Another hot rod

[Flunder]

Here we get a good look at the re-assembled twin plug cylinder heads that came on the engine.

The casting dates on the heads are 2-72 and as a matter of interest to some, note that the casting numbers are all the same: 911.104.307.1R. Both the intake ports and exhaust ports had been opened up to 41mm as per the factory specifications for a high butterfly injected 2,5L "ST" engine, whether it be in long stroke 911/70 or short stroke 911/73 configuration.

Third image shows the 93mm ANDIAL pistons and cylinders installed with two of the cylinder heads, seen from the intake side, slid onto the studs.

The final image shows all the cylinder heads installed from the aspect of the exhaust side of the heads.

[Flunder]

We re-used the original Race Department light weight chain sprockets that were on the ANDIAL engine and re-assembled the chain boxes with new mechanical tensioners to suit its center feed RSR camshafts. Note the gun-drilled snouts of the cams.

The light weight crank pulley also came on the engine as received.

Please take a moment and look over the attached images of the chain box assemblies. The racing cam nuts have a 1.5mm thread pitch and use a 41mm wrench. The competition layshaft and driven gear are forged as a unit for high strength. The light weight chain sprockets, idler sprockets and cam drive sprockets are aluminum.

Porsche-RSR (Belgium) and Carrerax - thank you for your posts.

Tom Butler: Before too long I hope to join you for that open pipes drive across the Connecticut hills.

[Flunder]

As if in homage to their benefactor, the partners of Junius Pierrepont Morgan erected vast estates, each grander than the next, all littered across the North Shore of Long Island in the enclaves of wealth and social prominence that stretched from Locust Valley to Oyster Bay. Here stood the stately Georgians, elegant Federals and romantic French Chateaux, some imported stone by stone from the Loire Valley, and as a group they transformed the fields along the Sound which had been culitivated for 250 years by the families of the original settlers from Colonial times. This stretch of cow pastures came to be known as the Gold Coast, a blinding reflection of that fair temple to Mammon that stood to the west on the island of Manhattan at 23 Wall: the House of Morgan.

But it was not this Golconda of the new world and its glittering parties that drew me out to Long Island on those summer weekends when I was still a young man. Rather, I would get the train from Manhattan to Glen Cove, a slightly gritty neighbor of the verdant splendor of Locust Valley, where my first stop would be to see Frank at the German Deli to get a paper sack full of take-out coffee, the price of admission to my ultimate destination. Next, I made the short walk up to the shop of William Wonder, Inc.

Bill Wonder had a successful career as third officer on commerical airliners when they still carried a navigator. He flew on the big jets of his day and like alot of guys who spent their time around airplanes, Bill also loved race cars. His vocation afforded him both the wherewithal and, more importantly, the time to pursue his passion.

And what a successful pursuit it was. Inside the non-descript store front, Willliam Wonder Inc. housed not only Bill's personal cars but also some long-term boarders selected from the garages of fellow racers and enthusiasts.

My greatest memory from these bench racing sessions sitting next to Bill at his desk, sipping coffee, was his casual irreverence towards the most revered of all sports and GT cars, the Type 62 Ferrari 250 GTO. One of Bill's customers, a man of surprisingly modest means but unquestioned passion, had acquired an all all original GTO when they were still just used race cars that no one really wanted. And I mean original, this thing still had scrutineers stickers on its windshield. Bill tended to its needs and boarded it in his shop for some years. They had taken it out to the east end of Long Island to put its through its paces at Bridgehampton before the 'bridge was turned into condos. Bill loosed it reins on the main straight, passed pit-in hammer down and went under the Lowenbrau Bridge and through the kink flat out all the way to the Millstone Corner. In summation of its test session, Bill had only a few words to say and delivered them in his best airliner intercom deadpan. "It don't go nowhere," he said.

Bill's personal cars were generally along the lines of big displacement, hairy stuff.

One year Bill bought a used GT40 race car from Shelby American and took delivery of the car in Florida. Although an early example, a prototype chassis numbered 103P, his '40 came with all the updates: LeMans nose and big ass tail, the widest pin drive Halibrands and all the Mark II suspension updates including the stronger uprights and the big calipers and rotors. Its "Fairlane" 289 bore little resemblance to what you could get across the counter at the Ford dealer what with its high nickel content four bolt main block, forged steel, internally balanced crank and matching rods, Gurney-Weslake heads and a double brace of 48IDAs atop its FAV lettered intake manifold. For the sake of completeness, Bill had bolted to an engine stand out on the shop floor a Ford 255 cu. in. Indy motor, its block dwarfed by the massive OHC heads and trash can sized 58mm sand cast Webers, the sort of engine for which chassis 103P originally had been designed and equipped.

One step up the ladder of hair was his DeKon Monza cloaked in striking French blue, a tube framed American response to the dominance of the RSR in the hands of Peter Gregg.

But his ultimate engineering delight was a taffy colored confection filled with 494 cu. in. of Chevrolet rat motor cased in an aluminum block courtesy of the foundries at the Reynolds Aluminum Company. This elephant was topped by unequal length ram tubes on its Hilborn injection manifold and led the observer to conclude that Bill's McLaren M8C was mostly just motor.

Bill did his own wrenching, sometimes with the help of a young Joe Stimola (who went on to Formula Ford engine building fame) before Joe went into the Navy. As one would expect, mechanical preparation was to commerical aircraft standards, which is to say, extremely high. His cars were immaculately painted save one for the original maroon paint on his '40. But is was Bruce Metnich at Del's Autobody in Locust Valley who painted Bill's stuff, after hours and off the clock. Bruce had a chopped '49 Merc in high school and spent his shop time restoring Bugattis and the like. Given the credentials of Del's, it was not surprising that the paint and panel work on Bill's McLaren looked awfully good for a race car.

With a wiry build and crew cut hair, Bill impressed with his calm demeanor and the easy confidence of a man entirely comfortable inside his own skin. Besides the great stories about the early days of commerical flight, full of the sorts of experiences described in God is My Co-Pilot I might add, and the tale of winning class honors at Sebring one year only to bear the jokes of the Goodyear gommistas for having more tread at the finish on the Ford's Bluestreaks than at the start (they were building up melted rubber in the corners left by Rodriguez and the other hotshoes up front) I remember best about Bill's place that it stood in time during the era when every race car worth its salt had an exotic induction system set out in plain sight, unemcumbered by the plumbing for forced induction that the Race Department fitted to its all-conquering 917K during those same years when I made the Saturday morning treks out to Glen Cove.

And so these next few images of the 2R high butterfly induction system are posted here in homage to the House of Wonder.

Nevertheless, I know that Bill would deride any ST as not being a real race car but only a sports car, all of which, in his estimation, don't go nowhere.

[fryardds]

assuming everyone hasn't been bored to the teeth by all the photos and turgid prose I have been posting.

Yeah right! Are you kidding me? Your 'turgid prose' is outstanding and thoroughly enjoyable. The engine build photos are inspiring.

[edmayo]

Hi Tom, like all the others I'm glued to the screen when I see your posts come up. I noticed on the exhaust side picture some different cylinder deflectors than I've ever seen before. The aluminum race deflectors I've seen had the same shape as their metal counterparts. Yours have a bit of curl at the bottom.

[Flunder]

Hello Ed, Good catch. Scott McPherson fabricated the deflectors to match the ones used on his current two liter race engines. Sorry, but I don't recall the engineering rationale for this design, but the objective is enhanced cylinder head temperature control under race conditions - an example of over kill for my application but in keeping with the overall theme of this engine. Hello Brian, nice to hear that you are enjoying the engine build phase of the project!

[912-2.8]

Edmayo: The air deflector tins are from the 906/8/17s. Supertec sells a copy for less than a c-note.

Flunder: Three questions if i may... Did you seal the case halves with three bond 1104 or the Dow 735 fluorosilicone? How long was the engine run before the rebuild with the aluminum sprockets? How come you didn't run spray bars as well, a la 935 (since the feed holes are already there).

Looks great, keep it coming! I'm getting ready to assemble a 2.8 and it's nice to see it all ahead of time.

t

[yale]

"Bill did his own wrenching, sometimes with the help of a young Joe Stimola (who went on to Formula Ford engine building fame) before Joe went into the Navy."

Joe Stimola! My cousin Tom Abbe worked with him building race engines in a small room in the back of Joe's shop and later track specific shock absorbers. Tom started out working for Roosevelt on Long Island as one of his only apprentices, biking over to his shop before he was old enough to drive until eventually Roosevelt hired him to work on Abarths with him.

[Flunder]

Yale:

Thanks for the post, it started the memories to flow. I met Joe Stimola a few times at Bill's and later when Joe had his race shop in the village over in Locust Valley. Pete Marcovicci (who went on to become a top Lotus twin cam, BDA, BDC engine builder) used to be there too. Small world I guess.

Your cousin Tom Abbe must remember Ray Cuomo who had been one of the top drivers for Team Roosevelt (the East Coast distributor for Abarth in the early days of SCCA). I was a young kid that Ray let hang around the shop (Gofaster in Long Island City and later Ray Cuomo Racing Ent. in Glen Cove). All that hanging around gave me the opportunity to meet Paul Richards a couple of times. Paul had been another of the team's top drivers.

And, your cousin must have known Jim McGee, the chief engineer/mechanic for Team Roosevelt. Jim was considered the top wrench ever by many and Ray, who was unimpressed by everyone, held McGee in awe. I met him only once out at his little corner shop in Bridgehampton. He was in the process of restoring the engine for Alec Ullman's Hispano Suiza. His old shop is still there on Rte. 27 in Bridge.

I met Ray Cuomo long after his Team Roosevelt days when he had the Goodyear race tire distributorship for the north east, before it went to Penske, and as a result Ray went to all the regionals, nationals, Trans Ams etc. to bust tires. Ray knew everyone in road racing but his favorite guys were Dan Gurney (a kid from Long Island before his parents moved west) and Mark Donohue, who was a young engineering student at Brown when he first met him. In those days Donohue was still just a talented instructor at the SCCA driver schools in the region.

Later on it became known that Ray had a stash of old Goodyear race tires (in the days before the tire companies made vintage race rubber) and you never knew who was going to stop by to get NOS tires for their old race car. Harley Cluxton rolled in one day to get rear tires on his P3 which he had just bought from Chinetti. Ray referred to the young hangers-on at the shop as "hobbyasses." We all loved him like a father.

Now, here is the Porsche content for this post: Cornpanzer asked in another thread how to attach an ST style license panel.

Image one: The original ALU ST license panel for the hot rod (discussed in the post in this thread titled "Parts of the Third Kind") had small tabs rivetted on either side of its lower corners, with the tabs projecting outwards towards the rear of the car, each tab drilled to receive a fastening bolt.

Image two: Jim Newton welded complimentary brackets to the bumpers to bolt it down using the ST license panel's original tabs. This is one way to do it; no doubt the factory used others as well.

Image three: This shows the trial fit of the old ST license panel fastened down for its trial fit. Note that it is now stripped and straightened with its cracks welded, but prior to final metal work etc.

Image four: A close examination of the great 72ST "factory tour" photo appears to validate Jim's method of attachment using the original tabs on the license panel. (Restorers note in this image of the 72ST engine that 2R high butterfly inlet funnels should be finished in black paint and steel mfi fuel lines used).

Dave, hope this helps.

[bob tilton]

The details on this build are completely off the charts!