San Diego BayFair
Sept 17th, 2017
Sept 17th, 2017
After a huge crash last year, Scott and Shannon Raney and their team rebuilt their U-11 Hydroplane and was back on the water for the last race of the season in San Diego.
With a new title sponsor, J&D's Metal Fabrication, the Raney's had the necessary funding in place to make all the repairs.
Scott was all smiles as we were all ready to go race.
Not everything goes to plan and the missing component for this weekend's race was the prop shaft. The heat-treater had dropped the ball and it sat for almost 15 days waiting to get treatment. By noon, on the Friday of the race weekend, we had the shaft in hand.
Thankfully, Cornel Feceu and his lead grinder at Quality Grinding came through for us at the last minute.
They side-stepped an existing job and worked overtime to centerless grind the almost 10' long prop shaft to within +/-.001!
We delivered the prop shaft to a happy Scott Raney near San Diego that night.
The U-11 qualified 4th for the main event. You can really only win from the two inside lanes, usually lane one. The rooster tails are so long from these boats, that you can't cut thru them to take the inside lanes because the water will drown the engine, actually break it if it gets a good gulp of water. So you basically have to hope that the guy to the left of you breaks.
That isn't really racing to us. But the challenge for us is making gearboxes that can withstand 3000 hp at 17,000 rpm, and boat speeds over 200 mph hopping in and out of water. We have been very successful in providing gears that last for several seasons, while at the same time we have considerable less rotational mass, more ratios to fine tune the boat, and therefore acceleration and top end are greatly improved.
Piloted by Tom Thompson, the U-11 had major handling issues in the race. The boat wanted to pull to the left, so Tom had to steer right to keep it going straight; which scrubbed off speed. And in the turns it was turning too much to the left, so he really had to muscle it thru the turns!
These boats aren't designed to turn right, so at speeds approaching 200 mph, you can imagine Tom had his hands full. Still, Tom and the U-11 finished the race in 4th.
That isn't really racing to us. But the challenge for us is making gearboxes that can withstand 3000 hp at 17,000 rpm, and boat speeds over 200 mph hopping in and out of water. We have been very successful in providing gears that last for several seasons, while at the same time we have considerable less rotational mass, more ratios to fine tune the boat, and therefore acceleration and top end are greatly improved.
Piloted by Tom Thompson, the U-11 had major handling issues in the race. The boat wanted to pull to the left, so Tom had to steer right to keep it going straight; which scrubbed off speed. And in the turns it was turning too much to the left, so he really had to muscle it thru the turns!
These boats aren't designed to turn right, so at speeds approaching 200 mph, you can imagine Tom had his hands full. Still, Tom and the U-11 finished the race in 4th.
