boat designs

[jsilvestri]

I've pondered the answer to my own question for awhile now but have not come up with an answer. My question "Why don't we race hulls like the Europeans, tunnel hull type boats with outboards for kneeldown racers? Is that possible within our rules? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Could we race the European type hulls on rougher water than our hydros? Would the boats be safer, etc... Anyone know? Just curious. The European 500 hull for sale on this thread reminded me of the questions I had. Nice rig by the way.

[epugh66]

They're not legal and more....

The PRO safety rule #17 says that a hydros sponsons may not be greater than 60% of the hull length. From a practicle stand point, hydros and tunnels dont mix on the same course well. They tend to cross paths twice each corner. Where a hydro is risky without a capsule in a two boat collision, a tunnel is dangerous. Those two full length sponsons dont like to let go of the water and bounce away. Tunnels take up more room on/in the trailer. A tunnel needs a long and skinny race course and a hydro like an oval. That would require two race courses or a compromise course. Or, all hydros switch to european designs. Those are just some negatives I thought of.

Now positive. You could race on water that normally would be bad for hydros. You could race in front of real fans much like all the tunnel circuits do. You would have boat that has advertising space. With a 500cc engine, it should run nearly as fast as SST120.

It would be a major step for traditional outboarders to make. One that would not be welcomed as warmly and open as the capsule rule.

It would be really neat though. About 1984, russian 700cc driver, Alexi Ishutin turned a race lap in nottingham england within several seconds of the fastest time set by one of the V8 F1 boats on the same course on a different weekend.

[sam]

While they are not legal in PRO, they are legal in Mod

[Dave M]

Yup, In Mod they are

They are legal in Mod, if you actually capsule it, meaning you put a canopy on it and strap yourself in, you need to pay for the divers that are required by the rules to be present.

You can make kneeldown hydros that handle rough water, even pickleforked boats. MJR design handles rough water well, maybe a little tweak and it would be a good Great Lakes boat as well ???? Marc, any input ?

[sam]

Dave you left out the word "and" which makes it sound like capsules are required on tunnels in Mod. They aren't are they?

They race Yamato 102's & 302's on tunnel hulls in Australia

[sam]

The answer to Joe's original question is that rought water boats can be built and are currently legal, but are unpopular because they are slower than flat water boats.

Back in the early and mid 1950's before the current style of 3 point hydros became THE only hydro to run - many alky racers had a newer Swift and an older Jacoby "conventional" single center step hydro. If it was rough they ran the Jacoby, if the water was smooth they ran their Swift.

If you can get 6 of your friends that race in your class to build and carry rough water boats to races there is a chance that on some days you would be the only ones to race .... on a few other days you would be the only ones to be able to stay out front without crashing or breaking your boats. The problem would be in finding enough racers willing to haul around twice as many boats for each class.

I'm afraid there is no way we can turn back the clock and require all boats to be rough water boats again.

[bh/]

rough??

-or you would run the KG4 on the C boat, and the 20H on the D.
One of Hal Kellys catalogs, he says he won a B race with the 20H on his Ben Hur D cabover, in very rough conditions. Switching Konigs around
was even easier, if they were all on the bolt on mounts.

[Steve Johnson]

Rough water boats

Runabouts :d

[sam]

Steve I wish it were as simple as that, but with the current construction styles, even runabouts as boats aren't safe from themselves or hard water.

[hydroplay]

There was a short-lived attempt at something like this in the late 80s. OPC had a class called SST-25 which was for tunnel boats using the same 25XS motor used in Stock. Not too many were built. I had a lighter knee-down model and had lots of fun playing with it. Del Snyder built the best one with a lightweight trim system and all. I was a bit faster than Del, but his trim system killed me out of the corners. Speeds were about 60 so maybe 6 slower than hydros at that time. But it takes more than 3 or 4 boats to race so that was the end of that experiment. Still have the 2nd place plaque from the OPC Nationals on the wall at the shop.

[jsilvestri]

Sam,
Do you have any pictures of the boat you or Del built? I'd like to see what they looked like. Sounds interesting.

[csh12M]

I would love to see that as well Sam!!

Any pictures, i have kind of pondered this question myself from time to time....

Later,
Dean

[rbengines]

Tunnels

Aof back in the 80's ran a special event class of Yamato 102 with expansion chambers on small tunnels. I believe Jim Mckean ran some of them.

[jon66w]

20 H's on DU's

Comments bring back memories of some of our rough water races in WI. One in particular was in 1960 on Lake Winnabago off the Fond du lac lake front park. It was blowing about 25 mph and very large waves as anybody who has raced on this lake can attest as it's about 30 miles long and has average depth of about 6 feet.
They were thinking about cancelling when a bunch of DU drivers, yes they called them utilities in those days with a front seat, got together and offered us BU people their boats to run so we could put on a show. The names I remember were Bill Luetner, Earl Granrath, John Arroco, Carl Stippich, and John Eimermann. I drew Earl Granraths boat, a Stippich pointed nose and won in straight heats being able to run over the rough stuff wide open, I think I even moved to the back of the boat and probably was going all of 45 mph but the crowd loved it. A couple guy's ran their BU's, Deny Berghauer's Bathtub Sid and Bob Grunska's Airborne but they couldn't stay with the big, 13' D lumber!
I understand, reading the Marathon National's thread,that they run an Antique D class?? Would that be the 55 H's with the old DSR hull spec's? This would be great as Tim Weber has his Grand dad's DSR and also his marathon boat, a Switzer Bullet which I believe is 14' long and is identical to the boat Bobby Switzer won the 1953 Winnabagoland Marathon in. If this is true, we might like to put a campaign together for it.

[hydroplay]

I'm better at building things than taking pictures. I don't have any pics of the boat rigged and running, only one I know of somewhere in the archieves was one of a Merc employee picking up the hull with a forklift to dump it unceromonously in a dumpster a year or two after I raced it. The boats looked pretty much like you'd imagine a small tunnel boat. They were about 10 feet long, like Sport C boats but with shallower sponsons. Del set his up to run with the short 25XS tower and mine had the 25XS powerhead on the longer 25SS tower. We both concluded that the longer tower was better on the tunnel boat because it made launching and retreiving the boat easier without worring about getting water in the engine- trailer launches of course. I'd think it would make a very interesting class to mandate a true tunnel boat with a minimum 2 1/2 or 3 inch deep sponsons and Yamato 302 motors, trim allowed and a minimum weight of around 475 lbs. They would run on pretty rough water but they'd like tighter turns and sooner or later there would be a serious crash as tunnels just can't turn side-by-side repeatedly like hydros can and then capsules/safety cells would be mandated along with the collapsable pickles, etc so it would be a serious project to run one, not just another simple, fun class. The Australian guys are good examples if you search for info on them but I don't see the SORC or insurance guys doing it here.