GPH vs. Unimited Lights

[Smitty]

I would have put this question in the Inboard section, but it didn't look very active, and probably everybody here but me knows the answer. So, what is/are the difference(s) between Grand Prix Hydro (blown) and Unlimited Light? The Lights race at Seafair every year, between Unlimited heats. Do the Lights have their own organization? It's hard to tell, but it would seem they are a lot more active, at least in the Northwest, than the GPHs, but then maybe they are the same thing. I tried to find the answer on the APBA website, but . . .

[Lee Sutter]

I know very little about this other then the grand prix class is the big boy class-500'ish cubic inches, alky, blower. The unlimited lights are smaller boats and engines. I think the lights have many engine combinations with and without blowers. The U.S. F1 tunnel boats replaced the lights at Seattle seafair about 3 years ago. Hope this helps.

[wrath of cron]

OK...unlimited lights started as an unblown class but extremely expensive unblown, they came up with some sort of formula to allow blown engines, it took size/weight/engine size into account. as time went on they figured out that the straight up blower engines were tons less expensive and less prone to turning them selves into bilge debris, and the larger hulls could take a bigger beating allowing them to run with the whisper boats on the rough water. The left coast guys started GP west as the successor to the lights and really standardized the rules for that circuit. The truth is the GP west engines make a couple hundred HP more than ACHA, using a few more ci. and I believe either a bigger blower or more overdrive. The ACHA is grand prix east (Canada), most of those hulls are owned by Valleyfield (acha) and "lent" to selected teams. they are I believe a bit smaller/lighter than the west coast boats and make @ 250 hp less. On the east coast most of the hulls are built by Bergeron or henderson, out west most are Jones (Jr. or Sr.) although the Hopp's is a Jammie Ault (as is Marty Wolf's), from what I have seen the east coast boats run smaller tracks and fly the boat more than out west. Now add to this the Australian and new Zealand GPs and the rules go even fuzzier. Down under the boats make even more hp due to less restrictive blower rules and make @200hp more than the west coast guys. Huey Newport who stewards the ACHA GPs (and along with Mike Endres) owns the Steeler GP 777 is in the process of trying to set up a true World championship race with enough $$$$ to get everybody together. How fast are these things....well the new boats go like hell but their real thing is they turn and handle, I once worked on a Lauterback that they said ran 192mph on a 1 2/3 straightaway, that in a 22' open conventional.

[1hshawwpba]

Interesting comments but the facts are this, the unlimited lights were a series that grew out of the Northwest and basically were boats that now run in APBA inboard as National Mods with some other engine packages allowed, the series was organized to get boat owners that wanted a series where you get paid to race at national sites. The blower boats (GP) came to the unlimited lights and asked if they could be included in the series. The series organizers knew that the blower boats would dominate and there was/is a reliability issue with the blower boats. The Unlimited light series looked at the issue and set a blower speed to equalize the blower boats and non blower boats for completion and made rule changes to allow the GP boats to run in the series. After a few years the GP teams felt they did not want to run under the rules set by the unlimited light series (basically it was a % the blowers could be run at to equalize the non blower and blower boats) and in heats where blower boats ran with non blower boats the blower boats had to start in the outside lanes. Again the blower teams asked to come join the series, but after a few years the blower teams decided to break off and go do their own thing due to restrictions imposed to equalize the completion, and they are now known as GPW (Grand Pre West). They now turn up the blowers and the results can be seen at events where they run, usually they tow in more boats than boats that finish due to high breakdown. They talk about 8-9 boats at each event but usually 4 maybe 6 boats come to the events and if you watched them at Seafair this year there still is a reliability issue. Yes they do make noise and gear heads love the noise, but the show is lacking competitive boat count and the best item needed is a good tow rope! The boats that do finish run side by side for all but the last lap and then truly race the final lap this is done to make a show for the unknowing people watching the event!

[wrath of cron]

Man I can guarantee that from the time the ACHA boats leave the dock till the checked flag they are racing.....even when they are doing an exhibition they are flat out. Valleyfield at one time would bring in @ 30 GPs , and even today their show is 13+ boats and when the west coasters come play they go over 20 boats. I don't know the politics of GP west but ACHA must have the right formula because for the most part they are as if not more reliable than 7 ltrs. Either way I really hope Huey can pull off his race, that will be one to remember !

[PRO-MOTIONRACING]

This might not be as powerful as a top alcohol dragster motor, but, read the description.
http://www.shafiroff.com/sportsman/582_sportsman_hr.php

Details:
http://www.shafiroff.com/sportsman/N...yHydraulic.pdf

[1hshawwpba]

You are correct the valley field event is well run and very organized the difference is the ACHA owns the boats and sets the rules. It is a premier event that everyone should go and see at least 1 time. This is what can happen if you take the racers out of the rule control and have a race management team control the rules and boat packages. It will never happen at APBA due to the structure of the organization where boat racers run the show and category chairman can appoint their friends and family to be on the commissions so they can control the votes. Plus there needs to be business people on the APBA board not boat racers, and the president needs to be elected by the members not appointed by the Board of Directors.

[Smitty]

(I just googled "ACHA" and can find nothing, including the on homepages of sites dedicated to this activity, that tells me what ACHA stands for. Very strange).

Y'all didn't start your history far enough back for an old guy like me. What happened to the good old 7-Liter class; did it morph into one of these newer classes at some point? Matter of fact (IIRC) there was also a "Stock 7-Liter" class for a while, which might have been sort of analogous to what some of you seem to be describing as essentially a single-4bbl crate motor class . . . .

I grew up in a suburb of Seattle in the golden age of Unlimited hydroplaning in the Fifties and into the Sixties. I can hardly describe to you younger guys the public excitement over that sport in that place and time. In my neighborhood, most of us boys were nothing less than obsessed by "the hydros," and talked about them year-round. I have said that if a group of the most famous stick-and-ball sports celebrities, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams, Y. A. Tittle and Wilt Chamberlain and Rocky Marciano, pick your own names, had we heard that these giants were all at a party at one house nearby, and had we also heard that some tail-end Unlimited driver was at another house, we all would have gone straight over to see the driver without a second thought. The wild popularity of the Unlimiteds was a wonderful recruiter for outboard and inboard racing; as soon as we had a little money as high school seniors or grads, three of us boys sent away for Hal Kelly's plans and built B and C Stock boats, another bought an A stock boat, and yet another, after two years working, bought an SK hemi runabout, . . . and we all lived no more than a block from each other!

In my opinion, turbine engines have permanently killed whatever slim chance that there could ever be another golden age of Unlimiteds. When I was a kid, the Sports sections of the two Seattle daily papers were full of front page stories of the boats every day of the week before the big race. Unbelievably, the local affiliate of the NBC television network would break into the middle of their daily programming when one of the hydros was pulling out on the course for a qualifying run! Now this is hardly believable even to me as I write it! And it wasn't like there was nothing else going on in town. The University of Washington had Rose Bowl contending football teams, Seattle University had top basketball teams led by such stars as Elgin Baylor, and our Triple A baseball and ice hockey games were very popular. But today the Seattle sportsnews media barely mention the U-boats at all, and might give the Seafair race about a quarter of the first page of the Sports section of the paper on race-day. This is both a cause and an effect of today's public lack of interest in the hydros. Most of the crowd that does bother to pack up and go for a day at the Seafair race know nothing about the boats, and only want to have a party and a spectacle to see. And any young guy who wants to race himself almost surely has a dad or a neighbor who races (none of the boys in my neighborhood did), and were not drawn to it by the big boats.

This is a long lead-in to offering my 2-cent view that retiring the turbine boats and running an Unlimited circuit with blown alcohol boats might put some new life into the Unlimited circuit and help recruit new outboard and inboard racers. Lots of blue collar men can relate to big-block auto engines; very few get excited about turbines. If big, loud, fast, colorful blown alcohol hydros were made the headliner national professional circuit for powerboat racing, I believe it would be a shot in the arm for the entire range of racing categories and classes, both in terms of popular interest and in sponsor interest.

[Big Don]

Try this link.

http://grandprixhydroplane.com/

[Smitty]

That's the first one I tried, Don, and I still don't see anything that tells me what ACHA stands for.

[lmichaudski]

ACHA is: American Canadian Hydroplane Association

[Tony Tello]

GO HERE: Hydroplanequebec.com ENJOY the show!! Check out the videos!