Jon Kaase Mercury offshore marine engine

 

 

 

 

At the Jon Kaase Race Engines booth at the 2016 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) trade show they proudly displayed a bright yellow Mercury Racing QCV4 engine built to power the 50-foot long Miss Geico offshore catamaran racing boat.

 

Equipped with two of these 520-cubic inch engines, each generating 1650 horsepower, the 13,000 pound stern drive boat can attain speeds approaching 200 miles per hour. The team owns a total of six engines which in a constant race-ship-rebuild cycle.

 

Photo courtesy of  AMF Riviera Beach, LLC

 

The all-aluminum double overhead camshaft twin-turbocharged V8 engine was originally developed by Mercury Racing, a division of Mercury Marine specifically to power the massive off-shore speedboats. The engine is a bit large for automotive application as it measures almost three feet across from camshaft cover to camshaft cover and as shown at PRI weighed over 900 pounds.

 

 

The dual-overhead-cam cylinder heads use "finger followers" to activate the 32 valves (4 per cylinder). The camshafts are driven by three chains: one from the crank to a cam-drive sprocket, and then two chains drive the twin cams in each bank.

From the Mercury Racing factory without the wiring harness, electronic control unit and turbochargers the QCV4 crate engine is priced at $68,000. We will leave it to you the reader to guess the price of the engine shown by Kaase fitted with custom stainless steel headers and a custom Wilson  Performance intake manifold that featured twin intercoolers to feed the twin turbochargers.

Check out the boat at http://missgeicoracing.com/

Check out Jon Kaase at http://www.jonkaaseracingengines.com/

Photos by the author except as noted

Top Fuel Hydroplane drag boat

The Hedman Hedders booth at the Performance Racing Industry (PRI) trade show featured the Hedman-sponsored “Shockwave” Top Fuel Hydroplane drag boat driven by Tyler Speer who celebrated his 26th birthday just prior to Christmas.

Speer took an interesting career path; after a childhood racing motocross and go-karts, he graduated to late models then began racing an ARCA (Automobile Racing Club of America) stock car on the dirt one mile tracks as a 20 year old in 2010.  To date Tyler has run 11 dirt races with his best finishes in 2016 of seventh at both DuQuoin and Springfield which matched his career best from the 2012 season.

In previous years, the stock cars driven by the young man from Woodstock Georgia carried primary sponsorship from his father Jim’s ProBoat Inc. boat service shop, but this past year Speer drove a Chevrolet owned by Andy Hillenburg that carried sponsorship from the Lucas Oil Drag boat racing series.

In 2015, Tyler stepped into drag boat racing at the controls of the Amphibious Motorsports “Climax” Pro Modified boat. A “Pro Mod” powered by 500-cubic inch ‘hemi’ style engine on methanol in a hydro style hull with the single 11-inch diameter propeller driven through a v-drive. “Pro Mod” places a premium on driver ability as the goal is to race down the “liquid quarter mile” to the finish ahead of your competitor in 7 seconds without going under that barrier.

As a rookie in the 2015 Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing (LODBRS) Pro Modified series, Speer finished seventh in the national points standings. This past season, Speer won the LODBRS  Pro Modified World Championship in a tight points race which was only determined at the series’ ninth and final race at Wild Horse Motorsports Park near Phoenix Arizona.   

Also during 2016, Tyler Speer made his first appearance in the #131 Hedman-sponsored “Shockwave” Top Fuel Hydro owned by Robert Montgomery. Shockwave is a “outrigger” style Ellison hull powered by a 500-cubic inch supercharged engine that burns a mix nitromethane and methanol to produce an estimated 10,000 horsepower and uses Hedman Hedders. 

Lucas Top Fuel boats use a W-drive transmission mounted ahead of the backwards mounted engine which splits the engine’s power into two contra-rotating propellers which spin at up to 20,000 revolutions per minute (RPM) to drive the “Shockwave” boat from a standing start to over 255 miles per hour at the end of the 1000 foot course in 3 ½ seconds.  

A view inside the driver capsule of the Hedman Hedders “Shockwave” which is designed to break away and float in case of a crash, with the driver breathing from the air tank mounted on the floor of the capsule.   

In 2017, Tyler Speer plans to defend his LODBRS ‘Pro Mod’ title and hopes to run a full season in the Hedman “Shockwave” Top Fuel hydro as well as compete in the two ARCA dirt races. Hedman Hedders has been proudly making exhaust tube headers in the United States since the company was founded by Bob Hedman in 1954. Check them out at  http://www.hedman.com/

All photos by the author

High-tech inspection at PRI 2016

Approved body components specified under the INDYCAR aero kit rules are off limits to alterations by the Verizon Series teams, but if you are at all like the author you have wondered “how do officials know what is legal or not?”

 

Online Resources Inc. demonstrated the system on the PRI show floor

using Ed Carpenter's Fuzzy's Vodka DW12 INDYCAR

 

At the 2016 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) show in Indianapolis, Online Resources Incorporated demonstrated their Creaform Handyscan 700 scanner, Surfcam and Geomagic software which is used to create a 3D model as an inspection and quality-control service for INDYCAR.

 

 

“A laser line is reflecting over the car and cameras built into the scanning unit are capturing the position,” said Jay Schaumberg, president of Online Resources Inc.  "The Geomagic Capture compares the scanned results to the files provided by INDYCAR with different colors on the monitor used to represent tolerances accepted or outside the rules."

The laser scanning inspection complements areas measured and weighed during the technical and safety inspection process during INDYCAR race weekends.

 

Learn more at http://new.onlineresourcesinc.com/

Photos by the author