The really "Old School" boating thread

[gn7]

I imagine that it's something simple and logical like a casting or an ignition or maybe it has to do with Reynolds #'s. I just don't know!

I'm tired of racking my brain Bob and I now have a headache from over use so would you just answer you own question so I can get some sleep! please.

Don't feel alone, it drove me crazy for years, so I finally sucked up my ignorance and asked Rudy WTF??

Maybe it just seemed strange to them mounting an engine backwards

They were backwards in crackers, PDOHs and hydros long before flats, so I don't think it bothered then to install an engine backwards.

Woodpecker is a circle boat Bob, remember....?

Oh yeah, DUH!



Before V drive flat bottoms, virtually all high speed boats were crackers or hydros with direct drive. There were V drive boats but they tended to be semi planning displacement boats like Chris Crafts and Hackers. Not exactly rockets on the water. Direct drive boats almost always have the engine in backwards because the engine is installed on the same angle as the prop shaft, which is a pretty steep angle. The flywheel has to be to the front, just to get the crankshaft center line low enough to hook to the propshaft. Imagine a cracker with the flywheel to the rear and you can imagine how high the engine would have to sit. By turning the engine around, and putting it on the prop shaft angle, the flywheel almost automatically clears.

So all the best props and development for high speed use in the early days of v drive flats were for the boats with direct drive. V drive flats were an up coming oddity. If you drive a boat thru a v drive, you have to drive it off the nose to use the same props. It was better in a circle boat anyways, and in a drag boat it was just cheaper and easier to run off the snout.
Flywheel forward started to really take hold when the FE Ford became popular because the snout on the cast crank FEs couldn't take it, and they had to run off the flywheel. About the same time, the drag boats were making to much power for the snouts to drive the boat and the high over drive blower, and they were forced to follow suit,

Originally running v drive flats off the nose was strictly due to available props.