Carl McQuillen Racing Engines in LeRoy, NY has remanufactured two circa
1906 Curtiss OXX6 V8 airplane engines which
lifted off Keuka Lake in Hammondsport, N.Y. in a replicated Curtiss
America 1913 seaplane. www.seaplanehomecoming.org is where you can see
this amazing thing. Carl is an aviation aficionado and somehow the
Curtiss Museum found him and his capabilities. They had two right hand
rotation surplus OXX6 V8 engines that needed to be rebuilt, with one
converted to left hand rotation to drive the other propeller. Instead
of simply rebuilding, Carl redesigned the nearly century old engine
with some modern technology (pistons, camshafts, valves, magnetos, etc)
and instead of 80 HP as dyno tested in 1906 (and in 2006 on Carl’s
dyno) the rejuvinated OXX6 engines now make 140 HP, both right and left
hand rotation! It was delightful to watch this project unfold, using
modern-looking but century-old cast aluminum engine blocks and billet
crankshafts machined in 1906 on manual lathes driven by flapping
leather belts.
22 years ago, then young Carl McQuillen
accompanied me to SuperFlow headquarters in CO Springs to help me
assess this new computerized dyno testing equipment I saw in some Hot
Rod magazine. Carl was just then beginning his engine building
business, had his own dyno, and did performance stuff for street/ strip
dragracers. He convinced me it was wise to borrow $50,000 for this
then-new dynamometer technology “if I wanted to do it right” so I could
spend another $50,000 adapting it, and creating this test cell to dyno
test snowmobile and motorcycle engines. As young people are apt to
type, online, “WTF?”. But here we are.
Carl was helpful to me
while I created this fixture/ facility for testing and tuning. When I
began testing things and learning, Carl was one of many who helped me
understand what was happening that had bewildered me. If you look back
in the DTR archives–Volume 1 #4 Carl McQuillen explained for us, in
understandable terms, why Breck Norton’s “Extrudehoned” 650 Wildcat engine failed
to make added HP even though airflow CFM was marginally higher.
Since
then Carl McQuillen Racing Engines has invested in many bucks
worth of equipment including CNC machining and EDM equipment, several
new fully instrumented dyno cels, and is capable of creating intricate,
useful things out of huge hunks of metal. This OXX6 engine project is a
great example of that capability. Here is a good Utube video, showing the green-shirted plane builders beckoning Carl to be in the the photo-op before the flight. White-shirted Carl did wade into the picture, and surely if the plane flew Carl would get his own green shirt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMMAmTLUaTI