George, JJ and I have been busy working on U 36 since our last outing at Buffalo last September. In the past four months we have made numerous changes and modifications to the boat to improve the performance of the old girl in general, particularly performance on the one mile courses which seem to be common on the vintage circuit. Last year the best we were able to see on RPM was about 2800 at 52 inches of manifold. Calculated max speed was in the 130’s at Buffalo with these power numbers. Even so she put on a pretty good show at Buffalo but she appeared heavy and had some difficulty flying as she should.
To make her better, for starters we have replaced the original WW2 oil cooler with a modern San Juan unit which will save about 70 pounds in the nose. We also have removed the alternator system which will reduce the weight in the nose by another twenty pounds. At Chamberlain and Buffalo she was nearly full of fuel which with the one hundred gallon capacity tanks was six hundred pounds of fuel we were lugging around. We will be cutting that amount by half or to about fifty gallons for each session, another 300 pounds out of the hull.
Additionally, due to a leak in the intake system pop off valve we were not able to attain manifold pressure beyond the fifty two inch level at Buffalo This pop off was something someone added sometime in the engines past. It seemed like a good idea so we retained it in 2012 but have now eliminated it returning to the original stock manifold which should raise the blower pressure, torque and horsepower. We know that the Allison is prone to backfires and damage to the blower housing so we will have to be careful to not allow backfires from this point forward.
We also discovered a problem with the intake annulus which was improperly installed causing a mis-direction of the fuel/air mixture in the intake manifolds. We think this contributed to the over rich condition on the starboard cylinder bank as can be seen in the videos as the boat comes off of the turns. We also discovered the gasket under the carburetor had no vent hole for the injector nozzle. We’re not sure what affect that had last year but it certainly affected something and has now been corrected.
The forward half of the cockpit floor has been lowered three inches allowing the throttle pedal to the moved ahead almost a foot. This will make things much more comfortable for the driver and also allow him to sit closer to the wheel which will provide better mechanical advantage and better control thru the arm muscles.
George designed and installed a new mixture setup which incorporates the control stick handle from a military aircraft. The gun trigger function will now activate the starter and one red button will activate the primer system. To have redundancy in the start system we will also retain the original start/mag rotary switch and primer toggle on the panel. A panel toggle switch will allow activation or deactivation of the booster coil function. We will be trying both settings to see how she best fires up out of the water prop unloaded and in water with a load.
This past weekend George and I displayed the boat at the Lincoln, Nebraska boat show. It was a huge success with over twenty thousand attending the 3 day event. That’s an excellent turnout for Lincoln, Nebraska. We had many interested people stopping by to see the boat, view the videos and ask many questions. At one point I counted fifteen people in our booth and four more on the back, bottom side. Many were fascinated with the propeller and its relative small size. I have attached a few shots of the show above for your perusal.
The boat is ready to go and we are thinking about attending the Tavares, Florida event next month. As you can imagine it is an expensive deal to tow down there and back from Nebraska and we are hopeful of some sponsorship to help with those and other costs. If you know of anyone wanting their company name on Miss U.S., have them contact me. We will appreciate it. Hopefully will see at least some of you in Florida in a few weeks.
Best Regards to all,
Jay Armstrong
