Uim 125 class...

[Team B&H]

I get a chuckle when the subject of 125 torque is discussed. After running several variations of 125 motors on the dyno, Mike Wienandt made the observation that you tighten the propeller nut with more torque than the motor produces.

[Dave M]

Sounds Bad

if you can't put a chamber on it, or a megaphone, what's the point. Add a 4 stroke, and there goes the very foundation on which Pro Category was built, bore & stroke. I am not a nay-sayer, just more of an old school kind of person. Hence why I still race what O.F. Christner dubbed as "the cave man's looper."

Why I love the pro category so much is the fact there is little to no restrictions, bore & stroke. There is no gray area to exploit for say. Tech rules are very scarse. And you can't quite beat the smell of a two stroke VRP or Rossi, or Old Six Merc, or any of the engines on Alkie. The smell of these should be in the marketing plan. I would buy a years supply of scratch & sniff cards if they smelled like this.

I hate that the 4 strokes might take over. Not much we can do about it though.

[treadguy]

Well said, Dave................

[Smitty]

" . . . not much we can do". Well, maybe there is. First, who says the EPA has taken any notice of PRO racing? We (not ME, I haven't been in this in ages) are awfully small potatoes for them to care about. Sometimes they make distinctions. In my field, welding, they are demanding that diesel-powered generator-welders have (at great expense) the latest pollution controls starting next year, . . . but, this does not apply to diesels under 40hp. With only a few hundred PRO racers in total, EPA might not even notice us. If they do, we might get a friendly (to us) and powerful senator to demand that EPA give us an exemption. After all, we have been using bio-fuels exclusively, since the Thirties or earlier!!

The motorcycle racing world, both dirt and roadracing, lost factory support for racing 2-strokes on Sunday because 4-strokes are what the factories sell on Monday. (Oh, the 2-stroke traction issue I described above for roadracing also was a key to 4-strokes taking over in dirt racing). It was the EPA making it difficult to build affordable 2-stroke street bikes that led the factories to reluctantly abandon 2-stroke roadracers by giving the 4-strokes such an advantage in the rule book (along with their natural traction advantage) that they were bound to to prevail.

Again, this is a situation that does not apply to us. PRO racing hasn't offered any marketing advantage to a big outboard manufacturer since Mercury deflector engines were winning their classes at the Nationals nearly fifty years ago. The big makers of fishing motors and pleasure boat motors may be heavily invested in 4-stroke technology, but they aren't interested in the few hundred PRO racers one way or other. Be glad of that; if they were influencing things, you'd have to use heavy 4-strokes with all of the cowlings in place for maximum advertising value, just awful.

They way I see it (from a position of ignorance, and y'all can correct me if this is wrong) is that any push to make 4-strokes competitive via displacement advantages comes not from EPA or the big manufacturers, but from a few guys in APBA (maybe UIM as well) that want this. It might be that they imagine that we should do this preemptively, before it is required of us by outside forces. But I doubt that it will be required. My notion is that some APBA commissioners have read just enough to be somewhat aware that 4-strokes have taken over the motorcycle racing world, and that without really understanding why that happened, these guys think that we are somehow behind the times if we don't make a similar transition. I have to say that while there are a lot of highly regarded PRO racers with great hands-on technical skills, Mr. van Steenwyk here being a prime example, there are also many big-name "checkbook-racers" who were drivers only, and left the tech stuff to others. Some from this latter group are, I suspect, always to be found among members of the PRO commission. The question then is, do you think these fellows who are not technically knowledgeable should be making technical rules such as the one in which 4-strokes get a 1.5X displacement advantage?

(EDIT) (P.S., as others mentioned, recent electronic fuel injection and timing controls are making it possible to build "clean" 2-stokes for pleasure boating and even motorcycling. OSSA is now producing a new-tech 2-stroke off-road bike. With luck, maybe we'll have ring-dings on the street again . . . but until then, I'm hanging on (for dear life!) to my old RD400C Yamaha).
(P.P.S., relative to that, this summer, tiring of looking at my half-bald head, I shaved it. I told the guys on a website for 2-stroke street bikes that now that I had a hard-core biker's shaved head, I needed ideas for some biker tattoos. But, I told them, the Harley bikers' traditional tattoos, with screaming eagles wrapped in American flags, and rather hard-looking naked gals, would not be appropriate for me, and that I needed ideas for tattoos specifically for a 2-stroke biker. By far the best and funniest 2-stroke tattoo idea: a stuck piston, with a big gouge of smeared aluminum down the side!)

[tenney]

250 four stroke costs

Following on Carlo's comments: it is apparent that the prices for moto3 engine parts, the 250 4 stroke class that replaced the 125cc 2 stroke class, are really high.

Below are a few of the prices that have been posted to other websites.

Honda:
piston 1,644 Euros($2,137)
wrist pin 343
Connecting Rod assy 571

KTM:
Crank: 1487 €
Piston: 757.30 €($984)
Valve: 228.03 €
Cylinder head: 1219 €($1,584)
Cylinder: 469.25 €
Ring (upper): 106,25 €
Ring (oil): 106,25 €
Piston pin: 157,50 €

You can buy the KTM engine for $16,000...the engine alone weighs 55 lbs. The engine price, for the near term, is being held at this low level by the rule makers. The entire KTM bike can be purchased for $54,000. The Honda bike was priced around $35,000.

Adopting a 250 4 stroke for boat racing would not seem to be a smart move.

In my opinion it would be smart for us to consider a way to appease the Green Movement and maybe slow the negative perception about our motors. We could:

-limit noise levels as they do for boat and kart racing in Europe
-switch to cellulose based fuel-ethanol and brag about it to the world
-other ideas?

Adopting some of these ideas may slow the negative view the green movement has about 2 strokes...and let us exist for a longer period of time.

[Geezeracer]

Before I start, I should say that this isn't an anti 2-stroke rant...It's just a word about a project I've always felt bad Will and I never completed.

Like brother Will, I always loved a good puzzle, and the reason we ran PRO was that rules offered room to experiment. We looked into 4-cycle when the option came open, but concluded while we might be able to protect the valve train, we couldn't deal with the size and weight of available engines.

Later though, Will worked out a concept that might have worked. It was based on a water cooled 200cc honda twin. Overall the powerhead would have been slightly bigger than a Rossi or VRP, but not nearly as big as our Polaris and Rotax motors. The key to making it work was the reason it never got beyond the "Imagineering" stage...Will had discovered a very small roots type blower.

You couldn't really run centrifugal because boost calculation is so complex (doubling blower RPM squared blower output). A roots blower though, is a positive displacement pump (doubling RPM, doubles the output) and you can adjust drive ratios to produce specified displacement. At the time I wanted to go for it even though it meant running with other 350s as an exhibition, because I wanted to measure its potential. In the end though, Will decided the project wasn't worth the political hassle it would generate and shelved it.

John

[Smitty]

It's as well that you never did it and caused a political hassle, because racers never have political hassles and wouldn't know how to deal with one . . .

No, just sayin' don't give four strokes special advantages in displacement, number of cylinders, etc. (not even blowers).

Switching to ethanol, which is currently made here mostly from corn for political reasons and which has doubled food prices for the overseas poor, seems a poor response for now. Yes, maybe someday it will be made primarily from other sources. But then, methanol can be made from logging waste, agri-waste, and garbage (thus helping reduce a second societal problem). I

n any case, is there actual evidence that the EPA or the greenies have ever even heard of APBA PRO racing?? Or are the worries about this entirely generated within APBA?

That would've been a cool project, JP.

[Steve77t]

It's as well that you never did it and caused a political hassle, because racers never have political hassles and wouldn't know how to deal with one . . .

No, just sayin' don't give four strokes special advantages in displacement, number of cylinders, etc. (not even blowers).

Switching to ethanol, which is currently made here mostly from corn for political reasons and which has doubled food prices for the overseas poor, seems a poor response for now. Yes, maybe someday it will be made primarily from other sources. But then, methanol can be made from logging waste, agri-waste, and garbage (thus helping reduce a second societal problem). I

n any case, is there actual evidence that the EPA or the greenies have ever even heard of APBA PRO racing?? Or are the worries about this entirely generated within APBA?

That would've been a cool project, JP.

THis EPA thing is not about racing or what we do. The EPA affects the manufactures of the parts that are used such as bearings. When a bearing company makes a bearing for engine use it then fits into the manufactures program, So as manufactures are told to change and they develop a different motor that does not use this bearing, the maker of said bearing has no market and they discontinue that line. It isn't about getting permission from EPA for our racing, it is about manufacturing the parts and being able to make enough money to make it worth while. Men Like Carlo, Rossi,Konnyand Sidewinder are doing racing a big favor by making motors for us. We should support them and their dealers so they can stay in business. Steve

[bill van steenwyk]

Smitty:

This is a really interesting thread, especially with Carlo Verona and David Tenney chiming in with some very good reasons (costs) for the PRO category to stay as far away as possible from 4 stokes for racing purposes.

And also Smitty, I want to thank you for your quote, maybe not exact, but what you said about "highly regarded PRO racers with great hands on tech skills" END QUOTE.

I certainly wish I could put myself among some of the folks you speak about like Walt Blankenstein, Harry Pasturczak, and many others who were designing and building engines during the time I raced myself, but Harry ZAK did all my motor work and all I did that was "hands on" was pull out my check book from time to time and thank him for his many late nite efforts in my behalf that made it possible for me to have the success I did in PRO racing with his engine work and design.

He built my "C and D" Konigs, and then my RB"s from Eileen's model 80's when she quit driving after her eligibility was up in the F-350 class, and I did not want to go the C&D speeds any more after an artificial hip courtesy of a Tunnel boat in 1974.

What little I do know about 2-stroke theory and what has worked and does not came from many late nights turning pages in various publications and listening to Harry, but I do thank you for your comments and just wish I was that smart and talented.


I have no idea what is required to get an EPA exemption for racing, but I know, as stated previously, the the Bass brothers got something that allowed them to sell the Tohatsu power head on their tower housing and lower unit for racing, and stock gas burning racing at that. All racing boat builders are required if building boats strictly for racing, to have an exemption for wgt, number of passengers carried, HP allowed, and other specifications. as I had one for my "Mexican" boats in the late 70's from the Coast Guard.

As several earlier posters noted, if required to keep the alky burning two strokes alive, maybe we should look into that (exemption) also if "they" start picking on us along with lawn trimmers, etc, and also the argument about "natural" product in alcohol (ethanol) would be a good one also, although a lot of methanol is made from natural gas, or used to be.

[Smitty]

Well anyway, Bill, you are certainly one with enough background to understand that making rules to favor 4-strokes is not something that other forms of racing have done because it was "progressive" in any way.

Thanks for re-stating what you said earlier, Steve, because I see I failed to pay sufficient attention then. I hope the engine manufacturers will comment on your assertions.

[G Stillwill]

As stated before its up to the manufacture to get the epa exempt for the mtors they maufacture. Mercury dose it with the Merc 15 so they can sell them in this country to APBA and comes with a sticker on the block for racing purposes only. The Sidewinder is the same way and I have to sign a waver for each one that buy that I will only use the motor for racing. Im not sure if when testing that is considered using them for racing or not but as few epa agents there are I dont worry about it. As far as boat building that is a Coast Gard thing and has nothing to do with the epa.

[bill van steenwyk]

As stated before its up to the manufacture to get the epa exempt for the mtors they maufacture. Mercury dose it with the Merc 15 so they can sell them in this country to APBA and comes with a sticker on the block for racing purposes only. The Sidewinder is the same way and I have to sign a waver for each one that buy that I will only use the motor for racing. Im not sure if when testing that is considered using them for racing or not but as few epa agents there are I dont worry about it. As far as boat building that is a Coast Gard thing and has nothing to do with the epa.

Hi George:

As mentioned,I am very much aware boat building is a "Coast Gard" thing.

The reason it was mentioned in this post was like the EPA, it (Coast Guard) is a governmental agency that does issue exemptions to their normal regulations, and if this (banning 2 strokes) ever becomes an issue in the PRO category, efforts could be made to point our manufacturers in the right direction, and with information that others have taken advantage of those exemptions to continue marketing their product in the US.

As you are surely aware, most of our manufacturers are foreign, small companies compared to larger like Mercury, etc. and maybe not completely up to speed on what happens in these type cases, although I am sure Steve Litzell and Rex Hall would make every effort to do so.

[Dave M]

Hold On

First, I don't think there will EVER be a ban on 2 Strokes, for racing or pleasure. What the ban will consist of is new models manufactured currently. That is what will provide for some bumps in the road along the way. I don't foresee any govt. outright banning 2 strokes from being used for anything. There are far to many in the world today to ban them. maybe in 100 years or more when the parts are NLA and all 2 strokes become difficult at best to maintain.

So I don't think it will be as bumpy a road as one thinks to move forward in Boat Racing. As mentioned, there are at least 3 motor manufactures that currently have expemtions based on our racing.

As Steve Litzal said, the parts needed to maintain these engiens is what will become tough. But then again, your local machine shop could potentially make something that would work too, expensive, but it might be it.

[Art K]

The overseas Manufacturers still make 2 cycle engines that are sold all over the rest of the world. This is where the Tohatsu powerhead comes from. Thanks to Bass & the Mad Russian Alex P. and there efforts to get the permits to import these engines as race engines.
Art K

[Smitty]

Don't know about a local machine shop making bearings (tho' Zak used to make his own retainers); better stock up on those and other hard-to-make bits.

http://motocrossactionmag.com/Review...th-A-3802.aspx

If it won't link for you, just google "ossa two-stroke"