzz Thorsen, who had the first Harrison in the Region in '66, I think. Buzz, a machinist from Oregon, had gorgeous equipment, with matching turquoise paintjobs on his MacDonald hydro and his '56 Chevy Nomad wagon. The pits always looked classier after Buzz arrived. I believe his son Alan is the current builder of the hardware line started by Leonard Keller.
Your quite right about the pipe bracings, other differences too
Jerry: Thanks for the picture, it is very true about racers hardly taking pictures of what they put themselves through! Most A - B Anzani drivers were of slight build and just right for their raceboats too.
I just got a short email concerning that wild Anzani porting system. Because it added 2 intake ports by the method it was done, it increased effective crankcase transfer volumes making for slower air/fuel transfer, that was supposed to be taken care of by increasing nitromethane content in the fuel mix significantly because the Anzanis did not breathe all that well. Most racers used 10% nitro where others a bit (what ever that means?) more. With this porting update it required some 25% to 30% nitromethane in the fuel mix to make the engine turn on faster than previous. Horsepower increases were significant this way. One of Tenney's associate engineers who retired from Polaris, now lives in Thief River Falls, talked about them dynoing engines up to 30% and some little more nitro in the fuel, breaking things. He as did Roger Wendt mentioned in the North West some were using 40% and as much as 60% nitro as fuel because the engine just could not breath effectively and the nitro took over that chore quite well being it was being used in a cast iron block that could handle it.
Smitty: Your very right on about the pipe bracings. The ones in the picture under my name are the kind Bill Tenney produced. They fractured more this way, the brazed weld repairs show it. The North Western pipes I also have, have that bracket your referring to in the middle of the cylinder head to tie to.
Another difference was in your NW area, some Anzani engines were head gasketless in cases, glued and bolted down extensively and different than the norm. To add to that, to equalize head bolt pressures around the head's perimeter NW racers took out the head's water jacket casting plugs, installed thicker plugs and drilled, threaded and installed Allen bolts through these thicker plugs to put pressure on the head's perimeters from the inside in addition to the head bolts, plus an extra one in the middle to attempt to equalize torque pressures around the head to block mating surfaces even between the cylinders. It worked well by all accounts.
All the Tenney engines I have here and recalled elsewhere had the hand made type sheet copper, sometimes aluminum head gaskets like the Quincy Flatheads also used with glue to seal the then torqued down head(s). Clearly the composite gaskes originally used for gasoline leaked and were unreliable for Alky use.
None of the Tenney engines here used fuel pumps but the crankcase pressure feed to pressurize the fuel tank with a line to either one or two DelOrto remote fuel bowls held high to then gravity feed and use needle, seat and coated cork float in the Vacturi carb. Sometimes there were float, needle and seat problems. The engines I got from Alberta from Gene Strain and in from Roger Wendt in Montana all used the rubber mounted OMC fuel pump with a floatless Vacturi carb with a overflow line back to the non pressurized Alky tank.
All this sounds kind of complicated but really they were quite simplified for reliability too.
First Mockup Of Anzani Twin Block C Alky
After asking around for a few years on the Internet from a small black and white picture supplied by returning racer Tim Chance of Bill Tenneys Anzani promotional British Anzani material the Anzani Twin Block C Alky went to first mockup during December of 2006. All the components were within the parts bank and were mounted according to what the picture offered. Tim Chance commented, what he was now seeing had not been seen sometime since disappearing in 1964-65. The work involved in restoring the racing engine now had some basis to go forward towards the operational model. Enjoy the first pictures.
Region 20 - Chuck Walters D Runabout any pictures?
Pictures anyone? The British Anzani twin block D project by Jim Hallum and Ron Anderson evolved around producing an engine that was used on Chuck Walters class D Alky DeSilva runabout in Region 10 back in 1968-69, in the North West USA. Do any readers have any leads to pictures of this raceboat with some strange looking engine attached to it where it took at least 4 people to hold the raceboat up and 2 starters to get the dual blocked engine going? Any picture, black and white, even blurry out of a box camera would be appreciated.
The arrangement of the two B powerheads was not like the layout in your photos. I'll send you a sketch.
A sketch would be a good start
The Twin block C Alky was done/re-created with a brochure picture supplied by Tim Chance. There is another block mounting method different is sure going to change how the Twin D would look alright. Looking forward to a sketch.
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