Larry Conners
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Boat racing trivia
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Since you mentioned Dan and Jim Kirts, do I correctly remember a Mel Kirts winning an FOH Nationals when he was 60 years old? Pretty cool. I assume he was Dan's dad, yes?
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The 1st PRO Nationals (we called it ''Alky'' then) I attended was the 1976 Winona regatta. The Kirts family had staked out a gentle sidehill leading down to the pits, four of 'em;: Mel, Jim. Jerry, and Dan, the youngest. Plus their family backup members. Looking up to where they worked was like watching 4 busy red-headed gnomes, only one with graying hair (Mel).
The most amazing engine they tried to field was an 8-cylinder Koenig -- two 500 or 750 cc engines mounted back to back so that their carbs were out to open air on each side. These were appropriately geared into a gear that drove the driveshaft into the gearbox. To start this beast, they had an electric starter on one of the Koenigs. They wheeled up a battery cart, attached the guick-disconnect ground lead to the driveshaft housing or such other convenient ground point and then touched the ''hot'' lead to the starter. Primitive, but it worked.
No luck with this rig, although the potential was for wicked fast in 1100 cc, Dan commented to me that they had failures in the geared driveline, not in the overall powerhead config.Last edited by dwhitford; 12-22-2016, 05:51 PM.
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DWhitford:
The engine you speak about was two 30cui Konigs mounted on one tower housing with a drive shaft from each engine going down to a hybrid Konig lower unit that was made from 2 lower units cut in two vertically and then re-welded to make one. Each drive shaft drove one pinion gear and was the weak link in the engine as it had to much power for the lower unit and would quickly shuck the gears out. It was the brainchild of Deiter Konig and Marshal Grant of Tennessee Three fame that was the instrumental group that backed up Johnny Cash.You can read more on BRF about this engine in some of Wayne Baldwin's posts along with photos. The name of the thread that covers this engine escapes me now but it is one of the large threads started by Wayne.
The engine was given to Danny by Marshall when he quit I believe, and I later heard that the powerheads were removed from the tower housing and converted back into regular 500CC konigs although I have no personal knowledge of that as they were never able to solve the problem of putting the power from two powerheads into the one modified lower unit.Last edited by bill van steenwyk; 12-22-2016, 09:14 PM.
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Originally posted by bill van steenwyk View PostDWhitford:
The engine you speak about was two 30cui Konigs mounted on one tower housing with a drive shaft from each engine going down to a hybrid Konig lower unit that was made from 2 lower units cut in two vertically and then re-welded to make one. Each drive shaft drove one pinion gear and was the weak link in the engine as it had to much power for the lower unit and would quickly shuck the gears out. It was the brainchild of Deiter Konig and Marshal Grant of Tennessee Three fame that was the instrumental group that backed up Johnny Cash.You can read more on BRF about this engine in some of Wayne Baldwin's posts along with photos. The name of the thread that covers this engine escapes me now but it is one of the large threads started by Wayne.
The engine was given to Danny by Marshall when he quit I believe, and I later heard that the powerheads were removed from the tower housing and converted back into regular 500CC konigs although I have no personal knowledge of that as they were never able to solve the problem of putting the power from two powerheads into the one modified lower unit.
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250 is correct again , Jerry Kirts won the 350 , 500 and 700 titles.Last edited by racingfan1; 12-24-2016, 08:13 AM.
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Bill Seebold Jr. A Hydro, B Hydro, & A Racing RunaboutLast edited by 250 Quincy; 12-24-2016, 03:32 PM.
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