Restored 1975 Plymouth Duster ”California Flash” drag car

Driver and engine builder Larry “Butch” Leal from Tulare California is a legend in National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) drag racing. Beginning with his first foray into the sport in 1960 in a Chevrolet El Camino. In the early nineteen sixties, Leal became a member of the Ford Drag Racing Team and he won the Super Stock class at the 1964 US Nationals in Indianapolis where he earned Leal the nickname “the California Flash.”

In 1965, Leal joined the Chrysler Corporation as a factory-supported driver in the Pro Stock category driving Hemi-powered (hemispherical combustion chamber) cars. Chrysler pulled out of direct factory sponsorship for Pro Stock racing in 1974 because of NHRA Pro Stock weight rules which Chrysler management felt unfairly favored the small-block Chevrolet.

In 1975, Butch Leal became associated with the Chrysler Direct Connection performance-parts program and ran this Ron Butler-prepared Plymouth Duster powered by a 16-plug (two spark plugs per cylinder) 426-cubic inch Hemi engine with a 4-speed transmission. Competing in the   B/MP (Modified production) class, it ran a best quarter-mile elapsed time of 9.65 seconds with a best trap speed of 142 miles per hour. This car was featured on the cover of the April 1975 Car Craft magazine and the cover of the 1975 Chrysler Direct Connection parts catalog. 

   

With this car, which had to weigh 8.00 to 8.99 pounds per cubic inch of engine displacement.  was allowed very few body and chassis modifications, as the body and the bumpers are all steel. Leal won the Modified Eliminator class at the 1976 NHRA Winter Classic, the Winternationals and the Gatornationals events. 

Leal was named to the 1976 Car Craft Magazine All-Star drag racing team as the modified driver of the year.  Leal drove Chrysler cars through the 1977 NHRA season. Leal who retired from drag racing in the late nineteen eighties is a member of the Mopar Collector’s Guide Hall of Fame the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame.

The car was meticulously restored by John and Denny Laube who proudly displayed the car at the 2018 Performance Racing Industry show in Indianapolis Indiana.    

One of a kind- the Bosley Mark I

 

Cars were much simpler in the nineteen fifties, and a man with the vision and mechanical skills could build his own sports/racing car. Richard W Bosley a nurseryman from Mentor Ohio was such a man; a charter member of the Northeast Ohio chapter of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), Bosley sold his Jaguar XK-120 to finance the construction of his sports car which began in September 1952. 

Bosley used 4-inch diameter .0625 wall steel tubing to build the Mark I’s ladder-style chassis, and used 1950 Ford front suspension and a 1948 Mercury rear axle with three trailing arms.

 

For a powerplant, Bosley used a 331-cubic Chrysler ‘Firepower’ hemispherical combustion chamber overhead-valve V-8 engine, equipped with a B.S. Cunningham Company intake manifold with four Zenith downdraft carburetors which boosted the engine’s output to a reported 225 horsepower. The Mark I used a New Process Gear four-speed manual transmission with a fifth gear overdrive and a clutch from White 3000 series truck.

 

 

Bosley designed and built the Mark I’s swoopy fiberglass Ferrari-inspired body himself, and the completed car rides on a 102-inch wheelbase, is 70-inches wide and stands a remarkable 48 inches high, but weighs a hefty 3,360 pounds.

 

The filler neck for the car’s 55-gallon fuel tank, visible in the photograph below, is located at the rear of the car’s roof. Bosley somehow convinced Ted Halibrand to sell him a set of center-lock magnesium wheels for street use which he shod with Pirelli tires.  Finished in March of 1955, Bosley drove his creation to Sebring Florida twice where he worked as a volunteer course steward.

 

 

Unfortunately, the Mark I never achieved Bosley’s dream of entering production; he spent $9,000 to complete the prototype and he realized the economics just didn’t pencil out. In 1957, he traded the completed Mark I to an Illinois car dealer for a well-used engineless Chevrolet Corvette SR-2 race car chassis which Bosley used to create his second masterpiece, the Interstate. The Bosley as shown at the Petersen Automotive Museum is owned by the Margie and Robert Petersen Collection.   

       

The speedometer and tachometer are

customized Ford police interceptor units,

 the balance of the gauges are Stewart-Warner

 

 

All Photographs by the author 

 

 

   

A brief history of automotive engines in postwar unlimited hydroplane boat racing 

The modern era of unlimited hydroplane racing series started in 1946 and the “3-point” prop-riding hydroplanes were perfected during the nineteen fifties  The hydroplane hull rode on a cushion of air trapped between the two side “sponsons" and the bottom half of the propeller, which were all that touched the water. Through the nineteen fifties and sixties unlimited hydroplane boats were front-engine and mid-engine “cabover” design came into vogue during the nineteen seventies.    

factory photo of the Allison engine

Following the Second World War, surplus V-12 aircraft engines were readily available and inexpensive and so the majority of the post-war unlimited hydroplane boats built were powered by these engines. There were two types of engines- the Allison, 70,000 of which were built by the Allison division of General Motors, which was founded by Speedway founder James A. Allison.  The Allison engine powered the Curtis P-40 "Warhawk", the Lockheed P-38 and the North American P-51 "Mustang" fighter planes during World War 2.

The other type of engine used in unlimited hydroplane boat racing was the Merlin, built by Packard and Rolls-Royce. The Rolls-Royce version which had served as the powerplant for most of the British fighter planes such as the Hawker Hurricane and Spitfire, while the Packard version was used in later P-40's  and P-51 Mustangs.    

Both the Allison and Rolls-Royce engines are liquid-cooled with a V-12 layout of two banks of six cylinders and a total displacement from the factory of 1,710 cubic inches for the Allison and 1,650 cubic inches for the Merlin. Each cylinder has two exhaust and two intake valves actuated by single overhead camshafts and ignited by a pair of spark plugs fired by a pair of magnetos. The Allison engine features a single-stage, one-speed supercharger while the Merlin has a two-stage, two-speed supercharger.

Compared to aircraft use, the engines were installed backwards in the hull, and raced with the supercharger turned upside down from the factory position. The typical Allison G engine in a highly-stressed hydroplane application produced over 3000 horsepower at approximately 3000 revolutions per minute (RPM) in short bursts, but required frequent rebuilds. Both the Allison and Merlin engines made extensive use of aluminum throughout; from the factory an Allison engine weighed 1650 pounds while the Merlin weighed an additional 250 pounds.

For the first two decades after the Second World War ended, the Allison and Rolls-Royce surplus aircraft engines were inexpensive but as time passed, parts and engines became scarcer, costs grew and some teams began to experiment with automotive engines for their hydroplanes. Automotive engines had been used in other classes of inboard boat racing since the early 1930s with the introduction of the Ford V8 and later the V8-60 engine. Later, the flathead fords were replaced by the light and powerful Chevrolet small-block and big-block V8 engines.

The earliest automotive-powered unlimited hydroplane was Seattle contractor Lyle Parks’ U-7 “Miss Skyway” of 1956, which was powered a pair of stock 265-cubic inch 1956 Chevrolet Corvette engines mounted side-by side in front of the driver that fed power through a rubber v-belt drive system to the propeller shaft. With perhaps a maximum of 500 horsepower, the “rubber band” boat, sponsored by the Skyway Luggage Company, proved to be woefully underpowered in trials at the Seattle Seafair Regatta and the hull sported an Allison engine in 1958. 

The first truly successful automotive powered unlimited hydroplane race boat was the U-77 “Miss Chrysler Crew” owned by Owensboro Kentucky construction magnate William Sterett. Sterett with no previous boat racing experience, bought a 426-cubic inch Chrysler Hemi powered 7-liter hydroplane after attending a race and then went on to win the APBA National Championship in that class back-to-back in 1965 & 1966.

During the 1966 season, Sterett debuted an Unlimited Hydroplane entry that was a 40% larger version of his championship winning H-1 “Miss Crazy Thing” powered by two Keith Black–built supercharged fuel-injected 426-cubic inch Chrysler Hemi engines. Both engines which faced forward, fed the 14-inch propeller through a Casale gear drive. Sterett picked up sponsorship from the Chrysler Corporation marine division and his new hydroplane was dubbed U-77 “Miss Chrysler Crew.”

The Sterett team experienced teething problems through 1966 with a single heat race win and their first race of 1967 was a disappointment when “Miss Chrysler Crew” failed to finish any of the heat races in Tampa, Florida. Three weeks later on the Detroit River. “Miss Chrysler Crew” won all three heat races and the 1967 UIM World Championship Regatta.   By the end of the season, Sterett and replacement driver Mira Slovak in “Miss Chrysler Crew” together scored enough points to finish second to Bill Schumacher in Ole Bardahl’s “Miss Bardahl” in the American Power Boat Association (APBA) points in 1967.

Despite the success, the Chrysler Corporation dropped their sponsorship at the end of the season and Sterett hired on as the driver of Florida beer distributor Bernie Little's all-conquering “Miss Budweiser” Rolls-Royce Merlin-powered hydroplane. Sterett won the 1969 APBA National Championship with four victories in seven races and retired. In the meantime “Miss Chrysler Crew” was re-fitted with a conventional aircraft engine before it was bought by George Walther and inexplicably left to rot behind his West Carrolton Ohio race shop, where the author saw it during the nineteen seventies and eighties.

Apparently due to the success of the “Miss Chrysler Crew” two new automotive powered hydroplanes debuted in 1970.  Dave Heerensperger, the owner of the Pay ‘n Pak Northwest home improvement store chain, debuted his “Pride of Pay n’ Pak” with twin supercharged Chrysler Hemi engines mounted behind the driver in a new “cabover” design.  Arizona lawyer, boat owner and driver Bob Fendler introduced his similarly powered and “cabover” design U-29 Atlas Van Lines sponsored hydroplane designed by Jim Lucero that same season. These two boats were not competitive and both were quickly converted to conventional aircraft-style engines.

In 1976 at San Diego,  El Monte California  machine shop owner Walter Knudsen debuted his “cabover” U-14 “Miss O’Neal & Knudsen” powered by a pair of methanol fueled Ford 427-cubic-inch, fuel-injected SOHC  (single overhead camshaft) engines built by Indianapolis engine builder Louis “Sonny” Meyer Jr. The 28-foot long boat, shorter and lighter than a typical hydroplane, driven by veteran pilot Jack Schafer Junior, showed up annually at San Diego through 1982, but was never fast enough to qualify for the heat races.  

In 1974 famed Indianapolis race car owner and steel wheel magnate George Walther, father of ‘500’ and boat racer David “Salt” Walther funded a “cabover” design to twin supercharged Chrysler powered U-77 “Dayton Walther Special” hydroplane designed and built by Seattle boat builder Ron Jones. The boat was incomplete when Walther sold the hull to Bernie Little who changed the design from twin Chrysler engines to a conventional V-12 Merlin engine, and raced it as the U-12 “Miss Budweiser” through the late nineteen seventies.

In 1979, a mysterious twin-engine boat known as U-5 “Candyman” appeared at the APBA Gold Cup in Madison Indiana. The team engine builder Leon “Bubba” Wilton fell off “Candyman” and broke his leg. The boat’s owner Carroll Kern without an engine builder then withdrew. If any readers know more information about U-5 "Candyman," please contact the author.

a press-kit photo of the Aronow Unlimited

from the author's collection

An “All-Star” effort appeared during the 1980 APBA racing season – the U-9 “Aronow/Halter Special,” funded by Don Aronow and Harold ‘Hal” Halter and designed by Gary Garbrecht, all big names in the marine industry.

Aronow, born in Brooklyn New York in 1927 founded Formula Marine in 1962, sold it to corporate interests, and then started Donzi Marine in 1964 and likewise sold the company off to a conglomerate. Aronow founded yet another boat company, Magnum Marine, and with a series of Magnum boats powered by a pair of 450-horsepower Holman-Moody built 427-cubic inch Ford engines won three straight United States and two world offshore racing championships. After he sold off Magnum Marine, Aronow started the “Cigarette” brand of offshore boats, with which he became world famous. Cigarette customers included Roger Penske, Mark Donohue, and President George Herbert Walker Bush and the Shah of Iran.

Aronow’s partner in the hydroplane venture, Hal Halter, had made a fortune after he founded his eponymous ship-building firm in New Orleans in the early nineteen fifties. In the nineteen seventies, Halter Marine supplied half of the world’s crew and re-supply boats for the offshore oil industry. Halter was moving into the offshore powerboat business, and  in 1978, Halter bought the Cigarette Racing Team from Don Aronow while Aronow started a new boat building company which he called USA Racing Team.  

Boat designer Gary Garbrecht started working in 1962 as a driver and research engineer for Elmer “Carl” Keikhaefer’s outboard engine company.  Before Kiekheafer retired in 1969, he put Garbrecht in charge of the Mercury outboard motor factory racing team, which he ran until 1979. During the time Garbrecht ran the Mercury racing program, he hired and nurtured the careers of Bill Seebold and Earl Bentz, who each won two world championships in outboard Mercury-powered Formula 1 “tunnel” boats. When Mercury Marine’s parent company cut back racing participation in 1980, Gary Garbrecht left and launched Second Effort, a high performance engineering company.

The hydroplane boat hull designed by Garbrecht drew heavily on the design of Formula 1 “tunnel” outboard boats, and was the first “tunnel hull” hydroplane design. Although it was 30 feet long, two feet longer than conventional hydroplane, the hull weighed just 1000 pounds. As if the hull design was not radical enough, for power Garbrecht specified a pair of longitudinally-mounted turbocharged 161-cubic inch displacement Cosworth DFX Indianapolis car engines tuned for the applications. The engines were slightly offset with 8-foot long drive shafts connected to Mercury stern drives.  

Author's photo of  the Cosworth DFX engine

 on display at the Museum of American Speed

Methanol-burning all-aluminum Cosworth DFX V-8 engines powered the Indianapolis 500-mile race winner over a period of ten consecutive years from 1978 through 1987 with 81 consecutive IndyCar (CART & USAC) race wins between 1981 and 1986 and a total of 153 IndyCar victories. Each Cosworth hydroplane engine was valued at $42,000, with the rated output of 800 horsepower at 9000 RPM.

The U-9 “Aronow/Halter Special” debuted at the APBA Gold Cup race held on the Ohio River adjacent to Madison Indiana over the July 4th weekend in 1980. Nashville Tennessee’s Earl Bentz an experienced outboard racer nonetheless was a rookie driving an unlimited inboard hydroplane.  Bentz’ first flying lap around the 2 ½ mile course was recorded as 111.111 MPH, the second lap 111.801 MPH and the third lap the best at 113.780 MPH.

As the “Aronow/Halter Special” began it’s the fourth timed lap, smoke began trailing from one of the Cosworth engine, and Bentz pulled off course into the infield. After the tunnel hull hydroplane was towed back to shore, the crew discovered that an oil line had come loose and one of the Cosworth engines was damaged beyond repair and without spare engines (a curious oversight), the “Aronow/Halter Special” was a scratch from the Gold Cup races.

The official qualifying time for the “Aronow/Halter Special,” the average of its two best laps, was 112.790 MPH, the fifth fastest of the eight boats at Madison, but 12 miles per hour slower than the pole-winning U-1 “Atlas Van Lines” owned and driven by Bill Muncey. The beige and brown colored boat appeared fast enough (175 MPH) in a straight line, but the engines “bogged” in the turns, which the “experts” attributed to the Cosworth’s lack of torque.

a photo of the Aronow fitted with two hemi engines

from the book  What were they thinking?

When the boat re-appeared in 1981, known as the U-19 “Aronow Unlimited,” the Cosworth engines had been replaced by a pair of fuel-injected supercharged aluminum 402-cubic inch displacement Keith Block Hemi-style engines. The pickle-fork hull was faster in a straight line than the previous year, at nearly 180 MPH, but the engines still “bogged” in the turns, which the “experts” now blamed on the hull design. The hemi-powered “Aronow Unlimited” was plagued for the next two seasons by mechanical failures and infrequent appearances driven by North Carolina driver George “Buck” Thornton who replaced the retired Bentz. .

The “Aronow Unlimited” qualified for the 1981 Columbia Cup in Washington State at 106.636 MPH but broke one of the stern drives during the second heat race. It posted a faster qualifying speed of 116.249 MPH at Mission Bay in San Diego, but after one of the engines failed in time trials, it did not start the heat races. In 1983, the “Aronow Unlimited” posted a qualifying speed of 123.636 MPH at the Columbia Cup but again broke a stern drive in time trials.

For 1983, the Aronow boat was reworked powered with four V-8 Johnson outboard motors and entered as U-19 "Don Aronow and Gary Garbrecht's USA Racing Team.” While the boat was slower in a straight line than before, it carried better corner speed, and driven by outboard champion “Jimbo” McConnell, it placed second in the UIM World Championship Race held on Clear Lake near Houston, Texas. The boat subsequently dropped off the APBA unlimited hydroplane racing circuit and its current whereabouts are unknown. Aronow was murdered in 1987 by Ben Kramer who had purchased the USA Racing Team business from Aronow.

Also in 1987, Jerry Schoenith of the famed Detroit unlimited hydroplane racing family started the Automotive Thunderboat Association for 28-foot long boats retrofitted with automotive engines, but the series only lasted one season.  In 1991, the APBA Unlimited Racing Commission created an “Unlimited Reciprocating Class” for boats powered by multiple automotive engines, but only “UR” boat showed up to race during the 1992 season and the "UR" experiment ended.

drawing of a Rolls-Royce Griffon engine

 

The thundering piston engines which lasted in hydroplane racing until the late 1980’s with experimentation with fuel injection, fuel additives, nitrous oxide, added turbochargers and multiple speed gearboxes. Some teams used the Rolls-Royce “Griffon,” a relatively rare 2,240-cubic inch aircraft V-12 that featured a two-stage, three-speed supercharger.  Eventually though these monster engines were replaced by the “whoosh” of a turbine engine. Modern hydroplane race boats are powered by a single Lycoming T55 L7C turbine engine originally used in Chinook helicopters connected to single speed reduction gearboxes.

The modern turbine produced 650 horsepower from the factory and weighs just 830 pounds and runs on Jet-A (kerosene) fuel, although H1 Unlimited rules still allow the use of a single aircraft-type engine of 2250 cubic inches displacement or any number of automobile-type engines are allowed, no one has experimented with automotive type engines in the class since 1993.

 

photo courtesy of H1 Unlimited

In a way, one can say that the change in hydroplane racing occurred mirrored exactly by a few years what Andy Granatelli had hoped would happen at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway after the 1967 and 1968 500-mile races, as modern turbine engines replaced old technology. As the old ‘railbirds” did with the day-glo red STP “whooshmobiles,” hydroplane purists complain that the modern hydroplanes lack the thundering exhaust sound that marked the glory days.     

"WATER FROM WILBUR"

Photo by the author

On a recent trip to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum and Hall of Fame, the author photographed several of the historic trophies on display. One which really caught the author’s eye was the silver cup engraved with the phrase “Water from Wilbur.”

Louis Meyer asked for buttermilk after he won his second Indianapolis 500-mile race in 1933, and that was repeated following his third win in 1936. The tradition of the winner drinking from a bottle of milk continued until World war 2 interrupted racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Beginning in 1947 this silver cup was filled with ice and water and presented to the ‘500’ race winner by Indianapolis Motor Speedway President and three-time ‘500’ winner Wilbur Shaw. This new tradition continued through the 1954 ‘500’ despite Shaw suffering a major heart attack in 1951 at the Soap Box Derby in Akron Ohio.  

Wilbur Shaw, right, presents the "Water from Wilbur" 

to 1949 '500' winner Bill Holland, center.
photograph appears courtesy of Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection in the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies.

On October 30 1954, on the eve of his 52^nd birthday, Shaw, pilot Ray Grimes and artist Ernest Roose flew in a Cessna airplane to Detroit so that Shaw could test drive a new Chrysler at the Chrysler Proving Grounds. On the return flight, with Roose presumed to be at the controls, the Cessna plunged into a field on Homer Ginter’s farm near Peterson Indiana, in Adams County and all three men were killed.

 

Sam Hanks drinks "Water from Wilbur" in 1957. Photograph appears courtesy of Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection in the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies.

To honor Wilbur Shaw’s memory, the Speedway continued to present the ‘500’ race winner with “Water from Wilbur” through the 1957, with Sam Hanks the last documented winner to drink from the "Water from Wilbur" cup, which now rests in an honored location in a display case in the Museum.  

The earlier tradition of the winner drinking milk that began with Louis Meyer in 1933,  resumed in 1956, with sponsorship from the American Dairy Association according to Indianapolis Motor Speedway historian Donald Davidson.  Maplehurst Dairy, an Indianapolis firm, had a refrigerator stocked with milk set up in break room in the Garage Area during the month of May in 1955, and this break room area was used a frequent background during the month.