Cowes festival 1990

[Jim Brooker]

Many thanks for the insight ... I guess from a spectators point of view these problems were not really known, although everyone that watched the races realised their were always going to be mechanical issues for one reason or another. Back in the day I used to think, **** why would Jon Clarke choose Lambo to power the cat, when Follett are so reliable with their diesel Issotta engines claiming win after win in the UK, and the old class 2 double 2 also had many wins with the relatively reliable Sabre diesel engines. But now with hindsight I'm thinking the Lambo's were very temperamental, the Issotta's seem now to have had equal quality issues, so what was left for the racers back then, perhaps going the way of the 46' Cougar with 3x600+ sabre or go petrol Merc. Think the last race I watched Follett in was the Southampton Global series where it unfortunately had problems and retired

The Issotta's in Follett's were very reliable, the only time's the boat retired was with the Turbos seizing up, the shaft side thrust would wear-out, over 3150 rpm the turbo's would over-speed when 3250 rpm max was reached.
The 46' Cougar just wasn't fast enough only 85mph I just could get it going quicker, not enough power and the boat was a little to big.

 

[cfun]

The Cat is SDA.
The quadruple Formula1 motored boat of Edwardo Poli (owner of the Rainbow Bears race team), a CUV I 'think', where's Pete Currington when you need him?.... Sometimes it had two drives & siamese gearboxes, sometimes 4. Always blisteringly fast for part of the race, only to break before the flag.JF

JF describes SDA and the transmission, he also mentioned the length in another post as it was one of the largest cats at the time, and in the pic it appears very very long 1st pic, 2nd pic SDA engines as JF describes, 3rd pic again shows the size and complexities of this extreme racer

 

[Jon Fuller]

Back in the day I used to think, **** why would Jon Clarke choose Lambo to power the cat, when Follett are so reliable with their diesel Issotta engines claiming win after win in the UK,

Remember Clarkie had his own engineer (john somebody) doing his motors, I think he was an ex race car engineer, mebbe Le Mans type racing, can't remember, anyways, I think they had their own dyno and did a lot of work trying to develop them. He seemed a clever bloke, but maybe his expertise wasn't aligned with the requirement for the job, as lambo's looked after by Conrero seemed reliable enough at the time!
I remember him telling me he'd developed a remote inboard pump/filter/cooling setup for the MkIV Speedmasters which had improved their durability enormously by circulating nice clean, cooled oil.
I think the drive uppers used to get quite hot and of course running 'surface', even the lowers aren't immersed in a way that will aid cooling much, so his remote system seemed quite innovative. mebbe Jim has a view on it??

Anyways, despite the dyno work, JC's Lambos never seemed very robust to say the least.

 

[Jim Brooker]

Remember Clarkie had his own engineer (john somebody) doing his motors, I think he was an ex race car engineer, mebbe Le Mans type racing, can't remember, anyways, I think they had their own dyno and did a lot of work trying to develop them. He seemed a clever bloke, but maybe his expertise wasn't aligned with the requirement for the job, as lambo's looked after by Conrero seemed reliable enough at the time!
I remember him telling me he'd developed a remote inboard pump/filter/cooling setup for the MkIV Speedmasters which had improved their durability enormously by circulating nice clean, cooled oil.
I think the drive uppers used to get quite hot and of course running 'surface', even the lowers aren't immersed in a way that will aid cooling much, so his remote system seemed quite innovative. mebbe Jim has a view on it??

Anyways, despite the dyno work, JC's Lambos never seemed very robust to say the least.

I think cooling and filtering the oil is a much better way than dry-sumping drives, but they do get very hot. I used to rebuild a lot of MK 3-4-4A and some 6's, there was no problems with the drives on petrol engine's and with Mk 6's, but with all the smaller drive's connected to Diesels like on Apache, Double 2 Shirts, RHS 1 and 2 and Folletts with the 600 bhp Sabre's in them had a very short life, in the earlier years the lower gears would only last about 4 hours, so I started getting all the gears shot-peened and I used to round off the the leading edge on each tooth, and then they would run for over 8 hours, still not very long.