Three Top Bearings Here Combo'd
The 3 bearing caps I have here are just like it by appearance There is a oilite bronze component as well as a cagged ball bearing race too boot making the bearing a doubled affair before you got to another cagged bearing below that assembly. In the case of the 3 combo top bearing caps the oillite bushing according to what Jim Hallum recollected that on various engines that served as a psuedo seal with the ball bearing getting its oil from pressurized by pass leakage from the bushing collar. Jim Mentioned that some engines even had oil feeder lines pressured with oil with a small nozzel from the bottom of crankcases to the top of the bearings to make sure they were awash with oil as well as the bushing and where no caged ball bearing, the bushing only.
All my other Anzani top bearing caps used a rawhide crankshaft spring seals to cover the bearings. The rawhide seal would harden quickly when exposed to methanol based fuels to where they were to neoprene type synthetic seals in the later years.
When I saw this stuff, I thought there was something missing to prevent dust and dirt from getting on and fowling bearings. Evidently at some point maybe it wasn't?
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Concerning Anzani Mark 1 and Mark 2 clamping & towers.
Twister: I took a picture of my Anzani Mark 1 or earlier clamps and saddle. Note that the front section of the to clamp the torque tube engine mount is either brass or bronze and the clamps are way different and way wider than the Mark 2s. Could it be an earlier setup made part of cast aluminum and cast brass or bronze be the earliest Mark 1s or something at the earlier still? There are no casting marks or other marks to tell us anything. The Mark 2s picture is included for comparisson purposes.
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More on Anzani Clamp Brackets
For comparison, here are some shots of the Mk I Racer clamp, the service Unitwin 10 clamp, and the Super Single clamp...I think the lineage can clearly be seen!
Looks to me like they were following their usual practice, in the early days, of adapting existing parts when they thought they could get away with it. I guess the Racer pretty soon needed a stronger clamp assembly...
The deeper swivel housing and the vastly stronger Mk II clamp bracket was carried over to later service Unitwins, the 15 to my certain knowledge - not sure about the 10, these were pretty rare beasts and the one I have is the only one I've ever seen.
The bronze saddle is a new one on me.
The lineage is quite clear. How about the use of rivets?
Twister: The clamp set here for a Mark 1? closely matches the lineage you speak of. The one thing the here has are some fastening large rivets as opposed to nut and bolting of the Mark 2s. Against a Mark 2 I can not say it is not heavy duty, it is.
I wonder if the rivets used making it and when Anzani stopped using them, the rivets can approximate a manufacturing date. When I was looking at pictures of Steve's Mark 1s his clamps too were all different and lighter duty looking though he has a Mark 1 Anzani Alky done by Bill Tenney that has seen lots of races. Its Lucas magneto looks different and earlier from any I have ever seen before which were the Mark 2s.
Up in the North Western USA the developers there used both the Mark 2 towers and fabricated steel towers with Mercury clamps to use Koing A-B gearcases under them. They did that with Anzani as well as Harrison modified Anzani engines of the day for kilo trials as well as oval course racing. They favoured the Konig gearcase for its dynamics and available gear ratio changes so they could swing some pretty big props. They started to change the properties of the Anzani gearcases to units not unlike the polished chrome like gearcase with the pointed nose and raised water pickup too.
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Interesting exhaust system...
This photo may be of interest...
It's a British 350 (B) model, raced by John Plenderleith and donated by his family after his passing to The Motorboat Museum in Basildon, Essex, UK.
The silencer (muffler) was a MMA (Marine Motoring Association) required fitment when they governed racing here in the 50s. It was a standard silencer, and I've seen it before fitted in place of the exhaust tube from powerhead to gearbox, but never like this. The top manifold casting looks like it may have been a factory item.
I'm on record as saying that, while I have enormous support for this museum which has one of my own boats on display, it's no place for motors like this because they'll never run again...
The motor could use some restoration sprucing up.
Not having motors run again is the lot of most marine museums. There seems to be little funding for restoration so it is a labour of love for a restorer to have the museum allow the restorer to volunteer time and a little money to do a good spruce up of an engine to make it a nice public display piece ensuring the colors used, not used, decaling and the sort with nice cleaned metal remains the same. Some don't agree with restorations but to leave it as was but generally that does not make for the best appearance for a public display that people would want to see. That motor could use some TLC. Being run again periodically is done some times in the USA for tradition and spectacle sakes to remind the public that these boats and engines led to what we have today is a good PR idea for museums. Problem is perennialy resources and people who can and know how to do it which in many cases is getting scarcer to non-existant. The Harrison collection in Florida typifies the lack of resources that would otherwise give a good public display better public exposure.
I subscribe to our local marine museum but their problem is when the Red River gets into flood of the century levels the whole display either gets flooded out or in the case of the larger ships want to float away so they let water into them that also affects their displays just to keep them there. Then they scramble to salvage what they can time after time. Ideally they need to move the entire display across the main road to way higher ground. People who have donated are dismayed with the flooding happening and are reluctant to do any more because of the present situation where displays are spoiled making the effort worthless without moving to higher ground. There is some idication that something may be done but its not a hot button issue where there are greater public needs.
After seeing that kind of overhead tank on the pictures this early 50s loop Anzani engine it kind of reminds you of something like the Yamato 80s of past 1970s years. Made tough too just like the early Anzani.
Engine bearings systems description asked for - revealed.
For a 1950s produced engines using cast iron blocks, alluminum crankcases and steel and alloy innards British Anzani for all its kind of ancient looks is a rather remarkable engine in the bearings departments. The crankshaft is supported on the flywheel side by a set of double, one in the end cap and anther lower in the crankneck held by the split crankcase, cage raced ball bearings. The bottom of the crankshaft is a single caged ball bearing unit. Both sides use modern day ringed seals though earlier versions used an open ball bearing top with bronze sleve/seal, later versions used rawhide collar spring seals with the late models being chemical resistent synthetic type spring collared rubber.
The most remarkable bearings sit on the rods and the center main. The big ends of the rods use spaced, caged tall and wide rollers with the bearing cages being made of the lightest kind of alloy. Wristpins are friction fitted machined oillite type bronze sleeves with an oil slot. Between the fit of the big end of the rod and the small end the actual machining kept the rod centered in the piston's wrist area as well as centered in the big end. Some developers removed the rods to silver plate the sides of the big ends of the rods to increase their width in stabilize rod centering even better with the silver being an extra very fine bearing surface itself for side thrust friction contacting management of the rod at the big end.
The center main bearing in the engine is its split bronze center main with rotary valve opening window. The bearing itself is split but also both halves float acting very much like todays turbocharger sleeve bearings. It is lubricated from all three sides drenched from the air/fuel/lube mix under intake and transfer pressures of the engine in operation. Like the rest of the engine are capable of support at very high rpm with wear no different than the rest of the quality parts with which Anzanis were put together. A remarkable engine in its time it was. :)
That is true except I was told it by its previous owner...
Mark 75H, that is very true except the previous owner did explain that S bent one was too much nitro. The Gene Strain (Calgary, AB) 2 carb Anzani exploded on start up when pure nitro was used to prime it, the rods broke in half tearing up inner cylinder port walls and tore the crowns off the pistons. Other than external peripherals, the entire block, crankcase and innards blew up. The other complete Anzani I purchased from Gene way back in 1978 had almost a 1/4 inch of rod droop from running 20% nitro and a bit too much timing advance. Its amazing that Anzani rods can bend without fracturing, to a point.