Thread: Konig History

  1. #51
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    Hi Danny,

    First, to answer your question as to what I think would have happened if Jerry Waldman had lived on:
    Many people that frequent this BRF web site have seen my former brother-in-law's (Frank Volker, whom I still consider family) technical postings. Back in 1971 and 1972, Frank was working extensively on an R&D expansion chamber program with very sophisticated metering equipment, including an oscilloscope, transducers and a camera while Frank was finishing up his college engineering degree. By 1972, we at Quincy Welding pretty much had the design of our expansion chambers completed. There are copies of Frank's original chamber drawings over on the Quincy site. they are also posted here on the Quincy section of BRF. We were planning on implementing their use on Waldman's A, B, C, D & F Loopers after that spring race in 1972, along with a very sophisticated water injection system that Frank was also working on in conjunction with the expansion chamber development. If all had worked as projected, Quincy Welding would have gone into production with these advancements.

    That being said, my opinion of the likely scenario is as follows:
    The crankshaft sustainability for the C, D & 44 Loopers at that time was probably good for another 4, 5 or even 6 years of competitive racing progress and horsepower increases for Waldman and other Quincy racing customers. Jerry would have been tough to handle for Konig, along with other Quincy racers that would have followed Jerry's lead. That would have given us time to further develop the next generation Quincy racing engines in the C, D & F classes.

    The A & B Loopers were another story. They were being out performed by the FA & VB Konig engines, especially the B Looper. You must remember that the 20H crankshaft that we used in those engines was originally intended for approximately 18 horsepower, tops. The B Looper was pushing the crankshaft durability at 65 horsepower. From 1969 onward, we were also working on the 2.3 square bore and stroke super B Looper. However, we were having some extremely unusual bearing problems with that developmental engine. My guess is that we probably would have ended up either way with the Z engine, which came out in 1975. The Z engine used the Yamaha TZ 350 road racing pressed crankshaft that we eventually developed to over 90 horsepower for the Z 350 twin race engine. Mercury from the 60's thru the 70's was in a fierce battle with Johnson and Evinrude in the OPC wars and had absolutely no interest in making a new crankshaft for the 2 cylinder Quincy race engines. My dad at that time checked the cost of custom manufacturing a crank for the A and B and the least cost we found was a $200,000 outlay. That was cost prohibitive for a small manufacturing company as ours.

    I think most people would agree, including his toughest competitors, that Jerry Waldman was beyond exceptional in terms of the quality of his equipment and his set up ability. I believe Jerry would have quickly moved the Quincy Welding Z engines to the front of the pack in whatever class he ran and kept them there for some time. Charley Bradley and I had some very meaningful conversations about this very topic.

    I believe that Frank, then Gene and Jim's leaving after Jerry's passing had a huge impact on my father's decision to put our R&D work on hold. To put it simply, he was devastated by the losses. Quincy Welding, in a very short period of time, had lost 4 key players from the team. Add that to my father's being locked into a contract to work in Florida for Mercury, and you can see how Quincy's progress on any new engines was held back for 3 years. Dieter, being an astute businessman, took advantage of that scenario.

    As they say......the rest is history.


    Regards,

    Paul A. Christner
    Thanks Ron Hill thanked for this post

  2. #52
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    Default Quincy Drivers

    Quote Originally Posted by Original Looper 1 View Post
    Hi Danny,

    As they say......the rest is history.


    Regards,

    Paul A. Christner
    Waldman was an all time great. But, the Quincy "team" of drivers included some real talents with the "Z" engines. The Kuglers had an outstanding Nationals at Lakeland (1982?). Jeff and Jack Kugler, John Stevens, Joe Garrick, Larry Latta, Alan Federson and several more. Perhaps no one of thse individuals measure in stature to Waldman individually. But collectively, this is a talented team. I have always considred John Stevens a masterful driver and great with set-ups. Jack and then Jeff have many Nationals and continue to so.

    DW

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    Hi David,

    I agree with you that all of the racers you listed above were outstanding drivers of Quincy’s engines. Most can be found on the QuincyLooperRacing.us web site as Racing Legends.

    However, my reply was to Danny Pigott’s specific question “Paul, what do you think would have happened with Quincy Welding if Jerry had lived on.” Danny was referring to that time period of 1972 and onward from there.

    By 1973 Konig, with sliding expansion chambers, had regained almost all records and went on to dominate the sport until Yamato came into the racing scene in a big way in the mid 1970‘s, courtesy of Jim McKean, Denny Henderson, Benny Aylor and Craig Lawrence.

    Quincy Welding’s second coming (with the new Z engines) didn’t occur to a significant degree until the World Nationals in Alexandria, LA in 1977 when a young Jeff Kugler, in his inaugural professional race event, won the 125cc Hydro world championship (which was also a UIM sanctioned event) with the very first production (not prototype) Quincy Z 125cc race engine in IT’s inaugural race event. We believe this combination to be a historical first.

    All of these other racers’ successes with Quincy racing engines that you are referring to above occurred after Jeff Kugler’s amazing success in Alexandria in 1977. That’s when the momentum changed in our favor for Quincy Welding‘s racing effort.

    Thanks again for your respectful compliments to those great drivers of Quincy race engines.

    Regards,

    Paul A Christner


    PS: The photo is of Jeff Kugler racing at the Worlds in 1977 on his way to victory with the Quincy Z engine.
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    Default more info on Harry Pasturczak pipe use on Konigs

    It has been pretty well established that Konig was aware and had made expansion chambers for FA konigs in 1961. Copies of factory brochures published on BRF confirm that.

    I made a post a few days ago reference the time frame of use by Homer Kincaid of Harry's pipes on a "C" Konig at Depue in 1967. That information was in error. Harry did fabricate the first set of pipes publically used in competition on a 4 cyl rotary valve Konig in the US, but these pipes were used by Homer at the annual Lakeland Fl. 1 2/3rd's mile record course in late winter, early spring of 1969, still prior to the Alexandria race later in 1969 mentioned in another post. The motor used by Homer to win the Nationals at DePue was an earlier 4 carb "C" equipped with the open megaphone type exhaust. This information comes courtesy of Jerry Peterson who competed against Homer in that race at DePue. Jerry was also a user of Harry's pipes on a "D" Konig in July of 1969 at Alexandria. These were the later model pipes with the cast aluminum manifolds.

    While giving me the correct information regards Harry's pipes and the date of their first use, he also related a story which show the single-mindenness with which Harry approached the sport of boat racing and his efforts to improve motor performance. Another friend of Harry's and a competitor in "B" Hydro at the time named John Winzler, was also at this race, which was taking place on July 20, 1969. While Jerry and Harry were working frantically in the pits to get the pipes fitted to Jerry's "D" motor, Winzler was up on the hill above the pits looking at a portable TV. Harry was yelling at Winzler to come down and help them and Winzler was shouting back there was something very important going on being shown on TV that Harry needed to stop and watch. Harry declined and continued to work on the pipes so Jerry Peterson could compete with the pipes on the engine. The event happening on TV that was not as important to Harry as getting the pipes on in time to race, was the first manned landing on the moon.

    If you knew Harry and how single minded he was in trying to help improve the performance of racing engines, and help boat racers, that story will not surprise you.

    P.S. There will be more information appearing in this thread in the next few days or so that will confirm my "faulty memory" regards time lines I mentioned in an earlier post about Konig versus Flathead, and the competitiveness of each against the other. If interested, stay tuned.

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    This just gets better and better.
    First of all thank you all for your comments. I now have a reasonable understanding of the way things went and it is fascinating to cross reference them to the development of the race bikes.
    Kim arrived at the factory in 1968 and actually drove with Dieter in the Paris 6 hour race and in a spare boat at other European meetings - finally coming 5th in the world championships. I realise that such championships were often simply one meeting results but it was still a good effort.
    Kim was keen to design a system whereby the expansion chambers on the bike could slide on the exhaust stubs but actuating such a system with the twist grip throttle was too hard on the wrist. I believe he then looked at a system with servos. This would require a deal of electric power and I wonder just how much electric power the engines generated, if any. Did they simply run down a battery or did they have a mag?
    Excuse my profound ignorance - I should know this but there you go. Ignorance aint bliss.
    When I visited the factory I was shown a repair in the wall of the boat shed that ran across the lane that in turn ran down the side of the factory. Apparently when Kim first fired up the bike Dieter insisted on having a go and put himself and the bike through the wall - luckily without too much damage to himself, the bike or the shed.
    Thought you might like to hear the story.

  6. #56
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    That was a good story Tim. I'm trying to picture where that happened. Since I started posting pics of the factory, I've been trying to remember the floor plan. I have a general idea, but some parts are fuzzy. Dieter never pointed out Tim's bench to me that I can remember, but I figure it was where the motorcycles were. These pics were taken in poor lighting and I didn't have my flash. Color balance is all wrong and I wasn't really trying to take good pics....just snapping some pics of Dieter with the bikes. I really didn't know anything about them. I just took some for posterity. Now, I wish I would have done more detail pics. So sorry about the quality, but maybe you can pick up something here you were curious about. I'm sure the motor was for a bike, although this one doesn't have the heads with the angled spark plug holes. I think that came a year or two later. These were taken in February 1975. The exhaust system I think is related to the bikes, but I'm not positive. This is the same type of guts that you would find inside the "can" exhaust. In Europe they slid them. The few short years we ran the "cans", we just fixed them close to the top end setting. I have some other pics of these bikes, one showing a different exhaust system with pipes on both sides. I will post them later.

    I had responded a few days earlier regarding what happened to Jerry Waldman. Some of the dates were wrong and I merely planned to insert the correct date, plus a brief background and description of what happened. I got carried away when my mind drifted back to that tragic day and I spent over an hour going into detail about what we were up to with Jerry, his success with Quincy and the details of the most frightening half lap I ever ran. I knew I would be logged out by the time I was ready to post, but I knew how to get back in to get it posted.......except one stupid finger hit an extra key while I typed in my password and that killed everything. Writing that took it all out of me and I didn't have the mental energy to do it again. You can find out more detail by looking around in other threads on BRF.

    I look forward to more of your info on Kim and connection with Dieter Tim. I will try to fix the tape as well as look into my journal from that visit to the factory in 1975.

    ADD: Now that the pics are posted I took another look at the heads and they do appear to be the ones for the angle plugs only these holes were drilled straight.
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    Last edited by Master Oil Racing Team; 07-23-2009 at 07:36 AM. Reason: correct a mistake



  7. #57
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    Default Mr K

    These photos are simply amazing.
    I will try to find out who owned the black bike.
    The yellow bike could easily have been Kim's. As you probably know the race numbers generally changed from one meeting to another so it will not be easy.
    After Kim died Dieter did try to carry on but without the input of a man who was a first rate mechanic and one of the most gifted riders around it all fizzled out.
    The exhausts look like bike items.
    When I visited the factory most of it was leased out to other companies. Only the very rear section was still operated by Peter Konig and that was the place the bikes were built. A big roller door opened onto a concreted area with a wooden building opposite the door. In the wooden building there were still a couple of lay down hydros and the remains of the powered handglider Dieter died while trying to fly on a tether. It was his dream to train lots of flyers who would then buy his engines but because of flight restrictions over Berlin - still Cold War - he decided to operate the ultrlights on a tether system. It did not work and he was killed the first time he tried it.
    I wrote a long post on aspects of engine design a couple of days ago and messed up sending it - eventually deleting the lot. Not sure if I should berate myself or just indulge my general hatred of computers. Did the latter but probably should have done the former.
    Tim

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    Default hatred of computers

    Tim:

    Regards your comment "general hatred of computers". I remarked very recently to a boat racing friend that it is a good thing that the engines I messed with in my boat racing career were not manufactured by companies named Dell, HP, Acer, CDW, etc., or the time spent actually on the water racing would have been MUCH less and a lot more broken, smashed parts would have been left on the lake bank.

    I can certainly sympathize and agree with your thoughts on that subject.

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    Cuss them as we will...if it weren't for computers...the internet and BRF...the following pictures would have melted into plastic. I get frustrated very often, but I have to think that if it weren't for BRF I would have never been in touch again with so many of my boat racing friends. Not to mention many I have met not only online, but at the events I have been to since.

    Tim...here's another angle of the bikes, and I came across a head with the angled bosses that I took during the same visit in 1975. I included an enterior look at one of the pipes, but I don't know what all the configuration was like inside. Dieter was always playing around with pipe schemes.
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  10. #60
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    Do I see a swing arm and set of shocks on the front forks of one of those bikes? An italian crotch rocket maker was the only one I have ever seen do that.
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