Doug Fraser Racing Engines
(All photos by Doug Fraser -- Unless I'm in them.)A History
In order to put all this in context, I need to back up to 1963 when I was working in Cambridge Massachusetts as a lab technician training monkeys.
LSD had recently been making the news and the US Army Chemical Corps was wondering if it might have any strategic uses. So we trained monkeys to do various tasks, then gave them (secret) drugs provided by the Army - I still don't know what some of that stuff was, but we had some seriously stoned monkeys.
However, Vietnam was increasingly draining our military's resources. The project lost its funding and I lost my job. I think the monkeys were disappointed too.
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Crandall-Hicks |
At about this time time, Crandall-Hicks, in Wellesley Massachusetts (The US importer of BMC cars) was in the process of not negotiating with their line mechanics, who had just walked out en-masse. I never found out what the issue was, but Crandall-Hicks was prepared to hire anyone that knew clockwise made a bolt tighter, and I desperately needed a job.
This turned out to be a super opportunity to play with neat cars. Working for the importer, we got employee discounts on parts, and BMC had a serious racing department with lots of performance goodies.
BMC 948 Sprite Special Tuning Sheets.
I built a full-race Sprite and even hopped up a (don't laugh) MG 1100..
Autodynamics |
I'd been at Crandall-Hicks a few years when a company in Marblehead Massachusetts called Autodynamics (I'd never heard of them) advertised for a racing engine builder.
One of the First Autodynamics Articles
I applied for the job, and then pestered them mercilessly until they agreed to hire me.
I started as an apprentice to John Harkness - master Formula Vee engine builder. Under his tutelage, I learned to build some pretty strong Vee engines, but more importantly spent a lot of time on the dynamometer.
These were pre-OSHA days. The dyno sat about 6 feet from the plywood wall against which the dyno controls were situated. We stood with our back to the dyno - engine screaming - working the throttle with our left hand, the load control with our right, reading the tach with our left eye-ball and the torque meter with our right, and somehow managing to write down some numbers. (OK, I'm kidding about the eye-ball thing)
I'm glad we never blew up an engine - I wouldn't be here now.
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Formula Ford |
It was early 1969. Formula Ford was in it's first year as an official SCCA class, and Autodynamics decided to enter the fray.
l remember Ray Caldwell calling me into his office and asking me if I thought I could build a competitive Formula Ford engine from scratch. I lied - I said "sure".
This began a period of me building approximately two engines a week for the Autodynamics Caldwell D-9 Formula Fords, and dyno testing every one of them.
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Skip Barber(Click image for a Photo Gallery) |
As an engine builder, my biggest break was when Autodynamics brought on Skip Barber to drive the D-9. Skip was one of the best racing drivers in the country, and as long as I didn't handicap him, my engines were going to look great.
Racing drivers are, with some exceptions, an odd lot. If they win, it's their driving, if they loose, it's because the other guy had a stronger engine.
Skip won, hands-down, so there were a lot of folks wanting engines just like his. He once quipped that if he showed up with a whirling propeller on the top of his helmet, next time out, everyone would have them.
Skip had the added advantage of being a smooth and consistent driver, sensitive to small changes and able to report, in a sensible way, how an engine was running. This helped fine-tune his engines at the track.
Ultimately, Skip won the 1969 SCCA National Championship.
There is an amazing story about this win: Boston Globe article.
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Doug Fraser Racing Engines |
Autodynamics had been selling lots of cars, and winning lots of races, but not making enough money.
In 1971 they filed for bankruptcy.
Bill Alsup, F/F driver extraordinaire, from Woodstock Vermont, had two Ford engines at Autodynamics for rebuilds, and offered to pay me in advance if I'd take them home and finish them.
This was the start of Doug Fraser Racing Engines.
I took a day job as a service writer at a Rolls Royce dealership, and built engines nights.
In the meantime, Skip Barber had started the 1970 season with a free ride from Techno, and engines from Holman-Moody in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Except that the engines didn't work well.
Holman-Moody was the builder of some of the worlds best large displacement engines. However they hadn't yet mastered the painstaking techniques for extracting those last few horses from a small engine, and Skip couldn't wait.
He hired me away from my service writer job (I wouldn't have lasted much longer there anyway) borrowed the engine dyno from Ray Caldwell and set me up in a garage complex in Brookline.
The F/F field was getting much larger, several new engine builders had entered the scene, and they were getting serious.
I realized that the old two-hand, two-eyeball methods weren't going to hack it any more, so I drew on some of the nerd-skills I'd learned as a lab technician and instrumented the dyno. It was primitive, but it worked. I used a surplus Leeds & Northrup X-Y plotter (that weighed about 150 lb.) a torque transducer and RPM pickup.
Now I could run a baseline test, make a change and then run a second test, while plotting right on top of the previous line. It became obvious when something worked or when it didn't.
(This is one of the actual plots from Skips 1970 engine)
One of my more clever tweaks was machining the timing cover to fit a paint can lid, and slotting the timing gear. This allowed me to make cam timing changes in a matter of a couple of minutes so other factors (engine temp. etc.) were less likely to affect the test.
Once again, Skip Barber won the SCCA F/F National Championship. (He also won the Formula B National Championship that year.)
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DFRE Gets Serious |
Business was picking up, so I moved out of my basement, and into a building on Beringer Way in Marblehead.
Autodynamics Reorganizes
Autodynamics reorganized under Chapter 11 and got back to building Formula Fords as well as a new Formula Vee, the D-13.
Letter announcing reorganization
Original Concept Sketch of the D-13 by Bill Woodhead. In my opinion, one of the most creative people on the planet.
1973 Autodynamics Catalog (F/F and F/Vee pages)
Reeves Callaway at speed (Sometime prior to building 200++ mph Corvettes)
[To be continued]
David Loring
Another top driver running the D-9 that year was David Loring. He was too young to race in the SCCA, so he went out and won everything else instead.
[more to come]
US Formula Ford Championship 1972
On Sept. 24, 1972 the U.S. Formula Ford Championship was held at Mid-America raceway in Wentzville Missouri.
This race was to determine which American drivers would represent the U.S at the Formula Ford World Championship to be held at Brands Hatch England on October 29, 1972.
Because the World Championship was scheduled before the SCCA Runoffs, this special event was held and the current front-running F/F drivers from all the SCCA divisions were invited as well as all the top finishers from 1971.
The top finishers were Jack Baldwin, 1st., Bruce MacInnes, 2nd., and Ron Dykes, 3rd. Gordon Smiley came in 5th. -- all with doug Fraser engines.
This is a photo taken during the mandatory engine tear-down at the end of the event, with me looking very smug and very '70's.
Car&Driver IMSA Pinto
I was approached by Pat Bedard from Car & Driver magazine to build engines for their latest project car - the just-released 2.3 liter Pinto to be raced in the IMSA sedan series.
This was a great challenge and having the opportunity to be the first one to develop this engine for racing was pretty exciting.
Ford provided me with the SAE paper describing the 2.3 engine development as well as considerable other technical support.
One of the areas that had the most effect on the power of the Pinto engine was reworking the head and inlet manifold. These are the original flow bench plots from that engine.
Don Sherman, the technical editor at C&D during that time, recently (Mid-2008) acquired the car and is now restoring it to it's former glory.
The DFRE Engine Number Listing (Does not include engines with prior numbers) |
Turbochargers
On the way back from accompanying the C&D Pinto to Daytona, I was introduced to a new C&D project car, the Turbocharged Opel. I'd never ridden in anything so fast. Or perhaps it was the insane driving in the canyons of New York City - but either way, I was hooked.
We shifted our enmpasis to custom turbocharger installations and began manufacturing kits for Porsche 911's and BMW 2002's.
[to be continued]