Coolest racing engine of all time???

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

This is what you get in the days of film cameras and the scanning technology of those days. Pretty primative comparing to today's digital technologies. Enjoy the pictures, that is about the best you can ever see them.

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

When Bill Tenney spec'd the Anzanis out originally 1960s in their Alky development, a single Vacturi carb you would find of OMC C-Service engines were suitablely barrel resized and plus used with anywhere on the A to B, from 1 to 3 DelOrto remote fuel bowls were used above the carb to feed the gravity float bowl of the carb unchanged from its original form. This was found to be combersome and rather leaky and OMC fuel pumps as those found on 30 to 40 or more horsepower units were adapted to a floatless made Vacturi carb where the pump would fill the fuel bowl that would then spill over and return to the fuel tank in a constant pumped fuel loop. As the Hallum/Anderson engines were developed with the addition to self pumping Tillotson HL series floatless/bowless carbs addtional lines from the main fuel feed line allowed these HLs to suck up their own constant supply of methanol/nitro based fuels. How much nitromethane loading could these cast iron loopers withstand? Many were run from 10% up to and over 40% of the fuel could be the nitromethane component. How much horsepower? Bill Tenney and his engineers were able to get 0ver 375 horsepower per liter of displacement out of a 250 Anzani and from the 322 to 350 CC units came 450 to 475 horsepower per liter of disaplacement on the dynomometers they used. Not bad considering they today are considered primative loopers, but, the engineers claimed without the cast iron block there was no way they could achieve that! They even did not have the expansion chamber exhausts, slide carbs and ignitions we today that we take for granted. Scary EH? LOL!

[N-77 Two]

Take a look at the back of the boat. There were two tanks custom made for that boat that actually held around 6 gallons of methanol. The motor drank fuel. In fact this was one of the first races that the "new" drive tube that Elli Langdon made for my dad. The lower two cylinders were actually below the transom of the boat, trying to lower the CG of the motor to make the boat steer thru the corners even better. This motor was definately a screamer. Thanks for the memories.

[Mike Schmidt]

This shot should go under "Coolest Engine of All Times". It has my vote.
I had the honor of riding deck in this beast, racing against it and even working on parts of it. This thing was ultra trick for its day. Still trick today 30 something years later. I never met Elli, but have the utmost respect for his work. His work was the same caliber as Walt, Harry and Tom. I did some work on the Konig overdrive unit that he had built for this motor after he had passed away. He had notes etched on the inside of the gear case telling what size shim went where. It was neat, kind of like he was helping.....Bill was a great driver in any boat, but this was his real love.

Hope you guys have this thing on display at Powermist.

Michael D-1

[Tomtall]

John - Very Very cool stuff and history leason! Thanks

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

The one bad thing about all this stuff was, when it was being run and your a pitman and later a driver the last thing you had on your mind was to take pictures of it all and lots of them. I took some but another racer borrowed the album and claims to have lost it when he and his wife split!

They were quite the engine that seemed to far surpass what their objective seemed to have been as a gasoline fueled stocker in the hands of American engineers like Tenney, Hallum, Anderson. others and the racers that developed drove them as Alky racers. I can remember them just blasting around the race courses as if it was yesterday. They were that remarkable. Back then I remember them smoking Quincy padded deflectors as well as Flathead Loopers and Konigs in some cases twice the displacement of the Anzanis. Anzanis major problems was perennialy ignition, that "Prince of Darkness" Lucas magneto and loading up and stalling before they could clean out to run. At times a bottom pipe would swallow enough water to wet down that cylinder so the practice was to get her on plane fast to get the ramfeed waterpickup going and almost go over the cockpit cowl to the nose to do so and coming in real fast, cutting the engine and getting up front fast to stop water coming up that bottom pipe.

There must be a load of 8 millimeter movie film and Kodak Brownie shots of this stuff, only where?

[Dr. Thunder]

...There must be a load of 8 millimeter movie film and Kodak Brownie shots of this stuff, only where?

Ron Andersons dad Rennie was a frequent visitor in the pits. Understood he was a decent photographer ... always had a camera around his neck or in hand ... I've always wanted to see what he developed ... I wonder if ...

[N-77 Two]

Thank You Mike for the kind words about my dad. You did a lot of work for ALL of us at Power-Mist during the 80's. It was to bad you never had a chance to meet Elli, he was a class act all the way.

One day Dad and I skipped work to go to Elli's to finish working on the Konig D my dad had. Dad and I were working on making all the pistons equal weight when my dad said everything was "close enough" and said he was going to do something else. Elli came over and looked at the numbers Dad had written on the top of the pistons and asked Dad and I to leave and go get lunch. So we did. When returning with lunch, Dad looked at the pistons, and all the numbers had changed and they were all the same. Elli took one look at Dad and said, "nothing leaves my shop until it is perfect, now the pistons are perfect." Elli did the pistons over and they were perfect. He was a great and gifted man. I am glad to have known him and glad to have taken him to the last race he went to, Soddy Daisy, TN for the Mod Nationals. What a blast.

After Dad broke his back going for the NOA 1100R Kilo record, which he was recorded going thru the trap at over 107mph the first way, and blew it over going back the other. Elli totally rebuilt that Looper and had it ready for dad for the race that you see in the picture above. Many people do not remember that my Dad had a severely broken back at that National, it was only 12 weeks after the accident. Bill and Ralph DeSilva built a brand new boat, also.

Again, thanks for the nice words about Dad. It was fun to race with you in the 80's, and it was fun to watch you deckride with Dad. It was also fun to watch you drive the 6-cylinder Yamaha motor we have on the 13.6 boat at Hartford that one day. When that motor finally got on pipe, you had a handfull with it. You did a good job that day until the lower unit broke. In fact that motor only was driven by a handfull of people and you should feel honored to have driven that. As far as deckriders go, you are one of only a handfull of people to do that also. Of course, Dick Scopinich, Howie Pickerell, Jay Gignac, Debbie McMahon and Yourself are the only ones to have taken a ride in that beast of a motor.

Thanks. Remember, Lets put Bills Fales in the APBA HALL OF FAME!!!

[John (Taylor) Gabrowski]

I am confused a bit from reading about Bill Fale's Looper 6 cylinder and F runabout?? Was it a Quincy 6 Flathead Looper (because the pipes and engine look similar) or was it a hybrid of some kind as racers and their engineers are something else marvelous in Alky racing, meaning anything is possible and is done or can be done???? End my confusion please?

[Mike Schmidt]

The motor in the photo from 1972 at Depue on the previous page is his six cylinder Quincy Looper. From the outside it looked like a real clean Quincy. Bill and Ellie put a ton of time into developing it on the dyno and on the race course. Porting, balancing, pistons, reeds and so on. Bill was one of, if not the best on fuel. The down housing they built was as short as you could get a six. They had to run a dump tank for the bottom carb, as it was below the transom. They had a fuel pump to pull out of the dump tank, back to the fuel tank for the floatless carbs.

Bill raced 4 cylinder OMC "pumpers", six cylinder Mercs, big block Konigs and the Looper in FRR, now called 1100CCR. Bill also had a six cylinder Yamaha based "rotary". Bruce Nicholson designed and built it. I tested it for Bill, until we ran out of Konig units. After ventilating three new 15-16 units in an afternoon, the motor went back to his shop.

Hope this helps.

Michael D-1