Originally Posted by
Master Oil Racing Team
We ran L87's in all our motors except the 350cc VB Konig. L87's were too hot. Sounds kind of strange doesn't it. I never heard of an L85 or L86 so I always figured L87 was only a little bit different from the L84. Maybe Mike can fill us in.
Anyway... we were holding the 2nd half of the 1968 NOA World Championships which was blown in Minnesota out at my Dad's house. When we raced there a lot of my high school classmates showed up, and some of my best friends wanted to pit. We always had a team that traveled all over with us, but against our best judgement we let one guy help. Basically, we let him hand us tools, carry fuel cans, etc. It was our stupid mistake to ask him to give us some new plugs to put in the B. A couple of new packages of L84's were opened and set on a box in the trailer. Unfortunately, an L87 was next to them and was one of the four he picked up. No one checked. That plug ended up in the top rear cylinder.
I pulled out of the pits to test and just barely broke over on a plane when the power dropped off and the motor made a sound like I never heard before. Back in the pits we took out the plugs and the L87was ashen white/grey with metal splatters all over it and we found a 5mm hole all the way through the piston. The races weren't until the next day, so I was up until midnight overhauling the motor. Because of that I missed the famous shootout when Jack Chance fired off a chamber full of blanks at the "ferocious little wood creature" that Jerry Simison's crew brought down from Minnesota.
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