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PREFACE
From the time I was a small boy, back in the dark ages, my family has owned some sort of boat. We went from small day sailors all the way to our last yacht which was a fifty five foot, sloop rigged affair that had been built for Thomas J. Watson, Jr, then CEO of IBM. All the family boats were wind powered as my dad referred to motor boats as being powered by a gasoline breeze. Exposed to “yachting” as I was, I belonged to the Power Squadron as well as the Coast Guard Auxilliary and I learned about navigation from them as well as my dad. I participated in a number of sailing races including one from Manhassett Bay to Block Island and back as well as the semi-annual Bermuda race, ie: from Newport to Bermuda. Being out of sight of land made it necessary to know how to read a compass and a U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey Chart. Those skills served me well when Offshore Racing as you are about to see.
The ALIMA, AROUND LONG ISLAND MARATHON ASSOCIATION race was variously stated to be anywhere from 260 to 284 miles in length if you didn’t stop at City Island to re-fuel. I don’t know if the mileage was ever surveyed but 280 sounds about right.
Under some circumstances you could, in the Long Island Sound segment of the race, be out of sight of land. It therefore became incumbent upon anybody seriously interested in winning to be able to navigate. Many didn’t or couldn’t spell the word chart.
In terms of having a Chinaman’s chance in hell of winning, this failing predisposed their outcome.
In 1963 Glastron entered 10 boats mentioned previously in my earlier writings. The rig assigned to me was a V-171, a 17’ boat with a Glastron supplied 100 HP Mercury Outboard. It was my dealerships responsibility to rig the boat and my decision to install a really good Danforth-White magnetic compass. I may have been the only rig in the race with a compass as most if not all of the other competitors figured “who needs a compass when all I have to do is follow the shoreline of Long Island?” WRONG!!! One guy was literally lost at sea for two days when his motor quit but that’s another story.
On race day, to our chagrin, we found the vibration incurred from landings from airborne made our expensive compass useless as it constantly spun like a top. That year we had the good fortune that atmospherics never caused us to loose sight of land. That was also the year that a hired float plane overflew us going thru The Gut with me kneeling & pissing on the cockpit floor. The pic made the Newsday sport section under the by-line of Dave Knickerbocker. That year, as also detailed previously, we finished second or as the NASCAR guys would say, First Loser.??????
Determined not to repeat the errors of the previous year we won in spite of a disasterous mis-communication between my great friend and co-pilot the late Dan Temple and myself. We had devised a compass mounting system that made our Danforth-White unit steady as a rock. The same system has been patented today. It, the patent, belongs to the inventor of the fill that goes into a MY PILLOW. In addition we laid out all the compass courses we would follow immediately after rounding Montauk Point. The magic if you will was we ran a rhumb line heading, ie: straight as a sting from Orient Point ALL THE WAY to the Throggs Neck Bridge. The second place boat, a 19’ HydroDyne driven by Glastron Dealer Eddy Drake, might have won but for the fact that he followed the curvature of Smithtown Bay. Look at the appropriate chart and you’ll see what I mean.
In 1964 NOT 1965 we ran a brand new 1965 model Glastron; a V-160 Thunderjet. The boat was supplied by Glastron but the motor was a blueprinted by me 100 HP Mercury with a trick prop that resides to this day on a plaque on the wall of my den. The engine was a legally stock unit but warmed up using time tested techniques known to race engine builders like myself. We were able to swing a more highly cupped prop with a powerhead able to turn another 500 RPM over out of the box stock units. The confusion about the year is caused by the fact that we were running brand new 1965 model boats in the summer of 1964. Testing of this rig, using an illegally appropriated Nassau County Police Radar Gun showed us that with half a tank of fuel (50 Gallons) and Dan literally sitting on top of the “Tower of Power” we could top, by a fraction, 50 MPH. We have head on pics of the Thunderjet “flying” to prove it.
WINNING THE 1964 RACE
The ALIMA Race was sanctioned by the APBA and run under their VERY peculiar rules.
You will recall from previous scribblings of mine that in 1963 the “JohnRude” boys went weeping and wailing to the APBA claiming it was unfair to pit their “Family Motors” against our Race Motors. Their argument being that since in previous Albany to New York Races on the Hudson River Mercury 10 HP Lightnings were beating the hell out of their CLAIMED 22 HP opposed twins the Mercurys MUST BE race motors. They demanded and got from APBA a ONE HOUR HEAD START. As they say in Southern Russia, “Toughski Shitski Y’all”. One hour wasn’t nearly enough and they got creamed, their advantage to the contrary notwithstanding. Failing in 1963 did NOT deter the JohnRude crowd from demanding, in 1964, the same one hour head start as had been granted the year before. The wimpy turkeys of APBA caved again BUT that wasn’t enough to suit the bitchers and moaners. They discovered that the powerhead covers for their 75 HP units could be adapted to cover the then brand new 90 HP powerhead with its’ four barrel carburetor. Now they had one hour and 15 CLEVERLY HIDDEN additional HP. Once again southern Russian came in to play. Given the opportunity, these guys would have tried to PUSH a boat with a rope.
The near disaster referred to earlier had to do more with noise than anything else. We had installed a scrolling mechanism to hold our navigational heading info so that it wouldn’t blow out of the boat at speed. Rounding Montauk Point I shouted over to Dan “What’s the straight line heading to Plum Gut. He shouted back an answer which I clearly misunderstood. As we approached what should have been Plum Gut I looked and said “SHIT” what the hell is Plum Island doing on our PORT side. Translation, by erroneously bearing East of the correct vector we wound up circumnavigating Long and Plum Islands combined. Holy shit, what am I gonna do now? As luck seemed to be on our side Long Island Sound was flat as a pancake unlike the ocean where Drake’s 19 footer had the edge. Now my navigational error gave the 19 footer an even bigger advantage. We, I mean me, decided, if he was willing, Dan was going aft and sit atop the engine as we had already determined that the more weight we could get aft the faster we would go. Sitting on a life vest and using 3/8” Nylon line wrapped around the engine railing to hang on to Dan Temple, one tough SOB, rode over 100 miles ON TOP of the “Tower of Power”. ALL THE WAY to the Throggs Neck Bridge. When he passed as a victim of Prostate Cancer I’ll bet the name Mercury was still embossed on his butt.
What’s navigation skill worth? Way offshore as we were we could see the Drake boat wasting precious time following the shoreline of Smithtown Bay.
FINALLY!!! THE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS
The official time given to our circumnavigation is 6 Hrs 57 Minutes. Keep in mind the significant additional mileage we traveled going around the East end of Plum Island.
To the best of my knowledge NOBODY using a 90 Cubic Inch Outboard, single engine installation has beaten let alone equaled that time for circumnavigating JUST Long Island . Given the correct chart and a pair of dividers I could easily calculate the amount of additional mileage we travelled as well as correcting our average speed to its’ accurate number
Back in the day there were no engine classes for marathon racing. Single or twin engine installations were the only “classes” inboard, outboard or Stern Drive. It didn’t matter if you were running twin 40 HP units or twin 100 HP units. You pays your money and you takes your chances. I doubt that many competitors of that day even knew or cared what the displacement of their powerplant was. As previously mentioned elsewhere all the OMC products were rated by the OBC, a trade organization. Carl Kiekhaefer rated all his engines by SAE standards. That’s the reason that 10 HP Merc could outrun 22 HP JohnRudes.
EPILOGUE
You will recall from previous writings my description of the “SV-234”. This is the rig we built for the 1965 ALIMA Race. She was capable of 75 MPH with a pair of Chevy 409s, just as fast as Kiekhaefer’s guys got her to go with the vaunted, newly released only to the cognoscenti, 427 Chevys, known variously as Mark IVs, Porcupine Head Motors or Rat motors. We achieved this level of performance by “inventing” and creating a power trim capability one full year before Mercury released their unit. Because the GH, ie: Hammond knew NOTHING about how to operate SV-234 and refused to relinquish the helm he blew the opportunity to take first overall as he had done many times previously. When we took the same rig to The Lake Michigan Regatta later that summer, absent the GH, we won First Overall despite finishing on one engine due to the failure of the breaker points in the distributor of one engine. We even managed to best HOLOCAUST, the super boat that up to that time NOBODY had been able to control at full throttle.
I hope you find this latest dissertation amusing and that it answers your questions. Any more inquiry’s keep in mind I don’t know how long my memory will hold out. I have reached a point where I remember, with great clarity, what happened 80+ years ago but 80 minutes fades into oblivion in a New York Minute.
The Rixter
At your service.
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Rixter's Reminicence PART 2
There may come a time during the production of this “masterpiece” when you wonder what the hell has all this pontificating got to do with “shrinking”. Stay with me and you shall see, I hope. Taking up where we left off in Part 1.
The race from Albany to New York was run many times by many different entities but when it came to outboards Mercury was far and away the “King of the River”. Many have forgotten the Mercury slogan “Full Jeweled Power” and fewer still have any idea what Carl Kiekhaefer was referring to when he initiated this verbal work of art. In fact, it referred to Mercury’s design which used only ball and roller bearings. No friction bearings of any kind. Even the wrist pins in the pistons were roller bearinged.
For some reason, never fully understood, the design of the Lightning 10’s water intake made it unduly susceptible to being blocked by the ever present “Harlem River Whitefish” a term euphemistically applied to the myriad of used condoms found floating on the surface of the Hudson. It is well known that more Mercs succumbed to the fish than were ever victims of the overrated “Johnrudes”
Most if not all the competitors in this race were running production hulls with production engines for power. No purpose built race boats seemed able to survive the rigors of this competition with one HUGE exception.
To this day, as in the long ago past, the mainline tracks of what was then the New York Central Railroad paralleled the Hudson River for the whole length of the trip from Albany to N.Y. Where the debate started is lost in the fog of antiquity but there came a time when a challenge was made by Gar Wood of Miss America fame to the powers that be of the New York Central Railroad that his Miss America could beat the then brand new and highly vaunted Hudson locomotive, a 4-6-4 configuration, known for its speed and agility. Miss America, as some old codgers will recall, was powered by four (4) Liberty Aircraft Engines of unknown horsepower but sporting forty eight (48) exhaust stacks. There are numerous photos of Wood and crew standing BEHIND these stacks while the engines were at “full chat”. How these guys withstood the CO emissions for the length of the trip no one knows, but they did. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, the boat beat the train. Both were capable of speeds over 100 MPH and did so when ever roadbed and water permitted.
The point of all this story telling is, that in this case, we’re speaking of a PURPOSE BUILT race boat, very different from what we are going to address very soon. Stay tuned, as they say, for the next breathless edition of “shrinkage”.
The Rixter
Cooking the memory cells of what passes for his brain
PART 4
For a time, there was lot of money to be made in the pleasure, family oriented retail boat business and lots of fly by night dealerships sprang up all over the country. Many of these operations were owned and run by people who knew nothing about retailing and even less about anything that could conceivably come under the heading of Marine.
As fast as these no nothing businesses failed new no nothings popped up, almost like crabgrass. The survivors were known to complain bitterly to the manufacturers about their franchising practices which would grant virtually anybody a license to steal. All the complaining however had no effect on the manufacturers who cared ONLY about volume. As soon as one of their licensees went down there were 5 others waiting in line to take the place of the failure. This was only one factor responsible for unreasonable and ultimately unsustainable growth. Another cause for the shrinkage which inevitably occurred was the inability and in too many cases the unwillingness of the franchised dealer to service what he sold. The end results of all this sub-standard dealing was that in the mid to late sixties, if not sooner, industry profits began to slide as did number of units sold. Similar symptoms are now beginning to affect the Gold platers of today. We’ll get to that shortly.
Eventually, there came a time when some enlightened retail dealers thought that a “new” form of marketing might weed out the turkeys in the business. These are the guys, the turkeys, who would skim off the cream as it were and then fold. Hence my description calling the practice as a license to steal. One of these “new” marketing ideas was some form of inter-brand competition. The only plausible way that came up for discussion was racing. Since local roundy-round racing was fairly common it was deemed necessary that in order to make this “new” new it would have to be long distance racing. Long Distance? Does the word Marathon strike a familiar chord?
Although the AROUND LONG ISLAND MARATHON was not the first it followed closely behind the Miami-Nassau race which was dreamed up by Sherman F. “Red” Crise. The original M-N race was competed with “stock”as opposed to Purpose Built Race boats.
A builder of sport fishing boats, Forrest Johnson if my memory serves me right, built a model called a Prowler which was one of the original racers. As time went on the competitors went in to faster and re-designed hulls that if not purpose built racers were damned close. Is there anyone today naive enough to believe that Don Aronow’s Cigarettes were pleasure boats and not purpose built racers. Does anyone still alive believe Aronow was an amateur and not one of the toughest guys alive. Anybody here want to meet the late Don Aronow and his riding buddy Norris “Knocky” House in a dark alley on a stormy night? I didn’t think so. These guys could have knocked out Issis in one week and not broken a sweat.
Now the AROUND LONG ISLAND MARATHON, of which I have some personal knowledge, STARTED OUT with nothing but stock boats. Aluminum boats, wood lapstrake boats, fiberglass reinforced plastic boats with every type of hull bottom design currently in common use at the time. Buy the time the last ALIMA race was run, nothing but fiberglass boats with a deep-V hull were competitive. In the beginning, a lot of guys adopted the motto “Win or Sink”. Let me tell you, there was a lot of sinking going on.
Not to worry. We are getting close to. How this all ties in to our original subject, shrinkage.
PART 5
There was a lot of sinking going on for a number of reasons. First was the large number of boats entered. Next was the fact that many entrants had no experience with basic seamanship. On top of that was the fact that many entrants had rigs that were OBC Rated for a maximum of 40 HP but hung the biggest engine available anyway And just to cap off the problem was the type of construction employed by the manufacturers of these boats.
Take an aluminum boat rated for 40 HP and hang a Johnrude 75 HP Tank on the back and watch how opening the throttle twisted the hull like a pretzel. Watch a lapstrake Grady-White for instance with a Merc. 100 HP “Tower of Power” come Un-straked and immediately swamp. Even some of the fiberglass reinforced plastic boats defined what delamination was all about. So, what was the result? SHRINKAGE!!!
It didn’t take long for a number of changes to take place. The first thing that became apparent was the following year the number of entrants had shrunk by about 50%. The next notable change was no more Aluminum, almost no Lapstrake and glass boats, by one manufacturer at least, beefed up to the point that the driver would break before the hull would give up. Not to be overlooked was a massive invasion of factory sponsored or factory owned rigs. Glastron alone showed up with eight factory owned and driven rigs. Big ones, small ones, outboards and yes even sterndrives. The only sterndrive available at the time was the Jim Wynne designed Volvo unit so that’s what you got to see. Even so, fewer units, ie: “SHRINKAGE”.
The factory OWNED effort was a disaster. Not one of their rigs even finished. Led by the Glory Hound they managed to abuse their stuff to the point of complete failure.
The following year the dealers were responsible for the entrants and their engines and the results were markedly better. Even though the field continued to shrink some interesting shenanigans were foisted upon the Mercury powered guys. Because of much P*****g & M*****g on the part of the Johnrude crowd the sanctioning body, APBA, decided it would only be fair to give the Johnrude powered guys a 1 HOUR head start. Didn’t do ‘em any good. Mercs blew ‘em away anyway. Just wait ‘till next year cried the losers. Since the P & Mers couldn’t beat the APBA out of yet a second hour headstart the sneaky bastards mounted the then brand new 90 HP engines, which were mounted so a 75 HP cowling covered the cheater powerhead. Since nobody around in those days had x-ray vision and no engine inspections were ever performed, unless you removed the cowling you wouldn’t know if somebody shrunk down an Allison V 1710 and set it atop a Johnrude lower unit You remember, that was the engine that sported the first 4 BBL carburetor. TOOOOOO Bad! We creamed ‘em again.
The dealer / factory entrants had gotten so tough that each year fewer and fewer guys showed up to compete. In his last year as an outboard jockey one guy set a record for circumnavigating Long Island with a single 90 Cu. In “Tower of Power” that actually beat some of the twin engined boats. To the best of our knowledge, that record stands to this day, 54 years later. Speaking with this driver recently we noted he still remembers, with great clarity, that race all those years ago. Unfortunately, his co-driver navigator passed away a few years ago but he, the co-driver was the real tough guy in that crew. Believe it or not he, the co-driver, sat ASTRIDE the engine for the whole length of Long Island Sound, 100 miles, which gave the rig enough xtra speed to beat some nasty competition. I know, I know, one twin engine guy got “lost in the fog” but our hero, through a communication error, went around the East end of Plum Island instead of through The Gut thereby adding an indeterminate amount of mileage to his trip. The extra speed generated by adding 225 pounds right at the transom made the difference between finishing first or as first looser.
In part 6 we will talk about how the introduction of the super powered Florida inboards Further added to the problem of filling out a decent field of racers and ultimately contributed to todays problems being faced by race promoters.
PART 6
As the dealer sponsored / driven rigs began to shrink a new phenomenon was spreading its’ seeds. The same problem that created the ever diminishing field of small dealer entered boats lived to see another day. That day has happened upon us even as we speak. For a while it looked similar to “Roundup” finally conquering crab grass but, as it has turned out, the crab grass has proven to be as tenacious as termites.
There came a time fairly early on in the history of Offshore Powerboat Racing when a factor I choose to call jealousy reared its’ ugly head. It initially appeared at the ALIMA races. This occurred principally because with few exceptions (Ed Kotti with his Volvo Stern Drive Powered American Finn was one) all the competitors were outboard powered. After about two years there appeared on the horizon the beginnings of entries by wealthy men with high powered Deep V inboards. A prime example was Bill Wishnik with his Amalie Oiler. This guy was able to write off the cost of such equipment by utilizing corporate sponsorship. In addition he was a condescending guy who looked down on the outboard crowd as a bunch of hicks who really didn’t understand how things should be done. Here’s where the previously mentioned jealousy began.
The first time Wishnik entered the ALIMA race he either couldn’t get his rig on plane or he blew up the engine. My recollection here is hazy. At the end of the day he was one unhappy dude as almost 100% of the hicks with their “dinky little outboards” finished the race. If one could read another’s mind you’d know this guy thought it was just bad luck that he didn’t show the hicks how it should be done
The following year something similar happened. Those damned Mercury Outboards with their overkill design, ie: “Full Jeweled Power” were near immortal. A smart dealer could take a “Tower of Power” out of the box, take the distributor off the engine and set it up on an Allen Synchrograph, re-install it on the engine and make sure his tank was filled with Amoco High Test properly mixed at 24:1 and the engine would run “forever”at full throttle. As the Packard Motor Company used to say in their print ads “Ask the Man Who Owns One”. No inboard engine of that day could match the endurance of the Mercs and so, for a while anyway, the outboards continued to kick ass and as they did the inboard crowd became increasingly unhappy.
As a consequence of their displeasure, the first thing they did was steal the only big time sponsor ALIMA had. JAs. Hennessy & Co. of Cognac, France sponsored the ALIMA race of July 13, 1966. They were happy with the recognition they received but for the following year the inboard crowd convinced Hennessy that they’d get more bang for the buck if they went with the “Pros” and ditched the hicks. Unfortunately for ALIMA, that’s exactly what happened.
As time progressed it became apparent that the ALIMA race and those like it were not spectator sports. Unless you were daddy big bucks and could afford to hire a plane or a helicopter to overfly the race the best you could do was to try to park yourself on a boat near where you expected the racers to pass and watch as they flew by generating a huge roostertail that would knock you clean overboard if it hit you. There were even documented cases where private yachts being used as turning markers and occupied by the “swells” had people jumping overboard when they though a boat being piloted by a pylon racer was about to ram them in the process of making a high speed turn.
Your author caused three people on the committee boat anchored off the Navy Pier in Chicago to do this during the Lake Michigan Regatta of 1965. For years after that, the “swells” who chose to party on these committee boats did so wearing life vests.
In due course Offshore degenerated into Off The Beach so that spectators were able to watch the “insanity” being practiced by overly wealthy and not so skillful drivers. All this time the volume of racers continued to grow and promoters of such events failed to foresee the inevitable “shrinkage” that would eventually occur. The equipment grew ever more sophisticated and of course more expensive, not only to build but also to operate and maintain. In the NHRA sport of Drag Racing some sage once coined the phrase Cubic Money. It was, of course a contraction of what it took to build a competitive machine ie: Cubic Inches of Displacement and money by the bucket load.
The cost to build a AA Fuel Funny Car is about $300,000. About the same for a AA Fueler Dragster. All of this to generate an orgasm lasting 3.5 to 4 SECONDS. The engines that power these machines are reputed to crank out ten thousand horsepower
And they disintegrate like hand grenades quite often. The $60,000 engine rarely says goodbye all alone. It likes company and will take some if not all of the car with it.
Any observer of the motor racing scene, whether it be on land, sea or air has experienced the shrinkage that will inevitably occur when the racers, their owners and their sponsors reach the point of diminishing returns. In Part 7 we will reach the inescapable conclusion that shrinkage is unavoidable and eventually only the wealthiest or those with some form of corporate sponsorship will survive. The rest will go on to the next activity, popular at the moment, and eventually spend that in to oblivion. Winning a hand at poker may be fun but at what cost. Really wanna know?
Ask the man who owns a poker run boat. Then ask him how long he can continue in this vein before becoming acquainted with The Salvation Army
The Rixter=
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(continues from above)
Epilogue
The shrinkage being experienced in the field of competition among SUPER power boats was, if nothing else, predictable by those who have been around long enough to have accumulated some wisdom on the subject. Looking back to the late fifties and perhaps the early sixties one can clearly see the direction in which the sport would inevitably head.
When Glastron’s SV-234 was conceived and built she might have cost in the neighborhood of $ 50,000 or even less. Much of the equipment was home brewed for no other reason than it simply did not exist in any other form. Parts that were not available were usually created in small shops and ingenuity was the hallmark of the day. SV-234 actually utilized automobile parts in places where nothing related to the marine business even existed. The engineer / builders of that rig invented “power trim” Before Mercury marine. Parts from Oldsmobile Toronados and Cadillac Eldorados were utilized so that the power trim would live for more than a few minutes at full throttle.
The economics involved in the building of a high performance or race boat made it possible for almost anybody with a reasonably deep pocket to participate in a sport that used to be populated, in the twenties and thirties, by millionaire gentlemen / sportsmen who went racing when they could spare the time from caring for their stable of Polo Ponies, Thoroughbreds and trotters.
Along came WW II and it all came to a screeching halt, albeit only temporarily. After the war, when we could begin to satisfy civilian appetites, boating took off in a big way. Buy a brand new PT Boat with three Vimalert designed 1,500 HP V-12 engines for $3,500. Brand new Allison V-1710s, in the crate, $350 Ea. For decades race boats such as Stan Sayers’ “SLO MOTIONS”, 1 thru 4, survived on war surplus machinery. And so it went for decades. For purposes of comparison, look at the progression of NASCAR from then to now. Old ‘40 Ford Jalopies to modern 800 HP 200 MPH machines
What we have today is a disease the symptoms of which are “Beat the other guy at all costs”. And boy, have all costs risen out of sight! Although this author has no experience in building and owning a modern Offshore Power Boat or what is euphemistically, in some circles, referred to as a poker run boat he can guesstimate what it costs to build one. Add to that the cost of operating the rig and you’re sure to be headed for the ionosphere if not outer space. Highly specialized racing engines and drive lines, specialized fuel for these monsters and let’s not forget insurance have made costs skyrocket. Remember, when you get much above 10,000 feet you can’t breathe without oxygen. In this case, in trying to keep ahead of the other guy Oxygen assumes a new spelling. Now it’s spelled MONEY. There comes an unavoidable occurance where you have reached the point of diminishing returns. The cost per MPH, in dollars, has gotten to the position that many of the competitors have simply abandoned the game. When you have to spend the butter and egg money to get to the next buoy first, the fun goes out of the game.
Billy Frenz can look to NASCAR & NHRA as the perfect examples of what happens when ever advancing technology outruns the financial ability to keep up. When was the last time, recently, when thousands of empty seats were not observed in ALL the grandstands? Recently John Force, the best known racer in NHRA suffered an engine blowup in the final rounds of the Winter Nationals in Pomona California. In a Funny Car, when an engine explodes it almost always takes the body with it. The car was totaled. In a post race interview it was stated that it would cost a mere $300,000 to replace the demolished car. Now Force has multiple sponsors, all corporate, and they will pick up the tab to build a replacement. In NASCAR. It costs about 15 million dollars to campaign one car for one season. Once again, the costs are picked up by multiple sponsors.
In the type of competition promoted by NPBA and Billy Frenz I’m not aware of the existence of multiple sponsors for all the competitors. It become clear that if each individual owner sportsman has to pickup all the bills you will soon reach the point of diminishing returns which in turn will almost certainly cause shrinkage.
Back in the day when your author was involved in motorcycle racing it became obvious that the privateer couldn’t compete with the blank check factory teams. The problem really came to light when the privateers began disappearing in large numbers. When promoters could no longer fill the fields, event after event, a solution had to be found or that form of competition would become extinct. The cure that was found, and it was extremely effective, was that all the races were claiming races. At that time Harley-Davidson owned the AMA which was the major if not only sanctioning body. They. Showed up at the races with specially prepared KR Harleys that probably cost the factory 5 or 6 thousand dollars apiece. Because the privateers couldn’t afford such extravagance they were therefore at a tremendous disadvantage. The claiming price of that day was set at $1,500. What that meant was that at the end of a race, if you had the cash, you could claim a Harley-Davidson Factory prepared racer for $ 1,500 regardless of what it cost the factory to build. Either the factory relinquished the bike, right then and there, or that rider and his machine would never race again in any event sanctioned by the AMA.
Two things happened as a result. Very few bikes were claimed. Because the factory decided not to risk their best stuff falling into the hands of a privateer who could then take it apart and glean all the tricks the factory had installed lots of tricky stuff disappeared. Harley-Davidson was infamous for their chicanery but the claiming rules put an end to all that.
If Mr Frenz and NPBA could figure a way to incorporate this type of equalization in their competitions perhaps the shrinkage that’s now being experienced could be materially slowed if not eliminated completely. At any rate, it’s something worth thinking about.
Good luck Billy.
The Rixter
P.S. I’m still waiting to hear what the hell happened to Joe Sgro. Don’t keep me waiting if you know anything. Did you pass on our condolences to the family as I asked???
P.P.S. Let me know what you think of this treatise on the subject of “shrinkage”
Feel free to edit my scribblings as you see fit. I won’t hold it against you.
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