Ron
Most motor work was done on our own. Everyone had good mentors and it all came together in the mid 70's. Craig's best A motor - the Mark 15 we called "Goldie" - was built by Craig in the very early days with help from Lloyd Swanson. Lloyd did all the work for his son Dave Swanson who ran a Karelson A runabout in the 60's with great success. Craig passed on his knowledge to me. I also grew up with a neighborhood friend named Jon Rankin - and his dad made the coolest mini-bike anyone had ever seen. I recall his dad had a very nice machine shop. My brother and I grew up spending summers at our lake cabin and built a Glen-L plan hydro - and then bought an old 2 cockpit Sid Craft boat from Howard Anderson and a KG-4 from Mike Jones. When we wanted hardware for the Glen-L, we bought it from a guy that lived just up the hill - Leonard Keller - and my brother and I ended up working for him for years. We learned a lot from Leonard, and then as we got into racing, we discovered that my neighborhood friend Jon with the cool mini-bike - his dad's name was Bill Rankin. Most of you have heard of him from time to time. One of the best machine and motor guys ever. Hal Tolford also helped us learn about motors in those early days. As everyone does, we gleaned knowledge along the way from many others - Gerry Walin, Jim Hallum, Ron and Dewey Anderson, Ray and Dennis Lee, Bob Martin and many others who were kind enough to care about some kids from the north end of town to help them out and share once in a while.
Jan Christ and Earl Garrison (Earl is Jan's step-dad) mostly ran BSH and BSR -and they did their own work as best as I can recall. Earl was saying last week they had a mechanic who was not a racer help with motor work as well. I do not think that Earl would have ever even thought of doing any illegal stuff - I recall not even one incident or rumor about that in my day - and of course, the KG-4, Mark 15 and Mark 20 A and B Merc had no head gasket.........
I am not sure about Lee Sutter as he mostly ran alky stuff - A and B racing runabout - in my day and Ron Anderson did most of his motor work when I was around.
Props - we had them all - R. Allen Smith props were used when I set the ASH Kilo Record - it was Gerry Walin's prop and the same one he used with the Anzanis. I set a competition record with an R.Allen Smith prop as well, won the nationals with a Czpluski (from the Chicago area). One of my Joe Price props - a Kamic blank I got from Bill Rankin - won the ASH nationals in 1972. After I dumped in the elims with the fastest time of the week - I loaned it to Dave Hoggard and he won the finals going away. Most of my competition props I had were built and/or worked on by Joe Price and I did some work on them as well. Craig's props were also made and worked on by Joe Price and George Lockhart. I think his best one that he won the ASR nationals with was a Lockhart that George made for him from a Record blank in about 1969. In B, he had some made by Price, Hopkins, Smith and others. We tested a lot and used many sizes and shapes.
For boats, here is a short chronology:
In 1969, Craig borrowed a Price Craft runabout from Tom Schiedt and was the fastest ASR at the Nationals at Hinton, WV. He jumped the gun one heat and did not win that year. He came home and started building and designing boats. Craig is and was always very good with wood and design - he has a great feel for it (although unlike what some posted earlier, he had no aircraft design background - we were 17 and 19-20 year old kids then for God's sake). Jim Jatho helped with hydros early on, and they were of this style - kind of like a pointed nose Hedlund
Of course Joe Price was around (and he lived at the shop from maybe 1974 until it burned down) and he always helped with ideas and concepts, but Craig started building the runabouts pretty much on his own by 1972. One of his first, if not his first, runabouts was this one from that year.
Craig's ASR - testing with me:
and this ASR he made for Greg (with my brother holding him):
That same year, Craig made this hydro as a Kilo boat - new cowl design and many new features he thought up - these photos are from Modesto Kilos in 1972 - set the record at 61.291 mph (but disqualified later for BS reasons) but could read 62-63 mph pretty easily on the Keller speedo that Leonard had just calibrated for us. We let Gerry Walin take it for a test ride - it was his prop after all - and he came in saying "Geez-zus you guys - I had a tough time going that fast with my A Anzani not that many years ago". It was a fun but disappointing week. Learned a lot from that week about inspections, racing politics, and that its just not that easy to set records at the same speeds you can read on the speedo. Here is the "Barking Spyder" kilo boat - it later set the M Hydro record as well with Ralph Hildebrand driving:
More in the next thread
Mark
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