Wayne Baldwin's Amazing Story: Baldy's Eual Eldred Baldwin

[David Weaver]

Wayne,

You time your story "breaks" very well. I love the memories that you generously share and it is great to witness the continuity in our sport.

OF course, I am intrigued by the photo's of your cast iron FA. I know where one resides today and have great memories of how well it ran for so long. I wonder what it would be worth today???


Looking forward to "next season"!

BTW - Boat racing is returning to Hinton this year.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Thanks David. We got that cast iron Konig on our trip to North Carolina. I wish I would have had more pictures of it, and the serial number. I guess there are not too many.

They were very tough blocks, but I guess to many racers weighed too much to want to hang them on their transom. That was never a problem with us. I seem to remember Sam had some information on the cast iron blocks, but I forgot what it was. Keep your eye on it.

I still haven't gotten to the rest of 1967, but the racing season is finished. There are still a couple of things I haven't been able to put to bed yet and that is the Rotary Valve Konig introduction into the U.S. Clayton Elmer thinks Billy Seebold may have had one in the fall of 1967.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Boat racers were already scheduling their time to come spend a weekend with Baldy and get some hunting in. That would be for the weekend, but what I worked on after school was my Gordie surfboard and the boats. I don't recall if I mentioned that Gene Acock glassed the fin in backwards and it was huge. I ground out a new shape since it was firmily implanted and I got some kind of blue paint from somewhere that looked cool at the time. It was a subdued blue gray color that I thought looked fantastic with black stripes. So I painted my Gordy blue and black. I like it so much that I thought I would do the same to all our boats. Our colors now would be blue and black.

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

Wayne:

You may be, or probably are correct, about Billy having/getting a rotary valve Konig in that time frame.

1968 was the year I started back after about a 10 year layoff and I started back with what I was running when I had to quit which was "C" Hydro. Over the winter of '67/'68 I ordered a boat built by Larry Goff that I had seen run at DePue in '67 driven by Ron Hagness. Billy's brother-in-law, Bob McFarland, who was married to his sister, called it a "Coffin Craft" a little take off on "Goff Craft" because it had high cockpit sides unlike most Hydro's of the time and was painted black. The boat was scheduled to be delivered in Spring of '68 and I of course needed an engine also so was looking in issues of the "Rooster Tail" and saw an ad by Bill Sr. that he had several Flatheads for sale, two "C's" and at least one "D".

I flew over to Granite City in a friends Cessna 210 and we picked up one of the "C's". I knew nothing about the difference between the two so I took his (Bill Sr.) advice and bought the one with a mag instead of the one with a battery ignition and a really flimsy looking point system under the flywheel. Bill Sr. mentioned they had purchased some Konigs and were going to go that way in the future, although Bob McFarland continued to run a D and 44 Flathead at several local races in the KC and St. Louis area the next summer and Billy ran Konigs. I ran the Flathead that year and part of the next before deciding that Bill Sr. was right when he had said a Konig was what you needed to be competitive.

I have already documented the "rest of that story" on Konig vs Flathead and the time frame the Konig proved itself superior in Alky racing, record and championship wise, elsewhere on BRF.

ADD. NOA appoved the rotary valve Konig a year before APBA did, or that is what my research turned up while digging into records and championships Konig vs Flathead.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Bill Van....you have helped put more pieces of the puzzle together. I looked in the November/December Roostertail and found the ad you mentioned. Apparently Baldy was looking for some more equipment as you can see he marked two ads in particular. Lots of fairly new motors were being sold in anticipation of the introduction of the rotary valve. Note that Arthur McMeans is selling one he had already raced, so it brings up a couple of more stories now that it is confirmed that there were already some being raced here. Now I have to decide if I want to go back and insert them in the proper place or not.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I decided to post additional comments at the bottom of post 429. It was after I talked to Clayton Elmer yesterday that he told a story I had completely forgotten. Baldy and Jack had told it for so many years, I wonder how I could have forgotten about it. Jack even mimicked Dieter's german accent as best as he could. Clayton repeated it to me the way Jack used to. Billy Seebold did have a rotary valve D at that race. Dieter came into our pits after the race was over. Clayton couldn't remember the year, but since Dieter was not at Alex in 1968 and we were running rotary valves, it was in 1967 that the story took place.

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

Wayne:

In the Konig vs Quincy Flathead thread, there is mention of several other Rotary Valve C Konigs that competed in the John Ward race held in Canada the year in question (1967).

Granted the race mentioned was held in Canada, and your comment was whether the rotary valve motor also competed in the US. I think that question (that at least one competed in the US) has been answered, and since the motors mentioned at the John Ward race were owned by US citizens (Harry Bartolomie SP? and Dick O'Dea,) possibly those folks attended NOA races in 67 where the motors were legal and also competed at some NOA races in addition to Billy's?

I know that a 4 cyl Konig, originally a 4 carb, owned by Homer Kincaid, was converted to a rotary valve motor by Harry Pasturczak at around the same time the rotary valve was introduced from the Konig factory, and I believe Homer won a National Championship with it in either the 4 carb version or the rotary valve modification. I am not sure as to the time frame as this is when I just started back racing and I had my hands full just getting used to the speed increase from the same displacement motors over 10 years, much less remembering things 40 years later I had no personal memory of.

I wish his son Jack, or grandson John would post some of his accomplishments here or they could be lost forever except to his family. I think I will try to see if I can get hold of one of them. Jack used to work for IBM so he should be familiar with a computer.

[Steve Litzell]

Yes Wayne, The first rotary valve motors were 1967 with the B first and c second then the D. They did not have to be approve because of the rotary valve on the B. What had to be approved was the motor as the 4 cylinder B was also new in 67. The other motors were already approved. I have the 50th B four cylinder made in my collection. It has the three position pipe fixture on it but could be made into a slider type easy. This was about the time we discovered the sliding thing. So you can now sleep easy as this is now solved. Steve

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Thanks Steve. Did you ever see or hear of any rotary valve motors in the U.S. with open stacks? I have a picture of one on my runabout, and maybe a hydro that I had forgotten about and can't remember what the deal was.

Bill Van...it was Ron Hill who won the John Ward in 1967, and I think it was with a rotary valve. Maybe Ron will confirm this

After all this research and looking at pit pictures and trailers, I have come to the conclusion that in 1967 we had only one Marchetti and ran A,B and C on it. No wonder Bob Hering wanted to know why we had such a big boat for A. I have been trying to think of a smaller Marchetti we had, but could not come up with an answer. In all the pictures, there are two DeSilva's and one Marchetti. That 4 carb really made it run, but maybe that's why I did better in A runabout than in A hydro. The first good A hydro I had was the spider boat, but that story is coming up soon. I may have to alter the post about the Konigs being shipped as earlier as I previously thought. I had originally thought we ran them at the Lake Corpus Christi race, and that has stuck in my mind through the years. Although Steve Litzell said the rotary valves were indeed in the U.S. by then, I can't find evidence we had any yet. So I will amend a few posts for those that haven't read this thread yet, will get a more accurate story. It only amounts to a few months in time anyway.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Our trailer box was already too small with a 4 carb Konig being stuffed in with three FA's, an FB, and an FC. With the season over, we took the boats and motors off the trailer to have an expanded box built, as well as racks for boats redone. There was no room in the motor/tack room to work, and spare parts and tools were scattered about in the workshop.

Baldy designed and had built a workshop just for our racing right in the middle of the back yard. For some reason I cannot remember, he did not have the front door facing our house, but rather the alley. The wooden building was set on piers and was about ten feet wide and twenty feet long. There were a couple of windows on the long side facing the house as well as at each end. I can only remember a door in the very center on the alley side. The main work bench was on the south side facing the house, and made an ell on the short west side. Thats also where a two by twelve had motor mounts to hang all the engines.

Baldy had been talking to Scott Smith and we were soon to become Konig motor dealers. We needed the room for not only our own use, but for lots of spare parts.