The way I read the rule book it is legal.

The rule book says you must present a block that is recognizable as one of the 850/FE motors and certain "made for racing" parts are not allowed. But then it clearly says you can modify anything that is not covered by the Tech rules. You have to have the right carbs and the right number of reeds ... but there is nothing about having stock cages, cages from something else, hand made cages or cutting and re aligning things by hand.

I thought the prohibitions we had in the FE rules were to allow things like this that anyone with imagination could produce and exclude limited production racing parts that are hard to find.

I have doubts that this by itself would go any faster than a few boats are already going ... but if it were combined with some of what is already out there ... its probably a major leap ... again.


I have not heard of anyone paying $7,000 for machine work on a FE. I think I have heard of people asking that much for a whole motor they wanted to sell ... but we all know you can go as fast as Vicky's boat for half or less, it was a case of someone overestimating the value of what they had.

I think we have already passed the line for killing FE as a class and need to look at restrictions to slow it back down to the speeds it was running 10 years ago to get numbers back up.

I saw Fitzgerald once, Horn not at all, Heffentreyer is out, Luce is running runabout, Reds Hall passed away (a few years ago), Grimes III couldn't find time to race ... Looking at last year's high points for FEH ... less than 12 racers raced 2 weekends of FE ... and one of them was the Mad Russian stepping up from DSH.

My personal opinion is that we should increase the boat size restrictions to slow FE down to just above DMH speed. I think bigger boats running 85-90 mph would attract new blood to the class. The alternative is 100+ mph capsule boats ... just like the non-existant 500cc hydros ... death by attrition