McLaren: The Engine Company 9780768095128, 0768095123

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McLAREN: The Engine Company

McLAREN: The Engine Company A History of McLaren Engines, Inc. and Its Successors BY ROGER S. MEINERS

Warrendale, Pennsylvania, USA

400 Commonwealth Drive Warrendale, PA 15096-0001 USA E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 877-606-7323 (inside USA and Canada) 724-776-4970 (outside USA) Copyright © 2020 SAE International. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of SAE International. For permission and licensing requests, contact SAE Permissions, 400 Commonwealth Drive, Warrendale, PA 15096-0001 USA; e-mail: [email protected]; phone: 724-772-4028. Library of Congress Catalog Number 2019939937 http://dx.doi.org/10.4271/9780768095135 Information contained in this work has been obtained by SAE International from sources believed to be reliable. However, neither SAE International nor its authors guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information published herein and neither SAE International nor its authors shall be responsible for any errors, omissions, or damages arising out of use of this information. This work is published with the understanding that SAE International and its authors are supplying information, but are not attempting to render engineering or other professional services. If such services are required, the assistance of an appropriate professional should be sought. ISBN-Print 978-0-7680-9512-8 To purchase bulk quantities, please contact: SAE Customer Service E-mail: Phone:

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Chief Product Officer Frank Menchaca Publisher Sherry Dickinson Nigam Development Editor Lindsay Brooke Director of Content Management Kelli Zilko Production Associate Erin Mendicino Manufacturing Associate Adam Goebel

dedication To my wife Katie, my ever-patient supporter.

contents Introduction

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

Foreword

xv

Preface: Two Men, Two Visions

CHAPTER 6

The First “In-House” McLaren Engine Shop

xvii

SECTION I

SECTION II. FOUNDING McLAREN ENGINES, Inc.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 7

The Beginning: Tragedy and Perseverance 3 CHAPTER 2

Bruce McLaren: Driver to Europe

7

CHAPTER 3

Rev-Em Racing: Teddy, Tyler, and Bill

13

CHAPTER 4

Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. (BMMR) 17 The Tasman Cooper Cooper-Oldsmobile—The Zerex Special

17 18

CHAPTER 5

McLaren’s Engine Program—Before Detroit 23 The Oldsmobile F-85 Aluminum V8 Gary Knutson The F1 Indy Ford The Chevrolet “Small Block” The Chevrolet “Big Block”

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33

23 24 25 26 29

Moving to Detroit

41

McLaren’s Headquarters in America

42

CHAPTER 8

1970: Indy and Can-Am The First McLaren Indy Car The 1970 Can-Am Season Reynolds Block Chevrolet Racing Chevrolet Racing: The Cosworth Vega NASCAR Engine Development

47 47 51 52 53 55 56

CHAPTER 9

1971: Knutson Returns—With Bailey Roger Bailey’s Ticket “Herbie Horsepower” Roger Meets Herbie

59 61 62 63

CHAPTER 10

McLaren Racing 1971–1976 A New McLaren Indy Car 1971 Can-Am Season

67 67 70

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viii Contents 

1972—McLaren’s Last Can-Am Season Can-Am Big Block Summary 1972: McLaren M16 Wins the 1972 Indy 500 1973: The IndyCar Program Continues The Tragic 1973 Indianapolis 500 1974 IndyCar Season Team McLaren’s First Indy Victory The 1975 Indianapolis 500 1976 Indianapolis 500: Another Win for McLaren

71 75 77 77 79 80 81 82 83

CHAPTER 11

Developing the Turbocharged Cosworth DFV Taming the Vibes

85

SECTION III. A NEW McLAREN ENGINES: THE RACING BUSINESS CHAPTER 15

Rebuilding

117

Mayer Motor Racing The CART Technical Committee BMW Engine Programs The McLaren Mustang Peugeot V6 Turbo Porsche Turbos 924 and 944 1997 Saleen Mustang at Le Mans

117 118 118 120 121 121 122

89 CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 12

IndyCar Racing: 1977–1979

93

1977: The M24-DFX Makes Its Debut The 1977 Indy 500: Touching 200 The 1978 Season The 1979 Season

94 96 96 97

CHAPTER 13

A Skunkworks F1 Engine 1977–1979

101

The BMW 320 Turbo Engine 1977: Ready to Race The 1978 Season The 1979 Season

101 106 107 109

The Buick Turbo V6 Racing Engine The ARS Engine A Version for IMSA Buick Turbo V6 Drag Car Buick LeSabre Turbo V6 Bonneville Car The Buick Hawk: Six Valves per Cylinder

Crisis and Crossroads

113

Team McLaren Leaves America Decision A Reprieve …

113 114 114

131 131 133 133 134

CHAPTER 17

BMW Returns: The IMSA GTP Car

139

CHAPTER 18

Project 734: McLaren Goes Offshore

CHAPTER 14

127

145

S E C T I O N I V. A N E W M c L A R E N ENGINES: THE AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING BUSINESS

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Contents ix

S E C T I O N V. T R A N S I T I O N S

CHAPTER 19

McLaren International, McLaren Engines, and ASC-McLaren ASC-McLaren The Buick GNX The Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo

155 156 157 161

CHAPTER 20

Other Niche-Market Program Opportunities The GMC Syclone Prototype The Supercharged Oldsmobile W-Car Convertible Proposal A Niche-Market Postmortem

169 169 170 171

CHAPTER 23

The McLaren Engines/ASHA Merger The Cadillac LMP Engine The Ramjet ZL1 Crate Engine The Transition Continues: A New Investor Indy Car Racing: One More Time Acquiring Dart Machine, Ltd. Selling Gerodisc

199 201 205 206 206 206 207

CHAPTER 24

Linamar Acquires McLaren

209

CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 21

A New Customer: Ford Motor Co. The Breakthrough “Belden Court”–The Vehicle Development Center

175 177 179

McLaren Acquires New OEM Programs Generation III Viper Engine Development The Generation IV Viper Engine Lamborghini Huracán Competition Engine Programs Electric Vehicle Powertrain

213 213 214 215 218

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 22

Other Automotive Engineering Business 183

A New Headquarters and a New Name

Legend Industries The PPG Pace Cars O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt Other OEM Projects General Motors Delphi Eaton Corporation Catalytic Converter Testing and Development Other Projects

Project Unity: Going Forward

222

Appendices

225

About the Author

247

Index

249

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183 185 188 190 190 192 193 194 194

221

introduction This is the little-known story of a Michigan company initially known as McLaren Engines, Inc., that served as the McLaren racing team’s North American headquarters during the 1970s. McLaren Engines built the aluminum Chevrolet “big-block” V8 engines for the McLaren cars that dominated Can-Am sports car racing from 1967 to 1971, and the Offenhauser engines that won the 1974 and 1976 Indianapolis 500-mile races. Team McLaren withdrew from the Can-Am series after the 1972 season and closed its IndyCar team at the end of the 1979 season to concentrate on Formula 1 in Europe. Following the departure of Team McLaren, McLaren Engines continued as a race shop, working with other Indy teams and expanded its scope of services to all forms of racing. It also took on an increasing number of non-racing projects, eventually morphing into an engineering services provider to the automotive industry. I had heard about McLaren Engines during the Can-Am era, when I  was a college student and auto racing enthusiast. I watched Bruce McLaren win the 1969 Can-Am title at Texas World Speedway and saw him close up along with fellow Kiwi and McLaren team driver Denny Hulme in the paddock following the race, where Stirling Moss presented the championship trophy. I noticed that Bruce had a slight limp but thought it was just something minor related to his driving that day. I learned later about the childhood orthopedic condition that caused it. During the 1980s, I met McLaren Engines founder H. William “Bill” Smith and he  asked me to provide legal assistance to McLaren Engines in Michigan, as the company planned a major expansion.

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I soon joined the company as the director of operations, working with company leaders Gary Knutson and Wiley McCoy to implement the plan, which included purchasing and completely renovating the building where McLaren Engines started. I also took on a sales and marketing role and became involved with the 1987 Buick GNX and 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo programs in addition to winning new customers, including the Ford Motor Co. Later, during the 1990s, I became a consultant, advising McLaren Engines on various legal and commercial matters. In 2009 McLaren engaged me to facilitate McLaren’s 40th anniversary event. There are many “McLaren” companies founded by or other­ wise directly related to Bruce McLaren, beginning with Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. in 1964. McLaren Engines, Inc., was the second company bearing his name. It was changed to McLaren Performance Technologies during 2000 before being acquired by Linamar Corp. in 2003. The company was then renamed McLaren Engineering in 2016. Other McLaren companies include McLaren North America, Inc., founded by Mayer and Smith during the 1970s to carry out racing projects with BMW North America. Nicholson McLaren Engines was founded in the U.K. by Mayer, Alexander, and John Nicholson to build engines for Formula 1 cars. McLaren International is the successor to Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. Going forward, we will ensure continuity by referring to the subject company, McLaren Engines, Inc., and its successors McLaren Performance Technologies, Inc., and McLaren Engineering as simply “McLaren.” Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. will be known as “BMMR” and the other McLaren companies will be addressed by their full names.

xi

acknowledgments

The idea of a McLaren Engines1 history came up when I was helping plan the 40th anniversary of the company in 2008. I was working with Wiley McCoy, then CEO of the company, and Scott Maxwell, then the general manager. Following a short discussion, we  tabled the idea in favor of concentrating on the anniversary celebration. Wiley contacted me in 2015 to revive the history concept. I was, of course, all for it, but with a sense of urgency born of the loss of important voices from the past, brought on by the recent passing of Teddy Mayer and the serious illness of Tyler Alexander, who would soon pass away. We needed to interview the old timers before it was too late—and Wiley himself was admittedly in that category (a status that I have now achieved). When I mentioned the company’s impending 50th anniversary and suggested 1

Now known as “McLaren Engineering.”

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we might also want to plan for it, he said, “Plan? I’m so old, I don’t even buy green bananas.” I collaborated on this story with Wiley and could never have completed it without his constant help—not only with company history (he was and continues to be the longest-tenured employee/ chief executive/technical leader/consultant for the company) but also for his strong mentorship. Thanks to then-McLaren General Manager Scott Maxwell. Without his support this book would never have been possible. We interviewed the late Bill Smith, a founding partner with Bruce McLaren and Teddy Mayer, as well as original General Manager Colin Beanland. I am also grateful to Colin’s wife Karen, the first McLaren Engines secretary, for her recollections. The late George Bolthoff, McLaren Engines’ first development engineer and engine builder, gave a concise overview of his history and work with McLaren. He was arranging to send a CD containing historical records, but he died before he could do so. Don Ewald, his longtime friend and fellow drag racer sent the CD later. Thanks also to Gary Knutson, the legendary racing engine guru who Bruce McLaren hired to work for BMMR in 1965, and Roger Bailey, who came to McLaren at the end of 1970. Bailey was the super salesman of McLaren’s Turbo DFV Indy engines and later led the BMW 320 Turbo racing program. He patiently endured hours of interviews and continuous phone calls and emails from me as I tried to get everything straight. I met Bailey in the 1990s through Jim Kinsler, owner of the Kinsler Fuel Injection company, who worked with McLaren on the fuel injection system for the Buick V6 and Cadillac racing engines and provided services for the McLaren Can-Am team’s Lucas injec­ tion components in 1970–71 (and for most other Can-Am teams).

xiii

xiv

Acknowledgements

At that time, I didn’t know that Bailey was one of the first McLaren Engines employees. I knew him only as the Indy Lights manager and that he was once Chris Amon’s racing mechanic at Ferrari. Thanks to Steve Widman for his stories about developing the Chevrolet marine and industrial business, and especially for his account of the epic “Project 734,” the 6.0-liter turbo­ charged Chevrolet big-block offshore racing engine for Mercury Marine. Thanks also to Bruce Falls for his account of his years at McLaren Engines, developing control systems for turbocharged marine engines and for the Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo, among many other projects. We were also lucky to have a weekend with the late Bill Smith and his wife Patsy at their home in Norwich, New York. I am grateful also to Alan Anderson, Dr. Tony Attard, Howden Ganley, Alec Greaves, and John Nicholson for their help in telling their part of story. Many thanks also to the following vital sources (in alphabetical order): Don Bartos; Dean Battermann;

Frank Bohanon; Lee Carducci; John Conely; Tom Dettloff; Jerry Entin; Jim Gamache; Ronnie Hampshire; Daryl Harsha; Bill Howell; Gibson “Gib” Hufstader; Karl Kainhofer; John F. “Fritz” Kayl; David Kimble; Tom Klausler; Vicky Klausler; Mike Matune; Doug Nye; David Palechek; Candy Rees; Peter Simon; Bruce Smith; Mike Smith; Don Taylor; Andy Toton; Bob Tripolsky; Jeff Washburn; Tim Yee; and Cher Van Dyke. The following friends reviewed various drafts and provided their expert insights: Ben Scheiwe, Professor William E. Maguire; John Clinard, and thanks to George Levy, the author of a Can-Am 50th Anniversary history3 published in 2016, for a brief reading and for valuable advice. And I owe a great debt of gratitude to former McLaren Engines Indy team chief mechanic/crew chief Steve Roby, who contributed his detailed history of McLaren Indy car racing and the McLaren Turbo DFV program (see Appendix for the latter) and whose photographs grace many of these pages.

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© Larry Neuzel

foreword

It was fall of 1972 and McLaren team’s Teddy Mayer flew to Indianapolis to meet with me. I was at the track, tire testing for Goodyear with the Gerhardt car. Teddy and I had breakfast together at the Holiday Inn, not far from the track. He outlined the deal. I agreed to it, and that was that. I was given the oppor­ tunity of my life. I would be driving for Team McLaren. In my early days with McLaren, two gentlemen—Bill Smith and Teddy Mayer—owned the McLaren Engines shop in Livonia, Michigan. Gary Knutson was chief engineer. Roger Bailey was the Indy engine man at the time. There they built the Turbo Offices for Indy while maintaining the British-made racing cars during the season. They had also built the big-block Chevy Can-Am engines until the year before I arrived. They also did research work for General Motors and any other manufacturer who wanted to develop secret projects.

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Everyone McLaren employed in the States — Americans, Brits, New Zealanders, and Australians — worked out of this shop. The job of organizing, the most important aspect of professional auto racing, was left to Tyler Alexander, who served as team manager. He was one of the best racing professionals I have ever worked with. They were like a family, a family of hard workers, and a culturally diverse family at that. Racing was their business as well as their passion. This was a team that was willing to work together to win — to be the best of the best! I could tell right away that I had found the magic. McLaren was a racing business. It was not a hobby. I always told my wife Betty that if I ever found a team that loved racing as much as I did, I’d be a winner. How true that was. We set track records, won two Indy 500s, and were victorious in many other races while I was there. When McLaren discontinued racing in the United States after the 1979 season, I moved to the Chaparral Indy car team and added one more Indy 500 win in 1980. Meanwhile McLaren Engines continued on at full speed, building racing engines and, more importantly, expanding its R&D work for the auto industry. This book chronicles the compa­ ny’s transition from racing to engineering R&D for the auto industry: work on marine engines, high-performance nichemarket cars such as the Buick GNX and the Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo, supercharger applications development, and eventually serious work on electric vehicle powertrain which continues at a fast pace today. I believe that the lessons learned from racing must have certainly transferred to the company’s R&D, engineering, and manufacturing activities. Creativity, attention to detail, hard work, and a drive to meet immovable deadlines are all qualities of successful racers and also successful businesses.

xv

xvi

Foreword

During this time Bill and Teddy sold the company, and I understand that after several years it was acquired by Linamar Corporation. The new facilities on the original Eight Mile Road site are certainly impressive.

McLaren Engines hasn’t given up racing completely, though. The engines it services for Lamborghini won their third straight Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona in January 2020 and the IMSA GTD championship in 2018 and 2019. Johnny Rutherford

© Linamar

© Linamar

preface: two men, two visions The year was 1956. Significant events were taking place for two young men in widely different regions of the world—events that would have far-reaching consequences for each of them. One region was bathed in optimism while the other was the scene of a mortal struggle. While the two events were as different Bruce McLaren as one could imagine, these young men were risking their lives in hopes of a brilliant future. One of them, Bruce McLaren, a young New Zealander engineering student, risked it all—his engineering career and indeed his life—for a chance to become a professional racing driver at the highest level of motorsport. The other, a Hungarian soldier named Ferenc Hasenfratz, risked everything, including his Frank Hasenfratz life, to save his country. These two events would indirectly lead to the creation of two international business enterprises that would come together 50 years later in America. In January 1956, McLaren took his father’s place in a major support race for the biggest racing event in his country, the New Zealand Grand Prix. It was what he called his “lucky break” and it would lead to fantastic successes in New Zealand, Australia, England, Europe, Canada, and America. He founded a company in England named Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. (BMMR), from which came some of the most dominant road-racing cars that ever took to the track in North America. He also founded a company there, called McLaren Engines, Inc., which would build the powerful engines for those amazing cars and house that unbeatable McLaren racing team.

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Meanwhile in Hungary, Ferenc (Frank) Hasenfratz was fleeing for his life. In October 1956, he had joined a revolution in Hungary that began on October 23. The revolution deposed the Sovietdominated puppet government, drove occupying troops of the Soviet Union out of the capital, Budapest, and established a new government. Hasenfratz was elected a member of the Revolutionary Council, but the revolution collapsed when no foreign government responded to its desperate cries for assis­ tance. Moscow, after waiting a week and confirming that the outside world would not respond, sent its troops into Budapest on November 4 and the killing began. It was all over by November 11. Hasenfratz fled the country via a harrowing trek, arriving in Austria on November 22. By December he was in Italy, where he paused before embarking to Canada aboard an Italian freighter on May 7, 1957. He arrived in Quebec City 8 days later. During the next few years, Hasenfratz established himself as a machinist near Guelph, Ontario. In the early 1960s he started a machining and manufacturing company named H & M, which grew rapidly and in 1966 was re-established as Linamar Corporation. In 2003, Linamar bought McLaren Engines (then known as McLaren Performance Technologies, Inc.), 2 based in Livonia, Michigan. We will follow the McLaren branch of this story in the following pages. The Linamar story is told in the book Driven to Succeed: How Frank Hasenfratz Grew Linamar from Guelph to Global.3 2 3

In 2016 McLaren Performance Technologies was renamed McLaren Engineering. By Rod McQueen and Susan M. Papp, Copyright © Carlslae Strategic Communications Inc. and Postmodern Productions Inc., 2012.

xvii

SECTION I

C H A P T E R

1

The Beginning: Tragedy and Perseverance John Nicholson, a racing-engine builder at McLaren Engines, Inc., in Livonia, Michigan, was at the company’s telex machine on the morning of June 2, 1970, reading a message that had just come in from Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. (BMMR) headquarters in Colnbrook, England. “I was always first in and there was the telex,” said Nicholson. McLaren Engines general manager Colin Beanland soon arrived with his wife Karen, the company secretary. Colin noticed the concerned look on Nicholson’s face, and asked him what was wrong. Nicholson answered, “Bruce has been killed.” Bruce McLaren, 32, a native of New Zealand and the founder of Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. (BMMR), died in an accident earlier that day at the Goodwood race circuit near Chichester, England, while testing the company’s revised Can-Am racing car, the M8D. The car’s rear bodywork detached at high speed on the fastest section of the circuit, where the M8D could reach 180 mph. The rear wing of the car went with the bodywork, causing the loss of all aerodynamic down force and throwing the car off the road into an old earthen enclosure used by course officials during races. The violent crash broke the car apart; there was no possibility of survival.

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4

CHAPTER 1 The Beginning: Tragedy and Perseverance

Stunned, Beanland asked himself, “What do we do now?” He immediately called the U.K. headquarters and asked for Teddy Mayer, an American who was Bruce’s partner in BMMR. Mayer confirmed the terrible news. “Ted referred to my friendship with Bruce and said, ‘If you need some time off…’” but Beanland could not do that. The first race of the important 1970 CanadianAmerican Challenge (Can-Am) racing season was two weeks away, and he was vitally involved in the preparations. It wasn’t possible for him to take time off. The new M8D was expected to continue the company’s threeyear dominance of the Can-Am, America’s premier road racing series. Bruce and teammate Denis Hulme, a fellow “Kiwi,” had dominated the Can-Am since 1967, its second year. The McLaren team won all 11 of the races during the previous season and had just opened McLaren Engines, Inc. in Livonia, near Detroit, to support the team. Bruce, along with Americans Edward Everett “Teddy” Mayer and Mayer’s friend, former racer H. William “Bill” Smith, a businessman based in Norwich, New York, founded The Engine Company (as Smith usually called it) in November 1969. Its mission was to build the Chevrolet engines for the McLaren Can-Am cars that were competing in the American series. It was also to build the Offenhauser engines for the new McLaren M15 single seaters that raced for the first time at the Indianapolis 500-mile race on Saturday, May 30, 1970, two days before Bruce’s death. The new company also housed the race teams and provided logistics during the racing season. It was effectively McLaren’s North American headquarters. Engineer George Bolthoff, a former professional drag racer from California, ran the engine shop and was a director of the new company. He built the all-conquering Chevrolet Can-Am racing engines in England during the 1969 season and came to

Detroit with Beanland to set up the shop for the upcoming 1970 season. “I found out [that Bruce died] when I came in to work that morning. It was devastating.” Tyler Alexander was in Indianapolis in the aftermath of BMMR’s first foray into the just-completed Indianapolis 500, running the new M15. He was having breakfast with Bruce’s friend, competitor, and sometime racing teammate Dan Gurney, when he was called to the phone to receive the news from Mayer. Alexander was one of the first BMMR employees and the McLaren racing team’s crew chief. He thought, “What the hell do we do now?”1 He flew back to England, to the McLaren headquarters in Colnbrook, near Heathrow Airport. “Of course, the factory was in a terrible state, with the feeling of doom and gloom as the shock, sadness and uncertainty all came to the surface,” he said. “It’s times like these when you have to get a hold of yourself and keep people together—in this case, the people who helped to make Bruce McLaren Motor Racing the team that it was. It was now time to use the things that we all had learned from Bruce, without showing personal sorrow. It was then that Teddy stood up in front of everyone at the factory and said, with no fuss or preamble, but in standard Mayer-speak, ‘We all realize that something not very pleasant has happened, but we have a company called Bruce McLaren Motor Racing, and it has a Can-Am race in two weeks—so best we get on with it!’”2 The McLaren team now had to build a replacement for the wrecked car and get both cars to the first race at Mosport Park

Alexander, T., Tyler Alexander: A Life and Times with McLaren, David Bull Publishing, Phoenix, AZ, 2015, 97. 2 Ibid., p. 98. 1

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near Toronto on June 14. This meant everything had to leave the factory in a little more than a week. The next few chapters recount how Bruce McLaren, Teddy Mayer, and Bill Smith originally came together to create McLaren

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CHAPTER 1 The Beginning: Tragedy and Perseverance

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Engines, Inc., and then we will follow the company through the decades as it survives Bruce’s tragic death as well as other crises while finally reinventing itself as a successful engineering and manufacturing company.

C H A P T E R

2

Bruce McLaren: Driver to Europe Bruce McLaren and Colin Beanland were close friends, beginning in their youth in New Zealand. They raced cars together, along with other friends, including Phil Kerr, who eventually joined McLaren in England. Bruce proved to be an exceptionally gifted racing driver. In 1957, he won the New Zealand International Grand Prix Association’s first “Driver to Europe” scholarship, which provided financial support for the 1958 racing season in Europe. Bruce went to the U.K. on the scholarship and Colin accompanied him to help run Bruce’s Cooper racing car. They found accommodations at The Royal Oak pub, which was just behind the Cooper Car Company works in Surbiton, Surrey, a suburb southwest of London.1 Cooper designed, built, and raced the cars Bruce drove in New Zealand and would now drive in Europe.

1 The Cooper works, located at Hollyfield Road, received an English Heritage commemorative “Blue Plaque” on August 16, 2018. See https://www.english-heritage. org.uk/about-us/search-news/english-heritage-unveils-blue-plaque-at-former-cooper-car-company-works/, accessed November 25, 2018.

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CHAPTER 2 Bruce McLaren: Driver to Europe

He had brought his Cooper single seater to England, a car purchased the year before from Jack Brabham, the celebrated Australian champion who raced on the Cooper Formula 1 team. Brabham was quite close to the McLaren family, basing his racing cars at the McLaren Garage when racing in New  Zealand. He  took notice of Bruce’s skills, not only in driving but particularly in his perceptive and intuitive engineering aptitude. Brabham said in his autobiography that he originally met Bruce at the New Zealand Grand Prix. Bruce’s father introduced them. “Bruce was a very keen youngster who read all the right books and probably knew more about engineering and racing cars than I did,” said Brabham. “I shall always remember how enthusiastic Bruce was.”2 Bruce sold the Cooper upon arriving in England and upgraded to a new Formula 2 model, which he and Colin built themselves from raw parts off the factory tube rack. The story was told that, when Bruce arrived at the factory, he asked where his new car was—and was directed to the steel tubing on a nearby rack from which he would have to build his own chassis, as did all the teams in those days. Roger Bailey3 said, “You didn’t buy a chassis from Coopers. You bought a pile of tubes; John Cooper would give you a jig and Ernie4 would help you weld it.” Bruce had already started fabrication by the time Beanland arrived and joined him in completing the car.

 FIGURE 2.1   Bruce and Colin with Bruce’s new Cooper F2 car. Beanland reported that, when they posed for the picture, Bruce pointed at a fastener and said, “This is a bolt. Turn it left to loosen and right to tighten.”

© Colin Beanland collection

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Brabham, J., Jack Brabham, William Kimber & Co, Limited, London, 1971, p. 70. Bailey was a mechanic on the Ken Tyrrell’s Cooper F-Jr, F2, and F3 teams during that era. He  was Bruce McLaren’s mechanic for two F1 races in 1960. More on his great contributions to racing later in the book. 4 The shop’s welder. Last name unknown. 2 3

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CHAPTER 2 Bruce McLaren: Driver to Europe



They raced it in the U.K. and on the Continent, with great success, including winning the F2 class at the German Grand Prix on the infamously difficult and dangerous Nürburgring mountain circuit. That result put him firmly on the map in the road-racing world. He finished fifth overall, behind four F1 cars and was only 10 seconds behind a Ferrari team car driven by Wolfgang von Trips. Ian Burgess, also driving a Cooper, was Bruce’s main competition during the season with the prize being a possible Cooper works drive for 1959, according to Beanland. Beanland had a big thrill at the AVUS track in Berlin when he got to drive Bruce’s Cooper on the track. The circuit layout separated the paddock from the pits in such a way that the race cars had to drive all the way around the track to reach the pits. When Beanland got into the car to move it, Bruce said, “Have a go!” Colin was taken aback but decided to do just that, booting the Cooper down the Autobahn straight and through the high banking at speed before completing the circuit at the pits.

© Courtesy of Revs Institute, Karl Ludvigsen Photograph Collection

 FIGURE 2.2   Bruce McLaren (R) and Ian Burgess with their Formula 2 Coopers near the AVUS track in Germany during the 1958 season. Burgess was injured in a crash during the race and missed the rest of the season.

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During the race, Beanland saw a Cooper in a big crash some distance from his vantage point in the pits but did not know who it was until he saw Bruce go by. Unfortunately, it was Burgess. He was injured and out for the season. Bruce continued to do well during the rest of the season and was rewarded with an invitation to join the factory team for 1959. “When we got off the plane in Auckland,” said Beanland, “We were surprised to see that there was a crowd of people cheering Bruce and throwing their hats in the air.” Bruce was initially slated to run another season in F2, but Cooper—realizing Bruce’s great talent—decided he  would be Jack Brabham’s teammate in F1, joining Masten Gregory, the American from Kansas City, who was already in place as a team driver. Bruce got off to a great start to the 1959 season by finishing fifth in the Monaco Grand Prix, his first-ever F1 race, which Brabham won. Bruce didn’t run in the Dutch GP, but Brabham took second and Gregory was third. Bruce came back to finish fifth in the French Grand Prix, with Brabham third while Gregory didn’t finish. The British GP at Aintree saw Bruce finish third while sensationally sharing fastest lap with Stirling Moss, who finished second to winner Brabham. Neither Bruce nor Jack finished the next two races, while Gregory took a second at one of them but was later injured in a crash and could not participate further. Coming into the last race of the season, The United States Grand Prix, held at Sebring, Florida, Brabham was leading the championship. But Stirling Moss and Maurice Trintignant, driving Coopers, were within striking distance. If one of the three drivers won the race and scored the single point for fastest race lap, he would be world champion. Moss took the lead at the start of the race and pulled out a 10-second gap over Brabham. McLaren followed closely in third. Trintignant had trouble and was well back. Then on the fifth lap

10

CHAPTER 2 Bruce McLaren: Driver to Europe

Moss fell out of the race, as Trintignant began a determined charge. He gained ground with each lap and recorded the fastest lap as he  moved into third place, but Jack and Bruce were well ahead.  FIGURE 2.3   McLaren takes his F1 Cooper T-51 through the hairpin at Sebring on the

© Courtesy of Revs Institute, Karl Ludvigsen Photograph Collection

way to his sensational victory in the 1959 United States Grand Prix.

Then two turns from the end of the race Brabham ran out of fuel. “I coasted on down until we reached the second last corner, when Bruce came alongside me, almost stopping. Bruce was horrified … he had vague ideas of stopping to help me.”5 If he had done that, Trintignant could slip by to win the race, and the championship. Luckily, Bruce got back on the gas and drove the final 800 yards to become the youngest-ever F1 race winner at age 22. Trintignant finished second, so Brabham won the 1959 World Championship, pushing his car across the finish line in fourth place. McLaren started the 1960 F1 season with a win in Argentina, becoming the youngest driver ever to lead the Formula 1 Championship. He eventually ended up second in the series to Brabham who took the title for the second straight time. Following the season, Brabham left to start his own racing team. Bruce remained with Cooper, staying on through 1965. But he had plans.

5

Jack Brabham, p. 139.

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Rev-Em Racing: Teddy, Tyler, and Bill Teddy Mayer, then a Cornell University law school student (he graduated in 1962), his brother Timmy, along with friends Tyler Alexander and Peter Revson formed a Formula Junior racing team in the eastern U.S. called “Rev-Em Racing.” Soon after, they invited Bill Smith, to join them.

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CHAPTER 3 Rev-Em Racing: Teddy, Tyler, and Bill

 FIGURE 3.1   H.W. “Bill” Smith (R), Teddy Mayer (center), and an unidentified person in

 FIGURE 3.2   Bill Smith on a victory lap in his Cooper.

© barcboys.com

© barcboys.com

front of Smith’s Ford store in Norwich, New York, with the three Rev Em Racing Cooper Formula Junior team cars. Teddy’s younger brother Tim, along with Smith and Peter Revson were the drivers.

The best road-racing drivers in America competed in the series, including—in addition to Revson and Mayer—Roger Penske, Walt Hansgen, Charlie Hayes, Chuck Dietrich, and Charlie Kolb.1 1

Formula Junior was created in Europe as an entry-level training series ultimately leading to Formula 1 for the best drivers. It was renamed Formula 3 in 1964.

The Rev-Em team dominated this class in their single-seat cars, Tim Mayer won the 1962 SCCA National Championship in Formula Junior. Bill Smith was fourth and Peter Revson was fifth. Smith’s keen interest in the sport had earlier led him to purchase a rear-engined Elva Formula Junior car from Carl Haas at Inskip Motors in New York. He recalled:

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CHAPTER 3 Rev-Em Racing: Teddy, Tyler, and Bill



 FIGURE 3.3   The Rev Em team at Cumberland, Maryland, May 13, 1962. Tim Mayer (Cooper #2) won the Formula Junior race, with Peter Revson second (Lotus #3). Bill Smith (Lotus #106) did not finish.

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 FIGURE 3.4   A young Tyler Alexander, trained as an airplane and powerplant (A & P)

© barcboys.com

© barcboys.com

technician, was chief mechanic, crew chief, and everything else but driver on the Rev Em Racing team. Teddy Mayer, then in law school, served as team manager. They were friends having fun while creating a tradition of winning everything in sight.

I didn’t even know I had to join the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA)—the sanctioning body then for road racing in the United States. I ran it [the Elva] on the back roads around my home. The car was so low I was lucky I didn’t get killed. That car was just terrible, but through it, I met Teddy Mayer. His brother Timmy had a Cooper Formula Junior. Then I read about Lotus and bought the new Lotus 20. I won at Watkins Glen with that car. By then, Teddy had acquired another Cooper and made a deal with Peter Revson to run it. They got together and started Rev-Em, and then added me to it.

Alexander, Mayer, and Smith met Bruce McLaren during these years because Formula Junior served as a support race series at the United States Grand Prix and at other races in which Bruce competed. This led to their coming together when Bruce formed his own racing company. In 1963, Timmy did a season in Formula Junior with Ken Tyrrell’s factory-supported Cooper team,2 which led to an invitation to run F1 with Cooper in 1964.

2

© 2020 SAE International

Timmy also raced a Cooper Monaco sports car that year.

© Pete Lyons

Bruce McLaren bought the ex-Roger Penske Zerex Special, modified the chassis and rear suspension, installed a Traco-build Oldsmobile F-85 engine and re-named it the Cooper-Oldsmobile. He’s seen here winning the Guards Trophy at Brands Hatch England in August 1964.

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Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. (BMMR) The Tasman Cooper In 1963, Bruce wanted Cooper to build two cars for the new 2.5-liter Tasman Series, which was to be staged in New Zealand and Australia during the winter of 1963–1964. Racing events Down Under were attended by many top drivers from Europe during their off season. Cooper declined, probably because the factory needed to get the F1 cars ready for next season. However, Cooper did agree to let Bruce build the cars himself. So, McLaren set up a new company, called Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. (BMMR) to build and run the cars. The company’s directors were Bruce, his wife Patty, and Eoin Young, a journalist friend from New Zealand who served as Bruce’s secretary/public relations agent at that time. Teddy Mayer made a deal with Bruce for his brother Timmy to drive one of the cars and contributed the 2.7-liter Coventry Climax FPF 4-cylinder engines from Timmy’s Cooper Monaco sports car. They fitted new short-stroke crankshafts to get

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CHAPTER 4 Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. (BMMR)

the engines down to the 2.5-liter Tasman engine displacement limit. Bruce’s Kiwi friend Wally Willmott1 and Tyler Alexander a certified aircraft airframe and powerplant mechanic—built two new “slimline” Coopers. They were similar to the Cooper F1 cars, but they had smaller fuel tanks (the Tasman races were shorter than those in F1) and narrower cockpits with stressed skin panels to stiffen the center section. They also added a new trailing-arm rear suspension with coil springs, replacing the traditional Cooper transverse leaf spring arrangement. Painted dark green with silver stripes, the cars would be called Coopers in deference to Bruce’s contract with that company, even  FIGURE 4.1   The sleek and sparse Tasman Cooper, one of two built by the new Bruce

© Roger Bailey collection

McLaren Motor Racing (BMMR) team for the 1964 winter race series in New Zealand and Australia. Mayer provided the Coventry Climax engines to the enterprise. The author counts this as the first McLaren because the BMMR crew built it to Bruce’s design—especially the completely new rear chassis structure and suspension.

1

Bruce’s close friend Willmott came to England in 1962 (he was a part-time racer in New Zealand; running a Ford Special and a 500cc Cooper-Norton) and became Bruce’s personal mechanic. He left in 1967 to get married and live in Australia.

though the back half of the chassis and rear suspension was designed by Bruce and the entire car was built by the new BMMR team. Alexander was set to handle Timmy’s car. Colin Beanland joined Tyler for all eight races,2 while Willmott worked with Bruce. The Tasman series went exceedingly well for the team as Bruce won three races, finished second twice and third twice, and had already clinched the championship as they went to the last race, on March 2 at Longford, Tasmania, a circuit made up of public roads. Timmy had two seconds and two thirds at that point. The Longford track was the fastest in the series, but it was undulating and very bumpy, with two narrow bridges, an “S” bend under a viaduct, and a railroad grade crossing. Disaster struck at Longford corner during practice on Friday when Timmy’s car got airborne over the hump at King's Bridge. It landed wrong, got away from him and crashed against a tree. Mayer was ejected and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Bruce parked his own car for the rest of the day and the next, but he participated in the main event on Sunday, starting at the back of the field. He finished second, while Graham Hill won in a Brabham. Teddy arranged to get everyone—Timmy’s wife Garrill, Alexander, and Timmy’s remains—back to the family home in Pennsylvania. After the funeral, Teddy received a phone call from Bruce that would bring Mayer and Alexander back to McLaren.

Cooper-Oldsmobile—The Zerex Special Bruce was looking for new opportunities. He decided to buy the “Zerex Special,” the F1 Cooper that Roger Penske converted into 2

The government was taking the building housing his New  Zealand parts operation because it was in the way of a highway project, so he closed the business and rejoined Bruce.

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CHAPTER 4 Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. (BMMR)



3

Mecom had been using the F85 engines in his one-off Scarab mid-engine sports racer until replacing it with a small-block Chevy. A.J. Foyt won the 1964 Daytona Continental in the Scarab-Chevy. The author was there as a spectator.

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 FIGURE 4.2   The second McLaren, officially named the “Cooper Oldsmobile,” was the

ex-Penske Zerex Special acquired from John Mecom. Bruce is seen here at Mosport in June 1964, winning from Jim Hall’s state-of-the-art Chaparral 2 and Mecom’s mid-engine Scarab, driven by A.J. Foyt.

© Pete Lyons

a full-fender center-seat “sports car” in 1962. Penske’s success with the car for two years in America and England had earned him national attention. Bruce asked Mayer to finalize the purchase and ship the car to the U.K. in time for the Oulton Park Trophy race, scheduled for April 11, 1964. Alexander left immediately for Pensacola, Florida, to pick up the car along with a new Tracobuilt Oldsmobile F-85 engine in a crate.3 He then drove nonstop back to New York to air-ship the car to England and follow there to help Willmott prepare the car for the race, which was only three days away. Bruce qualified the Cooper third at Oulton Park but did not finish. He won the next weekend’s Aintree 200 and also won the International Sports Car Race at Silverstone on May 2. After that, Bruce directed Alexander and Willmott to cut the chassis apart and insert a new back half that had room for the wider aluminum V8. They worked from a wire model Bruce had created. They changed the rear suspension to match the trailing-arm design Bruce created for the Tasman Cooper. There was no time to build an exhaust system for the new Olds V8, because the car had to be at Mosport for the Players 200, a major North American event, so they installed eight exhaust stacks that pointed up through the bodywork—and left them uncut—just haphazardly sticking out of the engine bay. This was rather uncharacteristic of a McLaren project.

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The car was then hustled to the airport and sent to New York, where Bill Smith took it to his Norwich shop to await the team’s arrival. “I sent Barney down to pick it up at the airport in New York,” said Smith: The car was … ugly. They never finished the exhaust pipes. It sat outdoors—I put a tarp on it until they got it ready and took it to the race at Mosport, in Canada. Jim Hall was there

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CHAPTER 4 Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. (BMMR)

with the Chaparral. [Bruce’s] car kept throwing oil out. Right in the center of the block was an air vent and I got an orange juice can and some steel wool—put some holes in it and got by. The car was the fastest one there. So that was the first McLaren car. As Smith said, these cars, the “Cooper-Oldsmobile” and the Tasman Cooper, could possibly be called the first McLarens except for political considerations—Bruce was still on the Cooper team, and the cars, of course, were only half McLaren. Well, with Bruce driving they were more than half McLaren. After Mosport, the car came back to the U.K. where Bruce won the Guards Trophy at Brand Hatch on August 3 and participated in the Tourist Trophy race before selling the ex-Zerex car

back to the U.S., where Dave Morgan drove it in a few SCCA races and more notably in the Bahamas Speed Week races in 1965 and 1966.4 After completing the Zerex Special/Cooper-Oldsmobile project Alexander remained with McLaren. Beanland was there, managing the build of a secret prototype McLaren F1 car using an aluminum-and-wood “sandwich” material called Mallite. The car, designated M2, debuted in the 1965 season, following Bruce’s departure from Cooper. 4

According to online records, Morgan drove the car in the SCCA Polar Prix regional races at Green Valley Raceway near Fort Worth, Texas, in January 1966. The author was there as a corner worker but doesn’t remember the car.

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McLaren’s Engine Program—Before Detroit The Oldsmobile F-85 Aluminum V8 During 1964 BMMR was working on the first McLaren-badged racing car—the McLaren M1A. Like the CooperOldsmobile, the car was powered by the Olds F-85 V8. Featuring aluminum cylinder block and heads, the F-85 pushrod V8 was introduced by Oldsmobile in 1960 for the 1961 model year along with a similar engine for Buick. The two GM engines had virtually identical blocks, with capaci­ ties of 215 in.3 (3.5 liters). Both blocks extended below the crankshaft centerline for strength. Their only difference was the Olds used six bolts to attach the cylinder head and Buick used only five. Cranks and connecting rods were identical, but they had different pistons, cylinder heads, and inlet manifolds. Racers immediately adopted the engines for competition, taking advantage of their low mass. The Olds version weighed 266 lb. without starter, generator, and cast-iron exhaust manifolds. The almost-identical Buick version had a similar weight.

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CHAPTER 5 McLaren’s Engine Program—Before Detroit

The Buick V8 was used in Mickey Thompson’s Harvey Aluminum Special, driven by Dan Gurney in the 1962 Indianapolis 500. The Mickey Thompson Buick engine was reportedly bored out to 256 in.3 (4.2 liters) as allowed by the United States Auto Club (USAC) rules and produced 330 hp at 6500 rpm with a 14.5:1 compression ratio. Repco, the Australian auto parts maker, used the Olds F-85 block as the basis of its single-overhead-cam racing engine that Jack Brabham and teammate Dennis Hulme used in their Brabham-Repcos to win the 1966 and 1967 Formula 1 World Championships.

Racers always want more performance, so builders increased the Olds V8’s displacement—first to 4.5 liters, then 5 liters. The resultant increase in horsepower and torque proved to be too much for the cylinder block structure holding the rotating assembly—the crankshaft, rods, and pistons. Traco Engineering added a main bearing saddle, a ladder-like structure that enclosed and supported the main bearing caps. All of this was expensive, but Bruce’s philosophy was to have the lightest weight possible. The other teams were using the small-block Chevrolet V8, some enlarged to 365 in.3, also Traco-built, that delivered much more horsepower—but they were 100 lb. heavier.

 FIGURE 5.1   Traco-built Oldsmobile V8 in the McLaren M1B prototype. Bruce favored

Gary Knutson

this lightweight engine over the more powerful, but heavier, Chevrolet small-block V8—until the results of a test at Goodwood convinced him otherwise.

Tyler Alexander photo

Engine engineer Gary Knutson came to McLaren in 1966 from Jim Hall’s Chaparral team. Knutson originally joined Chaparral after college through Hall’s younger brother Chuck, a fellow racing enthusiast whom he met in Colorado. The two hit it off. Knutson won a hot rod hill climb in Colorado when he was 16 years old, driving his friend’s ’32 Ford coupe powered by a Ford flathead V8 with ARDUN overhead-valve hemispherical cylinder heads that he built himself. Later he raced a Lotus 11, but his forte was building racing engines.

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CHAPTER 5 McLaren’s Engine Program—Before Detroit



 FIGURE 5.2   Gary Knutson, age 16, with his Ardun Ford V8 in a friend’s 1932 Ford. He won the trophy in a Colorado hill climb in the early 1950s.

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“I knew Teddy [Mayer] from racing activities while I was working for Chaparral. I remember I met [Bill] Smith at the same time. I met them all at races. Spent a week with them at Nassau Speed Week. I left Chaparral when they were going long distance racing. I didn’t want any part of that. I moved to Aspen in December of ‘65 to practice my skiing. In the spring [of 1966] Smith and Teddy and [Teddy’s wife] Sally showed up. They decided I should go to work for them in England.”

The F1 Indy Ford

Knutson: “Boulder was my home. That’s where I got to know Chuck Hall, Jim’s brother. He was a good friend of mine from high school—the Fountain Valley School for boys. Their older brother sent these guys, Mike, Colleen and Chuck Hall, away to schools when their parents were killed with a sister in a private plane crash. I met Chuck down there. Didn’t know who he was. That’s what started the whole thing. I was Chuck’s contribution to Chaparral cars.” Knutson said that Chuck paid his salary with Chaparral, so he didn’t actually report to Jim. © 2020 SAE International

© Courtesy of Revs Institute, Karl Ludvigsen Photograph Collection

© Gary Knutson

 FIGURE 5.3   Teddy Mayer and Bruce McLaren with the converted Ford “Four-Cam” V8powered McLaren at the United States Grand Prix. The engine did not have the horsepower to go along with its extremely loud exhaust.

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CHAPTER 5 McLaren’s Engine Program—Before Detroit

When he joined McLaren, Knutson worked on the Ford Indy engine to convert its displacement to 3.0 liters for the 1966 F1 racing season. McLaren did not have a suitable engine for the new 3-liter formula. So, Bill Smith contacted Ford vice president Lee Iacocca to get the Indy engine. “I wrote to Iacocca. He said, ‘You know, they cost a lot.’ I said, ‘We need the stuff.’ Teddy took over from there. McLaren bought five Ford Indy engines. That was when Gary Knutson got involved.” Motoring journalist Eoin Young provided some details about the program in a letter to Road & Track magazine: “Klaus von Rucker was engaged as an engine design consultant when we first investigated the Indy Ford as a three-liter GP unit. He worked with Gary Knutson and English engine man Bill Lacey. These three worked out the route to take.” After some work in England, Knutson moved the development program to Traco’s engine shop in Los Angeles; George Bolthoff was there and remembered the project. Young said, “We are hoping for a reliable 330-350 horsepower for Monaco.” But there were problems with the engine. “We couldn’t get the compression ratio high enough,” said Knutson. “And the ports were way too big for a three-liter engine, so it couldn’t produce the torque needed to get the car out of the corners on a road course. But it sure produced a robust exhaust note. Too much, in fact,” he said. “Imagine racers complaining about engine noise! It was during the F1 race at Monaco, so the sound was bouncing off all the tall buildings around the course,” he added. McLaren temporarily gave up on the Ford and tried the Italian Serenissima road car engine. “I don’t know who got the idea,” Knutson said, “but Serenissima’s people were impressive. They shipped it to us and some Italians came with it.” The M166 3-liter V8 did not fit the car’s transmission, so the Italians, “went back to Italy on Friday and came back on Monday with a bell housing that they cast and machined over weekend.

Nearly killed them. But they did it and it was fine. Bolted right together. We couldn’t believe it.” But the engine lacked power—and reliability, so McLaren reverted to the Ford engine, but it wasn’t good enough. Finally, the team received the BRM V12 they had ordered some time earlier, but it wasn’t the solution either. McLaren’s F1 program struggled for want of a good engine until they acquired the new Cosworth DFV V8 for the 1968 season.1

The Chevrolet “Small Block” Though Bruce McLaren favored the aluminum Olds F-85 V8 because of its light weight, the rest of the McLaren team wanted the Chevrolet engine, but it took some convincing. Beanland recounted: The [F-85] was a tremendously expensive engine to build because of all the machining to get to five liters. You can imagine how fragile it was and there were gusset plates inside the timing cover behind the camshaft timing gear and so forth and also in the bell housing. And it was cross braced at the crankshaft simply with holes for the rods to go through—slots, that would be—to try and keep this thing together. Bruce was very keen on that Olds engine because it was light, and he maintained and defended his position many times because it weighed 100 lb. less than the Chevy engine. But the economics of it were that the Chevrolet engine was a relatively inexpensive engine to build, they simply put 1

“In ’66 we should have used a three-liter [pushrod] Olds instead of the Ford,” Beanland reflected recently. “Three liters would have survived where the five-liter [Olds Can-Am engines] only lasted six hours, and that’s for an $8,000 engine.”

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CHAPTER 5 McLaren’s Engine Program—Before Detroit



in a better set of con rods and the Moldex crank and so forth and basically that’s really all the deviation was from stock parts. The Olds engine from Traco was probably $8,000 or $9,000 where you  could buy a $3,000 Al Bartz or Traco Chevrolet engine.

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 FIGURE 5.4   Bruce with Alexander and the M1B at Saint-Jovite with the new Webercarbureted small-block Chevy.

Anyway, the first engine that Al [Bartz] built for us was a 333-cubic-inch version2, and it got shipped over to Boston. All the adapter parts arrived from the Colnbrook factory and Tyler and I fitted this thing in a little shed adjacent to Tyler’s parents’ home in Hingham for the first-ever Can-Am race, to be run at Mont Tremblant in St. Jovite, Canada. “In ‘66 we got together with Bartz,” said Knutson. Al Bartz left Traco in 1966 and opened his own engine shop (George Bolthoff replaced him). He  supplied McLaren with 2

Beanland: “I wouldn’t mind betting that there was a series of three engines built, a s­ econd one for the other car that Chris Amon was driving, and one spare. We also went to a ZF transaxle to transmit the power.”

© 2020 SAE International

© Wade Fuller

And it came about that some of our guys were testing at Silverstone prior to the 1966 Can-Am season—Chris Amon was doing the driving—and they were mulling around this extra weight; what difference does it make to a lap time? So anyway, at lunchtime, Chris and mechanic Bruce Harre (much later the Firestone tire engineer) not only went for lunch but also came back with a big sheet of plumber’s lead. They put a big wad of it over the transmission, and they bolted a lot of it behind the seat—a hundred pounds of weight, which would be the weight difference from the Olds engine to the Chevy. And it didn’t make a difference in lap times. They went back and reported this to Bruce. And Bruce said, “I can’t fault it” and he calls out to Teddy Mayer, “Weiner, order us a Chevrolet engine.” And the answer came back, “I did. Two days ago.”

precision-machined iron blocks Knutson used to build up a racing engine. They were initially equipped with four twinthroat Weber carburetors. Later, Hilborn constant-flow fuel injection was tried. It sprayed fuel even when the intake valve was closed. The system was better at wide-open throttle but was not great at part throttle, which was more needed on road courses. So, for the 1967 Can-Am season Knutson decided to develop a Lucas timed fuel injection system for the

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CHAPTER 5 McLaren’s Engine Program—Before Detroit

Chevrolet engine. It provided fuel on the intake stroke—and it was mechanically metered according to throttle position. British Formula 1 cars used this Lucas-developed system. “Lucas—the old aircraft division—was not happy with us,” said Knutson. “Their metering unit was OK for Formula 1, but not for us. Not putting it on a Chevy engine!” They told him, “No you can’t make that work. Forget it.” He wouldn’t give up that easily. “Luckily BMMR production manager Harry Pearce3 knew somebody at Lucas,” he said. “And one day they showed up with a Mark 1 metering unit, eight nozzles, rolls of fuel line and said, ‘Here. We don’t want to know about this.’” Knutson had a Mickey Thompson magnesium cross-ram manifold he could use. It was designed for Weber carburetors, so he modified it for fuel injection. With it, the McLaren M6  FIGURE 5.5   Knutson’s new Lucas-based fuel injection systems for 1967 with Traco

© Courtesy of Revs Institute, Karl Ludvigsen Photograph Collection

throttle bodies on a converted Mickey Thompson cross-ram manifold. The extremely short intake trumpets were a far cry from the towering intake stacks coming in 1968.

3

Pearce was a successful motorcycle racer, retiring in 1955. He passed away in 2017 at 94 years of age.

Can-Am cars were more drivable, an advantage against the Weber-carbureted or Hilborn-equipped competition. “We had an area for assembly of small blocks in Norwich [at Smith’s Ford dealership], then at Long Beach between California races,” said Knutson. “Wherever we could have some floor space. We were nomads. Smith provided the tow truck, pick-ups and trailers in the early stages. I remember driving across the country too many times, a whole Chevy small block in the back of a ninepassenger van, driving nearly non-stop across the country.” From 1964 through 1969, before McLaren Engines, Inc., was formed, Smith Ford was McLaren’s headquarters on the East Coast from 1966, housing the Can-Am cars when they ran eastern U.S. tracks: Watkins Glen, Mosport, St. Jovite, Bridgehampton, Road America, and Mid-Ohio. Smith provided shop space on the east end of the dealership building, and everyone on the Can-Am team worked out of there. “It was a leftover shop from the Rev-Em Racing days,” explained Smith. “Lee Muir built engines at my dealership. We sent Magnaflux work out to the [former] Franklin air-cooledengines factory nearby.” The racing team would take over an entire motel for the summer—though they didn’t like the two-guys-to-a-room arrangement, according to Smith. “Most of the year, I provided logistics and parts procurement services—engines, metals and fasteners,” he said. “When they needed anything, they couldn’t get in England, they got me on the phone to chase parts for them.” In the early days, for example, Smith bought Olds F-85 V8 engines wherever he could find them. Smith also provided tow vehicles to the team. Cars were hauled on open trailers. Later, McLaren made a deal with Roger Penske Chevrolet in Philadelphia to supply three 1-ton trucks, to which Smith had fitted with ramp bodies to transport the cars. Knutson said, “The race team would go on and we would do the engines. We ended up at Bartz’s at the end of season and © 2020 SAE International

CHAPTER 5 McLaren’s Engine Program—Before Detroit



started to work on the big block Chevy—at first an iron block with aluminum heads. Stuff you could buy from a Chevy dealer. Me and Beanland, and then Lee Muir, a California guy, came on board.” Muir was a Volkswagen mechanic who volunteered to help the McLaren team when they were racing on the west coast.

and dyno time at Al Bartz’s nearby engine shop. Chevrolet Engineering sent blocks and heads and Knutson adapted intake manifolds, dry sumps, and associated hardware to run the engine in the McLaren M8A. Initial testing had been done at the Goodwood circuit in the U.K. in 1967 on an M6 that McLaren modified to fit a big-block engine as a stressed member. The car was in effect the M8 prototype. Californian Muir and Bruce’s friend Colin Beanland assisted Knutson. “Ted Mayer sent me a ticket,” said Beanland, “and said, ‘Get to California.’ Gary met me at the airport. We got into the big blocks. And Gary and Lee Muir were still doing development on the cast-iron version until aluminum ones arrived.”

The Chevrolet “Big Block”4

4

For details about the “Big-Block” engine see “McLaren-Chevrolet Big Block Develop­ ment History” in the Appendix. (David Kimble. Hot Rod magazine, February 2016.)

© 2020 SAE International

 FIGURE 5.6   The McLaren M8 prototype at Goodwood before the 1968 season. It’s an M6 with tub alterations to accommodate the M8’s semi-stressed engine mounting. Gathered around the car are, from left, Denny Hulme in helmet, Gary Knutson behind Hulme, Teddy Mayer, Phil Kerr, Wally Willmott (blue shirt), and Bruce McLaren in a driving suit.

© Geoff Goddard/GP Library

For the 1968 season, McLaren switched to an aluminum version of the Chevrolet “big-block” Mark II 427 in.3, staggered-valve pushrod V8 that Chaparral used in 1967. It was based on the 427 “Mystery” engine used in NASCAR beginning with the 1963 Daytona 500.4 Prior to adopting the Chevy, Bruce was considering using an aluminum version of Ford’s 427 in.3 NASCAR engine for 1968 in the new M8A Can-Am cars. The big Ford V8 was already being supplied to Shelby, recalled Wiley McCoy, who was building the engines at Holman and Moody at the time. Bruce was close to Ford via the Ford GT40 racing program, and he won Le Mans with fellow Kiwi Chris Amon in a GT40 MK II powered by a cast-iron 427 in 1966. McLaren had also built the Ford GTX (dubbed “Big Ed” in the shop), the topless aluminum-chassis Ford GT that won the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1966. It certainly wouldn’t have been a surprise if the team switched to Ford for the 1968 Can-Am season. When Chevrolet Product Promotions Engineering manager Vince Piggins heard the rumors about McLaren using the Ford engine, he called a meeting with Bruce at the GM Technical Center. Piggins offered McLaren aluminum big-block engines from Chevrolet Engineering based on the “Chaparral” dry-sump blocks developed by the Chevrolet R&D group. Bruce accepted. The development program started in 1968 with Knutson in California, working at a shop in Van Nuys, but using machinery

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CHAPTER 5 McLaren’s Engine Program—Before Detroit

Testing was done at Bartz’s shop. Initial work was done using Chevrolet-supplied blocks and aluminum heads that Knutson and Beanland dressed with McLaren intake manifolds and Lucas fuel injection. The aluminum blocks came off temporary

tooling from Chevrolet R&D until production parts became available. 5 “They were very much like a workshop or tool room engine,” said Beanland. “You could see the blue engineer’s marking ink. Not every engine was quite the same. You made a bracket for one and it didn’t necessarily fit another one.” Following the 1968 season, Knutson left McLaren to rejoin the Chaparral team. He said, “I remember [I was] at Colnbrook, getting ready to go. I was coming down from the design offices and met Tyler coming up the stairs and he said ‘Traitor!’ to me. I went to Midland. It was late ‘68.”

 FIGURE 5.7   From left, Knutson, Mayer, and New Zealand motorsports legend George Begg, help Hulme drive the prototype. The intake stacks look to be smaller in diameter than the final configuration. The Chevy big block figured prominently in the long-running “Bruce and Denny” show.

© Gary Knutson

5

In the year 2000 General Motors found the original production tooling for the alumi­ num 427 CID cylinder block. GM’s Performance Parts group came to McLaren Engines, Inc., with a program to develop a new aluminum big-block ZL1 “crate engine,” called the “Ramjet ZL1,” to be sold to the performance aftermarket. The author arranged this business with GM and provided liaison services. Gary Knutson helped with the fuel injection system. As of this writing, the ZL1 engine block was still available from Chev­ rolet Performance Parts.

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©Doug Nye/GP Library

Bolthoff in the engine shop at Colnbrook, UK, in 1969. Note the clean-up work in the ZL-1 engine’s valley, including the two welded-shut freeze plugs with their now-redundant square-drive cavities. Steel or cast-iron cylinder liners visible here would disappear with the advent of the linerless Reynolds blocks in the 1970 season.

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6

The First “In-House” McLaren Engine Shop Beanland recalled, When Gary quit [at the end of the 1968 season] we needed an engineer. And we decided we were going to build engines in England. I suppose it was the cost. It was hard to get good money from sponsors and I think they were trying to trim down. McLaren had a shop in England. I guess the freighting of the engines was cheaper than having a yearround facility. George Bolthoff was at Traco Engineering when Knutson left McLaren. Bolthoff knew Bruce McLaren because of his work at Traco. So, he called Bruce about the engine-building job, and Bruce hired him on the condition that he would set up an engine shop at McLaren in the U.K. Bolthoff was a mechanical engineer but started his engine-building career as a young drag racer in California. He belonged to The Throttle Merchants, one of the many hot rod clubs in the car-crazy Los Angeles area whose members included soon-to-be famous drag racers Tony Nancy and the Hampshire brothers, “Jeep” and Ronnie.

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CHAPTER 6 The First “In-House” McLaren Engine Shop

 FIGURE 6.1   George Bolthoff, foreground, is hidden by tire smoke as he blasts off the

© Bolthoff Family collection

line in his supercharged Chrysler AA/Gas slingshot dragster. He set numerous national records in gasoline-powered dragsters during and just after the National Hot Rod Association’s nitromethane ban, which was lifted in 1963.

Hampshire remembers Bolthoff as being a meticulous engine builder, whose powerful Chevrolet and Chrysler hemi engines were well respected in drag- and salt-flats racing circles. In 1964 and 1965 Bolthoff won championships and held national records in his own supercharged Chrysler “AA” dragster, running on gasoline. Bolthoff hung out at camshaft-maker Jack Engle’s shop and knew many of the southern California racers of the time. “Monday mornings we’d go down to Engle’s and talk about what happened on the weekend,” he said, “so we were a pretty close-knit group.”

When Bolthoff decided to retire from racing and get a job in 1966, Engle tipped him off about a position at Traco Engineering. Bolthoff said, “Well, I’ll try that.” When he joined Traco in March of 1966, Al Bartz was the head engine builder. “My job was to take over for him—he was leaving to set up a shop out in Van Nuys,” Boltoff noted. “Gary Knutson was there [at Traco], working for McLaren to convert the Ford Indianapolis engine into a road racing engine.” When Bolthoff arrived in England in early 1969 (with his wife and two children), Beanland took them around to see various places to rent. “An American arriving in London gets an awful shock to find the living conditions,” Beanland said, “particularly when you come straight from California. It was a calamity, really. The old houses had coal-fired furnaces and you didn’t just turn the heat on. You had to start the fire and keep adding coal and it would be days before the house would heat up. Harry Pearce was stoking the fires in my house [with its 18-in.-thick stone walls] for a week before Karen and I returned after our wedding in the winter of 1969. She said, ‘Can we turn the heat on?’ I said, ‘The heat is on.’” Bolthoff set up the engine shop in a corner of the Colnbrook factory and began to work out his engine build program. He reflected: London was horrible. Most of the guys there had never seen a V8 before and all the engine equipment was built around four-cylinder engines. You’d have to really work things out—boring cylinders was really time consuming. I spent so much time flying, there wasn’t time to do engine development. By the time I get back to London, I have to put together another engine set and then fly it back to wherever the race was that week.

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CHAPTER 6 The First “In-House” McLaren Engine Shop



Beanland handled the logistics of getting engines to the races in America and back across “the pond” for rebuilding. He said there were six or seven engines in the program during the 1969 season. “Two would be in vehicles, and a couple of spares,” he said. “And after a race they would ship the used engines back.” Meanwhile Bolthoff was in Colnbrook finishing two more engine rebuilds. He originally intended to just send them back to the team when finished, because there was no dynamometer. Time was of the essence. Bruce, however insisted that the engines be run first. Bolthoff built a portable test stand that could be wheeled out behind the plant, where the engines were run briefly before shipment.

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 FIGURE 6.3   A set of engine parts to be made into a 427 or 430 in.3 engine for the 1969 M8-B Can-Am car. Dark-shaded parts are all magnesium, including, from front, the sump, intake manifold, and valve covers.

© Doug Nye/GP Library

© Doug Nye/GP Library

 FIGURE 6.2   A set of prepped aluminum Big Block cylinder heads, ready for an engine build at the Colnbrook shop.

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“We had a good freight forwarder in England,” said Beanland, “and we didn’t really run into any problems, surprisingly, and we made it all in time for the races. There wasn’t any tracking available in those days, so I had a list of contacts I could call at various airports to check progress.” Beanland could call and find out if a shipment changed flights at an intermediate point—say Los Angeles—to see if it had made the next flight out. John Nicholson arrived in the U.K. from New Zealand at about the same time. “He was a good engineer,” said Beanland. “His dad ran Associated Engineering, a big engine rebuilding service in Auckland. He knew engines.” Nicholson raced a Lotus Elan, then a Lotus 27, which he maintained himself.

CHAPTER 6 The First “In-House” McLaren Engine Shop

He had written to McLaren about a job—friends told him to give it a try because Bruce liked to hire Kiwis—and received an invitation to come to England. There were no guarantees, though. He said, “When I arrived at McLaren I was told to go into the shop. As I entered, an arm shot out from the side and handed me a shop coat.” He had a job. Beanland explained the tradition: “The first question a Kiwi asked after arriving in England was, ‘Where is McLaren?’ Then they would go there and get hired.” According to Doug Nye’s McLaren history1 Nicholson said, “George was a really good guy to work with. When I asked him how, he told me how. I didn’t give any aggro. We worked long hours and I enjoyed every minute of it.” Nicholson also did some M8B and M8D track testing for BMMR, his driving experience having been noticed by the team.2 Nicholson and Bolthoff built all the engines for the 1969 Can-Am season, with logistical help from Beanland. “We had a designated guy at GM to get us parts—gasket sets, etc. Bill Howell was involved with that. They shipped stuff express air. Everything was ‘no charge.’” McLaren M8Bs won all eleven races that year, even finished 1-2 in eight of them—and they were 1-2-3 at the race in Michigan when Dan Gurney drove the spare car, starting last. He carved up the field until he was third—and stayed there, in deference to his McLaren hosts. “He was under strict instructions not to beat either Bruce or Denny; Dan, being very quick, was quite capable of doing this,” said Alexander.3 Out of 23 starts, the McLaren: The Grand Prix, Can-Am and Indy Cars, By Doug Nye, Hazelton Publishing, Surrey, England, 1984, p. 39. 2 Nicholson said in an email to the author, “Many years later, Jan McLaren called and asked me to confirm my Mothers name. A family in NZ were doing a family tree and this request to Jan came from them. A few weeks later I received email from Jan saying, ‘Hello Cousin(!!!).’ Bruce and I never knew this at the time I went to work at McLaren. Cousin? I’m not sure, but definitely related.” 3 Tyler Alexander, p. 90. 1

 FIGURE 6.4   Bruce in his familiar #4 car and Denny attacking Turn 5 at Road America.

This is the view that the rest of the field saw all season as the McLaren team won all eleven Can-Am races and took the championship for the third straight year. Imagine the sound of this two-car train!

© Ron Lathrop

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engines only had problems three times, causing two DNFs. The third incident was a failed oil pump drive on Bruce’s car at the Mid-Ohio event, but the engine ran for nearly five laps at the end of the race with no oil pressure. Bruce finished second behind Hulme. Bill Howell was the Chevrolet engineer in charge of developing the Mark II4 and Mark IV big-block V8s for racing. He was also liaison engineer with McLaren, and he spent many hours at McLaren Engines where Chevrolet went for racing engine

4

The NASCAR “Mystery Engine” that dominated the 1963 Daytona 500. It was developed from the 348/409/427 “W” engine, which was known internally as the “Mark I.”

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development during and after the Can-Am series.5 Howell knew Bolthoff from Traco Engineering. “Bolthoff built the Trans-Am small blocks for Penske that we won the championship with in ’68,” said Howell. “He was an excellent builder. Travers hated to lose him. He said Bolthoff ‘was the fastest good builder’ he  knew. “Fast, but never made a mistake,” he noted. Bolthoff was meticulous and single minded when building an engine. “I have an ability to focus on what I am doing—and focus on time,” he explained. “I was an engineer and I was interested in the engineering part of it, but when it came to building engines I  was a fanatic, in that I  had to put the thing together [myself].” Bolthoff built a 430 in.3 version of the big-block Chevrolet V8 for the 1969 season. The 430 had an enlarged (4.44-in.) bore and reduced stroke (3.475 in.) compared with the original 427’s 4.25 × 3.76-in. dimensions. Chevrolet developed the concept, according to Howell. “We knew that reducing the stroke would reduce friction and give more horsepower,” he said. This was proved out on GM’s electric dynos that could turn (“motor”) the engine and measure friction at various engine speeds. “We developed the engine using the MacKay intake manifold, but with constant flow fuel injection.” The Lucas timed fuel injection system wasn’t needed for engine development in a test cell. 5

When the emissions standards came in, GM needed more dynamometer testing and development capacity and claimed the test cells Chevrolet engineering was using for racing projects. “They put us out,” said Howell, “so we went to McLaren.”

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“This engine was used for most of the races in 1969,” said Bolthoff. “The drivers liked it because it was very smooth and would rev easily.” The engine produced over 600 hp at 7,200 rpm and could be consistently turned to 7,500 rpm. Bolthoff also began developing a 465 in.3 version of the engine, which used the 4.44-in. bore with the 3.76-in. stroke using the 427 crankshaft. He reported that Hulme had no interest in that engine, and he had to cajole him into using it. “Denny had a very big liking for the 430,” said Beanland, “the way it spun up. It didn’t have as much power, but it was easy to drive. He would say, ‘Give me a 430 and I’ll win’—and he got what he wanted a couple of times.” Howell was impressed that McLaren won all the races in 1969. “I don’t know that they ever really had any failures,” he said. “I can’t recall any. I know they were working it hard enough that some stuff on a rebuild wouldn’t pass Magnaflux, so they’d have to put new parts in. Crankshafts and eventually a cylinder block would be replaced. They were quite reliable.” In 1970, Bruce McLaren was awarded the Segrave Trophy6 by Britain’s Royal Automobile Club. It was “Awarded posthumously for the design, development and driving of cars that won every round of the 1969 Can-Am Championship.”

6

The Segrave Trophy is awarded to those with the “Spirit of Adventure” for the most out­ standing demonstration of transportation by land, air, or water. Sir Henry Segrave was the first person to hold both the land and water speed records simultaneously. He was also the first person to travel at over 200 mph in a land vehicle. The Segrave Trophy was established in 1930 to commemorate Sir Henry’s life.

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CHAPTER 6 The First “In-House” McLaren Engine Shop

© Courtesy of Revs Institute, Karl Ludvigsen Photograph Collection

 FIGURE 6.5   Bruce’s naked M8-B with unidentified crew member. Note that the wing struts attach to the rear suspension upright, transmitting downforce directly to the rear wheels without affecting ride height.

Before his death, Bruce nominated members of his team to receive medals as part of the award ceremony. They included team driver Dennis Hulme; team manager Teddy Mayer; chief engineer Tyler Alexander; chief design engineer Gordon Coppuck; engineering director George Bolthoff, and chief mechanic Cary Taylor. The award was presented to Bruce’s widow, Pat, in a ceremony at the 1970 British Grand Prix.

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SECTION II. FOUNDING McLAREN ENGINES, Inc.

From left, Bruce L.McLaren, H. William Smith, and Edward E. Mayer founded McLaren Engines, Inc. Their signatures as directors are on the first corporate organization document along with the other directors, Colin Beanland and George Bolthoff.

C H A P T E R

7

Moving to Detroit Bolthoff wasn’t happy with the arrangement as it played out in 1969—building engines in England and going to races in America was not logistically ideal and it would be better to move the operation closer to the action. He observed: I approached Bruce with the idea. “Why don’t we go to where the races are, and where our suppliers are?” Chevrolet was the supplier and we were getting tired of flying around back and forth to the races. The schedule was every two weeks. We spent a lot of time on airplanes. And I just pointed that out; spending a lot of time and money spinning our wheels, when we really need to be doing engine development, and Bruce bought into that. So, he just says, “OK.” I think Bruce assumed that I was talking about going back to California, and he says, “Where do you want to go?” And I said, “Detroit.” that caught him by surprise. I’m a native California boy, lived there most of my life. But I saw Detroit as the place to be—for getting stuff done and having access to General Motors and being able to go on short trips to races. That was all beneficial to everybody.

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CHAPTER 7 Moving to Detroit

The move to Livonia, Michigan, would make the Can-Am program much easier because the McLaren engine development facility was now less than an hour from Chevrolet Engineering in Warren, instead of a full day via transatlantic aircraft. It was not just Can-Am logistics on Bolthoff’s mind. Bruce McLaren had decided to build a car for the Indianapolis 500. It was an idea that Mayer and Smith had been kicking around. Smith even arranged a trip to the Indy 500 to show Mayer what it was all about. Also, Goodyear, McLaren’s tire sponsor, wanted to challenge Firestone at the Speedway. It was the biggest race in the world in terms of awareness among the tire-buying public, so the strategy could yield the desired benefit to Goodyear. To that end, Goodyear had sponsored Carroll Shelby’s ill-fated Indy turbine car effort at Indy in 1968 and put Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme in the cars. Hulme had prior experience at the 500, having been named Rookie of the Year in 1967 after starting 24th and finishing 4th in the race. However, the cars, designed and built by Ken Wallis, were seriously slowed by USAC’s turbine inlet rules. There were also questions about the legality of the turbine air inlet system. Eventually, Shelby withdrew the cars. McLaren would build a car for Indy and it would use Goodyear tires. Goodyear would provide the assistance of an Indy engine-building legend—Herb “Herbie Horsepower” Porter, the “father” of the turbocharged Offy engine.

McLaren’s Headquarters in America Bill Smith was involved with the new company at its inception. “Teddy came to me and asked for help,” said Smith. “Bolthoff had said they needed to come to Detroit. The company included me, Bruce, Teddy, Bolthoff and ‘Beanie’ [Colin Beanland]. I put the majority of the money into the company. It was registered in Delaware on November 26, 1969 with the name McLaren Engines, Inc.”

The board of directors included Bruce McLaren, Mayer (also listed as president), Beanland, Bolthoff, and Smith (listed as vice president, even though he owned a controlling interest in the company). Smith would lead the company for the next 30 years, relinquishing ownership in 1999. Beanland said, “Karen and I  left England at the end of November ’69, and we got off in Boston and brought one of the race car trucks and trailers over to Detroit. George Bolthoff had flown right in to Detroit. We picked up the truck from Tyler Alexander’s parents,” he said. “His dad looked after the vehicles over the winter for us.” Beanland and Bolthoff arrived in Livonia to move into a newly rented 4,500 square-foot unit—one of ten such units—in a brandnew, but nondescript, industrial building at 32233 West Eight Mile Road. “When we walked in, it was bare walls,” explained Beanland. “And the enormity of the thing about made us sick. We had left England where there was a machine shop, there’s an air system, there’s a lathe. Anything you wanted was there. And this place is bare walls, very little electrical and no air conditioning.” Beanland bought a used water-cooled air conditioner and had it installed on the roof. In 1970, “It was just the two of us,” said Beanland. His wife, Karen, served as secretary at Bruce’s request, and she became the de facto office manager during the time her husband was there. Beanland almost immediately added Lee Muir, the VW mechanic from southern California, to the staff. He had been volunteering to help the McLaren team at west coast races for years. Muir even did some work for the team out of Smith’s Ford dealership in New York. Beanland and Bolthoff collaborated to build space for the teams by placing a half-height wall down the middle of the shop space. For the existing Can-Am team and the new Indy car team, their crews and race cars were on the south side with access from © 2020 SAE International

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1

The test cell is still there today, next to that same stairway. The dynamometer is now at an engine R&D company in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

© 2020 SAE International

30 inches in diameter. With about a 10-inch neck. George was able to project where the muffler went through the roof. We found the center of it and dropped a plumb bob. I don’t know how I got up on the roof, but I got up there with a piece of welding rod and a saber saw we rented. And I cut a circle in the roof. George caught the hole as it fell through. I recall that I did most of the flashing on the mufflers in 26-gauge material.” Forty-seven years later, Wiley McCoy commented to Beanland that he did a good job on the flashing because it never leaked there. “The roof leaked everywhere else,” said McCoy, “but not around the mufflers.”  FIGURE 7.1   A 1970 Can-Am engine on the new McLaren Engines Heenan & Froude

water-brake dynamometer installed by Bolthoff and Beanland in 1969–1970. The photographer was an engineering student at the time. He later worked as a designer at McLaren Engines. He and his friend Tim Yee, a classmate at the General Motors Institute in Flint, Mich., walked into the shop unannounced in June 1970. He contributed this photo to the book along with Figure 7.4.

© Daryl Harsha

the overhead door. Engine builders and testing technicians were on the north side of the low wall. The race teams, led by Alexander, were part of BMMR, while the engine builders and support staff were with McLaren Engines, Inc. Bruce arranged for a 1,000-hp Heenan and Froude G490 water brake engine dynamometer to be shipped over from England. It was installed inside a new acoustic concrete block test cell on the east wall, next to a stairway in the northeast corner of the room leading to a mezzanine above.1 “The dyno required getting some plumbers to tap into the water mains on the east side of the building,” said Beanland. “They were eight feet out. We tapped in with a two-inch pipe instead of an inch. George had figured that instead of putting a cooling unit up on the roof, water was so cheap that would be the way to go.” The cooling system would take city water, run it through the dyno, and then dump the water, which was not contaminated in the process, into the sewer system. “But getting tradespeople to understand the urgency was another thing. With time ticking away, we have Offy engines coming and now in March and April they’re starting to show up.” Beanland grew tired of the plumber’s broken promises, so one day he went to their shop and sat there. “They got sick of me waiting and said, ‘OK, c’mon,’ and we went back to our shop to do the work, but Lee Muir couldn’t stand it,” said Beanland. “The layout of the pipes inside the building was so haphazard. When he had a moment, he redid the pipes, so everything lined up.” We got the plumbing in, and the electrical was going in. And George and I built pretty well every piece of bench, grinding room, everything that was in the workshop. We were there seven days a week, and it never slowed down. George got a couple of mufflers made for the dyno room. Ten feet long and

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CHAPTER 7 Moving to Detroit

 FIGURE 7.3   Lee Muir, foreground, assembles a Chevrolet big block v8 in the new McLaren Engines shop.

© Bolthoff Family collection

 FIGURE 7.2   George Bolthoff, at the controls, looks through the dyno cell’s side window. The window is still there, but the controls were later moved to the front of the cell around the corner to his left.

The dynamometer cell was known as “Cell 1” for years. It was the center of the McLaren Engines universe. Great things from McLaren Engines would go through Cell 1—the all-conquering Can-Am big blocks, the Indy-winning Offy and Cosworth engines, and others to come. It’s currently known as “Cell 4,” because that fits the layout of the dyno room, after three more dyno cells were built, but as of 2020 it hasn’t moved. The numbering system moved. The cell used the original control console for decades. It was built by Neil Clark, a GM engineer who helped Gary Knutson computerize McLaren Engines dynamometer controls and data acquisition systems.

© Pete Lyons

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“The whole [McLaren Engines enterprise] was operated on a reimbursement of expenses,” said Beanland. “Phil Kerr— BMMR’s general manager, who was Bruce and Colin’s buddy when they were teenagers in New Zealand—designed up a form and it had various categories, like parts purchased, shop materials, salaries. At the end of the month we’d tally up all these things, Karen would type it all up and I’d put it in the mail to Phil.” In 1970, McLaren Engines got really busy preparing for the Indianapolis 500. “We had to come up with Offy engines six weeks at least before they started sending vehicles over,” said Beanland. “George had to get into doing the Offy almost right away.”

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© Daryl Harsha

 FIGURE 7.4   Offenhauser engines await processing in June 1970, just after the Indianapolis 500.

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George Bolthoff checks sparkplugs during a practice session at Indiapolis 1970. Dale Porteous looks on.

C H A P T E R

8

1970: Indy and Can-Am The First McLaren Indy Car The McLaren M15 Indy car was the first car to be raced out of the new McLaren Engines shop. The Can-Am cars would not arrive until after their first race, which was at Mosport, two weeks later. Gordon Coppuck designed the M15 from Bruce McLaren’s concept, which was a simple solution. It was based on the M8 Can-Am car, but with a narrower central-seat tub. The suspension used M8 uprights and other bits from the M8, including the wheels. “The M15 Indy car was basically a single seat Can-Am car,” said Steve Roby, an Australian who was chief mechanic on the McLaren Indy team from 1976 to 1979. The turbocharged DOHC four-cylinder Offenhauser engine, built at Livonia, was mounted behind the driver in a manner similar to that used for the big Chevrolet V8 in the Can-Am car. The front of the engine was fastened to a wide plate, which in turn was attached to the rear bulkhead of the riveted aluminum chassis (called the “tub”). A pair of triangulated tubular reinforcements ran from that bulkhead to the

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CHAPTER 8 1970: Indy and Can-Am

bell housing at the rear of the engine to support the engine and transmit suspension loads to the tub. The BMMR team built three Indy cars in England. M15-1 was to be a test car. The others, M15-2 and M15-3, were for Denny Hulme and Chris Amon. “The test car was first run on November 3, 1969, at Goodwood in England,” according to Roby. “Bruce and Denny had to learn how to handle the Offy engine’s slow throttle response; it could instantly turn into a massive power surge when the turbocharger spooled up. Imagine a sudden several-hundred horsepower jump in the middle of a corner.” Roby continues: Tom Anderson, a McLaren mechanic on the Indy car team, recalls that the first U.S. test was in Indianapolis in 1969 during a bitterly cold November with both Denny and Bruce. The Goodyear test engine1 died before the end of the fourth day of the test and that failure, coupled with the cold weather, led to the test being terminated. Denny ran a lap at over 168 mph, which would have put him on the front row in 1969, and Bruce worked the test car up to 162 mph. Early in 1970 the three race cars were flown to Detroit and taken to McLaren Engines briefly before moving on to Indy. Chris Amon was slated to be Denny Hulme’s teammate, but he was not comfortable on the speedway and struggled to get up to speed. Amon finally told Bruce that he should 1

Built by Herb Porter.

find another driver. With Goodyear’s assistance, they put Bobby Unser in the car. He immediately went eight-mph faster! Chris headed back to Europe, where he would join the new March Engineering Formula 1 team for the upcoming season.

 FIGURE 8.1   Hulme testing the new McLaren M15 at the Indianapolis Speedway in

November 1969. The car came to the new McLaren Engines in Livonia along with two new M15s to get ready for the 1970 Indy 500. They would be the first team cars to run a race out of the new shop. Photo by Karl Kudvigsen.

© Courtesy of Revs Institute, Karl Ludvigsen Photograph Collection

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 FIGURE 8.3   Herb Porter (at left) poses with Bolthoff at the Speedway in May 1970. Porter built test car engines for McLaren sponsor Goodyear and his expertise was therefore made available to the team.

© Author collection, photographer unknown

Courtesy Nigel Beresford

 FIGURE 8.2   Teddy Mayer’s one-page bulletin was posted on the McLaren shop wall in England in November 1969. Thanks to Nigel Beresford, whose father Don saved this document for all these years, and Steve Roby, who secured it from Nigel for this purpose (Nigel Beresford).

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Hulme suffered severe burns to his hands during a practice run when the fuel vent cap vibrated open, allowing methanol fuel to leak out and catch fire on the hot exhaust system. Earlier, USAC had required the team to modify the cap with springs to keep the closing lever secure. The organization thought that the team was responsible for the fire because they left the cap open. But, one day after the fire the team was warming the engine and mechanic Allan McCall saw the cap start to open on its own. The lever was oscillating due to engine harmonics. A quick redesign was done, approved by USAC, and the problem solved-unfortunately too late for Denny.

engine-related problems. The Ontario track was quite a bit faster than Indy, Lloyd Ruby qualifying at 177.567 mph compared to Joe Leonard’s three-year-old Indy speed record of 171.551. The higher speeds may have been hard on the cars.

 FIGURE 8.4   From left, Hulme in the car, Tyler Alexander conferring with Teddy Mayer, and Tom Anderson walking around the back of the car. Standing on the left is Takeo “Chickie” Hirashima, at that time a spark plug manufacturer’s representative, was a heralded Indy racing mechanic. He also was the riding mechanic for the pole winner in 1935 to 1937—the last three years two-man cars competed at Indianapolis.

© Author collection. Photographer unknown

With Hulme out due to his burns, McLaren ran Peter Revson in car #73 and Carl Williams, with sponsorship support from his friends in Kansas City, in #75. Revson qualified 16th, running quite well but dropped out on lap 87 with magneto issues. Williams qualified 19th and finished 9th, three laps down. The team raced again at the inaugural California 500 at the Ontario Motor Speedway on September 6, 1970. According to Roby, Eamon “Chalkie” Fullalove came over from the Can-Am team to help as pit crew on Revson’s Team McLaren M15-001 (#75) in which he started 10th and was running in second place before losing over eight minutes on the last pit stop, dropping to 9th place. He recovered to finish fifth. Gordon Johncock qualified 11th and finished 4th in one of the two M15s he purchased from McLaren after the Indy 500. Both Revson and Johncock completed the full 200 laps, which was quite a feat, considering that only 8 cars out of 33 were running at the finish with 18 of the dropouts having

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The 1970 Can-Am Season  FIGURE 8.5   Dan Gurney, in the car at Mosport Park, was retained to take Bruce

© Pete Lyons

McLaren’s place in the new McLaren M8D. Here he checks the view while Alexander adjusts the mirror. George Bolthoff rests his hand on the rear wing support and John Nicholson stands behind Alexander. Can-Am commissioner Stirling Moss is in the group behind the car, talking to the man in the Gulf jacket.

As previously mentioned, following Bruce’s death on June 2, the team had less than two weeks to build a new M8D in time for the first race of the season. They determined that the car’s design

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was good, but nevertheless the longitudinal fins that held the wing were strengthened and modified to raise the wing a bit. Dan Gurney was hired to take Bruce’s place on the Can-Am team. McLaren had close ties with Gurney. The two were on the Ford GT40 team, and Gurney gave Bruce a drive in his Eagle F1 when Bruce’s new McLaren F1 car was not available for lack of a good engine. McLaren reciprocated in 1969 when Gurney drove the spare M8B in the Can-Am race at Michigan International Speedway, where he  finished third under “team orders.” At Mosport, Gurney spent a lot of time familiarizing himself with the car, tinkering with roll bars and springs. Finally, with only minutes left for qualifying, he went out and took the pole. Then he won the race. He won the next race, too—at St. Jovite. Gurney remained on the team for one more race, Watkins Glen, which Hulme won, but then his sponsor Castrol objected that Gurney was driving a Gulf-backed McLaren. So, he reluctantly stepped out of the seat and was replaced by Peter Gethin. After Gurney left, Hulme won four of the next six races to take the 1970 Can-Am championship. Gethin took the other two, but McLaren’s Can-Am win streak that started in 1968 ended at 19 when both cars failed to finish at Road Atlanta. Hulme retired early in the race after tangling with another car and Gethin retired near the end of the race with mechanical issues while safely in the lead. Tony Dean’s 3-liter, 350-hp Porsche 908 surprised everybody with the win.

CHAPTER 8 1970: Indy and Can-Am

Reynolds Block  FIGURE 8.6   A recent photo of an original McLaren linerless Reynolds 390 aluminum

© Roger Meiners

cylinder block.

In the late 1960s McLaren Engines’ sponsor Reynolds Aluminum was working with the General Motors Engineering Staff on a new rear-drive small-car concept code-named XP887, which became the Chevrolet Vega. It featured a new 140 in.3 overheadcam four-cylinder engine featuring a revolutionary aluminum cylinder block that did not use liners. The block was cast from Reynolds A390 aluminum, a hypereutectic alloy saturated with silicon that was precipitated out in crystalline form. The cylinders were processed in a way that exposed the silicon particles so that the pistons and rings would ride on the particles, not on the aluminum cylinder walls. This eliminated the need for iron or steel cylinder liners2 while reducing weight. An additional 2

The rear-wheel-drive Vega went on sale as a 1971 model in September 1970 for a base price of $2,090. Chevrolet sold nearly two million of them until the brand was discontinued after the 1977 model year. The Reynolds 390 concept worked well, but the overall design of the engine caused problems unrelated to the alloy.

advantage to eliminating liners was that there was now room for larger bores—as wide as 4.5 in. in the case of the aluminum bigblock Chevrolet engine. The Can-Am series was already seeing such large bores in linered blocks, but the Reynolds 390 alloy made possible “lower friction, excellent sealing, improved dimensional stability, improved heat dissipation, reduced weight, and higher durability compared to the traditional aluminum block with cast-iron cylinder liners.”3 Reynolds Aluminum’s strategy was to show the durability of this new process by using it in McLaren’s 700-hp racing engines. Reynolds hoped this would not only help Vega sales but also spur sales of its A390 aluminum to GM and other auto manufacturers. According to Colin Beanland, the engine development began in 1970 after “six blocks arrived in Livonia one day.” Bolthoff built up 465 in.3 engines for testing and the team began development.  FIGURE 8.7   A typical 1970 McLaren Can-Am engine configuration, seen at Watkins Glen, the third race of the season, with equal-length intake stacks. McLaren tested the Reynolds engine during the season. The first victory came nearly two months later at Laguna Seca, in the hands of Denny Hulme. © Courtesy of Revs Institute, Karl Ludvigsen Photograph Collection

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3

According to literature from Sunnen Products Company, a supplier of engine-building equipment.

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“It was very important to them that they win a race,” he said. “And we finally did that, I think it was Laguna Seca—Denny won the race with the all-aluminum engine and that was the first one, and from then on it was open season; everybody knew about it and Reynolds was anxious to get as many out to racers as possible. So, the exclusiveness of working with that thing disappeared.”  FIGURE 8.8   The Reynolds advertisement that celebrated the first victory of the Reynolds linerless aluminum cylinder block.

“We were having a major problem with oil consumption in Denny Hulme’s car,” explained Beanland. It was so bad that the fluid level in the car’s two-gallon engine oil tank became dangerously low during a race. Tyler Alexander came up with an emergency fix. He told Beanland to mount an auxiliary oil tank that replenished the engine’s oil supply by means of a cable-operated release valve for Denny to pull late in the race. “It was a crude solution,” said Beanland, “and Tyler couldn’t bear to do it himself.” The stopgap system was used for only a couple of races until new piston rings solved the problem.

© Paul Weisel

© Author collection.

Chevrolet Racing

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© Paul Weisel

© Paul Weisel

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© Paul Weisel

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The relationship with Chevrolet was a direct result of the McLaren Can-Am program—going back to the first small-block Chevrolet V8 engines built by Bartz and the advent of the big block in 1968 when Vince Piggins offered the aluminum 427 to Team McLaren. Once McLaren Engines was set up, the company took on various Chevrolet racing projects, many of which were managed by Bill Howell, the liaison engineer from Chevrolet. Howell said, “We contracted with McLaren for all our dyno work until ’76 or ’77.” Immediately following the 1970 season, Bolthoff left the company and returned to California. A big factor in his leaving was that Bruce McLaren wasn’t around anymore. “It was never quite the same [without Bruce],” said Bolthoff. “I missed Bruce’s input as a driver and as a friend.” © 2020 SAE International

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Chevrolet Racing: The Cosworth Vega “The program created new parts from Chevrolet suppliers. We did a cylinder head, a Hilborn system, crankshaft, cams—things like that,” said engine builder “Fritz” Kayl. “We also strengthened the crankcase by adding ribs to the sides,” he added, “But it still wasn’t strong enough. We needed to do a whole new one.” But that would not be part of the program. Howell farmed out engines for testing with the help of Bob Higman,4 a noted midget mechanic out of Lafayette Indiana. Higman built new cars that received the power plants and were run by Indiana and Illinois businessman Dan Pool; Dayton, Ohio Buick dealers Bob and Gene Shannon; and owner-driver Roger Mauro of Denver Colorado. “We had some success with the engine,” said Howell. Indeed, Pool’s car gained notoriety by winning 11 USAC midget main events and is known to history as the “Dan Pool #9.” It was driven by the likes of A.J. Foyt, Bill Vukovich Jr., Stan Fox, Pancho Carter, Johnny Parsons Jr., Joey Saldana, and many other drivers. Currently owned and restored by racing equipment purveyor 4

Higman was a legendary midget owner/car builder/crew chief/mechanic who was post­ humously inducted into the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame in 1995 and the USAC Hall of Fame in 2016.

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Dyno ‘Bomb Threat’ Race engine dynamometer work is never without risk. Colin Beanland recalled one day in Livonia when the bolts connecting a Can-Am V8 to the McLaren dyno’s driveshaft broke while the engine was under test. This removed the load on the crankshaft and allowed the engine to rev unbridled—potentially an exploding bomb for those in or near the test cell. The engine “immediately went to seven grand [7,000 rpm],” Beanland exclaimed. “George (Bolthoff) ran out of the control room alongside the dyno to get out of the line of fire if the engine blew up. There was enough fuel for it to run 15 minutes, so I tried to use a broomstick to reach in to shut it off. That wouldn’t work, so the engine had to run all that fuel out before it stopped.” While Beanland and Bolthoff tried to protect themselves from the expected blast, the big V8 continued to scream beyond its redline, without issue. It finally ran out of gas and shut down, to the relief of its two cellmates.  FIGURE 8.9   The gauge panel near the floor has a toggle switch in the center that controls the fuel pump. Beanland was not able to flip this switch with the broom handle.

© Alan Anderson

He opened his own engine shop, named Engine Systems Development, in an area of Irvine that was zoned commercial. There were complaints about the noise from his dynamometer testing, especially after he began working on Mazda rotary race engines. Two years later, he moved to a new shop in an industrial area of Orange, California. Bolthoff ultimately left the racing business and worked as a computer engineer. There was time enough, though, to build and run a replica of his old supercharged Chrysler AA/Gas dragster at vintage drag meets.

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Paul Weisel, it is on display at the Eastern Auto Racing Historical Society showroom in Orefield, PA. The original Chevy Cosworth engine is in the car. “Our ultimate goal was to take our own hardware and make it as good as the Cosworth version,” said Howell. “We tried to market it as a racing engine here [in the USA]. But it was so expensive there really wasn’t much demand for it. So, it was kind of a bust—but that program went on for probably three years over at McLaren.”

NASCAR Engine Development McLaren Engines also did some basic NASCAR development for racing, including engine power development with a 180-degree exhaust system that allowed optimum exhaust tuning. There was also camshaft and inlet manifold development during that time. “In about 1975, NASCAR decided to get rid of the big blocks in their race cars and they dropped the displacement down to 358 cubic inches,” said Howell. “So, they went to the small block [Chevrolet] and of course we had a lot of small block parts in the catalog and there were a lot of racers using small blocks in sprint cars, Saturday night racers and stuff like that. So, the people that raced Chevrolets in NASCAR switched over and started to build the small block.” “Well, my boss and I went down to Daytona the first year of that and the durability of the small block, the way that the customer had put them together and components and stuff, was bad enough that the announcer was counting how many of them blew up during the race. So, my boss said, ‘We’re not going to do that again.’ So, we started the durability (and power) development program at McLaren. And we  actually had them build six

NASCAR spec engines that we farmed out to the racers. And we brought them back in for rebuild after they ran them.” Kayl hired Bill McKeon, whom he  knew from Diamond Racing, to do engine builds for this program. He also hired Byron Clemens and Don Bartos around this time. “We were building a great team at McLaren Engines,” he said. Bartos also took over the Offy engine build program from Roger Bailey. “DiGard, in Daytona Beach, was part of the [NASCAR] program,” said Howell. “Junior Johnson, A.J. Foyt, Coo Coo Marlin, Waddell Wilson … those are the only ones who come to mind.” At that time most of the race teams were building their own engines, as is done today, Howell observed. “We discovered a number of things that they were doing in NASCAR that weren’t good for durability. And we  got them to change that stuff,” he said. “We didn’t have any disasters at Daytona the next year. We had durability up.” McLaren also built 302  in. 3 Chevrolet V8s for Formula 5000, said Kayl. McLaren Engines supplied powerplants for Al Hobert’s teams and for cars driven by Danny Ongais and David Hobbs. Holbert was the son of Bob Holbert, an early road racing star from the east coast who battled the likes of Roger Penske in Porsche Spyders. Al ran a Chevrolet Monza powered by a small-block Chevy engine with Kinsler fuel injection. That was a Bill Howell-directed program with McLaren Engines. Holbert, later the head of Porsche Motorsports in North America, worked with McLaren during the 1980s. When the BMW program came to McLaren in 1977, the Holbert project had to go, because it competed with the BMW. Other Chevrolet programs remained with McLaren.

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Facing page from Gray Knutson collection

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1971: Knutson Returns—With Bailey Gary Knutson came to Detroit right after the 1970 season to head up engine development. Part of the deal was that Knutson was bringing with him an experienced British racing mechanic named Roger Bailey, who was chief mechanic on the factory Can-Am Ferrari Chris Amon drove in 1969 and crew chief on the BRM P154 Can-Am team cars in 1970. Bailey came from a family of blacksmiths in England. He got into auto racing at age 17 in 1958 as a mechanic at the Jim Russell Racing School, where he received race-driving training as part payment for his mechanical work. He then went to work in the Lister Engineering engine shop that was run by Don Moore. He would work on the Lister Jaguars raced most successfully by Archie Scott-Brown, who unfortunately died in a racing accident before Bailey got there. He then learned how to build Jaguar, Bristol, Coventry Climax, and Austin Mini racing engines. He was assigned to support John Whitmore’s pea-green 850-cc Mini in the British Racing and Sports Car Club Saloon Championship. Whitmore won the championship, then was invited to join Ken Tyrrell’s factory Cooper team and invited Bailey to come along. Bailey served as a mechanic on Tyrrell’s Minis in the European Touring Championship.

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After that, Bailey moved up to wrench the Tyrrell Cooper single seaters, including Jackie Stewart’s winning car in the 1964 British Formula 3 Championship1, and he also did a short stint as Bruce McLaren’s mechanic for the last two races of the 1965 F1 season; Watkins Glen and Mexico. In 1965, Bailey Joined Alan Mann on his Ford GT program. He was almost immediately sent along with five other employees to Shelby’s shop in California to help prepare the Ford GT MK II team cars for the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans, which Amon and Bruce McLaren won.  FIGURE 9.1   Roger Bailey at left, in his Ferrari team mechanic’s overalls and his frielatend,

Roger Bailey’s collection

Ferrari team driver Chris Amon, taken a year or two before Bailey joined McLaren Engines.

1

Cooper’s factory racing team ran only F1. Tyrrell ran everything else for Cooper, i­ ncluding Austin Minis, and Cooper F-Jr/F3 and F2 cars in the 1950s and 1960s, before forming his own F1 team. For F-Jr in 1960: the Cooper team Formula Junior drivers were Henry Taylor and John Surtees; 1961-1962: Tony Maggs and John Love; 1963: Tim Mayer and Peter Proctor; 1964 when F-Jr changed to F3: Jackie Stewart and Warwick Banks. Most of these drivers went on to F1.

While in England, he lived with a bunch of racers, including Amon, at the famous 20 Corkran Road address in Surbiton. One day in 1967, Bailey fielded a call from someone asking for Amon, who was out at the time. The caller turned out to be Roger Penske. When Penske found out he was talking to Bailey, he offered him the job to be chief mechanic on a Lola T70 for Amon in the upcoming second Can-Am season. Bailey declined, citing the great job he had at Ford. He was hanging up when he thought he should ask the question, “By the way, what’s the salary?” Penske responded with a figure four times what Bailey was getting at Mann’s. Bailey said, “Let me think about that.” A few days later a ticket to Philadelphia arrived from Penske. A young engineer named Mark Donohue picked Bailey up at the Philadelphia airport. Bailey was Penske Racing’s fifth employee. After he’d been at Penske’s for a while, preparing the Penske Lola for Amon, Chris called and told him he was not coming but was going instead to Ferrari. Bailey, along with a helper named Al Holbert—later the IMSA champion, Le Mans and Daytona winner, and manager of racing for Porsche in the U.S.—maintained the Penske T70 for driver George Follmer, the Californian who was Amon’s replacement. Mark Donohue drove another Penske T70 in the series. Follmer outqualified Donohue, Penske’s lead driver, during the first half of the season, though Donohue finished second at Road America, behind Hulme’s McLaren. Follmer finished third at Bridgehampton and Laguna Seca, sixth at Mosport and Riverside. McLaren dominated the series with the M6 powered by Knutson’s Lucas-injected small-block Chevrolet V8, winning five of the six races. After the 1967 season ended, Bailey joined Amon at Ferrari to run a Ferrari Dino V6 in the Tasman series in the winter of 1967–1968. Ferrari needed an English-speaking mechanic to © 2020 SAE International

CHAPTER 9 1971: Knutson Returns—With Bailey



help the Ferrari mechanics who spoke only Italian. The team returned to Italy and Bailey was asked to stay on at Ferrari, becoming the first English mechanic to have a full-time job with the factory Ferrari racing team. He  and Amon then campaigned the Ferrari 612 and 712 Can-Am cars in the 1969 Can-Am season, the year the high-wing McLaren M8B won all the races. Amon was several times the best of the crowd that was chasing the McLarens, finishing third at Watkins Glen and Mid-Ohio behind Bruce and Hulme, but he had more than a few DNFs, too. The following year, Bailey managed the BRM P-154s in the Can-Am with drivers Pedro Rodriguez and George Eaton. Results weren’t good, as McLaren blew everybody away with their new big-block-powered M8s and won their second championship in a row.

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new location out in the shop area, which put the operator out of harm’s way if an engine blew up. Sometimes an engine failure would throw parts out the side of the cylinder block, which would have endangered a technician sitting at the console next to the engine.  FIGURE 9.2   Knutson’s new dynamometer control console, mounted out of harm’s way in the shop, facing the front of engine instead of from the side, where flying debris posed a danger to the dyno operator.

“In 1970 I came over [stateside] to help run the BRM 154s with Pedro Rodriguez and George Eaton in Can-Am,” said Bailey. “During that time, I’d done a deal with Gary to go to Chaparral’s, so I  brought everything to Chaparral’s, and I  came back to England. I hadn’t been back that long, when Teddy called and said, ‘Hey, Roger, I’ve got your ticket here.’ Bailey did not understand. “What do you mean, you’ve got my ticket? I’m going to work for Chaparral.” Mayer answered, “No, no, no; I did a deal with Gary and you’re part of the deal. I got your ticket.”” So, that was it. Knutson and Bailey would work at McLaren Engines, Inc. When Knutson arrived at McLaren Engines, he rearranged Bolthoff ’s dynamometer installation. He  moved the dyno console for safety reasons from the space next to the cell to a © 2020 SAE International

© Alan Anderson

Roger Bailey’s Ticket

The new console faced the back of the dynamometer’s absorber, with the engine beyond it—away from flying parts. Beanland was probably grateful for that, having experienced the danger first-hand the year before. Knutson also had McLaren gopher Alan Anderson install a surface plate in the floor. It was constructed using I-beams and adjustable engine mounting hardware, so that the cell could easily handle a variety of engines. At that time Team McLaren was running the big-block Chevy in Can-Am and the four-cylinder

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Offy at Indy. They each required unique dynamometer-mounting hardware, which the adjustable mounts facilitated and saved significant set-up time.  FIGURE 9.3   The McLaren dynamometer facility showing the four test cells. The famous “Cell 1” is at the far end, where high-horsepower racing engines were developed for CanAm, Indy, IMSA, NASCAR, and many other uses.

then George Bolthoff left, so they brought in Walter Howell, affectionately known as ‘Davey Crockett,’ but he didn’t last long. Howell had been to England in 1969 to introduce Bolthoff to the Offenhauser engine, using parts that McLaren sponsor Goodyear shipped over from Herb Porter’s shop in Gasoline Alley at the Indianapolis Speedway. Goodyear had hired Porter earlier in the 1960s to build Offy engines for Goodyear’s tire testing program. Porter was known for building engines with superior power, first experimenting with superchargers and then turbochargers. His success at these developments earned him the name “Herbie Horsepower.”3 “Gary told Bailey, “You go down to Indianapolis. There’s a guy named Herbie Porter there who does all the Goodyear engines. You’re going to go learn how to put together an Offy.”

© Gary Knutson

“Herbie Horsepower”

Knutson also changed engine machining sources. He switched from Bolthoff’s preferred King Automotive, to Diamond Racing, another Detroit-area resource, for both machining and for cylinder head work. Knutson said, “It seemed his [King’s] primary interest was drag racing and many of the approaches that drag racers took didn't seem appropriate for something that had to run longer than 10 seconds at a time.” Bailey: “When we came here [to McLaren] there were two engine builders, George Bolthoff and Lee Muir.2 And John Nick [Nicholson] had been there at some stage, but he had gone back to the U.K. And 2

The “gopher” Alan Anderson was also there.

“Herbie Horsepower” was a revered, if not loved, figure on the IndyCar Championship Trail. Born in Texas, he showed an early interest in racing that developed into an obsession with horsepower that he carried throughout his life. He was an early adopter of supercharging as a way to boost Offy power and he took it to the limit with turbo supercharging—whereby a turbine is introduced into the exhaust system to drive the supercharger. His first experiments involved supercharging the 97 in.3 Offy midget engine, its design based on the front half of a Miller 183. Herb built the blown engine for sprint car racing. Later he began devel­ oping a turbocharged version of the 270 in.3 Offy.

3

It seemed that all the racing mechanics had nicknames. Beanland was “Beanie,” for exam­ ple. He didn’t get the nickname from racing, though. His schoolteacher in New Zealand had previously taught his older brother, on whom he had conferred that same nickname.

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The venerable four-cylinder Offy had been deposed in 1964 from its throne atop the win lists at Indy by a Ford-developed overhead cam V8 Englishman Jim Clark did the deed in his rearengine Lotus, a win that also began the dominance of the rearengine Indy car. Not only was the Offy dead at the Brickyard, but so was the front-engined roadster. The Offy engine was built by Drake Engineering, the successor to Meyer and Drake Engineering, the partnership that had taken over the four-cylinder engine from its developer, Fred Offenhauser. Meyer, the three-time Indy winner (1928, 1933, and 1936) left to help develop the Ford engine. Drake stayed with the Offy and began to develop a supercharged version of the engine, using a General Motors 4-71 Roots-type blower that was used on GM’s four-cylinder, two-stroke diesel truck and bus engines. Eleven cars came to the 1966 Indy 500 with this engine. Parnelli Jones qualified one at 162.484 mph and finished fourth in the race. Herb Porter was there, too, but his solution was the turbocharged Offy in a roadster that Bobby Grimm qualified at 158.367 mph. Grimm practiced at more than 160 mph, the highest speed ever turned by a roadster at that time. Goodyear’s Leo Mehl hired Porter to build boosted engines to power Goodyear’s tire test cars. They needed plenty of horsepower in order to overstress the tires being developed for IndyCar racing. They needed to equal or exceed the speeds possible in actual races. Porter thus had the means to develop his turbo Offy engines.4

4

Firestone did the same in 1954 with Ray Nichels, the company’s chief mechanic for race tire testing. He built a Kurtis roadster test car powered by a 331 in.3, 440 hp Chrysler Hemi engine that was faster than the 415 hp Offy-powered roadsters of the day. Sam Hanks set the absolute closed course speed record in the car at the new Chrysler Chelsea Proving Grounds, clocking a 182.554-mph average speed around the test track’s banked oval on June 30, 1954.

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By 1968, “Herbie Horsepower’s” turbo Offy won the Indy 500 in a rear-engine Gurney Eagle chassis driven by Bobby Unser. In 1969, Porter sent an engine to McLaren’s U.K. shop in Colnbrook, where Walter Howell showed its unique design to George Bolthoff as McLaren prepared to invade the Indy 500 with its own car.

Roger Meets Herbie Bailey left Detroit at 3:30 a.m. and drove down to Indianapolis, arriving at Porter’s shop at 8:15 a.m., feeling like he had a head start on his day with Herbie. The shop was garage number 69 in the old Gasoline Alley at the Speedway. Bailey recalled the scene: I knock on the door at 69 and there’s a nice young guy there: “Can I help you?” And I say, “Is there a Mr. Porter here?” And a voice from out of nowhere says, ‘We start at 8 o’clock around here.’ I thought, ‘This is going to be a loooong three months.’ That young man was Carl Cindric. It was just the two of them. Today, his son, Tim, is president of Penske Racing. At 5 o’clock Porter says, “Hey Limey, you drink?” I said, “I like a beer.” He said, “C’mon, follow me. You’re booked at the Holiday Inn, right?” So, we turn out of the gate at 16th Street and right opposite where the tunnel is now, there’s a Holiday Inn. And I think, “I can walk to work in the mornings!” We go in, five minutes past 5. There’s one guy at the bar and he’s sitting way at the end and he’s kind of propped up, talking with the barmaid. And Porter walked right to him and said to the guy, “You’re in my seat.” Holy (expletive)! There are 40 chairs and this guy’s in his seat? So instead of pulling out a gun like they do now, he says, “I’m sorry,” and moved down a few seats.

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“VO Presbyterian,” Porter orders—and the barmaid already knew what he wanted. By about 8 o’clock I’ve had about five beers and he’s had as many Presbyterians. I asked, “Mr. Porter, are we going to eat?” He said, “What for?” And I said, “I haven’t eaten since lunch time and I’m hungry.” He grumbled, “Oh, you Limeys are all the same.” Then I go and check in, have a shower, go downstairs to the dining room because the dining room was all part of the Holiday Inn. I have dinner. About 10:00, I thought I’ll go get some sleep and I’ll see him in the morning. But I’ll make sure he’s OK (in the bar). I put my head around the corner—and he saw me! At 2:00 a.m., when the bar closed, I’d been up since 2:00 a.m. the morning before. I’m feeling pretty ‘ faced’ myself, so I said, “Mr. Porter can I drive you home?” He says, “What for?” He had a big old gold Cadillac Eldorado two-door. It was like he  pressed a button and the door swung open and he dropped in the seat and went “whoosh” down 16th street and the last thing I saw was it turning right on Georgetown Road. I was sure I wouldn’t see that old guy in the morning! I get there at 8 o’clock the next morning—a few minutes before, and I hear, “Where you been, Limey?” “Herbie was clever, but a cantankerous old guy,” said Bailey. “He’d deliberately say something about the Queen just to get me going. We had our ups and downs, but I stayed there until the Speedway opened for the 500. That’s how I became the Offy

builder.” Bailey’s first race as a McLaren engine builder was the 1971 Indianapolis 500. Bailey Meets Offy When Roger Bailey joined McLaren, he  figured that building Offenhauser engines would be fairly easy. After all, he had plenty of experience with contemporary twin-cam, four-valve racing engines in Europe when working for Lister (Jaguar six), Cooper (Coventry Climax four), and Ferrari (Can-Am V12). “I couldn’t have been more wrong,” he admitted. That’s because the Offy has features that are unlike modern racing engines. It is directly descended from the iconic racing engines designed by Harry Miller in the 1920s. The first Offenhauser, in fact, was a renamed Miller 220  in.3 DOHC four-cylinder. Its crankcase and cylinder block are separate assemblies. The combustion chamber and valve assemblies are part of the cylinder block, in “monobloc” fashion—there is no detachable cylinder head. The crankshaft’s main bearing webs and bearings have to be assembled onto the crank before final installation. The crankcase has to be stood on its end and heated before securing the crank and bearing webs into it. As it cools, the crankcase shrinks, thereby tightly securing the main webs. The Offy’s four overhead valves per cylinder are actuated directly by camshafts mounted in detachable “boxes” attached to the top of the engine. The valve clearances can only be adjusted by filing the end of the valve stem. The list of differences compared with “modern” race engines goes on and on. Famously reliable and capable of making serious power, Offy engines in naturally aspirated and turbocharged form dominated American open-wheel racing for more than 50 years, winning the Indy 500 27 times.

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Facing page photo from © William Green Photo Library

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McLaren Racing 1971–1976 A New McLaren Indy Car McLaren unveiled its wedge-shaped M16 for the 1971 Indy 500. Bruce and designer Gordon Coppuck sketched a layout of the car on the flight home from Indy the previous year, just before Bruce’s fatal accident testing the M8D. There were two cars for the works team—Revson had M16-002 and Hulme, M16-003—and one car, M16-001, for Roger Penske, driven by Mark Donohue.

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Eamon “Chalky” Fullalove, Graeme “Rabbit” Bartils, Bevan “Slugger” Weston and Bill “Big Five” Eaton.

 FIGURE 10.1   The new McLaren M16A Indy car on its open trailer, pulled with a pickup

truck. While this rig is a far cry from today’s massive high-end car haulers, it does have custom ramps that hide inside the frame rails. Note the “baby moon” hubcaps.

In 1971, the rear wing was mandatorily attached to the engine cover, albeit rear of the rear axle. This wing (and bodywork), which included the NACA duct from an M8 door under the rear of the bodywork, had only 10-degree inclination. This wasn’t enough, so Eaton modified the engine cover assembly in stages for more wing angle, which worked with great effect during qualifications.

© Colin Beanland

Hughie remembers that during the first days of May his driver, Peter Revson, wanted to sit lower in the chassis, so that night they removed the engine from the chassis, removed the seat and fuel cell, unriveted the flat seat back panel, cut a hole in the panel and stretched a spoon shaped panel to fit into the hole, then bonded and riveted the modified panel back into the car, replaced the seat, fuel cell and engine—all in a night’s work. Then Denny wanted that modification made to his car also! When you work for McLaren nothing is sacred in the search for speed.

Former McLaren chief mechanic and Indycar historian Steve Roby recalls: McLaren Engines built the Offy power plants for the race, with Herb Porter’s help. Bailey was already at the Speedway, working with Porter. Gary Knutson came down from Livonia. Teddy Mayer and Tyler Alexander led the colorfully-nicknamed team, which included Hywell “Hughie” Absalom,

The M16’s speed was the revelation of Indy 1971. Roger Penske and Teddy agreed to avoid posting fast times in practice, to hide the car’s potential until qualifying. But one time, when the McLaren team was off the track ­practicing pit stops, Penske allowed his driver Mark Donohue to run fast. Nevertheless, Revson won the pole for McLaren at 178.696 mph, with Donohue 2nd at 177.087 mph and Denny Hulme 4th at 174.910 mph. Just before Revson went out on his qualifying run they were in line and Porter was fiddling around with the injection system, making small adjustments, when Bailey said, “stop [bleeping] around with it, just screw in the bolt.” In other words, “turn the boost all the way up.” Porter proceeded to do just that, commenting, “You guys are all the same—strong springs, big holes and lots of boost.” From then on Porter called Bailey “Boost”—his nickname to this day. © 2020 SAE International

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Because the team were also running Can-Am the plan was to just run only the three 500 miles races, Indy, Pocono and Ontario. At Pocono, Donohue won the inaugural race, Revson finished 21st, and at Ontario there was a conflict between the Indy car race and a Can-Am race. Revson stayed in Ontario for Saturday qualifying while Hulme went off to run the Can-Am race, which opened the door for Gordie Johncock to step into Denny’s M16. Revson finished 7th and Johncock 27th in the race.

 FIGURE 10.2   Peter Revson’s 1971 pole winning M16 with the McLaren crew: From L, Hywel “Hughie” Absalom, Bevan Weston, Roger Bailey, driver Peter Revson, Eamon Fullalove, Graeme Bartils and Teddy Mayer. (H.W. Smith family collection.)

In the race, Donohue pulled out to a huge early lead, with Revson, Bobby Unser, and Al Unser dueling for second. Hulme had a spin early in the race but recovered to fourth; his was often the fastest car on track until engine trouble intervened. He finished 17th. Donohue suffered gearbox failure, finishing 25th. Revson finished second as Al Unser took his second straight win in the Johnny Lightning Special, powered by a turbocharged Ford Indy V8. Roby continues:

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© Larry Neuzel

H.W. Smith Family Collection

 FIGURE 10.3   1971 Indy 500. Peter Revson at speed.

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1971 Can-Am Season

ran the length of the engine through which fuel flowed, cooling the intake. “One of my jobs was to clean out the castings, to prevent failures from sand getting into the engine,” said Bailey. “We solved the problem by cleaning the manifolds ultrasonically.”

 FIGURE 10.4   Towering velocity stacks dominated the profile of the Can-Am cars during the series’ golden age.

 FIGURE 10.5   Tyler Alexander looks back at the engine powering the M8F Can-Am car

The 1971 race cars were designated M8F, a further development of the M8 architecture. They featured a lengthened wheelbase and 494- or 510 in.3 engines with the linerless Reynolds 390 aluminum blocks. Doug Nye’s McLaren book reports that Revson “used a Reynolds linerless engine for the first time in the series” at Road Atlanta, and a Reynolds full-page ad in Motor Trend, February 1971, heralded the new block’s first win at Laguna Seca, October 18, 1970, when Hulme took first place. Knutson put Bailey in charge of the inlet manifolds at the Livonia engine shop. “They were using McKay inlet manifolds for the bigblock Chevy,” said Bailey. There was a passage in the manifold that

© Pete Lyons

© Pete Lyons

at Mosport 1971. Peter Revson stands behind him with the Goodyear logo on his driving suit. Denny Hulme, facing the camera, cocks his head. He won the race that year.

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The advent of the 1,000-hp Penske Porsche 917 pushed McLaren to develop a new Can-Am car, the M20. It was lighter and more aerodynamic with side-mounted radiators to transfer heat away from the driver. The wheelbase was lengthened two inches and the engine moved forward eight inches to concentrate mass more centrally. Mark Donohue was injured while testing the Porsche for the second race at Road Atlanta, so George Follmer took over the drive. He won the race after pole winner Hulme flipped backwards at the crest of the back straight, right in front of Revson who had stopped with engine problems. Bad luck reigned at Road America when both Hulme and Revson dropped out, but then McLaren came back and won decisively at Watkins Glen. It was obvious that, even though the McLaren M20 was able to win a couple of races early in the season, it was never going to be fast enough to beat the 917. So, McLaren decided to develop a 1

Nick Plantas was also a partner.

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 FIGURE 10.7   Tony Attard (R) and Jimmy Stone warm the new McLaren M20 a at Mosport. Radiators are now on the sides next to the engine instead of at the front of the car.

© Pete Lyons

1972—McLaren’s Last Can-Am Season

 FIGURE 10.6   Denny Hulme in the M20 at Mid-Ohio in 1972. He finished fourth.

© Larry Neuzel

Bailey also took on the Chevy V8 cylinder heads, in addition to his Offenhauser work. “They sent me for a week to Diamond Racing Engines on 9 Mile at Mound Road [three miles south of the GM Technical Center] and I worked with Butch Eldkins who was a partner with Jim Cavallaro1 at Diamond. They taught me how to do the cylinder heads.” He soon began putting a lot of engines together. McLaren extended its championship streak to five straight, winning seven of the nine Can-Am races during the season. Revson captured the championship, with four victories to second place Hulme’s three. Jackie Stewart in his new Lola T260 was a threat to McLaren’s dominance though, taking poles at Mosport and Watkins Glen and winning at St. Jovite and Mid-Ohio. Stewart would lead races during the rest of the season but was undone by DNFs.

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 FIGURE 10.8   Alexander, at Mid-Ohio, looking concerned while Revson ponders. He retired from the race with engine trouble. McLaren won two out of the previous three races to start the season, mostly because the brand-new Penske Porsche 917s had early season problems. But the future was troubling McLaren.

This crank had a much better potential life than the 4.00 crank, so it was decided a better choice for the turbo program. This shorter stroke also produced an engine with much less vibration compared to the 494’s and 510’s.

© Larry Neuzel

I had done quite a bit of turbo “testing” at the early stages of the program as we wanted to run with the turbos with the shafts oriented vertically. This gave a much tidier package and put the heaviest part down low. This also meant that the exhaust system could be similar to what was used on the non-turbo cars. Placing the compressor intakes at the top meant cool(er) air for the intakes.

twin-turbo big-block Chevrolet engine to match the Porsche “Panzer” engine (sidebar).

McLaren Tries a Turbocharged Big Block Gary Knutson recalls the basis for the turbocharged Chevrolet V8 was a normal Reynolds-390 block. However, unlike the 494  in.3 engines, the turbo version used a 3.76-in.-stroke crankshaft, reducing displacement to 465 cid.

This mounting position was a real challenge as the turbos were meant to be run horizontally and the oil system relied on gravity to get the oil to the return line. We were on our own on this project, as AirResearch [the turbocharger maker] didn’t want to see their turbos run in this position. My solution was a curved end on the pickup fitting plate which extended into the cavity on the center section and with the help of a pump, would extract most of the oil from the turbo. The system worked well but it did leave about a teaspoon of oil in the housing after shutdown. This oil would seep past the gap in the piston ring seal used on the exhaust side and end up dripping into the tailpipe—and sometimes catching fire. It wasn’t much of a fire, but it would get the attention of the track safety personnel. Some of the pictures show two small pans that were placed under the tailpipes to catch the oil. The oil system was developed in [dyno] Cell 1 as we needed a way to handle the exhaust from the running turbine, the heat and the noise. There was also a pressurized source of gasoline

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A Hilborn nozzle and a spark plug were added to the pipe and a continuous spark was provide to the plug. A needle valve regulated the fuel. This meant everything was up to temperature and the turbo oil scavenge could be developed separately from the engine. The rig used two pumps, one for oil supply and the other for scavenge and a dry sump tank. There was also an oil cooler in the system as the oil would heat up rapidly. As the rig used gasoline for fuel, and as was true with any gas turbine, care had to be taken not to over-speed or over-heat the unit as the more fuel that was supplied, the faster (and hotter) it ran. After all the development was finished and the oil system was ready for the vehicle, I decided to see what happened with a large increase in fuel. In a short amount of time, the exhaust turbine failed in a shower of sparks. The test turbo had served its purpose well! We were using turbos from the Indy program so there were plenty of them on hand.

 FIGURE 10.9   The big twin-turbo V8 in a display. The intake plenum and ductwork was discovered intact in 2019.

© Courtesy of Revs Institute, Karl Ludvigsen Photograph Collection

which took care of the fuel requirements. I had made a system that allowed the turbo to run as a turbine engine. It was a simple loop of tubing that ran from the compressor outlet to the turbine inlet.

 FIGURE 10.10   Twin-turbo big block delivered over 900 hp on the

Livonia dynamometer.

© McLaren Engines

I remember seeing around 1,100 pound-feet of torque and 900 bhp. This was achieved at 65 in. Hg absolute (17 psi on a pressure gauge). There was additional power  available if required but we thought this would be enough for initial vehicle tests. This output would exceed the capacity of the dyno if we tried to run at too low an engine speed—lots of low-end torque! We  limited the rpm to about 6,800  in hopes that we could have a reliable package.

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The engine systems seemed to perform as intended but unfortunately the drivetrain wasn’t going to be able to keep up. After the Atlanta test, drivetrain parts that normally would have run all season were found to have beginning signs of failure. We looked into other gearbox sources but there weren’t any available (at least in our price range2). I believe that once the vehicle problems were discovered, it became apparent that we shouldn’t attempt to try and run the next season. Nobody was very happy about this, but it did make good sense.

Knutson remarked that the boosted big-block was a smooth runner. Minimizing turbo lag involved using an electrically actuated dump valve to bleed off pressure when the throttle closed. Knutson developed an attachment for the Lucas metering unit that increased the fuel flow relative to the manifold pressure; this took care of fuel metering. “We didn’t really run enough on track to determine what the race [fuel] consumption would be, but it would obviously have been higher” than with the naturally aspirated V8s, he said. “There weren’t any cooling problems so that part of the vehicle appeared to be up to the job.”

Team McLaren realized that the huge increase in torque would require equally huge modifications and development to the McLaren transaxle and chassis—at huge expense. Moreover, “huge expense” to McLaren would be a paltry sum compared to the money Porsche was spending on the 917-30, so Teddy Mayer decided to shut the team down at the end of the season and instead spend the money on Indy and Formula 1. Beanland was gone from McLaren at the end of 1972. Can-Am was pretty much over and he decided the time had come for him to depart. The Can-Am series entered a slow death the very next year, when Porsche bored the fans by winning everything in sight against a bunch of outmoded McLarens and a few Lolas, and other noncontenders.3 The Shadow team was sometimes fast, thanks to significant sponsorship from Universal Oil Products. Of note was the Commander Motor Home team. It fielded a couple of M20s, one of which was powered by their own twinturbo big-block Chevrolet engine, with the turbos mounted

Peter Revson tested the twin-turbo engine in an M20 at Road Atlanta. Knutson observed:  FIGURE 10.11   Twin-turbo big block in a McLaren M20 at Road Atlanta. The tin pans are

there to catch oil drips from the turbochargers, which are mounted sideways to streamline the packaging layout.

Roger Penske reportedly offered to sell Porsche Can-Am gearboxes to McLaren—for $125,000 each. 3 Curiously, the fans weren’t bored with McLaren’s total dominance for the previous five years. Could it have been the lack of noise from Porsche’s turbocharged engines? The author was at the 1972 Watkins Glen Can-Am race and remembers the Porsche’s quietness compared to the thundering noise of the McLarens.

© Jimmy Stone

2

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conventionally. It was listed as an entry in four races for Mario Andretti but started only two; Laguna Seca on October 10 and Riverside on October 28. Andretti practiced, but turned the drives over to John Cannon.4 Porsche dropped out of the series after the 1973 season, leaving the way open for the UOP Shadow team to dominate and win the championship in 1974.

Can-Am Big Block Summary George Bolthoff built a few versions of the big-block Chevrolet during his tenure at BMMR and McLaren Engines. The following are his insights into those mighty V8s: All of the engines used an injection system with Lucas timed injectors and an inlet manifold made by McLaren Racing. The inlet manifold was based on the Crower/MacKay design. The dry sump and the rocker covers were cast in magnesium and machined in the McLaren shop. The heads were the aluminum “open chamber” type, with porting and polishing done in the McLaren shop. The 427-cu.in. engine The 427 had an aluminum block, with cast iron cylinder liners, with 4.250-in. bore, 3.76-in. stroke, and 6.13-in. rod length. This is the engine used in the 1968 season. A few of these were left over and they were used in the first race in 1969 and for car testing. After that they were used as dyno test engines. The first 427 engines had Delong roller-tappet cams but when a roller tappet failed, destroying an engine, Bruce insisted on flat tappet cams for all future engines.

4

During the 1972 season Mario Andretti tested the McLaren twin-turbo M20 at Mid-Ohio. The engine’s torque reportedly twisted the half shafts among other (unspecified) damage.

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The 430-cu.in. engine The 430 “short stroke” engine, used the 4.440-in. bore aluminum block, with cast-iron cylinder liners, a 3.47-in. stroke crank, and 6.405-in.-length rods. This engine used the Chevrolet .560/.600 cam, part number 3959180. The gain in HP over the 427 engines is due to reduced frictional losses with this combination. This engine was used for most of the races in 1969. The drivers liked it because it was very smooth and would rev easily. The 465-cu.in. engine The 465 had an aluminum 4.440-bore block with castiron cylinder liners and used the 427’s 3.76-in. stroke crank with 6.13-in. rod length. We started developing this engine mid 1969 as the next step up from the 430 engines. The “No-liner” engine The “no liner” engine was initially a 465-cu.in. engine, with the block made from Reynolds 390 aluminum alloy and the pistons run directly on the aluminum bore (no steel liners). Denis Hulme won the Reynolds block’s first Can-Am race in October 1970 at Laguna Seca. Reynolds was very happy! The 494-cu.in. engine The 494 engines used the 4.00-in.-stroke crankshaft with the 4.440-bore blocks. Both the 356-alloy block with cast iron liners and the 390-alloy block with no liners were used for this engine. These blocks can be over bored up to .060-in. for a displacement of 510 cu.in. Engines with 4.25-in. stroke According to Gary Knutson, “The last two columns [on the right in the chart below] show two additional configurations that were tried and deemed unusable as the vibration was extreme with the 4.25 stroke crank. We figured they wouldn’t last a race.”

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 FIGURE 10.14   Chevy 494 engine power and torque curves

© Roger Miners

 FIGURE 10.12   Chart showing various Chevrolet big-block V8 dimensions used by McLaren 1968–1972.

The traces in the accompanying charts show what Bill Howell calls a “hole” in the torque curves of the big block engine.

© McLaren Engines

© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 10.13   Engine torque and horsepower curves.

The torque trace falls until around 5000 rpm, then climbs back up to its peak. This made drivability somewhat problematic because the Can-Am cars were so overpowered and tractionlimited that the uneven engine response made it difficult for the driver to maintain smooth acceleration. Smoothing out the torque curve would make the cars easier to drive. Howell said this could be done by carefully tuning the exhaust and intake systems, and it also helped to add a “venturi” in the exhaust system. “That will smooth [the torque curve] out an amazing amount,” said Howell. Also, the Can-Am big-block V8s initially used tall equal-length stacks, but Howell noted that “the big block has four inlet ports that © 2020 SAE International

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point more toward the center of the combustion chamber than the other four. So, we decided to separate those two groups of four and change the stack length to take the holes and the bumps out of the torque curve. We make four cylinders strong and the other four weaker, but the torque curve you measure at the flywheel is smoother.”

1972: McLaren M16 Wins the 1972 Indy 500

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Johncock. Penske ran Mark Donohue and Gary Bettenhausen in the other two. Revson qualified 2nd, retiring with gearbox problems, and Johncock qualified 26th and retired on lap 113. Bettenhausen led for 138 laps but had ignition problems on lap 176. Mark Donohue went on to win, leading the last 13 laps”. This was the historic first Indy win for McLaren. Revson and Johncock ran Pocono and Ontario, the season’s other two 500-mile races.  FIGURE 10.16   

McLaren IndyCar chief mechanic Roby commented: “McLaren built four new cars for the 1972 ‘500,’ designated M16B. Two for Gulf-sponsored McLaren team drivers Peter Revson and Gordie

© Roger Meiners

 FIGURE 10.15   Peter Revson’s Team McLaren M16 is in the middle of the front row, next to eventual winner Mark Donahue’s Penske McLaren M16. Gary Bettenhausen is on the outside of the second row. He dominated the race until near the end, before dropping out.

1973: The IndyCar Program Continues

© Roger Meiners

McLaren decided to run the full season, so it needed a full-time driver, as Johncock was leaving. Herb Porter recommended Johnny Rutherford, and so did sponsor Gulf Oil; “I was in the office with my boss at Gulf, Ed Stollenwerke,” said Barry Smyth,5 5

© 2020 SAE International

Smyth is a veteran of the racing business, including Indy, and was with Chevrolet R&D in the early 1960s. He managed Gulf ’s relationship with McLaren during the Can-Am and IndyCar years.

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“when Teddy called Ed and mentioned a couple of drivers, Mike Hiss and Rutherford.” Smyth got Ed’s attention and recommended Rutherford, saying, “He can win, and he can talk.” Teddy signed him in the fall of 1972. “Rutherford (J.R.) was doing all the races,” recalled Roby, “with Revson just doing the 500 milers. J.R.’s friend Jim Ellis joined the team as a weekend warrior and took care of timing and the pit board. Cliff Pleggenkuhle, who, like Jim, was a Continental Airlines pilot, assisted in the pits. Lee Muir and sometimes John Nicholson from the engine shop were present. Don Bartos had just started as an Offy engine builder.” Bartos came from the short tracks around Detroit, where he prepared Chevy small-block racing engines. “When I first

started, the Can-Am cars were still there,” said Bartos. “They were just winding down. They did a last test of the turbo car with Andretti down at Mid-Ohio. And, from the conversations I heard, the car certainly had the capability. It just needed to be  upgraded. There were components that were just not strong enough.” “I was an engine builder,” he continued. “I worked directly under Roger Bailey. That was an experience (laughs)! His nickname was ‘Boost.’ We hit it off quite well. Roger was a great guy. He had a great racing history, that’s for sure.” According to Roby, the season did not start out well, when the team needed to run a just-finished M16C destined for Penske Racing before shipping it to the U.S.: They had Jody Scheckter, who at that time was their somewhat untamed F2 driver, shake it down at Goodwood. With no rear wing on the car, the turbo boost came on unexpectedly strongly for Jody and he crashed it into a bank. The tub required a rapid re-skinning before being shipped directly to L.A. and then to OMS [Ontario Motor Speedway] where Penske’s crew noticed the scratching on the underside of the tub but thought it must have come from the shipping pallet.

© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 10.17   Don Bartos with an Offenhauser engine. Prior to joining McLaren, he was an engine builder for short-track racing in southeastern Michigan.

“The Offy had a new inlet manifold which made the engine run better and gave the car more aero efficiency. The design of the inlet manifold allowed the inlet plenum  to  be  moved up out of the airstream, allowing better airflow to the rear wing and also reducing the car’s frontal area.

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The Tragic 1973 Indianapolis 500

 FIGURE 10.19   1973 Indy 500 pole winner Johnny Rutherford in the car, surrounded by

the McLaren crew, from left, standing: Allan Boroughs, “Hughie” Absalom, Dennis Daviss, Roger Bailey, Alec Greaves, Don Bartos, Tom Tann, and Neil Konami; kneeling left is Teddy Mayer and on the right is Gordon Coppuck, the car’s designer.

 FIGURE 10.18   Johnny Rutherford sits in the McLaren M16 during practice for the 1973

© Larry Neuzel

© Courtesy of Revs Institute, Karl Ludvigsen Photograph Collection

Indianapolis 500. Tyler Alexander (L) and Teddy Mayer look concerned, while behind them the crew attends to the car.

Said Roby: At Indy, Rutherford worked the car up to being ‘ just’ flat footed all the way around in practice. He said it gave a little wiggle out of Turn One each lap, but he could catch it. There were five McLaren M16Cs entered. Two by the McLaren team—Johnny Rutherford and Peter Revson, based at McLaren Engines; and three for Penske for Mark Donohue, Tony Bettenhausen, Jr., and NASCAR star Bobby Allison. All were powered by Offenhauser engines. Rutherford told the author that, when he tested the car it wouldn’t turn, so designer Gordon Coppuck revised the rear suspension and “At Indy I  could drive it flat out through the turns.” © 2020 SAE International

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The rear wing was described as ‘big as a picnic table.’ With a strong chassis and the Offy engine running unlimited turbo boost, JR ran mock qualifying runs at 200.0 mph and 200.1 mph, which both would have been records had they been repeated during qualifying. But it rained frequently on pole day, changing the track, so the car was not quite as good, and he had to feather the throttle a little to get the weight to transfer. Rutherford qualified on pole with a speed of 198.413 mph, saying he ran ‘at 120 inches boost with the needle

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bending against its stop and the engine turning 9,200 rpm.’ Revson ran 192.606 mph for 10th, in the other McLaren entry. In Penske’s cars, Donohue qualified 3rd at 197.413 mph, Bettenhausen qualified 5th, and Allison qualified 12th.

 FIGURE 10.20   1973 Ontario 500. From L, Peter Revson with Tyler Alexander, Eddie Wyss, Roger Bailey (rear) and Hughie Absalom. Revson took the pole and led the first 15 laps but did not finish. Revson's teammate Johnny Rutherford qualified fourth and also did not finish.

For Bartos, the new engine guy, Indy ’73 was, in his words, a “real shocker.” It was his first high-speed oval, which sharply contrasted with the bullrings back in Detroit, where the action was intense, but at relatively low speeds. “At Indy,” he said, “the cars were going so quickly there were a lot of injuries and a lot of death. The first day of qualifying, just before it started, Art Pollard [a close friend of Rutherford] hit the wall really hard. And then qualifying started. I remember maybe about an hour into it, the announcer came on, and said Pollard had passed away, and he asked for 30 seconds of silence. And then it was right back to where you were.” Bartos thought this “was really, really cold.” Bartos continued, “And after that, [on race day] they had the aborted start when Salt Walther crashed, with spectators hurt up in the stands, and then all the big crashes—drivers getting hurt. Then Swede Savage was seriously injured in a crash right at the end.” He died in the hospital a month later. “Being my first year down there,” said Bartos, “I had to do some real soul searching about why I was really here. I didn’t know whether I would come back in ’74. I took a vacation at the end of the season and I did some soul searching and came back feeling better. When you think about it, and you say, ‘You know what? They’re doing what they love.’”

© Pete Biro. Roger Bailey collection

The race, which was planned to run on Monday, was marred by foul weather and multiple accidents, eventually running on the Wednesday afternoon. J.R. was black flagged for a fuel leak, eventually finishing 9th, down 9 laps. Revson hit the wall on lap 3. Mark Donohue finished 15th, Gary Bettenhausen was 5th, and Bobby Allison lost an engine at the end of lap 1.

1974 IndyCar Season At the Brickyard in 1974, Tyler Alexander was in charge of Johnny Rutherford’s Gulf M16C and Hughie Absalom oversaw David Hobbs’s M16C, in Carling Black Label colors. Initially the Rutherford car was to be sponsored by JCPenney, according to Roby, but Penney’s stopped backing “anything to do with speed” after the OPEC oil embargo drove oil prices up. Noted Roby: Gary Knutson developed a driver-adjustable boost control system that put some boost pressure on the backside of the diaphragm to hold it closed. If the driver wanted more boost, he would turn the knob on the dashboard to increase the © 2020 SAE International

CHAPTER 10 McLaren Racing 1971–1976



pressure on top of the diaphragm. To reduce boost, the driver would turn the knob the other way to reduce the pressure on top of the diaphragm. There was a tiny hole in the wastegate cover to allow a controlled bleed off the top side of the diaphragm allowing the valve to open early. This system, or a variant of this system was copied by most teams and is still used today. In another first-time development, crew member Sid Carr built a tubular pit stand for the team timers to use in the race when crew usually stood around or sat on tires and toolboxes in the pits.

In the race, J.R. was running second after a couple of pit stops and dueled with [pole qualifier] A.J. Foyt who was typically faster in a straight line than J.R., but the McLaren handled much better. “I was all over him in the turns,” said Rutherford. The two swapped positions until the later stages of the race when A.J. had to drop out because of an oil leak. JR won the race, leading 122 laps to Foyt’s 70 laps, with Hobbs coming in 5th. Rutherford also won the next two races, a 150-mile event on the Milwaukee Mile, finishing ahead of Gary Bettenhausen in Roger Penske’s McLaren, and a 500-miler at Pocono, Pennsylvania. Then he suffered a broken left leg in a crash while practicing before a one-off Formula 5000 race at Watkins Glen. Nevertheless, he raced again three weeks later at Michigan, where he finished fourth with his leg in a cast that was bungeed to the chassis so it wouldn’t slide over into his throttle foot. His win streak was broken, and he  didn’t win again, finishing second in the USAC championship.

Team McLaren’s First Indy Victory Team McLaren earned its historic first victory at the Indianapolis 500 in 1974. It was also the second win for a McLaren car, after Mark Donohue’s in 1972. Roby recounts: Rutherford’s engine went sour in practice on the first day of qualifying. The team rushed the car back to the garage to change the engine and then, with the car rolling, but not finished, pushed it out into the qualifying line only to be told by Harlan Fengler that they could not now be “Day One” qualifiers. This was the year of the oil embargo and the typical four-day qualifying format was reduced to just two “days” spread over two weekends, so McLaren would be  in the second half of “Day One.” Tyler and Teddy decided that if they could not qualify as Day One then they would then run as Day Two qualifiers the following weekend. Thus, the car qualified 24th, even though Rutherford was 2nd fastest at 190.446 mph to A.J. Foyt’s 191.632 mph pole winning time. Hobbs qualified 9th.

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This was the year that the team tested their Formula 2 driver, Emerson Fittipaldi, in Rutherford’s car at Indy. A.J. Foyt took him around the track in a golf cart, explaining things. Then Emmo got into the car. He had to go through the rookie procedure and was then turned loose to drive as he pleased. “The car felt absolutely sensational,” Fittipaldi said. “I can honestly say that never, before or since, have I driven such a well-balanced car.”6 6

Comments posted on the McLaren-Honda website: http://www.mclaren.com/formu­ la1/blog/emerson-fittipaldi/emmo-on-bruce-denny-can-am-and-indy/, accessed on June 2, 2014.

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 FIGURE 10.21   Johnny Rutherford consults with his wife Betty during Indy 500 practice as the team watches the track.

 FIGURE 10.22   Gatorade sponsored the McLaren team in 1975. Brothers Eddie and Bill

Roger Bailey left the team right after Indy qualifying, returning to the U.K. to start a business. John “Fritz” Kayl, an engine man at Diamond Racing, replaced him. He ran the shop, eventually becoming general manager. In April 1977, Kayl joined the McLaren board of directors and was also named a vice president of the corporation. Bill Smith was president and Gary Knutson was executive vice president. Besides Kayl, the other directors were Bill Smith, Teddy Mayer, Knutson, and Tyler Alexander.

The 1975 Indianapolis 500 For the 1975 race, McLaren engineers Gordon Coppuck and John Barnard updated the M16. The team built two new cars: M16E-001

© H.W. Smith Family collection

© Larry Neuzel

Smith sit in lock step on the pit wall. Betty Rutherford is on the left by the toolbox. Unidentified crew member in the foreground.

for Rutherford and M16E-002 for Lloyd Ruby. After a difficult practice and qualifying, Ruby qualified sixth and Rutherford, seventh. After qualifying Alexander, who was in charge of Rutherford’s car, found that Goodyear had changed the tire © 2020 SAE International

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construction, so a few small changes to the setup brought the car more to J.R.’s liking. Roby observed:

Johncock’s Wildcat and Tom Sneva’s Penske M16C. Mario Andretti drove the other M16C for Penske. Due to his F1 commitment in Belgium, Mario was a day-three qualifier—his 189.404 mph speed put him 19th on the grid. Mario finished eighth.

During the race the Patrick Wildcats were fast with Gordie leading the first eight laps until he suffered an ignition problem. Then Wally Dallenbach led 96 laps until engine problems intervened, allowing Rutherford to take over the lead on lap 162 from Bobby Unser, who reassumed the lead on lap 165. After heavy rain the race was red flagged with Bobby Unser, Rutherford and Foyt negotiating a very wet track to take the flag. Rutherford remembered advice from Denny Hulme, which was to put the car into first gear (to keep it slow enough to not aquaplane) and drive very carefully when it was wet and you were on slicks. This worked to give Rutherford 2nd place.

1976 Indianapolis 500: Another Win for McLaren The team built two new M16Es for 1976. At Indy, Johnny Rutherford was fast in practice running a lap faster than 190 mph. He qualified on pole at 188.957 mph to beat out Gordie © 2020 SAE International

 FIGURE 10.23   Rutherford poses with the team at Wisconsin State Fair Park Speedway, the “Milwaukee Mile” two weeks after he won the Indy 500.

H.W. Smith Family Collection

Ruby had engine trouble early in the race, finishing second from last. The trouble was caused by a flooded cylinder in the Offy engine. Before the race, with the fuel tanks full, the Hilborn system could backfill and flood the intake manifold with fuel, which would then run into the cylinders. To prevent this, each runner of the intake manifold plenum had a drain cock that we opened to drain the manifold. But on Ruby’s engine one of the drain cocks seized closed, and the Hilborn fuel injection system backfilled the inlet manifold, flooding the affected cylinder with methanol, washing down the cylinder wall, which resulted in a seized piston early in the race.

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As Steve Roby saw it: In the race Rutherford fought with Foyt until a drizzle at half distance caused a yellow flag. Three laps later it rained hard and the race was red flagged [with Rutherford in the lead]. The rain cleared up, we lined up in the pit road, and then the rain gods sent a mighty deluge our way and that finished the race for good. Rutherford declared the winner. This was the last Indy 500 win for an Offenhauser engine. J.R. led for 48 laps to Foyt’s 29 laps.

The Mclaren Cosworth DFV Turbo V8 on the dyno at McLaren Engines. Steve Roby set up a camera inside the dynamometer, removed the tailpipe frome the turbocharger and turned out the lights to get this picture. ©Steve Roby

C H A P T E R

11

Developing the Turbocharged Cosworth DFV Tyler Alexander said in his book, “During the latter part of 1976, we were starting to look at having a turbocharged version of the Cosworth DFV engine for Indianapolis. Others were already going down this road, among them, Parnelli Jones’s guys in California.”1 The Vel’s Parnelli Jones team began work in 1975 under engine builder Larry Slutter. They showed up at Indy that year with the engine in a new car, called the Parnelli Viceroy VPJ6-Cosworth DFX, a development of the VPJ5 Formula 1 car, but 250 lb. heavier and riding on 15 in. wheels instead of the F1 car’s 13 inchers. Driver Mario Andretti tried the car, but it had severe handling problems, so Mario got into the old Viceroy Eagle for the race. The “DFX” nomenclature used by Vel’s Parnelli Jones was adopted by McLaren Engines, and later became the official Cosworth designation. According to Steve Roby, Alexander called him in Australia and asked, "Why don't you come to America, we’re going to do a turbo V8 program and I need somebody to run the car.” I replied, “I’ve retired.” Alexander 1

© 2020 SAE International

Tyler Alexander, p. 133.

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countered with “Ahh, we’ve all retired. Why don’t you come over here? It doesn’t start till later in the year.’ Roby thought, “OK, I’ll give it a year”—but as it turned out, his “year” did not end until after the 1984 season. Preparing for his move to the McLaren team in the U.S., Roby put an Eagle-Offy together for Bill Simpson at Simpson’s shop in Torrance, California, for the 1976 Indianapolis 500-mile race, but Simpson was unable to qualify. “So, I did Indy with McLarens and their M16 Offy,” he  explained. Roby would now join

McLaren’s program to create a replacement for the venerable Offenhauser engine. He would be crew chief for the car. Turbocharged versions of the long-tenured Offy produced monster horsepower when the rules allowed unlimited boost. But after the accidents and fires in the 1973 race, USAC mandated a pop-off valve that limited boost to 80 in. Hg and the cars’ fueltank capacity was reduced. The Offy could no longer produce competitive power and mileage, thus the move to a more modern V8 engine—the Cosworth DFV, which was by then dominant in

 FIGURE 11.1   The Turbo development car, a modified M23 F1 car with changes to accept the turbocharged Cosworth DFV. The team brought the car to the races and tested the day after

© Steve Roby

to get comparative data. The squared-off engine cover was primarily for security.

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Formula 1. Steve Roby generously compiled for this book a detailed memoir about the turbocharged DFV program, which began with ex-F1 engine blocks numbered DFV122 and DFV172.

 FIGURE 11.2   The development engine. The ever-present McLaren run sheet is on the

© Steve Roby

clipboard to the right.

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In early 1976 McLaren Engines started developing the turbocharged, methanol-fueled DFV with two ex-Formula 1 Cosworth DFV engines that were sent to Livonia from Nicholson McLaren Engines, the company that built them for McLaren’s F1 team.2 These 3-liter engines had block numbers DFV122 and DFV172. Roby said, “The goal was to develop a 2.65 liter turbocharged methanol fueled engine, with twice the power of the 3 liter F1 DFV (800 to 900 HP at 80 inches Hg boost). The engine had to withstand a duty cycle of perhaps 90% to 100% wide-open throttle (W.O.T.) per lap for 500 miles. The duty cycle of the F1 engine was typically more slanted to bursts of power with no more than maybe 25 seconds of extended W.O.T. per lap for 200 miles, although at the fast slipstreaming races like Monza and Hockenheim, the engine would run at W.O.T. significantly longer on each lap.” While McLaren Engines proceeded with the engine development, BMMR developed a new car. “For this project, Gordon Coppuck designed the M24,” wrote Roby, “which was an evolution of both the Indy M16 and the F1 M23. The M24 used the foam-filled crash-absorbing radiator ducts similar to the design of the smaller M23. In simple terms the M24 had M16-like suspension grafted onto a larger M23-like tub…The M24 was a lot stiffer than the M16 with a larger plan form, which gave us more down force.” Bill McKeon, the project’s designated engine builder, built the first test engine at McLaren Engines on January 22, 1976. “The V8 engines,” wrote Roby, “initially used cranks from Moldex in Redford, Mich., just down the road from McLaren Engines; rods from Carrillo in San Juan Capistrano California; pistons from ForgedTrue and then TRW [thanks to Herb Porter]; bearings 2

Nicholson founded Nicholson McLaren Engines, with Bruce, Teddy, Tyler and Phil Kerr as partners in the new company. Nicholson eventually bought them out. The company continues today as a rebuilder of airplane engines and auto racing power plants.

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from Clevite; Piston rings were made specially for us by Sealed Power in Detroit; camshafts from both Cosworth and Herb Porter. “The standard [Cosworth] DFV F1 cam was designated as DA1; the Cosworth sports car cam was designated as DA2. The DA2 had a profile with shorter duration and less lift but the same basic shape as the DA1 up to 9600 RPM. We ran the valves from the sports car engine as they had thicker stems. At Milwaukee, a short track that required low engine speed power off the corner, we tried BD3 cams (from the Cosworth BDA engine) and they worked very well but produced a different sound for all to hear so our competition knew what we were up to. “Analysis showed that the Cosworth cam profiles were so good that they did not float the valves within the rev range. We also tested a lot of Herb Porter cam profiles but I cannot remember if we ever raced them,” said Roby. As in all engineering programs there were problems to solve. Some were expected at the outset, and some reared their heads as the program progressed. Of course, the team anticipated that the increase in horsepower would cause additional heat and mechanical stress. Fixes for these things were usually integrated into the plan. Tyler Alexander, in his Autobiography, wrote, “Gary Knutson and I, along with a few other guys at McLaren Engines in Livonia, set about finding ways to get more cooling for the engine—particularly the cylinder heads—with a focus on the valve-seat area…” especially the exhaust valve seat. “We were interested in increasing the f low of water,” continued Tyler. “To do that, we bought several different water pump impellers from a large used-car parts place on Eight Mile Road, just down from the workshop. The guy behind the counter was somewhat bewildered when we showed up with a set of vernier calipers. When we said we wanted to buy some waterpump impellers, he naturally wanted to know what car they were for.

“In the end, he let us go into the vast warehouse and choose some that we could modify. Several shapes and sizes later, we machined three standard water-pump housings to take a biggerdiameter impeller; a Studebaker impeller worked best and gave us a place to start. “One of the things we learned early on was that by cleaning up all the sharp edges we could get at … in the water-flow passages of both the cylinder head and the block, we were able to improve the water flow and get rid of air in the system. You could plainly see the difference through the clear pipes we had put on the test rig. “There were several [other] problems we had to deal with … the exhaust seats were sinking in the cylinder heads. I’m not sure why we didn’t twig what was going on. It really shouldn’t have taken us as long as it did.” McLaren Engines was concurrently doing a very similar turbo program for BMW, based on the BMW Formula 2 engine—raising its power from 300 HP to something like 500 hp “…and yet we had no problems with the exhaust seats in the BMW cylinder heads,” he said. “Something we should have done straightaway was to compare the hardness of the material in the Cosworth and BMW cylinder heads. The BMW heads were 120 on the Brinell scale, but the (expletive) Cosworth heads were only 95 to 98. I guess the mistake we made was taking it for granted that the Cosworths would be as good as that company’s reputation,” wrote Tyler. Other problems: Cylinder liners were cracking. “[T]he liners were cracking. Cosworth steel liners were tried but wore out quickly, these steel liners were replaced by Cosworth cast iron liners, which were then replaced by (Curt) Nicholson Machine 4340 nitrided steel liners. Later the steel liners were flash chromed to prevent flaking on the backside (water side). “Valve springs were a constant problem for us,” said Roby. “Every night nearly the first task after running, was to perform a leak-down test on each cylinder to check for valve-to-seat leakage and invariably while doing this on the cooling engine © 2020 SAE International



we would hear a “ping” and know that a valve spring had just broken.” That required an engine change. There was a lot of engine vibration initially. Tyler thought it might be caused by the piston. “[It} turned out to be too heavy, causing the engine to vibrate too much.” Roby said there was a problem getting enough “Mallory metal,” a very heavy mass, into the crankshaft counterweights, so the vibrations couldn’t be fully quelled. When lighter pistons were substituted, the counterweights didn’t need as much Mallory metal to get a smoothrunning engine. The bigger problem was that the vibration caused exhaust manifold cracking, which is a big concern in a turbocharged engine. A crack in the exhaust system allows exhaust gasses to leak, meaning less exhaust pressure driving the turbine—not to mention blowing superheated gasses who-knows-where. It should be noted that these engines used 180-degree crankshafts, sometimes called “flat” cranks because the throws are on a single plane and, well, they look flat. They are also inherently difficult to balance, so some vibration was accepted as normal. But not when the vibration wreaks havoc on the exhaust pipes. Tyler commented that, “cracked exhaust pipes… occurred mainly at the 500-mile races, one of which was of course Indianapolis. I hate to think how many sets of exhaust pipes I welded up out of a variety of types of stainless steel...” On the inlet side we had a variety of Aluminum plenum chambers, of different volumes and runner lengths. Some plenums had the entry radius of ram tubes initiate on the plenum

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floor and some had the entry of the ram tubes elevated from the plenum floor. “We used Boris Kondaroff’s Mallory magnetos on the DFV turbo engine. We gave Boris an office in the chassis shop so we could keep track of him and thus get rebuilds when we needed them. Boris also developed a unique CD ignition system, which we raced often. Unfortunately we only ever had that single unit. The team began to take the M24-DFX test car along to races and run it the day after each event. This enabled comparisons to the performance of not only the McLaren team’s M16-Offy, but also all the other competitors who raced that weekend. By season’s end, McLaren was ready for 1977 with the new Turbo DFV and the new M24 Indy car.

Taming the Vibes It should be noted that these engines used 180-degree crankshafts—sometimes called “flat-plane” cranks because the throws are on a single plane and, well, they look flat. They are also inherently difficult to balance, so some vibration was accepted as normal. But not when the vibration wreaks havoc on the exhaust pipes. Alexander commented that “Cracked exhaust pipes… occurred mainly at the 500-mile races, one of which was of course Indianapolis. I hate to think how many sets of exhaust pipes I welded up out of a variety of types of stainless steel.” As explained in the Appendix, the exhaust cracking disappeared when the team changed to Laystall crankshafts.

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 FIGURE 11.3   Bill McKeon was the principal development engine builder during the program. A lifelong builder of racing engines, he once said, “I don’t work on cast iron.” He made an

© Steve Roby

exception for the BMW turbo engines. They had cast iron blocks. Here he attaches a cylinder head to the Cosworth DFV cylinder block.

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 FIGURE 11.4   McLaren Engines chairman Bill Smith wanted to have the name “McLaren” on the company’s Turbo DFV engines. Longtime McLaren friend and consultant Dennis Carlson

© McLaren Engines

designed the nameplates and they were cast and then bonded to the cam covers after the original cast-in Ford nameplates were ground off.

© 2020 SAE International

John Conely collection

C H A P T E R

12

IndyCar Racing: 1977–1979 The McLaren IndyCar effort that began in 1970 continued for nine more years. During this time Teddy Mayer acquired a sedan racing program during negotiations with BMW Motorsports in Germany. This program began in 1977, but we continue Steve Roby’s Indy narrative for the years 1977–1979 before picking up the BMW story.

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 FIGURE 12.1   The First National City McLaren M-24 shows its colors in this overhead

John Conley collection

shot of a leisurely pit stop during a practice session. Note the gray tube slid over the exhaust pipe to get the heat and fumes away from the crew.

1977: The M24-DFX Makes Its Debut After much trouble and strife and a fair bit of dyno work and track testing to get everything working correctly, including the Hilborn fuel system, the McLaren team arrived at the first race at Ontario, the 2.5-mile oval just outside Los Angeles. Penske also entered two M24s—M24 002 for Mario Andretti and M24 004 for Tom Sneva. Teddy Mayer had a deal with Roger to supply the new cars and engines. The two teams put their new McLarens powered by the new McLaren Engines-Cosworth Turbo emphatically on the front row. Rutherford took the pole, and Sneva planted himself next to him. But the new McLaren M24-DFX would have to wait a

while for the first race win—J.R. missed a gear at the start and tagged the valves. Sneva had a piston problem a bit later. The race was won by A.J. Foyt in his turbocharged Foyt V8, which was based on the old Ford Indy engine. This was the same base engine that Gary Knutson converted to power the first McLaren F1 car. McLaren’s win came three weeks later at the Jimmy Bryan 150 at Phoenix International Speedway. Rutherford took his second consecutive pole and led 51 laps to score the M24-DFX’s first victory after a race-long duel with Foyt. Steve Roby was there: This was the race in which Gordon Johncock got into it with J.R. over a territorial dispute around Turn 2 where the track widens, while at the same time A.J. Foyt had Tyler [Alexander] a foot off the ground—all after the race has finished. USAC used the pacer light scheme under yellow conditions and A.J. kept closing on us under the yellow so Tyler told J.R. on the radio to speed up so we would maintain the gap we had built up on him. J.R. told us that we were running to the light and could not go faster; Tyler’s retort was that A.J. was cheating on the light, “so speed up.” A.J.’s guys were monitoring our radio (as did we on other competitors) and told A.J. what Tyler had said, so A.J. became a little hot under the collar and went hunting for Tyler after the race. It did not help that we told him that Tyler was not around here (in the pit) but up at the car, when he  was actually right behind us. So, by the time A.J. went up to the impound area where the car was and then back to our pit in search of Tyler he was primed and ready. The problem was A.J. called Tyler a “Limey”—and Tyler told him that he was from Boston! To a red-faced A.J. this did not ease the problem. At the same time Gordie Johncock was hot under the collar about a skirmish he and J.R. had © 2020 SAE International

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Dennis Carlson In 1977, Dennis Carlson, a motorsports enthusiast who was an architect with a major Detroit firm, stopped by the McLaren Engines shop to look around. He  met Steve Roby there and, after some polite conversation said, according to Roby, “I can sew vinyl, would you like me to make you some car covers.” He made car covers and some toolbox covers. He also made important contributions to the Indy and BMW 320 programs. In the course of this activity, Gary Knutson asked Carlson if he  knew anything about refrigeration. “I told him I  knew that if you put a six-pack of beer in a refrigerator it would get cold,” said Carlson. Apparently, the BMW 320 team had a problem with cockpit temperature during races. The turbocharger was on the driver side of the engine and David Hobbs was “getting cooked,” as Roby put it. So, Carlson researched NASA’s astronaut “cool suits” and built one for Hobbs. It was a success. Dennis went on to work with the Williams F1 team to integrate cool suits into their cars. Williams’s driver Keke Rosberg used the first one to win an extremely hot Dallas Grand Prix in July 1984. Soon Carlson had an active business making cool suits for Formula 1, NASCAR, sports car, and boat racing. Meanwhile, the ever-innovative Carlson noticed that the critical task during pit stops was fueling, so he and Steve Roby designed a fueling apparatus to speed things up. The new tank was larger in diameter and had a parabolic shaped bottom that was actually part of a spun aluminum light shade the architectural firm where he was employed designed for use at Detroit airport parking lot.

© 2020 SAE International

With this, and the tank mounted higher to increase head pressure, fuel flowed significantly faster into the car and the McLaren team had an advantage over the competition by saving significant time in the pits. Carlson had an office in the McLaren Engines building for years for Cartech, his company. He  took on projects for both McLaren and for other customers, most notably the U.S. military, including everything from hostile environmental threat-sensing units to designs for tank cockpits and ways to cut Humvee engine changes from 9 hours to 90 minutes (he actually achieved a time of under two minutes in his demonstration to the military). Today, he is in his own facility nearby, where he has room to work on his inventions and also display his fantastic large-scale car, boat, and airplane models and various impeccable automobile restorations.

 FIGURE 12.2   Dennis Carlson (R) with Tom Klausler at McLaren Engines in the

late 1980s.

© Roger Meiners

out of Turn 2 and J.R. told Gordie (Johncock) that “if he could not stand the heat to get out of the kitchen”—and then added “little man” to set him off like a firecracker. We needed the muscle of both Cliff Pleggenkuhle and Jim Ellis to maintain the peace.

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The 1977 Indy 500: Touching 200 Indy in 1977 was historic for McLaren Engines, even though Johnny Rutherford finished last, after his transmission jumped out of gear, causing the engine to overrev and the pistons to tag the valves. During practice, the McLaren team recorded a 200-mph lap by Rutherford. Roby remarked, “Rutherford did it first and then Sneva, but Sneva got the honor somehow.” But in any case, a McLaren M24 with an engine developed by McLaren Engines became the first car to record the Indy speed milestone. Steve Roby’s insights: At Milwaukee a week later in the season Rutherford’s DFX misfired for nearly the entire race. The plug tube in the head, between the head and the cam box, which keeps water from the head getting into the cam box, and which also isolates the spark plug, split longitudinally allowing water to spray out of the crack onto the plug, shorting it out. This went on for the entire race and somehow, we still won. The original DFV had this feature cast in place but the design was changed to allow more coolant around the head. The plug tube was O-ringed in place. We were really hooked up that day. J.R. had a slip in qualifying, so we were only 2nd. Bobby Unser, who was on pole, led the first 20 laps but J.R. with a misfiring engine (which could be heard by Bobby) passed him on lap 23 and disappeared into the distance with us expecting the engine to let go any second. This race was also remembered as the one in which Sid Carr somehow had Tyler’s Amex card and provided a fine dinner for the troops with it. Tyler was not amused with Sid’s generosity.

Rutherford started the season with four straight poles—Roby drew the third after qualifying was rained out—and won four races to finish third in the championship. While Sneva won twice, scored two poles, and won the championship for Penske. Quite a statement for McLaren in the first year of the M24 powered by the DFX.

The 1978 Season Prior to this season, Roger Penske’s chief mechanic, Karl Kainhofer, spent seven months at McLaren Engines, learning about the new turbo Cosworth DFX. He would come to Detroit on Monday from Penske’s shop in Reading, Pennsylvania, and return home on Friday. He also spent time with Herb Porter. Kainhofer built the engines for Penske’s McLaren M24s for the 1978 Indianapolis 500 at the Livonia shop, then took them to the Speedway. After the race, Kainhofer returned to Reading and from then on built the turbo DFVs in Penske’s new engine shop, which featured a dynamometer installation by GM engineer Neal Clarke., who moonlighted on the project. It was a duplicate of Cell 1 at McLaren Engines. All told, McLaren did 40 engine builds and rebuilds for Penske before Kainhofer took over after the 1978 Indy 500. Penske remained a customer for work on cylinder heads and other components. The 1978 season began for Team McLaren with engine failures, which led McLaren Engines to cast new cylinder heads. Roby said: We actually led all three 500-mile races but had issues in each of them. At Indy we broke the left-hand side exhaust pipes, which we changed in 20 laps. At Pocono we were in charge until the last stop when we got a puncture going out of the pit

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road but still finished second to Al Unser. At Ontario Motor Speedway we had a 40 second lead on (mostly) Al Unser only to have the crank come out of the crankcase when the engine’s main bearing webs failed. In 1978 we effectively handed Al Unser two of the three 500-mile races—and he won all three! Budweiser bought out the Citibank sponsorship for 1979. The first input from the Anheuser-Busch agency was to paint the front of the car metallic gold and the rear metallic red, which was not so (or even) attractive. Tyler came up with a more sanitary red and blue on white color scheme, which was much better. After some wind tunnel work where we tested both full-width noses, full-width wings, and more narrow noses we found the narrow nose was better and ran it at high speed tracks for the year.

The 1979 Season

© Steve Roby

 FIGURE 12.3   The Budweiser-sponsored McLaren M-24 Indy cars pose in front of Smith Ford’s new dealership building in 1979.

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The racing season was full of tumult and controversy. Many of the Indy car owners, including Dan Gurney, Roger Penske, Pat Patrick, Jim Hall, and Team McLaren were unhappy with USAC’s management of the racing series and formed an association called Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) at the end of the 1978 season. CART proposed to assist USAC, much like the Formula 1 Constructors Association gave input to the F1 organization. The USAC was having none of that and rejected CART’s proposal. CART then split with USAC and set its own schedule of races for 1979. CART also threatened to boycott the Indy 500 and stage its own $1 million event on the same day unless its demands were granted. USAC and the Speedway stood firm, however, and CART finally submitted 44 entries two days before the deadline. USAC sent telegrams to the CART teams on April 21, 1979, notifying them that their entries were refused. CART responded by filing suit in the U.S. District Court in Indianapolis asking for an injunction to prohibit USAC from excluding CART members from the 500. The court issued the injunction against USAC’s action, allowing the CART teams to run in the race. Also, before the season, USAC replaced Budweiser with Miller as the official Indy beer. This was a big blow to McLaren’s sponsor, costing Budweiser millions of dollars in sales. And along the way, Johnny Rutherford in a McLaren qualified 8th and placed 18th in the 500. More on this later.

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© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 12.4   Three Budweiser McLaren M24 team cars in the McLaren Engines shop.

© 2020 SAE International

The David Hobbs/Ronnie Peterson McLaren BMW 320 Turbo at the 1977 Watkins Glen 6–Hour race. (William Green Photo Library.)

C H A P T E R

13

A Skunkworks F1 Engine 1977–1979 The BMW 320 Turbo Engine In 1976, Teddy Mayer was in discussions with BMW’s Motorsports Manager Jochen Neerpasch about BMW supplying engines for the McLaren F1 team. But the BMW corporate board would have nothing to do with F1, so Neerpasch and Mayer cooked up a racing program for the BMW 320 sedan. McLaren would develop a turbocharged version of the 2-liter 4-cylinder M12 Formula 2 engine for IMSA sports car racing in America. It was to remain a

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 FIGURE 13.1   From left, Bill Smith, Tyler Alexander, Gary Knutson, and Teddy Mayer with

© McLaren Engines

the BMW 320 Turbo car—part of a long-range plan to create an engine for McLaren F1.

2-liter engine for this program, but there just might be  an opportunity to build a 1.5-liter version, too—which would be perfect someday for F1. Mayer hoped McLaren would get the engine for that purpose, but, for now, the IMSA racing project would go to BMW North America. McLaren Engines would develop the engines and assemble the race cars. Bill Smith, Mayer, and Alexander set up a new company, called McLaren North America, to run the race program. They brought Roger Bailey back from the U.K. to run the team and hired Wiley McCoy to lead the engine development program. McCoy brought in engine builder Tom Klausler in late 1977.

McCoy and Klausler developed the engine in Cell 2 at the Livonia shop. Both were experienced racers. McCoy, as an engineer and engine builder who had competed on dirt ovals, driven fuel dragsters, won a go-kart championship in his youth, and built racing engines at Holman and Moody in North Carolina. He also engineered Bobby Rahal’s Formula Atlantic cars—a relationship that started with McCoy doing the same for Rahal’s father Mike in Chicago, where McCoy previously had a race shop. Klausler was a highly skilled mechanic and a professional racing driver. He was runner-up in the 1974 Formula Atlantic Championship and third in the 1975 season, running against stars such as Keke Rosberg and the legendary Gilles Villeneuve— and Bobby Rahal, who later won the Indy 500. Klausler won the first single-seat Can-Am race in 1977 and drove in the 1981 Indy 500 as well as two CART IndyCar races in 1983. McCoy was working out of race team owner Doug Shierson’s shop in Adrian, Michigan, at the time the BMW program started. “An engine builder named Don Beadle was there [at Shierson’s],” said McCoy. “He had worked at Nicholson McLaren Engines in England.” Beadle was the McLaren F1 team’s Cosworth engine guy in 1974, when Fittipaldi won the Formula 1 World Championship. After that, Beadle came to America to work in Formula Atlantic, and in 1976 started working for Shierson. Gary Knutson knew him and when McLaren Engines started the DFX development program in 1976, they brought Beadle into the team, adding all his Cosworth experience. Meanwhile, Shierson had a short-term sponsorship from T. Edwards, a clothing company, to do two Formula 5000 races in a March car. “Doug bought an engine from McLaren Engines,” said McCoy. “It was my job to go to McLaren to get it. That’s when I met Knutson. I took the race car to Mid-Ohio with the engine for a test. It ran like a double-A fuel dragster. “Bungler” [Bill McKeon] built it.”

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©Steve Roby

 FIGURE 13.2   The new BWM 320 sedans shared space with the Indy team. The cars are under construction for the 1977 season. Car #2's engine is still in naturally-aspirated configuration as raced at Daytona.

Bobby Rahal on Wiley McCoy: When I first started racing in 1973, we had a mechanic who was a service director at a local Mercedes-Benz dealership—a weekend warrior. My dad had gotten a Lola sports racing car that I raced with a 1300 cc Cosworth BDA, and we later made it an 1850. Wiley did that engine. By then we were probably exceeding our mechanic’s understanding, so in the late summer or fall of 1973 Wiley came on board part time. We knew he’d come from Holman and Moody and that sounded pretty good to me. We probably paid him on an hourly basis—fairly cheap, because my dad was cheap. And that season I won some SCCA Nationals in C Sports Racing and then a couple of B Sports Racing events at the end of the year after the upgrade to 1850 cc. Then we decided to build a 2-liter BDG. At that point Wiley really kind of came on. He was now going to the races with us. He was closer to full-time than he had been in early 1974. The people we had dealt with throughout or racing, my father before me and now mine, were people with a lot of good intentions and some kind of basic knowledge about racing and cars, but not to Wiley’s level. He was a professional, a step up.

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And so, Wiley and I then went racing together because my dad stepped out and only raced once or twice while I was doing more. Then in September 1974 at the IRP National, a friend of mine in college bought a Rondel, and we go to the first race at IRP, my first race against guys I had respect for, and we ended up winning the race. Then we went to Elkhart Lake—now with an Atlantic-spec engine that Wiley built—and we won the race there, an SCCA Regional. Next we went to the pro race at Watkins Glen on the grand prix weekend. We qualified around 20th out of 42 cars and during the race I was up to 12th, passing people and having a great time, when I banged wheels with a Canadian driver, flattened the front tire and that was that. In 1975 we went full time in the Formula Atlantic series with a  new Lola and, in the first Atlantic pro race, which was at Edmonton, I’m now the new kid on the block, racing against pros like Tom Klausler, Phil O’Connor, Bill Brack, Elliott Forbes-Robinson, and we ended up putting the car on the front row. We were ­disappointed when the ignition switch failed on the pace lap. By the time we figured that out, we were many laps behind and that was that. Then we went to the next race at Westwood, British Columbia, and I was on pole. So, it’s like, wow, this is pretty good. That year was great. And we went to Doug Shearson in Adrian, Mich., for 1976 to race a March. Wiley moved there and did the engines. Keith Devereaux (“Wombat”) joined the team, too. We had a horrible year—so many mechanical issues and just bad luck. At the end of that year, I quit racing. I was just fed up. I was immature. I said I’m not going to waste my life chasing this dream. I’m going to grow up and get a real job, which I did. We sold everything. I said screw it. And I actually got a job in an advertising agency in Chicago. I was working there for about four or five months and Wiley would call me. He goes, “You’re making a mistake, don’t give up, blah, blah, blah.” And my girlfriend at the time was saying the same thing, “You’ve got to give it more of a shot.”

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And then Wiley called me and said, “Hey, this guy in New York bought all of Vileneuve’s cars from 1976, you should talk to him.” So I called the guy, Jim Morgan, and the next thing you know, I’m back in racing and the rest is history. And Wiley went to McLaren, and that’s how I met guys like Roger Bailey and Gary Knutson, and Tom Klausler was there. Wiley was like our babysitter and mechanic in the early days. My father would ship us off in the van. He was like chief cook and bottle washer. He was everything. He did it all, and probably shook his head more than once about me, this kid, but I think we had a pretty good relationship and I will always have tremendous respect for him. He’s one of those guys that you want to keep around because he’s forgotten more than you’ll ever learn.1

Chevrolet’s Bill Howell managed a racing engine project in which McLaren supplied Chevrolet small-block engines for Al Holbert for his IMSA DeKon Monza, and for David Hobbs in F5000 cars. The engine McCoy picked up at McLaren was built with used parts from that program. Wiley did the two races with Shierson and then was ready to move on. “The BMW program was coming next year [1977] and Don Beadle recommended me for the engine development job,” said McCoy. “I met Gary at the Big Boy [restaurant] around the corner from McLaren Engines,2” he said, “I didn’t even have a resume. It was an ‘old buddy’ type talk, about everyone we knew. He hired me that day. Very casual kind of thing.” Rahal won 24 CART races and three championships. As a team owner he won the 2004 Indy 500 with driver Buddy Rice. 2 The Big Boy property now houses a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise, in case you’re interested. 1

That was in November 1976. BMW AG sent McLaren a raceprepared car from Germany and Tyler Alexander put the team together. “To start with, they had ‘Turbo’ Tom Smith, a fabricator. Jack Smith was the crew chief. Tom and Jack knew each other from working in Formula 5000,” said McCoy. The base BMW 320 race cars were built by BMW Motorsport in Munich and shipped to McLaren Engines in Livonia, where the McLaren team completed the assembly and installed the turbocharged engines it was developing. McCoy’s job was to develop a turbocharger package for the engine, which was based on the BMW 4-cylinder M12 Formula 2 power unit. McLaren essentially doubled the horsepower, which would give the car the grunt to challenge the Porsche 934 singleturbo 6-cylinder coupes that were dominating the IMSA Grand Touring class at the time. “There were no real guidelines from BMW Munich,” said McCoy, “except a mandate to use the Kugelfischer metering unit from the production 2002 Turbo street car, which had a 2-liter single-overhead cam four cylinder producing 170 hp. We were going for 500 to 600 hp with the turbocharged F2 base engine.” “Bosch’s Wolfgang Hudstedt told me to get to know a Kugelfischer engineer named Ruprecht Quast,” said McCoy: “Befriend him if you  want your thing to work,” said Hudstedt. So, I did. Quast specified how to develop a fuel curve on the dyno using a special metering unit. He sent a hand-drawn chart and said, “fill this out.” You came up with the data for Quast’s fuel curve with the exhaust temps. You had to be very careful.

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 FIGURE 13.3   Engine development engineer Wiley McCoy sets clearances on the BMW M12 racing engine (McLaren Engines).

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That’s when I learned how to run the dyno. How delicate it was to produce a fuel curve and sit there for hours and produce Ruprecht’s little map. Gary was happy to leave me with that. My job was also to not blow up the engine while I was doing that! We had to record data manually. This was before computers, obviously. Then he [Quast] took our data back to his shop and ground this three-dimensional cam—created “lumps” in it to control fuel delivery, and that would be the fuel calibration.

© Steve Roby

 FIGURE 13.4   The turbocharged M12 engine on McLaren’s dynamometer. The goal was to make more than 500 hp.

 FIGURE 13.5   McCoy works on the turbocharged M12 engine outside the McLaren

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© Steve Roby

© McLaren Engines

Engines shop.

CHAPTER 13 A Skunkworks F1 Engine 1977–1979

After the first couple iterations with the fuel curve in 1977, Paul Rosche, BMW’s demanding Motorsports manager, took notice. “Up to that time he was sort of ignoring the whole thing,” recalled McCoy. “Somewhere in 1977, he wanted to see us. Gary said, ‘you are going, I am busy with Cosworth.’ So, Wiley the ‘new guy’ had to go to Munich. “It was like being ushered into Ferrari,” he said. “For some reason Rosche liked me, and we went to a pub and had a beer. He said later he didn’t think our project would be sensible. He was ready for ‘I told you so.’” BMW Motorsports of Germany entered a non-turbocharged BMW 320 Junior Team car in the 24 Hours of Daytona in February 1977, running against a fleet of turbo Porsches and Al Holbert’s Chevrolet Monza. Interestingly, McLaren Engines built Holbert’s Chevy V8 engines as part of McLaren’s Chevrolet racing business—but McLaren wasn’t bragging about that. The BMW team drivers at Daytona were David Hobbs, Ronnie Peterson, and Sam Posey. Hobbs would be the principal driver for the program for the next two years. The 320i didn’t do well, finishing 40th overall and 28th in class. That was no surprise, given that the engine produced roughly 300 hp less than the competition. Anyway, the race was more of a team-building and learning exercise for the McLaren crew.

1977: Ready to Race In mid-April 1977, the McLaren-developed 320 Turbo appeared at Road Atlanta, where Hobbs finished fourth. The team then headed out to California for the race at Laguna Seca on the Monterey Peninsula. Tom Smith hauled the car out there. On the way, “Smith took the BMW car to the Salt Flats and took beautiful pictures of the car against the white background with the mountains in the distance. Everyone wanted one of the pictures.”

 FIGURE 13.6   The turbocharged BMW 320 race car poses for a beauty shot on the

Bonneville Salt Flats. The photograph was controversial with McLaren management, but everybody wanted a copy to frame. More turmoil ensued when the car visited the Grateful Dead on another stop—and band members took it for rides.

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“Tom also stopped in San Francisco at the Grateful Dead ranch,” said McCoy, “where he had once worked as one of their roadies. And those guys, including [lead guitarist] Jerry Garcia, drove the BMW up and down the long driveway of their estate. That was too much for Tyler to take.” There was some disagreement between the McLaren race team and BMW Motorsport around chassis tuning. The former thought the car needed a rear anti-roll bar. Hobbs wanted it, based on testing he did in Europe. Bailey agreed—and so the two Smiths, Jack and Tom fabricated and fitted one for Laguna Seca. Alexander gave them roll bar parts from an M24 for the job. Hobbs took pole and fastest lap in the race but finished © 2020 SAE International

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The 1978 Season Things were looking good for the McLaren as the 1978 season arrived. The McLaren BMW 320 Turbo was very competitive,

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but Porsche had a weapon waiting in the wings—the 935 twinturbo, which was not approved by IMSA (Porsche was running the single-turbo 934). IMSA president John Bishop had given assurances to McLaren that the car would not be permitted to race in the series. But come February 1978 at the 24 Hours of Daytona in Florida, there they were—eleven Porsche 935s. BMW would counter this with a new “lightweight” car—200 lb. lighter—but wouldn’t get it until Lime Rock. Hobbs qualified third at Daytona (with Peterson), in the only non-Porsche 935 in the top 11. Unfortunately, troubles early in  FIGURE 13.7   Team manager Roger Bailey with (L) Ronnie Petersen and David Hobbs at

the 1978 Watkins Glen Six-Hour race.

Roger Bailey Collection. © Carla Harman photo

only 24th. But when Germany found out about the bar, they ordered it removed. Bailey obeyed. He had the team remove it—and then put it right back on. It remained on the car for the duration of the program. The only permanent change was McLaren stopped talking about it. The car was competitive, qualifying, and running well, with four wins, a fourth, and an eighth place in fourteen races. Meanwhile, Al Holbert used his McLaren-built Chevrolet engines to take the championship in the series with four firsts, four seconds, and a third place. McCoy’s work on the BMW 320 project received favorable notice and he took on more and more responsibility at McLaren Engines. “As a manager you  know who the good guys are,” he said. When I first came there, I didn’t know why they let me do what I  did. Gary pointed me in the right direction, then let me “get on with it” (Tyler’s favorite expression). When it came time to deal with BMW Motorsport—in particular Paul Rosche—I somehow managed to not piss them off, and also learned to drink a lot of Bavarian pilsner. The whole McLaren organization was like that. The good guys came in and management let the good guys do what they needed to do. That’s the way it needed to be to operate like that.

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the race caused the car’s retirement. Then, at the 12 Hours of Sebring Hobbs took a dominant pole, smashing the track record with the McLaren-developed BMW 320 engine’s “boost turned up.”3 Again, trouble early in the race stopped its charge.

Roger Bailey Collection. © Carla Harman photo

 FIGURE 13.8   The characteristic burst of flame that marked the BMW and other turbocharged racing cars.

3

This was Hobbs’s explanation at the time for the quick lap. Actually he had somehow— perhaps inadvertently—cut a corner and nobody noticed, so he got credit for the fast lap.

Finally, it all came together when Hobbs won at Hallett, Oklahoma. He started on the front row with Peter Gregg’s polewinning Brumos Porsche 935, but Hobbs drove to victory while Gregg finished 13th in the race. Finally, the lightweight car was available, and Hobbs was on the front row again at Lime Rock. On pole at the 1.5-mile Connecticut circuit was Gregg—no surprise that. This time Hobbs finished fifth while Gregg won. So, after four races in the McLaren BMW 320 Turbo, Hobbs had a win and a top-five finish. It was shaping up to be  a good season. At Brainerd, Minnesota, Hobbs was again on the front row next to Gregg, but only managed five laps in the race. At the Paul Revere 250 at Daytona he  qualified third behind Gregg and Danny Ongais in 935s, but suffered another DNF, though he did complete 53 laps. McLaren entered two 320 Turbos at the Watkins Glen 6-Hour; one for Hobbs and one for Peterson. Hobbs qualified fifth but Peterson did not race. Two other BMW 320s were entered from Europe and qualified 13th and 14th. Meanwhile, Porsche 935s took the front two rows and eight of the top ten qualifying positions. There were a total of eleven 935s in the race. The race didn’t work out so well for Hobbs, though, as he was forced to retire after only one lap. One of the European BMWs finished third, driven by Dieter Quester and Hans-Joachim Stuck. Hobbs bounced back in a big way at Sears Point in Sonoma, California, in July, winning from pole with Don Whittington two seconds back in his Porsche 935. The usually fast Peter Gregg was a DNF after qualifying way back in the field. Success continued at Mid-Ohio. It was a 250-mile race, so Tom Klausler came out of the McLaren Engines shop and took a turn with Hobbs. They finished second in the race after starting on the second row right behind perennial pole man Gregg. They were just a little over a second behind a Porsche 935 and a lap or © 2020 SAE International

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The 1979 Season

 FIGURE 13.9   McLaren Engines experimented with this twin-turbo setup on the M12 engine, but never ran it in a race.

© Steve Roby

Roger Bailey Collection. © Carla Harman photo

 FIGURE 13.10   A typical racing transporter setup for better-financed teams in the late 1970s. Compare this to the early 1970s and McLaren’s open one-car trailer towed by a pickup truck for Can-Am and IndyCar.

more ahead of two more 935s. The McLaren-developed turbo four-cylinder BMW engine was enough to threaten and, when conditions were right, beat the world’s most dominant road racing car. The rest of the season was uneventful, even disappointing, as Gregg won the IMSA championship. The year 1979 would be more interesting, with BMW Motorsports adding a second team for Jim Busby to run the McLaren BMW 320 Turbo.

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The first race of the season saw Hobbs qualify second, ahead of Busby in seventh, but Busby finished second, ahead of Hobbs’s fifth place in the race. Then, after a lackluster finish in the 6-hour race at Riverside, California, Hobbs and the McLaren team reeled off a first (at Hallett for his second straight win there) and three seconds, while Busby was finishing well down in the order.

CHAPTER 13 A Skunkworks F1 Engine 1977–1979

Then in the second half of the season, Busby began running the BMW M1 on occasion while McLaren continued exclusively with the 320. The M1 was a mid-engine “supercar” with an inline six-cylinder naturally aspirated engine designated M88. It was based on BMW’s DOHC Formula 2 four-cylinder, which was also the basis for the McLaren-developed 320 Turbo. BMW had created a one-make M1 series in Europe, and now several cars were competing in an IMSA-sanctioned series. BMW had apparently decided that the M1 was the Next Big Thing, which wasn’t all bad, because McLaren Engines was becoming the go-to source for the M1’s inline six engine. Derek Bell joined the team for the 250-mile race at Mid-Ohio. He and Hobbs started second but slipped to ninth at the checkers. Hobbs then suffered two DNFs leading up to the 500-mile race at Road America. To complicate things, the Wittington brothers brought a bunch of money to McLaren, wanting to run the 1979 Ontario 500, which was on Labor Day weekend—the same weekend as the Road America 500. Tyler Alexander couldn’t refuse, so the Indy team would run a third car. “The problem was Tyler wanted—needed—Roger [Bailey] and some other guys to come handle the 3rd car in Ontario,” said McCoy. “Tyler took Roger to California and left the BMW team with Ed Nathman and me and we did all the prep work.” Wiley would serve as team manager for the race, in place of Bailey. Derek Bell joined Hobbs again as a team driver. The car was competitive, as usual, starting fourth on the grid with a 2:16.556 qualifying time, just behind three Porsche 935s. Gregg was fastest, at 2:14.979. Then came Redman at 2:15.675 and Heimrath with a 2:16. Hobbs was running at the front during the race. Then a problem arose when the car started refusing to use all the fuel in the tank. “Our car started to misfire,” said McCoy, “and the driver thought it was out of fuel and brought it in. We said, ‘No you have

10 more laps.’ But, when we filled it up, sure enough it still had 6 gallons left out of 20. The last 6 gallons couldn’t be used. We had a 14-gallon tank, in effect. So, Ed Nathman helped me adjust the race plan. Now Hobbs [and Bell] had to push hard and get a big enough lead to win, despite making more pit stops.” They pulled it off and won the race, finishing 53 seconds ahead of the second-place Porsche 935 and on the same lap as another 935 in third, so the result was in doubt right to the end. Jim Busby’s BMW M1 finished fourth in the race, three laps down. Another McLaren customer, Kurt Roehrig, was entered at Road America. His production-based BMW 320 dropped out after  FIGURE 13.11   McCoy checks the 320 before a race.

Roger Bailey Collection. © Carla Harman photo

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only one lap. Roehrig joined McLaren a few years later as an engineer. He would play a big part in making another BMW a winner in 1986. Roger Bailey counted missing Road America as one of his biggest-ever personal disappointments. McLaren took a great victory with his program, but he wasn’t there for it. On top of

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all that BMW cancelled the race program at the end of the season. But the biggest blow came when McLaren’s IndyCar sponsor, Budweiser, pulled out of Indianapolis racing—a move precipitated by the war between USAC and CART.

© The Detroit News.

McLaren Engines collection

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Crisis and Crossroads Team McLaren Leaves America When Budweiser ended its sponsorship at the end of the season, the McLaren team was left without funding. That, coupled with problems McLaren was having with the Formula 1 program in Europe, convinced Teddy Mayer to shut down the Indy team. McLaren Engines had lost not only its biggest customer but also its foundation.

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Alexander explained, “Teddy and the company needed to concentrate on the Formula 1 effort, which was not going particu­ larly well at the time. There was a lot of pressure to try and fix this problem.1 ” “I knew this was a team with a passion for auto racing,” Rutherford commented, “This was a team that was willing to work together, and I knew that we were all in the business of auto racing to win—to be the best of the best! Under Tyler’s guidance we all came together in a way that had other crews in the garage area talking to them and trying to find what “black magic” we were using in our car. It can now be told-we were just damn good!”2 Alexander stayed on long enough to sell the team cars and parts with help from Roby and Roger Bailey, and then have a garage sale to get rid of unneeded equipment. It was all big news in the local newspapers. The December 8, 1979, Detroit News story ran a tongue-in-cheek Garage Sale ad: “Moving to England. Everything must go. Three 1979 McLaren M24 Indianapolis 500 racecars. Low mileage. Ready to race, including winner of Atlanta 125-mile races, $65,000. Two rolling chassis only $40,000. Cosworth race engines $25,000 each…”

Decision Bill Smith and Teddy Mayer put the question to Knutson, Bailey, McCoy, and the rest of the company: Should they shut down McLaren Engines? Although the major racing programs were gone, Chevrolet End Products, a valued and loyal customer, remained. There were still ongoing projects, and the business was very active and growing. Also, some small racing customers 1 2

were coming to McLaren Engines for help. The BMW M88 racing engine build business was solid. And there was the Cosworth DFX. Could that program be continued with new customers to replace Team McLaren? If so, there would be plenty of work.

A Reprieve .… Was there a chance McLaren Engines could survive and grow? The answer was “Yes,” and Smith and Mayer decided to give it a go. They would see if McLaren Engines could keep the doors open without the BMMR Team. For now, the dynos would not be silenced. When BMMR exited the U.S. and the BMW 320 program ended, the engine company suddenly found itself to be a much smaller enterprise, divided almost equally between racing and non-racing business. On the one hand, it remained a high-level race shop primarily servicing the Cosworth DFX Indy engine, along with small projects with many individual race teams. On the other hand, McLaren also had Chevrolet as an industrial customer. This business would be instrumental in transforming the company from racing into a successful engineering research and development enterprise. In another development, Wiley McCoy’s role would be formally broadened on October 5, 1980, when he was brought onto the board of directors and named a vice president of the corporation. “I wasn’t expecting it. We were in a meeting at the F1 race in Watkins Glen and suddenly Bill Smith made the announcement,” he said. The following sections will separately discuss the history and growth of each of these two informal business divisions at McL a ren—Sec t ion III, R aci ng a nd Sec t ion I V, Automotive Engineering.

Tyler’s autobiography. Tyler’s autobiography, p. 115.

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SECTION III. A NEW McLAREN ENGINES: THE RACING BUSINESS

Part of the McLaren engine build shop. Looking toward the dyno cells in the background: “Cell 1” to the lefT. The control console sits in front of the window that looks into the cell. Photo taken in the early 1980s, with multiple DFX engine builds in process. © Gary Knutson

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Rebuilding All agreed that McLaren Engines’ existing customer base would not be enough to keep the company in business for long, so Roger Bailey immediately polled the Indy teams who were using Cosworth DFX engines, signing up most of them. Suddenly, McLaren Engines had a whole new group of customers for the 1980 Indy car season.

Mayer Motor Racing In 1984, Teddy Mayer and Tyler Alexander were back at Indy with a March-Cosworth. McLaren’s Bill McKeon built engines for their MMR team during the one year they ran the series, with Tom Sneva and Howdy Holmes as the drivers in March 84C Indy cars. They rented a building on Robinson Ave. on the north side of Eight Mile Road in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Steve Roby joined the team as crew chief in his last racing involvement before retiring to what he called a “real” job. Sneva averaged 210.029 mph to take the pole in that year’s Indianapolis 500 but retired from the race on lap 168 with suspension failure while running in second place. He led 36 laps. The program closed after the season and the

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 FIGURE 15.2   Joe Bunetto assembling a DFX engine with help from an

March 83C-Cosworth cars on the front row at the 1984 Indy 500. Sneva sits in the pole winning “Texaco Star” and Holmes is in the car next to him, sponsored by Jiffy Mix, his family’s business in Michigan. Crew chief Steve Roby, in a red sweater, stands next to Holmes. Rick Mears won the race in the yellow Pennzoil Penske March 83C next to Holmes. Sneva led 31 laps but retired after 168 laps. Holmes finished 13th in the race. Sneva finished second to Mario Andretti in the 1984 CART Indy Car championship, winning three times.

unidentified technician.

© John Conely

© Gary Knutson

 FIGURE 15.1   Mayer Motor Racing drivers Tom Sneva and Howdy Holmes put their

principals moved over to F1 in partnership with Carl Haas with their new Beatrice team.

The CART Technical Committee “Kirk Russell, CART technical director, was creating a committee to work on rules,” said McCoy. “The first committee members were me, Steve Horne, Tony Cicale and Kirk. And we wanted to test various engine devices, like a sonic turbo restrictor and a fuel flow limiter designed by Keith Duckworth, that kind of stuff. So, we  tested at Eight Mile and reported back to the CART Tech Committee.”

Wiley McCoy observed that, by 1981, “We were doing the DFX engines for customers Alex Foods, Interscope, Longhorn Racing, Doug Shierson Racing, the Whittingtons, Rhodes Aircraft, Armstrong Tool (they stayed with us for years), the International Machinist Union—Bobby Unser was now retired and running that team. Josele Garza was their driver.” McLaren would build DFX engines through the 1985 season.

BMW Engine Programs McLaren also built and serviced the inline DOHC 6-cylinder BMW M88 racing engines for BMW M1 racers in IMSA, such © 2020 SAE International

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as Deacon Racing, Kendall Racing, Tony Garcia, Dave Cowart, and Brevier Racing. Tom Klausler was the principal M88 engine builder. This racing engine building business would continue for several years.

© Wiley McCoy

 FIGURE 15.3   BMW M88 engine.

There was still a small BMW involvement. In 1981, BMW North America Motorsports was running a prototype, a March M1C racing car, powered by the M88 racing engine, but the car, driven by Hobbs and Hans Stuck, needed more power to compete

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with the swarm of prototypes using stronger American V8s. BMW North America racing manager Jim Patterson made the decision to use the McLaren-developed Turbo 4 from the nowdiscarded BMW 320s last used in 1979. McCoy made the conversion at McLaren Engines in consultation with Rosche, who flew in from Munich. But it still wasn’t competitive with the American iron, so that program died as far as McLaren Engines was concerned. Meanwhile, some smaller teams started coming in the Livonia door. For example, McLaren built and maintained engines for Kurt Roehrig’s BMW 320, running in IMSA’s GTU class, for several years. An engineer, Roehrig eventually hired on, but kept racing on the side. For 1982, he did a program with Buick to run their Turbo V6 in the SCCA Trans-Am series and continued this through 1984. It wasn’t all land-based teams, either: offshore boat racer Joel Halprin was introduced to McLaren by Jay Signore, a longtime associate of Roger Penske, who ran Penske’s International Race of Champions (IROC) all-star series. Halprin wanted big-block Chevrolet racing engines. Also, the Saltulla team needed smallblock Chevys and Cougar Marine needed turbo development on their big blocks. McLaren had the experience and the expertise to do whatever was needed. The marine racing engine duty cycle was much like that of Indy engines. Mostly wide-open throttle—except when the boat launched off a wave, exposing the propeller. Then the throttle was closed so the engine wouldn’t overspeed, but it was back to wide-open throttle (WOT) after only a second or two. By then, Roger Bailey had left McLaren to become a member of the IMSA management team. John Bishop extended him a great offer to be the competition director. He left McLaren after the 24 Hours of Daytona, where he helped run a car he had been developing called the McLaren Mustang.

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The McLaren Mustang In 1980, Gary Kohs,1 a local Michigan entrepreneur, made a deal with Ford and Firestone to create a series of four-cylinder Mustangs with a high-performance look and feel. McLaren Engines would do the development work.  FIGURE 15.4   A poster of the McLaren Mustang and a McLaren M24 Indy car Gary Kohs

bought and repainted to a deeper McLaren orange.

Performance Radial tires; beefed-up suspensions with adjustable Koni shocks; big brakes; and McLaren-prepared 2.3-liter fourcylinder engines. A total of 250 cars were to be built, but the program was cancelled by Ford after only 10 were produced. “We had the M81 all set,” said Kohs, “but Ford’s Michael Kranefuss wanted to do the SVO car, 2 so they cancelled our program.” During this program, Kohs also decided to field two race versions of the IMSA GTX class at Daytona and Sebring. McLaren Engines built the cars, which were similar in appearance to the street versions. They started with a body-in-white and made a race car out of it. Ed Nathman was the primary fabricator on that along with Tom Smith, both of whom had been on the BMW 320 Turbo program. The cars featured race-prepared suspension components and drivetrains, including naturally aspirated Cosworth BD-series racing engines.

© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 15.5   The McLaren Mustang racing car at the Livonia headquarters. Remade for track only and powered by a Cosworth BD-type four-cylinder racing engine.

1

Kohs, who passed away in 2018, began his marketing career as a student at Notre Dame University, where he organized and promoted a highly successful car show called The Sports Car Spectacular that was supported by international car manufactures who sent their latest concept and production cars. The show was written up in nationally circu­ lated car enthusiast publications. He moved the show to Detroit for a few years after he graduated. His company, Marketing Corporation of America promoted everything from Pizza to Volkswagen Motorsports, Ford Performance Parts, Ford Motorsports, and Firestone Tires. The latter two formed the genesis of the McLaren Mustang.

© McLaren Engines

Carrying an M81 prefix, the McLaren Mustangs received radical body modifications including enormous fender flares that covered 15 × 8-in. wheels and 255/55/15 Firestone High

2

The SVO Mustang was also based on the turbocharged 2.3-liter Ford four-cylinder en­ gine, which was moved rearward in the engine bay for better weight distribution. The car did not have the radical wheel flares but did have a well-developed high-grip sus­ pension system.

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 FIGURE 15.6   McLaren Donzi

 FIGURE 15.7   Engine of McLaren Donzi - A 2.3 liter Ford Pinto four cylinder

turbocharged by McLaren.

© McLaren Engines

“We had this deal to run the Mustang at Daytona,” said Roger Bailey. “It was partly sponsored by Ford, but most of the money came from Firestone because we would run the race on their new High Performance Radial [HPR] road tires—and I’m positive I’m right in saying that we ran 24 hours on two sets of street radials.” Bailey was involved with both the streetcar and the GT versions and attended the Daytona race just as he left McLaren on his way to his new job at IMSA. Once again Tom Klausler was pressed into driving duty, this time alongside John Morton. The two drivers also raced the car in the 12 Hours of Sebring in March 1981.

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Peugeot V6 Turbo

© McLaren Engines

The Peugeot Rally team came on board in 1982, and McLaren commenced developing a racing version of the Peugeot-RenaultVolvo (PRV) V6 engine—the same type that the company had been developing for DeLorean when that company went under (see Section IV. B.). But in this case McLaren was able to complete the needed upgrades to create a powerful, durable racing engine. McLaren also supplied engines and rebuilds during the competitive life of the program.

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Porsche Turbos 924 and 944 Lee White, of Hermann-Miller Racing, and a friend of Roehrig, brought his team’s four-cylinder Porsche 924 turbo engine to the

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shop for development. “Lee needed turbo and dyno expertise,” recalled McCoy. This program continued into 1982. The driver was Paul Miller. White was later general manager for Roush Racing and for Toyota’s TRD Racing group. The year 1983 saw the start of a project with Al Holbert and Porsche North America on a new Porsche 944 turbo racing engine. Holbert had McLaren work with Dave Klym of FabCar Engineering, a race car builder in Atlanta, Georgia, to develop the 944 R. FabCar built eight of them, including one for IMSA. Andial took over the engine program for production. This project ran through 1985, with engineers Irv Zwicker and Frank Bohanan running the show. Bohanan worked on the upper end of the engine, including the cylinder head, which was developed by Reher-Morrison. “The head was really trick and got the attention of Hans Metzger at Porsche,” said McCoy. Lead engineer Zwicker developed the bottom end improvements. Bohanan described his part as follows: We designed [an intake] plenum and then used different runner lengths to suit different tracks, to get the torque curves that we wanted. I used Kinsler velocity stack bells as the basis for the manifolds, which tapered for improved airf low and the balance between cylinders, prevented “ fuel stealing.” We were using a continuous fuel injection system that wasn’t solenoid-based, so you were always spraying fuel in there and you had to worry about the pulses from one cylinder stealing from the adjacent cylinder, so the design of the manifold took that into consideration.

First time we ran the manifold with one of the factory teams, they liked it so much that they never returned it. It was supposed to be a prototype. We ended up making more of them, obviously. We worked with FabCar to get the headers as good as they could be and still fit their chassis. We kept the balance shafts, which were rotating at twice engine speed. We had a 7,500-rpm red line, which meant that the balance shafts were spinning at 15,000 rpm. The first time that Al Holbert drove the car he  said he  couldn’t believe that such a big four-cylinder engine making that kind of power was so smooth.

1997 Saleen Mustang at Le Mans Soon after Dave Coram3 left Ford Performance for Saleen Automotive in 1996, he approached McLaren with a project to do a supercharged version of the 4.6-liter Ford V8 for the street Saleen Mustang. McLaren was working on this when Steve Saleen decided to run a team at the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans with his partner, actor/comedian, and TV star Tim Allen. Tom Dettloff, a cylinder head expert trained at Diamond Racing, was the project manager for the race program. The McLaren team built engines for two cars, which were entered under the name SaleenAllen RRR Speedlab Racing. Steve Saleen and Price Cobb were the principal drivers. Others would join the team for the race. Dettloff accompanied the cars to France that June, where he would look after the engines. The cars placed 32nd and 43rd in the race. Neither car was on the track at the end due to suspension problems. 3

Coram was formerly an engineer at McLaren Engines, Inc.

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© Tom Dettloff

 FIGURE 15.8   McLaren Engines developed this fuel-injected small-block Ford V8 for the Saleen Mustang Le Mans project.

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© Tom Dettloff

 FIGURE 15.9   The two Saleen Mustangs in the Le Mans garages. Tom Dettloff was there to manage the engines. He commented that Le Mans was more of a family event than he saw at races back home in the U.S. He saw whole families together during open pit walks during the week.

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The McLaren–developed Buick V6 Turbo Indy racing engine.

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The Buick Turbo V6 Racing Engine The year 1983 saw the beginning of a multiyear engine development project with Buick that would race on both road courses and oval speedways, ultimately the Indianapolis 500. Wiley McCoy tells the story: Buick Performance, led by Herb Fishel, saw a window to compete at the 1984 Indy 500. After CART was formed, USAC still controlled Indy and allowed the “stock blocks” a great deal of latitude over the by-then-standard Indy engine, the Cosworth DFX. “Stock Block” was defined as single camshaft located in the engine block, two valves in the cylinder heads operated by pushrods. If turbocharged, the engine was allowed up to a 3.4-liter piston displacement vs. Cosworth’s 2.65 liters. The Buick Power Source catalog was full of well-developed high-performance Stage 2 parts. Herb and his team, Joe Negri, Ron Kociba, Ron Yuille, and others just needed an experienced partner/supplier to develop an Indy specification powertrain. Herb went to Smokey Yunick as the guy who could do this. Smokey’s answer was on the order of, ‘Only God

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could make a Buick run at Indy, and I’m good—but I ain’t God,’ or something to that effect.

 FIGURE 16.1   Tom Klausler in the The development “mule” powered by the prototype

Buick turbo engine at the Ohio’s Transportation Research Center in 1983.

Herb’s second choice was Gary Knutson, as he knew Gary and his reputation from Chaparral and McLaren Can-Am well. And Gary and McLaren Engines were already engaged in a program to develop a turbo Buick engine to power a March 83G in IMSA and Le Mans in 1983.

McLaren Engines designer John Gracen was given the job to package the V6 into a useable unit. It had already been established that, to make it simple for the Buick to be accepted in the current (1983) racing community the package had to bolt into a chassis the same way a Cosworth did. So, John’s job was to make the V6 mount like a Cosworth DFX. He specified the familiar DFX-style front cover with belt driven pumps on either side of the block with the same front and rear mount points as a DFX. With the assistance of Jack Fields at Cosworth, McLaren even purchased Cosworth water and oil pumps. Gary and John designed a sump that also mimicked the DFX. Not a small part of Jack Fields’s job was to convince Cosworth chief Keith Duckworth that selling lots of parts to Buick was a good idea and no threat to the DFX. It turned out that, in the long run, Jack was right. McLaren Engines also specified a Cosworth mechanical fuel metering system for turbo/methanol use. It replaced the original Hilborn system that the McLaren Engines turboDFV team developed.

© Wiley McCoy

We started Work Order #659 in 1983 after Fishel gave us the job. The project started with the Buick “Stage II” heavyduty V6 block and heads that were created for the NASCAR Grand National series.

 FIGURE 16.2   Chuck Looper next to the car. Ed Nathman on right. The helicopter in the

background was restored and flown by Gary Knutson.

© Wiley McCoy

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While McLaren’s team of expert engine developers including Bruce Allen,1 Tom Klausler, Jim Gamache, Jim Daw, and John Conely were busy getting the engine ready for testing, McCoy’s 1

Bruce would later escape 8 Mile and join Reher-Morrison’s drag racing team in Texas. The R-M team had been a cylinder head development partner of McLaren. Bruce took the late Lee Shepherd’s place behind the wheel of their championship Pro Stock drag racer. He is still there!

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7-mile banked oval—and a 50-acre skid pad similar to “Black Lake” at the General Motors Milford Proving Ground. Tom Klausler was pressed back into test driver mode. He spent many hours pounding around the vacant landscape of TRC. This was in the later part of 1983.

job was to find a test vehicle. His search took him to the Forsythe Racing Indy team, where he purchased a 1982 March chassis. A super team of development engineers and fabricators was put in place in Livonia. It was led by Tyler Alexander, who was between assignments, as BMMR had recently been bought out by Ron Dennis, with the help of Philip Morris’ (tobacco) money. Alexander was preparing for his and Mayer’s re-entry in IndyCar racing as Mayer Motor Racing (MMR) in 1984.

While the engine was being “validated,” Buick made a deal with Brayton Racing of Coldwater, Mich., to run the team at the 1984 Indy 500. This program led to Scott Brayton and Car and Driver writer Pat Bedard, to drive the cars. They both qualified (after some much-needed chassis set-up guidance from the friends-of-family MMR group). Brayton retired with engine failure2 and Bedard had one of the most spectacular survivable accidents ever seen at the Indianapolis 500. His March chassis was literally cut in half and he rode out the mess in his cockpit, which had separated from the rest of the chassis and engine. Bedard retired from Indy racing on the spot.

 FIGURE 16.3   Tom Klausler, at far left, debriefs with Wiley McCoy, while crew member Chuck Looper checks the car. Gary Knutson is at the car’s cockpit.

© Wiley McCoy

The next two years with McLaren direct involvement saw some success. Pancho Carter sat on the Indy 500 pole in 1985 with Brayton 2nd and setting a new lap record of 214.199 mph on his third lap. His transmission failed coming onto the main straight on the final qualifying lap, so he coasted to the finish line. Otherwise he would have taken the pole. Both cars failed early in the race with burned pistons, Pancho was the first to go, after only six laps. Scott lasted until lap 34. Official cause was listed as pump failure—this did not go over well with McLaren’s friends at Cosworth.

Tyler led the Buick project team, consisting of Chuck Looper and Ed Nathman, as they combined perhaps 50+ years of racing experience into prepping a proper test vehicle for the Buick V6. McCoy continues: When ready, the whole group descended on the Transportation Research Center (TRC} in Ohio. TRC was perfect for private testing at any speed necessary, using the © 2020 SAE International

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Galles Racing was running Pancho and attempted to run CART races after Indy, but CART was not as welcoming to 2

Brayton also ran the engine in CART races at Milwaukee, Portland, Elkhart Lake, and Michigan but did not finish any of the races.

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stock-block race engines, which had to run the same boost as a Cosworth; 48-inches Hg, which was not exactly competitive. At Indy, with 58 inches of boost the Buicks were making over 800 hp, compared to 725 for a good Cosworth. At 48 inches of boost, the Buick made approximately 700 hp. In 1986 the official team was led by Danny Ongais, with a second car for Jim Crawford under ASC sponsorship. Brayton Racing also ran Scott again. The Brayton team continued to star for Buick another 10 years until Scott’s untimely death during practice at the Indianapolis Speedway

in 1996. Ironically, he had already taken the pole for the 500-mile race. The team support job moved from McLaren to Dennis Fischer Engines. Later on, Menard took over the Buick programs from GM and continued into the mid-1990s. The stock-block-at-Indy saga ended in 1994, when Penske/Ilmor used a loophole in the technical rules to produce the killer Mercedes 500l program and ran over everybody with their [209-cu.in.] 1,000-hp monster. The rules-makers put an end to that story.

© Courtesy of Revs Institute, Karl Ludvigsen Photograph Collection

 FIGURE 16.4   Pancho Carter in the Galles Racing March 85C.

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The ARS Engine CART initiated the ARS (American Racing Series) with Indy team owner Pat Patrick as series owner. This was a development program to bring new drivers into the CART series. Buick selected McLaren to develop a non-turbo Buick V6 based on its Stage II block and heads with Kinsler injection. The engines had accessory drives configured like the Buick Indy Turbo engine to fit in a version of the existing Cosworth DFV-powered March Formula 3000 single seat car raced in the European open wheel road racing series. Pat Patrick hired Roger Bailey away from IMSA to serve as the technical director of the ARS series.

© Roger Bailey collection

 FIGURE 16.5   ARS series director Roger Bailey (L) with Steve Roby in discussion with driver Gordon Johncock at a track test of the new ARS car. It was based on the European March F3000 chassis and powered by the McLaren Engines-developed Buick V6 engine.

Bailey had advance notice from March’s Robin Herd on the opportunity: “I got a call from Robin,” said Bailey, “He said, ‘Hey © 2020 SAE International

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Roger, I’m building 36 cars for a minor-league Indy race series— and you’re going to run it.’” Bailey took a leading role in developing the engine, using McLaren facilities and engineering support. Buick managed the engine builds and former drag racer “Ohio” George Montgomery would maintain and rebuild them on a day-to-day basis.

A Version for IMSA Buick also ran the McLaren turbo V6 in the IMSA GTP series starting in 1984. Buick teamed with Pegasus Racing to enter a March 84G in the series. Pegasus would also run the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year. Americans Ken Mandren and David Speer were the team principals and also the regular drivers. Others would join them behind the wheel at Le Mans and at the longer IMSA races. McCoy traveled to March Engineering, the race car builder in the U.K., to work with the company’s new designer Adrian Newey to fit the engine into the chassis. “Adrian was just a kid, just starting—really sharp, though,” said McCoy. Newey would go on to become one of the legendary race car designers in Formula 1. The Mandren-Speer March-Buick’s first race was the IMSA Daytona finale in November 1983. According to a report in Autosport magazine,3 “its speed around the banking—being used without a chicane for the last time—astounded everyone.” The car was driven by Mandren, Speer, and Wayne Pickering in the 1984 Le Mans race. It did not finish, but it was reportedly the fastest car on the long Mulsanne Straight. It was then campaigned in various IMSA races during the rest of the year. McLaren continued to develop the engine as the season went on. 3

An article on the new March 85G-Buick IMSA GTP, December 13, 1984, issue, p. 45.

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 FIGURE 16.6   (a) Whitney Ganz in the Conte Racing March-Buick at the 500-kilometer

© Wiley McCoy

© Larry Neuzel

Mid-Ohio IMSA Camel GT race in 1986. Buick Indycar driver Jim Crawford Co-drove. (b) The Buick V6 engine being fitted into the March 85G chassis in England.

Buick made a deal with Californian Phil Conte to run a two-car March-Buick team in IMSA for the 1985 season,4 using the McLaren-built V6 turbo engines in the new March 85G. Their first race was the 1984 Daytona finale, driven by Conte Racing’s John Paul Jr. and John Morton. Autoweek reported that during the race, Paul Jr. “proved the car’s potential by storming up from 9th to the lead in the early stages.”5 Another March 85G-Buick qualified 10th in the hands of Emerson Fittipaldi and Tony Garcia. Neither cars finished. Racing driver Tiff Nedell tested the car in England for Autosport magazine 6 just before it was shipped to Daytona. He commented, “There is something addictive about brute horsepower … the grunt of a 5-litre Chevrolet, the punch of the [Porsche] 956, but the Buick really was awesome. It is probably the most powerful racing engine in race trim anywhere in the world…but its smoothness and lack of fuss really impresses. With the exhaust and turbo out over the top of the gearbox at the back the engine is very quiet, and a wide power band gives acceleration that is so smooth to experience and yet so explosive.” During the 1985 season, Conte’s car usually qualified well with several front-row starts, even scoring the pole position for the Daytona 24-hour race in early March 1985. The car, driven by Paul Jr., Bill Adam, and Whitney Ganz, had various problems and retired after 330 laps. It did score a fifth place at Pocono (Ganz/Adam) that season. In late March after his car was the fastest qualifier at the Riverside event, Conte told the Los Angeles Times, “The engine has been bullet-proof, and all we need is for the car to stay together.” Mandren would drive one of the cars in a couple of races late that season. Autosport, December 13, 1984, issue, p. 45. 6 Ibid., p. 46. 4 5

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The team showed more promise in 1986, with its new RC Cola sponsorship, starting from pole at the April 27 Riverside 6 hours (Paul Jr.), scoring a third at the Charlotte 500 Kilometer race in May 1986 (Ganz/Bob Lobenberg) and another third at the Watkins Glen 500-miler (Ganz/Jim Grawford). Ganz and Paul Jr. placed second at Road Atlanta after starting fourth and fighting with the Hendrick Corvette until the Buick-March developed brake problems. This would be the team’s best-ever finish. Conte continued to run the cars through 1987. Tom Klausler managed the engine program and John Conely built engines and provided track support.

Buick Turbo V6 Drag Car

Performance, went nearly 250 mph for a new class record the first time out and continued to set records for years afterward by Kizer and team members in the car in various engine configurations, including both gasoline and fuel classes—normally aspirated and turbocharged. Kurt Roehrig worked on the initial project, doing wiring, engine mapping, and other work on the original build and at Kizer’s base in Georgia. He accompanied the car on its first foray to the Salt, testing it to 205 mph before record runs began.  FIGURE 16.7   McLaren engineered the installation of a modified Buick Indy engine into

this NASCAR-Buick Regal. A single large turbocharger was placed ahead of the V6 engine. The car was run by a team led by the late Courtney Hizer of Rome, Georgia. He set records in the 250-mph range on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats in 1987. The team continued running the car for years thereafter, getting Hizer and others into the prestigious 200-MPH Club.

In 1985, Buick had McLaren Engines build a Pro Stock engine for drag racer Buddy Ingersoll. It was based on a 268 cu. in. V6 using the same block and heads as the Indy and IMSA engines (without the Cosworth pieces), but with a “violent giant turbo thing running on trick fuel,” according to McCoy. “Technically, the fuel was gasoline, because it was required in Pro Stock. Buddy Ingersoll was a really good racer,” he added. The car would go over 190 mph in the quarter mile in 7.8 seconds, which was very competitive in Pro Stock then. This program continued into 1986.

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© Villa Hizer

Buick LeSabre Turbo V6 Bonneville Car McLaren built another engine and installed it in a Bonneville Salt Flats-bound tube-frame 1987 Buick LeSabre for Courtney Hizer of Rome, Georgia. The turbocharger/intercooler system was mounted in front of the engine. Hizer, supported by his Miller Beer-sponsored team initially known as Hinton

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The Buick Hawk: Six Valves per Cylinder

 FIGURE 16.9   The experimental six-valve cylinder head.

During 1987, Buick kicked off a program to develop a pure racing engine for Indy. The only stipulation was the engine had to be a V6, to match Buick’s V6 production engine philosophy. Everything else was free, and Buick wanted to experiment with a six-valvesper-cylinder configuration.  FIGURE 16.8   The Buick Hawk prototype engine assembled for display,

© McLaren Engines

without turbocharger.

 FIGURE 16.10   (a) Pistons with six valve reliefs installed in the prototype cylinder

© McLaren Engines

block.

© McLaren Engines

McLaren worked with Buick engineer Ed Keating to design a new engine with a cylinder head that packaged the valves in a splayed radial configuration. The McLaren team included Gunnar Alxesonn, a talented designer from Sweden. The General Motors Research Laboratories also assisted with airflow development. © 2020 SAE International

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 FIGURE 16.11   Bill McKeon measures clearances on the Hawk cylinder head. Engineer Irv Zwicker is almost completely hidden behind him.

© McLaren Engines

The design, called the Buick Hawk, used the Cosworth oil and water pump configuration and would mount similarly to the existing stock-block Buick Indy engine. Castings were made and machined, and an engine was assembled for testing on the dynamometer. After only a few days running, Buick cancelled the program, as the company was not prepared to finance the needed long-term development that is necessary with a new design, particularly one so radical. Another reason was Chevrolet had introduced its own Indy engine, built by Ilmor Engineering. Incidentally, Ferrari introduced a similar concept for the F355 sports car in 1994, but with five valves instead of six (three intakes and two exhausts). Yamaha was years ahead of all the carmakers, having introduced its “Genesis” 5-valve FZ750 sportbike engine in 1985.

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 FIGURE 16.12   (a) Wiley McCoy, right, observes a testing run. Ian Patton, L, and Bill McKeon observe as Jim Gamache drives the dyno, (b) Bill McKeon (L) with Wiley McCoy, Buick engineer Roger Jendrusina and Buick Motorsports manager Joe Negri.

 FIGURE 16.13   The six-valve DOHC engine with transparent cam covers received a few

© McLaren Engines

© McLaren Engines

days of running in and some power runs but received no further development.

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© Tony Mezzacca Motorsports photography

McLaren–built BMW IMSA GTP cars on the front row at Watkins Glen in 1986. The Hobbs/Watson car (#19) suffered from cooling problems and dropped out early, but John Andretti and Davy Jones dominated the race in car 18.

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BMW Returns: The IMSA GTP Car In 1985, BMW North America returned to McLaren Engines with a program to build a new prototype for the IMSA GTP series. The car would use a March chassis with a 2-liter turbocharged BMW 4-cylinder engine—think M12 Formula 2, very similar to the one McLaren developed for the BMW 320 Turbo project of the 1970s. But this time, the engine was the Formula 1 version developed from the McLaren-developed 320 Turbo.

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© Michael O. Crews

 FIGURE 17.1   The first iteration of the BMW GTP car ran at the 1985 24 Hours of Daytona in this configuration. Some considered it an “ugly duckling,” earning it the nickname, “Donald.”

David Hobbs returned as a driver and was teamed with Formula 1 veteran John Watson. John Andretti and Davy Jones drove a second car. John McLaughlin was the first team manager. “John was a really nice guy who had worked for Zakspeed and Roush,” said McCoy. “He and John Andretti were buddies. That’s how we got John as a driver.” McCoy said, “We took over the Mayer Motor Racing building down the street on the Farmington Hills side to make it into the BMW shop that we called ‘McNorth.’” McLaren put together a test car affectionately known as “Donald,” short for “Donald Duck,” because it was a bit oddlooking—an odd duck. McLaren fabricator Don Miller built the car, along with most of the actual race cars and parts during the life of the program. Miller came from Callaway Engineering, where he designed turbocharger packages for the aftermarket. He was

recommended by Bruce Renton of Warner-Ishi Turbo, the company that supplied all the turbochargers for Callaway—and for Indy. The regular team cars were bodied according to a BMW stylist’s concept that had been developed aerodynamically. “McLaughlin hired a friend in Brighton, Michigan. to do our bodywork,” recalled McCoy. The only race the team ran that 1985 season was the Eastern Airlines 3-Hour Camel Grand Prix at the Daytona International Speedway, where the car showed speed and Hobbs qualified second ahead of all the new Porsche 962s but did not finish. After extensive testing in the off-season, the team went to Sebring in March 1986. There, disaster struck. The bodywork came apart during practice, with Bobby Rahal at the wheel and the car went end over end, setting altitude records between Sebring’s first and second turns. © 2020 SAE International

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 FIGURE 17.3   Drivers John Andretti (left) and Davy Jones celebrate their victory in the

The Hobbs/Watson car suffered from cooling problems and dropped out early, but John Andretti and Davy Jones dominated the race in the other car.

1986 IMSA Camel GT Kodak Copiers 500.

© McLaren Engines

© William Green Photo Library.

 FIGURE 17.2   Watkins Glen 1986: the first and only win. Both cars were on the front row.

“It could have killed Bobby,” said McCoy, who was a family friend. Fortunately, Rahal was not injured, but the BMWs were withdrawn. “We had to fix the bodywork,” said Wiley. “I went to Indianapolis to Lee Sargent and Eloisa Garza and got them to do all-new bodies for us.” McLaughlin was replaced by Vic Elford but that didn’t work out, so McCoy stepped in as temporary team manager, while searching for a replacement. David Hobbs said, “Hire John Dick,” a crew chief he knew from the 1983 Trans-Am Camaro team. “He’ll make your team work.” So, John came on board. One of his first moves was to recruit Kurt Roehrig out of McLaren’s Eight Mile Road headquarters, where he  was working as a vehicle development

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engineer—primarily on the Buick GNX program. “The two of them fixed the whole thing,” said McCoy. The BMWs, with the 900-hp McLaren-developed engines, were faster than anything on the track, leading many races, but development problems kept them out of the winner’s circle until September 21 at Watkins Glen, when Davy Jones and John Andretti took the pole and won the race, lapping almost the whole field, except the second and third place Porsche 962s. That was the high point of the program. At the end of the season, with one year left on the contract, BMW shut down the team. McLaren had solved all the big problems and was poised to dominate the 1987 season.

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 FIGURE 17.4   The turbo M12 engine. Based on the BMW Formula 1 engine, but enlarged

Hobbs was incensed at the cancellation, not only because he was ready to win big, but also because he had more time on his contract with BMW. When BMW cancelled the 1987 season, Gianpiero Moretti, owner of MOMO, an Italian racing wheel and accessories supplier, bought two of BMWs March 86G chassis and installed a 3.0-liter version of the turbocharged Buick V6 in one. The other car got a 4.5-liter naturally aspirated Buick V6. MOMO, now the de facto Buick factory IMSA team ran the last three races of the 1987 season in the turbo car. In 1988 the team ran just half the season, finishing 10th at Mid-Ohio and 9th at Watkins Glen before Moretti parked the now-obsolete cars in favor of a Porsche 962.

© Author

to 2.0 liters. First developed by McLaren Engines for the BMW 320 Turbo IMSA sedan.

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©Roger Meiners

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Project 734: McLaren Goes Offshore “I was driving down Eight Mile Road and noticed the McLaren Engines sign,” said Steve Widman, an auto mechanic at the time. He was also a racer of hydroplanes and go-karts, and so he was naturally tuned in to the car-racing scene. He knew about the McLaren team’s huge success in the Can-Am and IndyCar series. But McLaren Engines? What was that? Curious, he went in to find out what was going on.

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 FIGURE 18.1   Steve Widman on the dyno. He managed the Chevrolet marine business

© McLaren Engines

as well as serving as a dynamometer department manager.

He found a racing paradise. There were competition cars crammed into the place; Team McLaren Indy cars and McLaren’s BMW 320 Turbo racing sedans. He’d found the very place where the big-block racing Chevys that dominated Can-Am racing were reared. This is where Indy-winning Offies had been built; where a turbocharged Cosworth DFV was created and built for McLaren’s and Penske’s McLaren Indy cars; where McLaren

Engines birthed the BMW 320 Turbo. It was McLaren’s racing teams’ headquarters in North America! Widman wanted in but was rebuffed by the receptionist. “Come back after the racing season,” she said. He sat in his car in the parking lot, thinking about it, when he  saw the receptionist walk out and drive away. “Probably going to lunch,” he thought. He went back into the now-vacant front lobby, looked around, and found a pad of blank applications for employment. He decided to fill one out and, while doing so, heard the name “Gary” announced a few times on the public address. He thought this guy Gary might be in charge of the place. So, Widman wandered into the shop, saw somebody, and asked him to give the filled-out form to “Gary.” Later that evening Gary Knutson called and told him to come in. The next day Widman presented himself at McLaren. Following a short conversation, Knutson hired him and said to see Joe Bunetto in the shop. Bunetto, a gifted mechanic, was working on a disassembled dynamometer on his bench. Joe pointed to it, told Widman what the program was, and then went to the other side of the shop where he would join the team that serviced the turbocharged Cosworth DFX engines for the McLaren Indy cars. Racing was where it was for Bunetto, so this was a promotion for him. The program called for Widman to take over working with commercial and industrial customers such as Chevrolet’s End Products Group (EPG) on various marine engine development projects. EPG’s customers included Mercury Marine and Outboard Marine Corp., and others.

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 FIGURE 18.2   A small-block Chevrolet marine engine undergoes testing on one of the

© McLaren Engines

eddy-current dynamometers that were in Cells 2 and 3 at McLaren.

Widman began to develop relationships with the Chevrolet engineers responsible for these projects and spent a lot of time at the EPG offices at the GM Technical Center. Primary customer principals included engineer Stan Petrak and also Don Wiederhold, the engineering manager of Chevrolet Special Products, a part of EPG. “Don Wiederhold and I were spending a lot of time at Mercury, solving their issues with Chevrolet engines. I’d known the highperformance guys at Mercury Performance Products (MPP), Mercury’s racing department. Anyway, Wiederhold calls me up one day and says he’s bringing a Mercury guy out,” said Widman. © 2020 SAE International

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“Mercury wants Chevrolet to build them some racing engines. And Wiederhold told him Chevrolet does all its engine work at McLaren. The Mercury guys turned out to be Fred Hauenstein, Jr. and Mercury’s high-performance (products) president, Ed Keim. They said they wanted an engine that has 1,000 horsepower and it has to be technically stand-alone—and they want Chevrolet Marine to pay for [its development].” Offshore boat racing had become a Big Thing during the 1980s. It was fast, dynamic, and exciting. Creative design, new technologies, and increased public and media awareness lured major sponsors and race teams. Forty-foot twin-inboard-engine catamarans were seen flying at 120 mph on rough seas, half the time clear of the water, the noise of 800-hp engines shattering the air. Racing boat and engine manufacturers vied for victory. The once-dominant Mercury Marine Co. saw its Chevroletbased engines being overtaken by independents using Ford bigblock V8s. Thousand-horsepower diesels were coming on strong, and even Lamborghini had a big powerful V12 marine engine. The U.I.M. Class 1 offshore racing rules allowed a total of 1,000 in.3 piston displacement when naturally aspirated or 714 in.3 boosted. The optimum power solution at first appeared to be a pair of turbocharged 350 in.3 Chevrolet small block engines. However, Widman and Petrak decided that the power unit of choice would be based on the much more robust Chevrolet bigblock V8 for reliability and durability. “Wiederhold says the new big-block 502 Mark V engine is in the casting process right now,” Widman said. “We can make the bores any size we want, so we make a 350 cubic-inch version of the new Mark V big block.” Wiederhold secured a budget of $100,000 to do a proof-of-concept engine and authorized McLaren to get started with a design on paper. Widman and his team laid out a plan for the engine. A description of the program that was published internally by

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Widman1 specified a single Garrett TV-71 dual inlet turbocharger feeding a large variable-volume plenum incorporating water-to-air intercoolers feeding a tuned-length cross ramstyle inlet manifold. The intake systems were designed by Gary Knutson, “the same guy who did the McLaren Chevrolet big block for Can-Am,” Widman remarked. While no longer at McLaren, Knutson received a contract to develop the large intake plenum that packaged the water-to-air intercooler. It was nicknamed the “Turkey Roaster” by the always-irreverent McLaren crew.

© Tom Dettloff

 FIGURE 18.3   The huge “turkey roaster” mocked up above the intake manifold base as the intake and exhaust systems undergo packaging. The exhaust pipes would receive ceramic shielding of the same materials as used in NASA’s Space Shuttle heat shield tiles. This innovation required approval from the American Powerboat Association as it deviated from the traditional use of water-cooled exhaust manifolds.

It would have dual circuit cooling using two separate Cosworth-style centrifugal water pumps; one pump fed seawater to the intercoolers and to the raised-port cylinder heads, with water jackets close to the exhaust valves. The other pump fed the cylinder block in a thermostatically controlled closed circuit system set to 200°F. The engine management system would use a wide-range oxygen sensors and two individually controlled port injectors per cylinder. Two-atmosphere software exclusive to the program was developed and added to a modified Chevrolet LT-5 engine management system. According to the Widman report, “The exhaust system consisted of two-inch diameter stainless steel tuned length pipes sealed at the cylinder head by copper O-rings. An insulation coating is applied over the pipes and turbine housing to retain heat. This feature has met APBA/UIM operation parameters and is now legal. The process was developed by NASA and its commercial usage is currently being licensed2. Two watercooled wastegates are used in addition to water-cooled plenum, turbine discharge and wastegate discharge pipes.” Each engine with all its ancillary hardware was mounted on its own cradle, making a module, and two such modules were then installed in the boat. The modules were designed to be easily installed in engine test cells using a dedicated electrical dyno harness at McLaren for development and durability work. Widman presented the concept to Chevrolet and Mercury. “They were impressed,” he said. McLaren got the order to move forward and proceeded to staff up. Joe Bunetto was brought back to McLaren from the Kraco Indy car team. Bruce Falls was the fuel injection designer and calibration engineer. The LT-5 2

1

“Project 734,” a report by Steve Widman. Published January 16, 1990.

Normally a water-cooled (or “wet”) exhaust system is required to guard against fire. The NASA coating process was based on the material used to insulate the skin of the Space Shuttle during re-entry.

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switched-on throttle man and boat rigger,” said Widman. “Throttle guys were the key to winning. Chevrolet or Mercury Marine had to make a deal with them not to race that year so we could use the boat while they had their new purpose-built boat put together in England. Lanier was needed for the development program. Wiederhold worked that out somehow,” he added.

 FIGURE 18.4   Fast boat: Bob Kaiser’s “Systems” catamaran at speed with Errol Lanier

on the throttles. Kaiser and Lanier were protected in two separate F-16-style watertight canopies.

© Steve Widman

electronics were based on the controls used in the limited production Corvette ZR-1. Tom Dettloff did the cylinder heads. Tom Klausler and Jim Daw were the engine builders. Stan Fairlie would handle casting issues. “I listed off a few more capable people,” Widman said, “including Mike D’Annabale. He was about six months from finishing his engineering degree at Lawrence Tech, but he postponed that to come back as chief engineer of the project.” Mitch Haddad was in charge of the design project. He had guys doing paper drawings. He was old school. A new cylinder block was tooled with non-siamesed bores with a 4.125-in. bore and a 3.290-in. stroke giving a 352 in.3 piston displacement. Internal components included a Moldex billet crankshaft, Carillo rods, JE 9:1 compression ratio pistons, sealed power rings, and a roller camshaft ground to McLaren specifications. A program-specific cylinder head was designed with provision for increased valve and port area, for future larger displacement versions. For durability, racing-type sealing rings between the block and heads were used instead of cylinder head gaskets. A Cosworth-type dry sump included the oil pump, scavenge pumps, air-oil separator, and water pumps as used in Cosworth Formula 1 and CART V8 engines. Initial dyno testing showed the first engine produced 942 hp at 6,000 rpm, at 61-in. Hg manifold pressure using a 4.895in. inlet bell. A second engine ran 22 hours at wide-open throttle. It was rebuilt and, after further fuel and spark calibration produced 981 lb-ft peak torque at 4,500 rpm and 1,000 hp between 6,000 and 6,400 rpm. A duplicate engine was built and, per MPP request, manifold pressure was set at 52 in. Hg. It produced a conservative 876 hp to begin development and in-boat testing. Chevrolet and Mercury searched for a boat racing team that would support the engine development program in secret. They settled on Bob Kaiser and Errol Lanier. “Lanier was the most

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The Mercury staff attended the first boat test in Lake St. Clair, near Detroit. “We put the engines in the boat, right off the dyno, and with Mercury outdrives—Offshore Super!” Widman recalled. But on its first runs out in the lake, a drive blew up. Next time out, another drive blew up. “And now we knew we had trouble,” asserted Widman. Mercury initially

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wanted to reduce horsepower, but McLaren engineer Bruce Falls came up with a torque management system. It sensed engine rpm as the boat bounced out of the water and backed off the torque as it went back in.

© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 18.5   Bob Kaiser’s “Systems” catamaran with the two 1,000 horsepower McLaren-developed six-liter Big Block Chevrolet Mercruiser engines installed. The boat is parked on the east side of the McLaren Engines facility on Eight Mile Road in Livonia, Mich.

“Anyway, we bust up a drive and we take one of the engines apart and find one of the blocks has a crack in the main bearing web,” said Widman. “These were new Mark V blocks,” he  said. “The high-performance version with thick main bearing webs wasn’t out yet. We built some girdles and that

seemed to work. Later, Mike d’Annibale and I  went to the engine plant in Ohio and made eight blocks with strengthened cores in three days, to thicken the main bearing webs. Fortunately, Wiederhold knew an engineer there who made that possible.” The team—Widman, D’Annibale, Bunetto, and Falls— trailered the boat to Wisconsin’s Lake Winnebago for development and demonstration. After solving some serious first-day problems with the wiring harness that prevented the engines from running on all eight cylinders, the boat went out the next day. “Erroll takes it just over 100 mph at part throttle. He comes back with the biggest smile on his face,” said Widman. “He says, ‘I can over-rev these props at any speed I want.’ This is incredible. He tells Fred Hauenstein to get the biggest propellers he’s got. He sticks them on the back—and it spins them too fast!” Tuning and calibration was handled by Falls and Bunetto, who “climbed into the two engine bays—it was a catamaran— with their laptops and life vests and sailed out across the lake at 100+ mph while tuning the engine. Erroll eventually got the boat up to 128 mph.” Finally, they were ready to race. The team took the boat to the World Offshore Championships in Atlantic City. Practice was a thrash—an engine failed, and they decided to replace both engines, so they had to fly in replacements and work all night. The next day in practice, the Mercury team was better than everybody. “Next morning,” recounted Widman, “we are all in our race duds. The weather is bad and there are heavy seas. The boats go out and begin the usual circling around the starting line, positioning themselves for the start of the race.

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The development team watches from the top of their hotel as disaster strikes. The boat suddenly is swamped by a wave and sinks stern first!” The weather got even worse and races were cancelled for the next two days, giving the team time to service the engines. On the day of the race, the boat performed well, but a software problem with the LT-5 engine management system caused

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damage to the engines. This ended the race for the team. But the McLaren-Mercury boat had shown dominant speed. The problems with the electronics were solved by GM and the show was ready to resume. Widman said, “The Project 734 turbo big-block was ready. It was time to win races. Then Mercury surprised everybody by cancelling the program. The reason given: Lack of funding.”

SECTION IV. A NEW McLAREN ENGINES: THE AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING BUSINESS

When both Team McLaren and BMW stopped their racing programs after the 1979 season, McLaren Engines suddenly faced an uncertain future. It was “Oh, no! What are we going to do?” according to McCoy. When Bill Smith and Teddy Mayer gave the go-ahead to keep the doors open, the racing business was the logical first step, and it was successful at the outset, thanks to Roger Bailey’s quick work signing up teams who needed Cosworth DFX rebuilds. But McLaren was also doing engineering work that did not involve racing. During the early 1970s, McLaren built an additional two dynamometer cells next to the original high-capacity water brake dynamometer used for Can-Am and Indy development. These two test cells had Go-Power dynamometers for McLaren’s non-racing Chevrolet projects, the majority coming from Chevy’s End Products Group (EPG). This business was steadily growing. As mentioned earlier, Steve Widman managed it. The EPG group’s mission was to find additional markets for GM’s current engine products or to find uses for obsolete engine tooling. One such obsolete product was the old four-cylinder Chevy II engine. When it was dropped from regular domestic automotive production GM sent the tooling to Mexico and continued producing it for marine and industrial markets. EPG sourced McLaren to modernize the engine, designing and developing a new cylinder head with better ports, and a revised combustion chamber to improve the engine’s performance. This is just one of the unique projects McLaren carried out for Chevrolet. Through all this work, including the Project 734 racing engine and the regular GM Marine projects, the Chevrolet End Products business grew to be a major source of revenue for McLaren Engines. Other work of all kinds was coming in, which will be touched upon later in this book. We will detail some of the larger programs here.

The now–legendary 1987 Buick GNK: chassis and powertrain engineered by McLaren Engines. Body, interior, and production by ASC/McLaren. Threre cars have appreciated in value over the years and are now highly prized by collectors.

© McLaren Engines

GNX by ASC/McLaren

C H A P T E R

19

McLaren International, McLaren Engines, and ASC-McLaren In 1980 Teddy Mayer merged BMMR with Ron Dennis’s Project 4 racing team, creating a new company called McLaren International. Mayer and Dennis were co-managers of that entity. Since Mayer was at this time also a minority owner of McLaren Engines, Inc., the interlocking ownership gave McLaren International and McLaren Engines an affiliation that conferred an elevated status to the latter in the minds of some because of McLaren International’s Formula 1 team. This attracted the attention of Heinz Prechter, a German immigrant and entrepreneur who founded American Sunroof Corporation, Inc. (later renamed ASC, Inc.) and built it into a successful tier one supplier of roof systems and convertible tops for the auto industry during the period when the Detroit 3 automakers were not building their own convertibles.

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ASC-McLaren Prechter and Bill Smith began to discuss the idea of working together. They quickly saw that the two companies together had the capability to create special vehicles not only as suppliers to the auto industry but also on their own. This concept was spelled out in their formal agreement on March 29, 1982, to form a joint venture. It said ASC had expertise in “design, styling, engineering and marketing” automotive products and the “manufacturing and assembly operations” to deliver them to the market. The agreement also stated that McLaren Engines, Inc., had been in “automotive racing” business and had “automotive technical expertise in powertrain and chassis development.”  FIGURE 19.1   ASC boss Heinz Prechter and McLaren Engines CEO H.W. “Bill” Smith formed ASC McLaren in 1982 to create high-performance niche-market automobiles.

The conclusion was that the combination of their capabilities gave them the ability to create “advanced automotive specialty products,” and they were therefore joining to “design, develop, produce and market automotive specialty vehicles and automotive after-market products.” The working concept was embodied in the Code of Federal Regulations, 40 CFR 86, allowing a “small volume manufacturer”— one with U.S. sales of fewer than 10,000 units for the model year in which certification is sought—to have access to a simplified EPA certification process. The small volume manufacturer could apply to the EPA for assigned deterioration factors (“DFs”)1 established by EPA in its certification process, rather than performing a 50,000mile durability test (120,000 miles for trucks) in order to determine the DFs. This presented a significant opportunity for cost saving. Moreover, the small volume manufacturer did not have to build an entire vehicle. It could buy a base vehicle (technically, an incomplete vehicle2) from a large manufacturer and finish it, then send it back to the original manufacturer to be shipped and sold in the original manufacturers system. This would save the cost of throw­ away parts, separate transportation, and marketing and still preserve ASC-McLaren’s status as a small volume manufacturer. On April 29, 1982, the two companies announced the new joint venture known as ASC-McLaren to build specialty highperformance cars. McLaren would supply engine upgrades and ASC would customize and assemble the cars. A “deterioration factor” is the ratio of the emission level at the point representing the full useful life (of the vehicle—50,000 miles for cars) to the emission level at zero miles. 2 An incomplete vehicle was defined in 49 CFR 529 at that time as “An assemblage con­ sisting, as a minimum, of frame and chassis structure, power train, steering system, suspension system, and braking system, to the extent that those systems are to be part of the completed vehicle, that requires further manufacturing operations, other than the addition of readily attachable components, such as mirrors or tire and rim assemblies, or minor finishing operations such as painting, to become a completed vehicle.” The incomplete vehicle manufacturer would be, for example, Buick division of GM and the small volume manufacturer would be ASC-McLaren.

© H.W. Smith Family collection

1

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“It was just a couple months later that Teddy and Tyler sold their interest in McLaren International to their partner, Ron Dennis,” McCoy said. “I was the one who had to call and tell Heinz, ‘Oh, by the way, Teddy just sold the business to Ron Dennis.’3 And there was a long silence on his end of the phone. But we continued. Heinz just picked himself up and kept going.” ASC-McLaren went on, without any connection with McLaren International. Not that it really ever affected McLaren Engines. Mayer was still a co-owner of McLaren Engines with Prechter. Bill Smith, of course, had the controlling interest in the company and made all the important business decisions. The first ASC-McLaren project car was the Mercury LN7. Two more projects followed in short order—a Cadillac Cimarron and a Ford Ranger. These were primarily restyled and redecorated cars. Changes to engine and drivetrain, the content that McLaren supply, would have involved extensive engineering development, testing, and certification to meet engineering requirements and government emissions regulations. These expenses would have driven the retail price of the vehicle too high for market acceptance at the small number of cars that could be sold. But ASC could do some redecorating and badging without getting into such areas and could sell the cars at reasonable prices. Two major ASC-McLaren projects were created during the earlier 1980s—the ASC-McLaren Convertible, based on a converted Ford Mustang and the ASC-McLaren Capri, based on the Mercury pony car. Over 2,500 cars were built from 1983 through 1989. No engine upgrades were done on these cars, for the above-mentioned reasons, so participation from McLaren

3

Teddy reportedly owned 45% of McLaren International and Tyler had a small share. Ron Dennis and his designer, John Barnard, bought them out. Teddy kept his ownership interest in McLaren Engines.

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Engines was minimal. Nevertheless, the cars had an enthusiastic response and they remain collectable today. Then, in 1986, ASC-McLaren was presented with an opportunity to create a new muscle car that included a significant powertrain upgrade, not just a cosmetic redo. The opportunity arose because McLaren was in the middle of the Buick Turbo V6 engine development program for the Indianapolis 500-mile race (detailed in Chapter 19). The car would be called the Buick GNX. It would go down in history as the last great Detroit muscle car of the 1960-1970 era.

The Buick GNX Buick was totally committed to the V6 engine for its production of sedans, and in 1978 introduced a turbocharged version of the engine that produced 165 hp. Over the next few years the engine was developed, and by 1984 was producing 200 hp and 300 lb.-ft. with sequential fuel injection. While all this was going on, Buick was developing the nowlegendary muscle car called the Grand National, based on the company’s G-body (Regal) platform. The first ones were just cosmetic upgrades to give a muscular appearance but with no performance upgrade. Then came the turbocharger, and then an air-to-air intercooler—with the sinister all-black paint scheme. In 1987 horsepower was bumped from 235 to 245 hp with 355 lb.-ft., and the Grand National became a beast that could lurk at the stoplight with the best of the competition. But the end was near; the Buick product program indicated that the rear-wheel drive, mid-sized G platform would be dropped for the 1988 model year in favor of a new front-wheel drive version. Buick chief engineer Dave Sharpe asked his division’s product planning department if they could develop a special Grand National to commemorate the end of the turbocharged rearwheel drive era at Buick. Tim Logsdon, director of divisional

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planning and Buick’s specialty vehicle departments, along with Mike Doble, the manager, Advanced Concepts and Specialty Vehicles, came to McLaren Engines to discuss the idea.  FIGURE 19.2   Buick chief engineer Dave Sharpe (L), ASC’s Heinz Prechter, and Buick

© McLaren Engines

product planning director Tim Logsdon at the GNX production kickoff.

Doble saw the question as, “Can we develop the ‘quickest GM production sedan—ever!’”4 Up until then the fastest Buick was the legendary 1970 GSX Skylark, of which 400 were built with the 360-hp Stage I 455 in.3 engine. It produced 510 lb.-ft.

4

Buick GNX. A Performance Legend in Its Own Time, by Martyn L. Schorr. P26. 1988, Buick Division, General Motors Corporation.

McLaren Engines was in the middle of the Buick Indy engine program, so it was logical for Buick to approach the company—in its ASC-McLaren joint venture format—with the idea of building a special Buick Grand National. Doble broached the idea to ASC-McLaren at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s infield cafeteria on May 10, 1986, when he met with McLaren’s Louis Infante, director of corporate planning; and Tom Weber and Richard Gorski of ASC, Inc., in the Speedway’s infield cafeteria to discuss the idea. Doble had some thoughts laid out on a “Brainstorming Sheet” that spoke of a 100-car build. The car would have a “distinctive appearance” and a 1-second 0-to-60-mph acceleration improvement over the 1986 Grand National. Buick said that the car could do 0-60 in an average of 6.2 seconds, so Doble’s objective was 5.2 seconds. The parties scheduled a follow-up meeting to be  held at McLaren Engines for June 25, 1986, to further discuss program parameters to meet the broad goals Doble laid out. The meeting included Buick chief engineer Dave Sharpe and product planners Tim Logsdon and Mike Doble along with Jeff Lane from GM’s Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac powertrain operation; McLaren’s Infante, Wiley McCoy, and the author; and Rick Gorski from ASC. At the conclusion of the meeting Logsdon issued a memo stating the above team’s vision that the car would be the historic “Last Grand National,” a piece of history to “close out an era of performance with a bang and have some fun doing it.” The car would emphasize function first—meaning performance over cosmetics. “Think top-10 cult car,” the memo said. Sharpe agreed to fund ASC-McLaren for a development project to meet those general goals. Buick general manager Donald Hackworth had given him verbal approval for the development program.

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A conservative overall strategy was proposed by ASC-McLaren and stated as: “Enhance the existing power plant and improve the chassis so that more power is usable, not only for better straight-line performance, but also to achieve superior overall handling. Revise car styling to package engine and chassis changes and to improve aesthetics.” The strategy would include just a 10% increase in horsepower and torque, larger wheels and tires, and a suspension upgrade for more traction. Other content mentioned included a Gleason limited-slip differential and a Ron Nash 5th-link rear suspension design to maximize forward bite without compromising lateral handling performance. ASC would develop a new instrument cluster with tachometer, speedometer, and other analog gauges plus warning lights and would do a wheel study to identify appropriate parts available in the industry. Fender overlays (flares) would likely be needed to clear any bigger tires. The ASC-McLaren group met with Buick on July 15, 1986, to finalize content. Mike Doble confirmed that no more than 200 vehicles would be produced—increased from 100 in the initial program concept. This number would later be revised upward. The cost of the conversion was to be amortized into the 200 cars, but it was thought that would push the cost of each car too high, so ASC-McLaren suggested a 500-car production run. Buick agreed, but made the number 547, so that each high-performing Buick dealer could have one to sell. Tim Logsdon summarized the intended content of the program of the car, which he called the “1987 Special Grand National.” The overriding goal was again stated as a 1-second improvement of “the current ‘mean’ 0 to 60-mph time (5.2 vs. 6.2 sec).” But Logsdon added that “Further reduction at the risk of a quality, piece cost, timing or safety penalty would not be considered.” In other words, Buick wanted a demonstrable performance difference, but without taking huge risks to get there. © 2020 SAE International

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McLaren engineers believed that a rear suspension change would guarantee the one-second 0- to 60-mph improvement. They recommended “replacing the two upper control arms with a very long single arm which will act like a torque tube. Lateral location of the axle will be accomplished with a Panhard rod. These modifications will require a new differential housing cover to mount the rear of the torque tube arm and a new cross member to mount the front of the arm.”  FIGURE 19.3   Cars are on lifts to receive the new torque-arm rear suspension and

corresponding rear arm attachment, which is part of a new cast aluminum differential cover. The cover features a bold “GNX” script. The crew also added a Panhard rod to the car. It controlled side-to-side movement of the rear axle.

© McLaren Engines



McLaren’s engineers built the system into a prototype car, tested, and evaluated it against both unmodified and modified production Grand National rear suspensions. They determined that the new single-arm “torque tube” suspension met Buick’s 1-second improvement goal. The new cast aluminum differential cover also added a very visible and attractive feature to the car.

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ASC-McLaren would create two concept vehicles for evaluation. One would contain all content, but no body changes. That would limit tire size because there would be no modifications to the wheel openings. The other would be  identical but would package the largest size tires available with modified wheel openings.

© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 19.4   The GNX engine, modified in the car on the production line at the ASC/ McLaren assembly facility.

ASC-McLaren divided the program into three phases, with Phase 1 to be completed in 10 weeks: 1. Concept car build, layout engineering, and final content definition 2. Production engineering and development, sourcing, and coordination 3. Build of the 547-unit batch After discussing the logistics of doing such a production program in a Buick assembly plant, Stan Kourt of Buick powertrain

engineering thought that the best way forward would be  for ASC-McLaren to do all the work in an ASC-McLaren facility. Buick would deliver production Grand Nationals for conversion. Buick engineering approved Phase 1, the two-vehicle concept car build and performance review program. Then, barely a week later Don Hackworth, who had approved the concept development, was replaced by Ed Mertz as divisional general manager. The production program was now in doubt. Nobody knew what Mertz would do with this high-performance project, but he would have to approve it, if it were to go beyond the two prototypes. Fortunately, when Mertz was briefed on the program, he quickly approved. The two prototypes were configured by a McLaren team headed by Ray McCallum as follows: Prototype No 1 had the “torque tube” rear suspension, modified wheel wells, P235/60R15 Goodyear Eagle Gatorbacks on alloy wheels, and a dual exhaust system. The engine used a new Garrett turbocharger with ceramic turbine impeller and a stock intercooler. The engine controller was recalibrated. The car also had an auxiliary transmission oil cooler for the production 200 R4 gearbox. Prototype No. 2 had all of Prototype No. 1’s features, plus a modified intercooler, full instrumentation, functional air vents in the fenders, flared wheel wells, and P255/50VR16 Gatorbacks on alloy wheels. It obviously was making more power with the modified intercooler and putting the power down with the fatter Gatorbacks. On October 24, 1986, the two prototypes took part in a performance review for officials from Buick, the B-O-C vehicle group, Hydra-Matic Division, Buick Design Staff, the Chevrolet-PontiacCanada vehicle group, Garrett turbocharger, and ASC-McLaren at the Milan Dragway in nearby Milan, Michigan. Bob Cross, a technician at Buick Special Products Engineering, drove the cars and achieved the results previously mentioned. Buick indicated its satisfaction by commissioning seven more prototypes. © 2020 SAE International

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As noted above, the cars used the stock Grand National 200 R4 transmission. Originally it had been thought that a stronger transmission would be needed, perhaps the 3-speed GM Turbo Hydra-Matic 400 (THM 400) used in trucks, but its gear ratios and torque converter were wrong for the application. The truck transmission made the car slower-accelerating. Its 0-to-60-mph time was 7.7 seconds, compared to the 5.38 seconds seen at Milan Dragway. All because of the low first gear in the 200 R4. The team also decided against any hood modifications. The fender vents, which were informally being called “portholes” in honor of that familiar Buick feature of the 1950s, were functional and very effective in exhausting underhood heat. Buick was now calling the car a “Buick Grand National GNX.” This came about as a nod to the vaunted GSX muscle car of the early 1970s. The “S” was changed to “N” to reflect that the car was based on the Grand National, so the “GN” of that name was married to the “X” to create a new legend, the GNX. Once the production program was approved, Buick organized a media show-and-tell back at Milan Dragway. The GNX prototypes were demonstrated against a Corvette. Not just any Corvette, but a Callaway Corvette, a lighter car with a 382-hp twin-turbo engine. The GNX blew it away in the quarter mile. Journalists filed enthusiastic reports, which had a very positive effect on the muscle car market. The enthusiast press generated cover stories about the car—one with the tagline, “Darth Vader, Your Car is Ready,” and their readers swamped the dealerships with orders. Mike Doble remarked, “After all the enthusiasm generated by the press reports on the two prototypes, there was no choice. We  had to build this car.”5 And the cars were a sensational success. All 547 units were snapped up (some at prices well above sticker) and a new legend was enshrined in muscle car history. 5

YouTube video interview with Mike Doble, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v​=k​ zFEg1​ UKQO0, accessed January 3, 2019.

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The GNX program also produced a program methodology that made ASC-McLaren the leader in developing certified nichemarket vehicles within the requirements of Federal regulations. This capability placed ASC-McLaren in position to take on a much larger program that would come from Pontiac Motor Division.

The Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo The phone rang one day at McLaren as the GNX project was winding down. The author fielded the call. Pontiac product planning was on the line. They wanted McLaren Engines to do a “GNX” job on their new front-wheel drive Pontiac Grand Prix. Its V6 engine produced only 130 hp. The old rear-wheel drive Grand Prix had a 150-hp V8. The anemic 130-hp wasn’t enough for a Grand Prix. Pontiac explained that they didn’t care how we got the extra horsepower, just do something.  FIGURE 19.5   A Grand Prix Turbo prototype as built by McLaren Engines. The script on

top of the intake manifold will be changed to “3.1 Intercooled Turbo” for production.

© McLaren Engines



The author immediately alerted Wiley McCoy and Lou Infante. Meetings were held and McLaren recommended adding

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a turbocharger to get over 200 hp. Pontiac liked the idea and authorized a prototype. ASC agreed to take on overall responsibility for the program and retain McLaren to do all the engineering, the same arrangement that governed the GNX project. McLaren’s Don Miller laid out the turbo package—a single Garrett T-25 turbocharger blowing through an intercooler. Compression ratio was lowered to 8.78:1 to compensate for the increased cylinder pressure. A strengthened crank was also specified. ASC came up with a bodywork package and 16-in. crosslaced wheel similar to those of the Trans-Am GTA. The car’s look was a vast improvement over that of the standard car. The turbocharged engine enabled a 0-to-60-mph time of 7 seconds, and a 15.3-second quarter mile time. Sale price for the Grand Prix Turbo was to be under $29,000. Pontiac liked the concept and the parties created a prototype that was shown at a long-lead press event at Mid-Ohio raceway.  It  was very favorably received, and management approved a 5000-unit production program for the 1989 model year.

© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 19.6   A Grand Prix Turbo development car in the McLaren fabrication shop. A 3.1 liter turbo engine is on the cart to the right.

There was one big problem. New pistons were initially thought to be needed to lower engine compression. This would be prohibitively expensive because it would entail tearing down and reassembling the engine, an expensive proposition. The problem went away when the V6 engine plant in Saltillo, Mexico, agreed to build the engine with a 0.010 higher deck height, so new pistons weren’t needed. The plant also installed equipment to strengthen crankshafts that had been selected to the high end of the hardness scale. An ASC-McLaren development plan was created according to the GM “Four Phase” process, which was required of all vehicle programs within the corporation. This would be the first time it would be used for an outside engineering program. The process progressed from the first phase, which GM called Phase 0, technology and concept development; through Phase 1, process development and prototype validation; then Phase 2, process validation and product confirmation; and, finally, Phase 3, production and continuous improvement. ASC-McLaren would carry out engineering tasks to complete each phase. Pontiac took the concept to GM’s C-P-C vehicle group for fine-tuning. There were probably 30 people representing every discipline involved in a vehicle program in a large conference room. Each had the opportunity to add to the program. For example, McLaren specified exhaust vents for the car’s hood, to allow heat from the turbocharger to exit. A body engineer pointed out that the vents could weaken the hood, causing it to fold at the vent location. He specified “hood slams” to make sure that that would not happen. This test would require the hood to withstand a few thousand cycles simulating a person forcefully closing the hood. This was one of many tests required for the program to progress through the Four Phase process. The engine program went to C-P-C Powertrain for approval (they had responsibility for the 3.1-liter V6 engine). After much discussion and consideration, Jim Aitken, the engine’s chief © 2020 SAE International

engineer agreed to the program. C-P-C requested that McLaren bring in development engineers from GM who were familiar with GM’s latest procedures. McLaren hired two experienced engineers, Don Apple and Bruce Falls, to the team. Aitken also consented to limited access to his engineering staff to review problems. McLaren Engines took full advantage. Suddenly GM’s Hydra-Matic Division’s engineering management stepped in and said they would not approve the program because the 4T60 transmission would not handle the torque delivered by the turbocharged engine. Bill Smith convened a meeting with Hydra-Matic general manager Tom Zimmer to work a compromise. “They made us torque-manage the engine so it would not exceed 200 lb-ft,” recalled McCoy. “Bruce Falls calibrated the electronically-actuated wastegate, so we had a flat 200 lb-ft from 1500 rpm to horsepower peak [4800 rpm],” he continued. Once the first prototype engines were assembled with production components, McLaren began durability testing, running 300-hour tests. The test protocol called for wide-open throttle runs, with only a 5-minute return to idle every hour. At the end of each 50-hour period, McLaren’s engine technicians would open up the engine and examine the components, then reassemble it for another 50-hour run. One time a crack appeared in one of the pistons. McLaren took it to C-P-C Powertrain for examination. One of their engineers looked at the piston and immediately diagnosed the cause and recommended a fix. C-P-C used this information to make an engineering change to all 3.1 V6 pistons. McLaren Engines developed the turbo 3.1 powerplant and carried out all the engineering work, including durability (validation) testing. This work did not end with release for production. McLaren had to review all change orders during the two years cars were being built to make sure a change did not jeopardize the conversion process. For example, a change order came across our desks that substituted plastic for metal in the brake © 2020 SAE International

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booster unit that was exposed to the heat of the turbocharger housing. McLaren’s engineers rejected the change because it might have led to the destruction of the device, or worse yet, a fire in the engine compartment. If GM wanted to use plastic, then it would need appropriate testing to validate it for this use. This review process continued until all Grand Prix and STE Turbo conversions were complete. And Pontiac Service was in this loop to make sure that no incompatible service part would be used on a Turbo car in the future. McLaren built 20-some GM10 Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo test vehicles for the program. Much of the testing was done at an EG&G facility near San Antonio. In 1988, McLaren engineered the Turbo 3.1 engine for the 4-door STE Pontiac Turbo. “We had a four-door mule car that I drove for years,” said McCoy. “I finally wrecked it.” The author can attest that the mule car looked wrecked even before McCoy started driving it.  FIGURE 19.7   The ASC/McLaren production line in a facility next to the GM assembly plant in Fairfax, Kansas, a Kansas City suburb. The cars appear to be complete and ready to drive off the line.

© McLaren Engines



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After the program was finished, Pontiac continued experimenting with the Turbo engine. In 1989, Tom Goad ordered the installation of Getrag 5-speed manual transmissions in two Grand Prix Turbos for engineering evaluation. Pontiac had a deal to supply pace cars to NASCAR for the 1989 season. Tom Goad had McLaren build several Grand Prix Turbo NASCAR pace cars.6 In January 1989, Don Apple, Tom Goad, and the author went down to Daytona International

Speedway to test the pace cars during the testing period reserved for GM NASCAR Cup race teams. We used the track during the downtime between test sessions on the days reserved for Pontiac. I initially thought I was going there to watch, but Tom said, “Bring your helmet.” He knew I had been competing along with him in the IMSA Firehawk endurance series—he drove a Pontiac Firebird and I  sometimes drove a Honda CRX in another class.

 FIGURE 19.8   Pontiac made a deal to provide Grand Prix Turbo cars to NASCAR as pace cars. McLaren Engines did the conversions to add lights and rollover protection. The cars were

© McLaren Engines

speed-limited to 140 mph because of tire limitations. NASCAR later changed the final drive ratio on the cars for better acceleration on short tracks, where they did not need to go much over 100 mph.

6

McLaren built a total of 17 concept/test/validation cars during the program.

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For the Daytona test, we had a GP Turbo, finished in red, and a black mule car without the GP Turbo facias. Tom and I drove both of them, trading off between them from time to time. Don Apple had an electronic control unit called a “head-up” display in the black car that he used to tweak spark and fuel settings while I drove. The cars would only go 140 mph before the revlimiter kicked in, so we went wide-open throttle all the way around the track—140-mph laps for three days. There was little drama in the session, except coming down the back straight for the first time, Turn 3 rose up in my windshield like a huge wall. It was a bit disconcerting at first, but I got used to it. Once I got into the banking, I had to look high through the windshield to see where I was going. The only big change NASCAR made to the pace cars was to change to a shorter final drive ratio to improve acceleration on short tracks. To support the Grand Prix Turbo production program, McLaren Engines performed pilot audits for GM’s Fairfax, Kansas, plant. The work included complete vehicle teardowns in Livonia. McLaren’s engineering program for the Grand Prix Turbo was a great success and provided a new method by which General Motors could engineer low-volume niche-market cars for production and sale to the North American market. The following summary of McLaren’s work on the Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo program was written to a GM engineering manager by the author, in support of a subsequent proposal to upgrade another GM powertrain: When we started the Grand Prix Turbo program, all we had to go on was Pontiac marketing’s mandate to, “Give us more power out of the 3.1L V6 for the Grand Prix.” (Pontiac knew about the GNX program we did for Buick). From this

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beginning, we determined that turbocharging was the solution for more power. We  created the prototype turbocharged engine and built a concept vehicle. Pontiac showed this car to GM management and took it to a long-lead press event at Mid-Ohio [race track]. It was favorably received. Pontiac also took the car to the assembly plant in Fairfax, Kansas, along with McLaren and ASC engineers, and got a buy-in, contingent on engineering approval. Pontiac, McLaren, and ASC convinced platform and powertrain management that we could pull of a production program. The most critical requirement was to avoid any use of C-P-C engine division resources, except for a single liaison engineer to get us technical information. The same went for the platform, though they saw the program as a way to create a procedure for doing niche-market product and put some resources on it. Stan Kwasek was the platform engineer who followed this and memorialized it. McLaren did all the powertrain design, development, and production engineering (and follow-on engineering during vehicle production). We  religiously followed GM’s thencurrent “Four Phase” procedure during the entire program. We did much more than just design and development. We also completed all validation tasks on both the powertrain and the vehicle (vehicle validation was performed at EG & G’s proving ground in San Antonio, and at various other facilities, including GM locations). We worked with the W-car platform, C-P-C engine engineering, and Hydra-Matic to determine validation requirements on the new body parts, the engine, and the transmission. We looked at CO [carbon monoxide] intrusion, for example, because we added hood vents. And we  did hood slams to validate the new hood

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configuration. The new front fascia was tested for cooling in Harrison [Radiator Division]’s hot wind tunnel, and vehicle testing included water and mud intrusion. We also had to completely re-validate the transmission.

We had access to the Milford and Desert Proving Grounds for development, validation and emissions testing. Our engineers did high-altitude work in Colorado and cold weather testing at Kapuskasing, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

We did all engine calibration and EPA/CARB certification. We took advantage of the small-volume manufacturer exemption for this. This work included software changes to run the boosted engine. We  released directly to Delco Electronics. We  also handled all NHTSA certification, including crash testing (At TRC and at Milford).

We convinced the assembly plant to delete parts and let us use slave wheels. We set up the second-stage ASC satellite plant nearby (including DV testing at that plant and modifications to DV testing at Fairfax). Our engineers lived at the plant during start-up and visited very frequently during production.

During development, we did the initial engine durability tests in 50-hour stages up to 200 hours so we could catch problems without risking catastrophic engine failure. We reported the results to C-P-C, and we then worked with C-P-C suppliers to implement changes. We  worked with Mahle to release a stronger piston. We solved problems with the cylinder head when we  discovered big variations in product the supplier delivered to the Ramos Arizpe engine plant. Our solutions were adopted for all 3.1L V6 engines across the board, not just for turbo versions. We worked with the Ramos plant to select cranks for hardness. Ramos also installed equipment to roll crank fillets when we discovered that the production crank was marginal for the horsepower we were producing.

Our engineers released all parts for production, did the production drawings, an owner’s manual, and followed the base vehicle BOM [bill of material; the master parts list] throughout production to make sure running changes did not adversely impact the Turbo model. One example of many: We caught a brake booster part running change from metal to plastic that would have caused problems in the high-heat turbo environment.

We worked closely with Hydra-Matic because we had to tailor the engine torque curve to the transmission.

This was the first program of its kind, so we plowed a lot of new ground. We pioneered the idea that we could do a powertrain program in support of a second-stage manufacturer. None of this was obvious at the time. We had to figure it all out. Through all this we accomplished the program in only 14 months.

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Other Niche-Market Program Opportunities The GMC Syclone Prototype In 1989, the General Motors GMC Truck Division contacted McLaren Engines (late in the Grand Prix Turbo program) about creating a high-powered GMC S15 pickup truck. GMC had completed some research among journalists from automotive enthusiast magazines that indicated they could sell a few thousand “muscle trucks.” They even had a name for it: the GMC Syclone. GMC figured that they could use a GNX engine in the vehicle, but McLaren recommended the use of the 90° 4.3-liter GM V6, which was based on the popular small-block Chevrolet V8. The V6 engine was built in the GM Romulus, Michigan, engine plant and McLaren already had a relationship there and with the 4.3 engine’s chief engineer, Volker Harhaus. This engine was already packaged in the S15 truck, so all that was necessary was to fit a turbocharger and intercooler under the hood.

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Why a turbocharger when high-performance Chevy smallblock parts and pieces could turn the V6 into a free-breathing, high-revving engine with lots of power? A turbocharger gave a similar power increase that could be added without having to disassemble the engine, which, as stated before, is prohibitively expensive. It was an easy decision to turbocharge the engine. McLaren built a rear-drive prototype that astounded GMC management, except that it was difficult to control because of the typical pickup’s high weight bias to the front. This would be cured by going to an all-wheel-drive system. McLaren was poised to do the entire niche-vehicle development and production program, but ASC was not interested in doing another program in which they would have to take on the overall responsibility. McLaren looked for another partner but found none willing. GMC finally recruited another outside contractor to produce the vehicle.

The Supercharged Oldsmobile W-Car Convertible Proposal Then, another niche-market car program surfaced. Beginning in 1987, McLaren was developing innovative quality control methods for the Oldsmobile Quad 4 engine plant in Lansing, Michigan. Called VIP stations, they were installed in critical stages of engine assembly and would take the place of so-called hot testing, in which a finished engine was actually run on a test stand at the end of the production line. Hot testing meant that the engine had to be plumbed for water and oil, a complicated process, and if a problem surfaced, the entire engine had to be set aside, not available for shipment to the vehicle assembly plant. Testing at intermediate stages of production made it possible to correct faults before the engine was complete.

McLaren’s team, led by engineer Dean Batterman, devised testing methods, such as turning the camshafts in a completed cylinder head to check the amount of torque required. If the torque reading was outside the established parameters, the cylinder head was failed. Similarly, turning the crankshaft in a completed short block was another test. All this work on the Quad 4, including building a few supercharged test engines for Oldsmobile Motorsports, led to another production niche-market development opportunity, with a production partner already identified—the 1990½ Oldsmobile W-Car Cutlass Supreme Coupe with Supercharged Quad 4.1 Oldsmobile product planning approached McLaren with the following program (as listed in Oldsmobile’s product planning documents): •• Competitors were Taurus SHO and Supercharged T-Bird SC •• 230 bhp, 230 lb.-ft. •• Supercharged and intercooled •• 5-speed Getrag 284 manual transmission •• Program Management by Cars & Concepts (C&C; David Draper, president) •• McLaren Engines (with Lansing B-O-C Powertrain assistance) to: ■■ “Design, develop, test/validate and certify all vehicle components and the vehicle to meet all federal, state, GM corporate standards and performance objectives for C&C Incorporated as assisted by General Motors” ■■ Provide and maintain task force leadership for a McLaren implementation program 1

Plan Book: “Oldsmobile 1990 ½ Cutlass Supreme Coupe with Supercharged Quad 4. Revised 02/02/89.”

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■■ Maintain “up-to-date” mock-ups for design reviews and check chassis ■■ Initiate all releases utilizing the C-P-C GM10 format ■■ Responsible to recommend vehicle component sources to C&C Incorporated ■■ Help develop a vehicle build and quality control process with C&C Incorporated and the Doraville assembly plant ■■ Maintain the guidelines as defined in GM10 Specialty Vehicle Procedural Manual. •• B-O-C Powertrain manufactures engine •• April 2, 1990, SOP (McLaren needed “Early February 1989” approval to make this timing) McLaren was to design and develop the supercharged engine and associated vehicle systems, such as the intercooler—and indeed the entire vehicle as affected by the new, more powerful, engine. For example, more power means not only more stress on all other components, such as the driveline, but also more heat, which affects engine cooling, the underhood environment, and such things as ventilation and air conditioning. These issues had to be addressed and changes made to components to handle the increased power. A massive amount of testing was to be  required under McLaren Engines management. This included durability testing for the engine and on the unique engine and chassis components, engine and transmission in-vehicle validation, cold-weather and hot-weather testing, noise testing, calibration for performance, drivability, and emissions performance—and meeting the all-important EPA certification and Federal Safety Regulations. Because the car was converted from a coupe to a convertible, there were a myriad of tests required to assure the integrity of the chassis, top mechanism, and weather sealing. © 2020 SAE International

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McLaren Engines was to evaluate Oldsmobile’s plans and submit its cost to carry out the engineering program as described in the Oldsmobile Plan Book. The cost breakdown included program cost and timing, vehicle component estimated cost, tooling and lead times, slave parts required, number of test vehicles required, test, validation and certification plan, and any additional items that needed to be included. Slave parts were any components needed to get the car down the assembly line without the plant having to install the unique parts required for the car. For example, the cars would be built without the unique wheels and tires. So, the wheels used in the plant would be removed in the C&C plant and returned to GM’s Doraville plant for reuse, while C&C installed the unique specialty wheels required. C&C was to provide the cost of vehicle component installation, facilities (i.e., the C&C plant where the components would be installed), engineering, and manufacturing support. During the evaluation period McLaren built engines and 18 test cars to prove out the concept. It also applied its experience with the Grand Prix Turbo and the Syclone programs, which gave it great insight into all possible costly pitfalls in such a program. McLaren and C&C established the estimated cost for the program—but before it went further, Oldsmobile cancelled the convertible program and with it the Supercharged Quad 4 project.

A Niche-Market Postmortem The Oldsmobile Quad 4 program cancellation ended an era for McLaren Engines. The company had the unique capability to design and develop niche-market, high-performance cars, but, absent production resources, it did not have the means to build them.

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Since the company would also not take the risk of accepting a “Small-Volume Manufacturer” designation under the EPA regulations, McLaren needed to find a partner, which was ASC for the GNX and Grand Prix Turbo. McLaren positioned itself as a supplier of engineering services to ASC—indemnified by ASC (which Heinz Prechter was very reluctant to do, but he took the risk for the sake of the program). When GMC Truck offered the opportunity to develop the Syclone pickup truck, McLaren accepted and produced the

prototype vehicle but was unable to find a partner to carry out a full production program. Cars & Concepts, a Brighton, Michigan, company led by David Draper, agreed to partner with McLaren on the supercharged Oldsmobile convertible, but the program was cancelled by GM. Ironically, Tim Logsdon, the Buick product planner who led the GNX program, came over to C&C to manage the doomed Oldsmobile program.

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Ford Racing Performance Part brougth this fantastic McLaren–built 1965 Mustang to SEMA in 2003. It featured this 5.0–liter, 32–valve “Cammer” engine with four downdraft Weber carburetors. It was rated at 420 hp. © McLaren Engines

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A New Customer: Ford Motor Co. The largest McLaren Engines customer, by revenue, had for years been General Motors. This was the legacy of the McLaren Can-Am racing years during which the company had a very close relationship with Chevrolet. This led to other work with Chevrolet racing engines and with the Chevrolet EPG. As the years went by, non-racing work with Chevrolet began to generate the largest part of McLaren Engines’ revenue.

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This was a tenuous situation because McLaren was so dependent on GM, so the author suggested that the company look for new business from another automobile manufacturer (these are also known as original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs). The first target would be Ford. The author had been an OEM salesperson with Motorola, working with Ford, and other OEMs, so he knew the culture and had many contacts at Ford. The author called his friend John Clinard, a Ford manager whom he met when he first came to Detroit in 1977, and Clinard sent the author to Glen Lyall, the chief engineer of Ford Advanced Vehicle Engineering. Lyall recommended that McLaren Engines get in touch with John Manhart, Ford’s purchasing specialist for experimental parts. Manhart was interested and visited McLaren’s facilities in Livonia in August 1989. He liked what he saw, but said, “I can love McLaren, but you’re not going to get business from me alone. You need to convince the engineers.” Manhart then gave the author the names of key leaders in the various engineering groups, such as Engine Product and Manufacturing (EPME), Advanced Powertrain Engineering Office (APTEO), and Powertrain Planning and Engineering (specifically truck engines). The author began setting up meetings, during which he  and Wiley McCoy explained McLaren’s capabilities and solicited opportunities. Among others, they visited Marlyn Stroven, an EPME executive engineer for Small V6 and Special Engine Engineering. His responsibilities also included 4-cylinder engines. They also met with APTEO’s Joe Macura, manager of Advanced Engine Design, and his boss Jim Gagliardi. Macura explained that Ford was looking for additional/alternate suppliers to support their workload by supporting engine development with design and fabrication of prototype parts and providing engine dynamometer durability and development services to support mainstream Ford engine programs.

 FIGURE 21.1   Bruce Smith managed the engine development and testing business with

Ford, while Dean Battermann (not pictured) handled engine builds.

© Roger Miners

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These services required different types of work. Engine durability testing meant running the engine for long periods of time on scheduled load cycle settings at prolonged wide-open throttle (WOT) punctuated by short idle periods. Each test might run for 300 hours or more, including scheduled periodic maintenance. Engine development work required a more skilled test operator and dedicated engineering support. McLaren presented the labor and dyno rates for all categories of work including dynamometer testing, fabrication, assembly, engineering, and so on. Manhart deemed the rates acceptable but reiterated that McLaren needed to secure a program from Ford’s engineering community. © 2020 SAE International

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 FIGURE 21.2   The McLaren crew at SEMA with their very fast tube-frame UPS Ford F100 panel truck build. From left: Tom Berkery, Don Buzynski, Ray McCallum, Rich Cole, Cher

© Roger Miners

VanDyke, Tom Bohnett, Vince Coppola, and Candy Rees.

The Breakthrough Finally, after a year and a half of meetings, presentations, site visits, and follow-up, there was a breakthrough. Ford was beginning a new global 4-cylinder-engine program, called “Zeta.” Versions of the engine would power cars in England, the European continent, and other regions of the globe. The engineering group led by Marlyn Stroven would develop the U.S. version. Stroven had worked on the Ford GT 40 project in the 1960s and, of course knew of Bruce McLaren who, with co-driver Chris Amon, drove a Ford GT Mark II to Ford’s first victory at Le Mans. © 2020 SAE International

But the actual opportunity came through regular channels, as is usual within the industry. The executive engineer doesn’t deal with program details, which are handled by specialists who are doing the day-to-day work. One such specialist was Nick Schubeck, the engineering supervisor in charge of assembling and testing prototype engines for Ford’s Engine Manufacturing Development Operations (EMDO). McLaren also fabricated prototype engine parts such as intake and exhaust manifolds to support engine development. Only a month before, in June 1990, Ford had kicked off the Zeta program with another supplier, but, perhaps because of the new McLaren presence, decided to pull it back and seek quotes

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from McLaren and two other suppliers. The specific program was to build six prototype engines, four for EMDO and two for Ford’s European auto operations. McLaren came back with a competitive proposal, which was scrutinized by Schubeck, and by Roger Verardi, the engineer who would handle the day-to-day interface with whomever won the job. McLaren ultimately was awarded the contract, which allocated a certain number of labor and engineering hours along with a purchase order budgeting $150,000 for dynamometer testing. Manhart later told the author, “Roger and Nick reviewed your quote and your facility and said you are obviously qualified, so I had no problem selling this sourcing to my management.” The Zeta engine was designed and produced in England and Ford wanted a version more suited to the American driving style, which was more of a slow-speed duty cycle, where Europe—­ especially Germany, with its Autobahns—was a high-speed environment. The major change was the engine’s intake manifold was tuned for low-end torque. McLaren supported the program by building prototype parts and carrying out dynamometer testing and tuning. “It was a great program with McLaren,” said Schubeck recently. This success led to many other Ford programs. The work dominated McLaren’s business throughout 1996 and at the same time GM work was slowing, just as Ford started coming on stream. Beginning in 1990, McLaren supported continuous development on the Zeta program through 1996. McLaren built hundreds of engines—so many that McLaren project manager Dean Battermann set up a production line in a building across the driveway to the east of the original McLaren facility. This building and another next to it were known (logically) as Buildings 2 and 3. McCoy said, “Joe [Bunetto] got it all done in the dyno shop. And Dean [Batterman] got it all done in engine build. He and his team got quite good at it. There were ten or 15 engine builders, because we had to work two shifts. We were actually making good money doing this—generating real EBITDA profit.”

McLaren also provided services to Ford on 1.9-liter and 2.0-liter 4-cylinder engines in the 1990s. Bruce Smith managed the Ford dynamometer testing contracts. “He practically lived at the Ford dyno lab,” said McCoy. “He was there every day. He kept all this work coming. Sat in their offices listened to them and developed the business.” Bruce Smith started out at McLaren Engines in the dynamometer testing department in the early 1980s, working part time. He was also an experienced fabricator. But his performance in a small sales campaign let to a broadened role at the company. In the late 1980s Bill Smith initiated a broad-brush sweep for potential customers. The author developed lists of all sorts of companies that might use McLaren’s services and divided them among 10 managers, requesting that they make cold calls on the telephone. Each list had around 25 names. Bruce Smith received his list along with all the others. None of these hard-working McLaren people had experience in making cold calls, a challenging thing for most salespeople. An hour later, Bruce Smith returned and reported that he had called everyone on the list—and he had a prospect. He asked for more names of people to call. The next day still more. However, as a sales exercise, McLaren’s cold-calling blitz bore little fruit, except what came through Bruce’s creative efforts. He impressed the management with his enthusiastic work on the project. It was not a surprise to hear that he later become McLaren’s program manager for all Ford dynamometer work. Ford quickly became McLaren Engines’ largest customer, with Bruce Smith handling the dyno testing and development business and Battermann managing the Ford prototype engine fabrication and assembly. During this time McLaren worked with Ford not just on Zeta but also on V6s and the 4.6- and 5.4-liter Modular V8 engines for a large variety of projects—prototype fabrication, engine assembly, run-in, durability testing, fuel injection system parts fabrication and testing, and oxygen sensor testing. © 2020 SAE International

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McLaren also built a non-operating V12 engine “mule” to support development of water pumps for the Aston Martin V12, which was essentially two Ford Taurus V6 engines put together. Ironically, Ford had by then replaced General Motors as the dominant customer.

“Belden Court”–The Vehicle Development Center In 1995 McLaren built a vehicle development center to service the Ford business. It was a vehicle build shop located on Belden

Court, in Livonia, about four miles south of McLaren Engines headquarters. “We did a lot of vehicle work for Ford Racing there,” said McCoy. “The cars were very unique, high-performance machines used for testing and for show. There was a great team of fabricators, painters and car builders at Belden, managed by Don Buzynski. The team included Ray McCallum, Vince Coppola, Rich Cole and Larry Inman to name a few. They attracted the enthusiast press, which wrote numerous stories that earned favorable notice for Ford Racing Performance Parts.”

 FIGURE 21.3  One of two McLaren-built 300 hp front-drive Ford Focus cars. They appeared at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas and on the covers of many auto enthusiast magazines in

© Roger Meiners

2000 and 2001.

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 FIGURE 21.4   Ford Racing Performance Parts brought this fantastic McLaren-built 1965 Mustang to SEMA in 2003. It featured this 5.0-liter, 32-valve “Cammer” engine with four

© McLaren Engines

downdraft Weber carburetors. It was rated at 420 hp.

Car builds included the FR 500 Mustang and, in the year 2000, the 300-hp four-cylinder, front-drive FR 200 Escort, a V10 Navigator and V10 Expedition, a ’96 Cobra and a ’98 Cobra, and a Dodge Viper and a Corvette for SVO benchmark testing. Later that year the team built a racing Escort, a racing Ford Harley-Davidson truck, and a FR 500 V10 Navigator. There

was also a series of cars with a hot Ford engine called “Big Bang.” The first was a Big Bang Escape. Other Ford projects included Ford Racing Kits, a Bronco restoration for Edsel Ford by Don’s team, and more FR series projects, including an FR 300.

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© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 21.5   Greg Biffle and fellow NASCAR driver Mark Martin appreciating the engine in the McLaren-built Ford F100 pickup. Ford Racing director Dan Davis looks on. The truck featured a McLaren-fabricated tubular space frame with four-wheel independent suspension.

The Center also took on the engine installation phase of Superformance’s replica Cobra manufacturing process. The company shipped semi-completed cars to McLaren at Belden where the engines were installed. McLaren also built a special

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1965 Mustang Fastback for Ford to commemorate the Mustang’s 40th Anniversary. Belden Court built other special show cars for SEMA, including a trick Focus and a turbocharged Mustang.

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Other Automotive Engineering Business Before, during, and after the above activities, McLaren continued to expand its customer base and carried out a wide variety of powertrain projects, such as those discussed in the following sections.

Legend Industries In 1981, McLaren began working with Legend Industries, of Hauppauge, New York. “Legend came to us through Irv Zwicker,” said McCoy, “whom I met previously and helped with a project. He and some ex-Chrysler guys—Bob Lee [later head of Chrysler powertrain engineering] among them1—needed a commercial source in Detroit to do projects. Their engineering team lived here in Detroit with the Legend Industries headquarters on Long Island.” 1

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Bob Lee eventually returned to Chrysler and is, at the time of this writing, Head of Engine, Powertrain and Electrified Propulsion, and Systems Engineering, FCA– North America, as well as Powertrain Coordination, FCA–Global. Lee is also a member of the Group Executive Council (GEC) for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (FCA). The GEC is the highest management-level decision-making body within the FCA organization and is led by the FCA chief executive officer (CEO).

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© Steve Widman

 FIGURE 22.1   Legend Industries, a consultancy populated with experienced Detroit automotive engineers, came to McLaren for help improve the Delorean sports car’s performance. Turbocharging was suggested but the PRV V6 couldn’t withstand the extra power—and Delorean went bankrupt in mid-program and couldn’t pay its bills.

Legend created a turbocharged version of the Spyder 2000 for Fiat. It went into production in the 1982 model year. The turbo version sold for $15,000–$2,700 more than the non-turbo version. The turbo car had 120 hp while the naturally aspirated version was rated at 102 hp. The turbocharged car did 0–62 mph in 8.6 seconds, and the quarter mile in 17.5 seconds at 82 mph, according to a contemporary magazine review. During 1983 McLaren also did some work involving a Fiat X1/9 for Fiat North America. Then DeLorean Motor Co. retained Legend to develop a turbocharged version of the PRV V6 engine that powered the

DeLorean sports car. But before McLaren’s job was finished, DeLorean went bankrupt—and this took Legend down with it. One of the Legend team, Lou Infante, a former GM engineer, had the dubious honor of meeting with McCoy to tell him that Legend would not be continuing the project and would therefore not be able to honor its outstanding obligations. However, in the end that all worked out for Infante, as McLaren hired him. Infante ended up leading the engineering teams for the Buick GNX, the Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo, and other projects.

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© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 22.2   Before the Delorean project, McLaren helped Legend Industries with a turbo upgrade for the Fiat 124 Spider that increased horsepower nearly 20 percent.

The PPG Pace Cars McCoy remembers, “We built our first PPG pace car for the Indy car race series in 1982; the Buick Century show car. PPG was the name sponsor for the PPG Indy Car World Series. The company began a promotion with their customers—the car

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manufacturers—to build futuristic pace cars created by the car company designers. These concept cars were quite expensive, up  to a million dollars in some cases. The most radical car McLaren built was the Buick Wildcat—a wild mid-engine twoseater with a bubble canopy. It had no doors, access was by raising the canopy.”

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 FIGURE 22.3   When PPG Industries became title sponsor of the CART IndyCar World

© McLaren Engines

Series it used this involvement to engage the auto industry in designing some astounding pace cars. These cars of course needed engines to match. This 24-valve DOHC V6 was one, and McLaren Engines created it for the 1985 Buick Wildcat.

McCoy said, “The funny part of that project was the time Buick program engineering manager Joe Negri was in the car and the canopy wouldn’t open and he couldn’t get out. He was roasting because of the lack of ventilation and it was like a green­ house. He thought he was going to die in there.” A few years later, McLaren adapted the DOHC heads to the Buick 3300 V6 engine block and installed the engine into a production car for Buick Division to evaluate the performance characteristics of that type of engine for future programs. McLaren built several other cars during the program. They included a special Renault that was based on the Renault Le Car Turbo and a radical Renault with an extreme wedge-shaped body informally called the “Doorstop”; a Pontiac Fiero, a Buick Le Sabre; a Buick 4-door sedan for CART competition director Wally Dallenbach to use on the track; a Camaro; a Renault Alpine; a Ford Focus XT2; Toyota All-Trac; Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and Ciera; and a Mazda RX-7.

McLaren even built a special DOHC Buick V6 designed by Hans Hermann that was exposed to view. GM VP of Design Chuck Jordan once told the author that this engine configuration was “the future of mid-engine cars.” The McLaren-developed engine was based on Buick Special Products’ cast iron Stage II cylinder block with McLaren-designed aluminum twin-cam cylinder heads. Toothed belts drove the intake camshafts from the crank­ shaft and the intake cams then drove the exhaust cams with gears. A story in Motor Trend magazine2 quoted Buick engineer Ed Keating, “The cams are real mild, the stroke is rather long to keep the engine within easy power band, and the thing feels really nice in the car. The engine is very smooth, it warms up quickly—it’s just a real joy.” 2

Motor Trend, December 1985, p. 33.

© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 22.4   The Renault PPG “Door Stop” pace car.

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McLaren Engines also built pace car versions of the Pontiac Grand Prix and the Buick GNX—with some heavy-duty parts, such as the Moldex billet crankshaft in the GNX, but, other than that, these cars had little more than strobe lights, roll bars, an electrical shutoff switch (in case of a roll-over accident), and

special paint to showcase PPG’s capabilities. McLaren’s John Conely was the on-road manager of all the PPG/McLaren fleet. The pace car program continued through 1994. The author took over liaison with PPG after Conely left to start an auto rental company.

© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 22.5   After building wild and expensive cars for a few years, PPG settled down and began commissioning pace cars based on production high-performance cars, like this Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo, and a GNX, both built by McLaren. They had beautiful paint and bodywork, lightly breathed-on engines and roll over protection.

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 FIGURE 22.6   John Conely, right, seen here with Bill McKeon at a CART event, managed the PPG support program in the field, while also building turbo Buick engines for the IMSA GT

© John Conely Collection

race series.

O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt In 1990, GM was drastically reducing their scope of work at McLaren. The author called Herb Fishel and asked for additional projects. Fishel responded with contracts to (1) develop and build a 1.6-liter engine (later a 1.8-liter version) to be used in compact Geo Storm sport coupes for racing and (2) to develop and build engines for the Corvette World Challenge race series. The author also called Don Runkle, GM’s VP of Engineering, and Runkle introduced McLaren to Tom O’Gara, owner of O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, a builder of limousines and funeral cars located in Dayton, Ohio.

O’Gara built armored limousines for third-world governments, primarily in the Middle East. O’Gara’s absolute requirement was that their armored cars be able to survive an attack and be able to flee for something like 1,500 ft. This would be far enough to get the car to a protected area—such as down the street and around a corner before becoming immobile. To achieve this the cars had 360° protection, including the floor and roof. All door portals had overlapping steel armor and windows had multiple layer glass and plastic several inches thick. All this made the vehicle very heavy and they needed large powerful engines for quick mobility in the event of an attack.

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McLaren provided these engines, along with the rest of the powertrain, and even installed heavy-duty GM truck frames. O’Gara was impressed with McLaren’s capabilities—and the recommendation from Runkle. So began a multiyear relationship that only waned when the Middle East blew up with war and uprisings.

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The first order came in 1990 for a 60-in. stretch Cadillac limousine that weighed over 10,000 lb. The vehicle-build shop installed a big-block 502 in.3 Chevrolet engine tuned for huge torque—with a transmission to match—and a truck frame and truck rear axle. Brakes and wheels were also maximized. The tires were fitted with O’Gara’s run-flat system, which consisted of a large bulletproof disc inside of a truck tire on which the car could ride for the requisite distance.

© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 22.7   McLaren built armored limousines and SUVs for use in politically unstable parts of the world. This GMC SUV was beefed up and powered by a 427 in.3 GM big-block V8.

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© McLaren Engines

 FIGURE 22.8   The McLaren-built 502 cu. in. GM big block engine was used in armored GM Suburbans and Cadillac limousines.

Later that year, McLaren built four Chevrolet Caprice limos. They received the same treatment. In 1991, there were two additional 1992 Cadillac limos, including another two big-block engine swaps. In 1993, the shop built six Cadillac parade cars and, during 1994, five 502 in.3 big-block-equipped Suburbans. Besides new builds, limousines were returned for repairs and scheduled updated maintenance. During this time, the shop also designed and built a special water-recirculation kit for O’Gara vehicles in the Middle East to maintain optimum cooling, thus avoiding overheating when the engines were stopped or idling.

Other OEM Projects McLaren took on many interesting smaller projects during the years. These were taken on from various business units of traditional customers, such as General Motors and other automotive manufacturers and suppliers.

General Motors •• GM’s North American Vehicle Operations (NAVO) contracted McLaren in the early 1980s to certify GM cars for © 2020 SAE International

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•• McLaren performed S-10 4.3-liter pickup truck V6 development for GM in 1985. Later, this led to McLaren building the S-10 V6 Turbo, the engine that would power the all-wheel-drive Syclone pickup truck. It out-accelerated even the fastest production Corvettes at the time. •• “We were also heavily involved with the General Motors Romulus engine plant,” said McCoy. “We built the two dynos in the back unit on the east side of our building to handle this work.” It consisted of quality audit of engines from the Romulus, Ste. Catherines, Canada, and Tonawanda, New York, plants. We set up rapid response cells to run 10- to 20-minute loaded audit tests. The team, led by Dean Battermann, included Phil Sievers and Ray McCallum. They developed a system whereby as many as 90 engines could be tested in a 24-hour period.  FIGURE 22.9   This engine was a development of the Buick Wildcat pace car

powerplant. It had virtually the same DOHC cylinder heads on a smaller 3.3-liter V6s with a hand-built fuel injection manifold. GM wanted this engine for evaluating the performance characteristics of multi-valve overhead cam engines—a common production-car configuration today.

© McLaren Engines

overseas sale. The work was focused on “witness testing.” European representatives (witnesses) from Holland and Spain came over and watched the test run. They witness the tests, collect all the data, and compile written reports, which would constitute their certification. McLaren did more testing in 1983 and 1984, ramping up by 1988. In 1989, McLaren certified the entire Chevrolet Beretta carline for NAVO to export overseas. •• McLaren Engines performed its first powertrain durability test for Detroit Diesel on the 8.2-liter engine in the 1980s time frame. Earlier, McLaren had carried out testing on the infamous V8-6-4 variable-displacement gasoline engine. A GM engineer on the project reportedly called it the “4-6-8Zero engine,” because of its many issues in running reliably. •• McLaren built two Isuzu diesel-powered Cadillacs and completed development work for each. In 1984, Cadillac retained McLaren to build right-hand drive cars for testing in the U.K., and eventually three were built. •• A 1983 engineering program with GM’s Livonia engine plant to troubleshoot the 4.1-liter Cadillac V8 sparked a series of projects for the facility, including developing inspection stations at the end of production lines for the 4.1-liter engine and 1,000-hour testing for the engine. •• During the 1980s, GM was still using Chevrolet big-block V8s in trucks, and in 1984, McLaren began performing heavy-duty 2,500-hour dynamometer tests for the GMC Truck division. As late as 1989, McLaren was still doing GM truck durability testing. •• In 1984, GM started to put various diesel engines in cars for evaluation, for example the Cimarron Isuzu the year before. The work included exhaust systems and a turbocharged 4.1-liter powerplant.

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Delphi “We completed 10 S-10 truck builds for Delphi in 1994,” said McCoy. Delphi, the company made up of GM’s former component operations, had separated from GM by then, and they wanted an intake manifold and fuel system for the new 1995 S10

pickup. As is customary, they needed to build their own test fleets and run GM durability tests. So, McLaren got the job to build the trucks as test vehicles and administered the testing at the EG&G proving ground near San Antonio Texas. McLaren used EG&G again 1989 for the Pontiac GP Turbo program.

 FIGURE 22.10   McLaren built this fleet of Chevy S-10 trucks for a Delphi fuel system project. The engine company also built test fleets for the GNX, Grand Prix Turbo, and for an

© McLaren Engines

Oldsmobile Quad 4 project.

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In the mid-1990s, McLaren carried out significant work for Delphi in China. Delphi was introducing electronic fuel injection systems to the Chinese auto industry, which then was still using carburetors. Bruce Falls and McCoy traveled there to kick off the project. McCoy made several trips to China during 1995 regarding work with Delphi’s customers First Auto Works and Guangzhou Peugeot. On the trips McCoy found that these and other customers had purchased new Dyno systems from AVL but were not using them properly. McLaren developed a training mission for them and sent two of McLaren’s the best dyno techs, brothers Don and Jon Hancock, to China to run dyno operation seminars. “In 1995 it was pretty difficult to travel and work in China,” McCoy said. “You were watched and guarded all the time.”

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V6 engine to run on propane, remembered McCoy. “In 1987 we were still doing work on Hyster propane,” he said. “We did a CNG lift truck for them in 1991.”  FIGURE 22.11   This supercharged GM 4.3-liter V6 was installed in a GM mid-size car to

learn how to control a high-power, front-drive car’s driving dynamics. Wiley McCoy said it was “wild ride.”

During the mid-1980s, McLaren designed and built an electricpowered van for Eaton Corp.’s electric drive engineering group. In 1985 McLaren built a unique Ford Escort for Eaton. The McLaren electronic technician on the Eaton project, Ian Paton, a native of New Zealand who was with the McLaren BMW 320 Turbo team, later worked for Mayer Motor Racing and stayed on with McLaren when the team disbanded. Eaton brought various supercharger programs in the 1990s to McLaren Engines, who became Eaton’s contract prototype house for various demo OEM vehicles built to demonstrate Eaton superchargers to potential customers. Also, McCoy went to South Korea to develop a relationship with SSangYong for Eaton. At 8 Mile, several Mercedes-Benz/SSangYong joint venture (JV) sedans were outfitted and calibrated with Eaton supercharger packages. Forklift-truck maker Hyster, at Chevrolet Special Projects’ recommendation, gave McLaren a contract to convert a Chevrolet © 2020 SAE International

© McLaren Engines

Eaton Corporation

Ontario Bus became McLaren’s first customer for CNG development in 1989. In 1994, McLaren started Ontario Bus emissions certification work. These opportunities emanated from white papers authored for the California Air Resources Board by Lou Faix, a brilliant retired GM engineer. “We knew him from the GM Dyno Lab and the GM Tech center,” said McCoy. “He got to know Steve Widman and me pretty well, so when he retired, he said, ‘I’m available.’ And we hired him. He was our ‘Captain Science’ for years. He did all the Blue Bird and Ontario Bus certification work.”

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Catalytic Converter Testing and Development McLaren started catalyst testing for Hyundai and suppliers Engelhard Corp. and CAMET. “We were starting to understand the catalyst business a bit then,” said McCoy. Catalyst material had to remain effective through its design life, which was at least 100,000 miles, as required by the EPA. This business continued to grow for years. McLaren engineers devised unique test rigs that could test multiple catalytic converters at the same time on one host engine. One of the significant long-term projects resulted from McLaren developing an automated system for mass-testing oxygen sensors by computerizing the test sequences so the dyno cycle control was automatic. The company did the same for catalyst aging. Maintaining exact temperatures, fuel mixtures, and chemical makeup was critical for both oxygen sensors and catalyst aging. McLaren’s fabrication shop created unique exhaust manifolds to fit multiple oxygen sensors—capable of aging as many as 50 sensors at one time on a single engine. Catalytic Solutions, an automotive supplier based in Camarillo, California, did so much testing at McLaren that the company rented an office in the building for their engineers.

Other Projects In 1990, McLaren entered into a JV with Motorola’s Automotive and Industrial Products Division, which had no prototype fabrication capability at its Dearborn Technical Center. Motorola did have two sophisticated AVL transient dynamic motoring dynamometers there, along with Ph.D.-level research and engineering expertise. The idea was that together the two companies could offer sophisticated engineering services to existing and new

customers at a higher level. The JV was not a total success for McLaren because Motorola’s dynamometers did not have the capacity to handle the high-performance engines that were the mainstay of McLaren Engines business. In 1992, Ford recommended that McLaren purchase Special Engineering Services (SES), a venerable, but declining, design company. The company had design responsibilities on Ford programs that Ford felt were in jeopardy if SES went out of business. The author put on his lawyer hat and worked on the acquisition for McLaren owner Bill Smith. McLaren purchased the business assets and moved the designers, support staff, and selected office equipment to the 8 Mile location. Candy Rees, the CEO’s administrative assistant, came with them and is still with McLaren as of 2019. In 1992 McLaren built data acquisition systems for Siemens’ Auburn Hills dyno facility. (Siemens bought Motorola’s dyno lab eventually.) “One of our guys went over there to work,” said McCoy, “and recommended our data acquisition system, called Wyn-Dyne, developed by the team of Everett Sumner and John Gee. Later, in 1993 Siemens converted to Schenk [dynos], so McLaren did a data system retrofit for them, too. Sumner and Gee did this work.” Different Drummer Engineering, a consulting company founded by John Gracen, a former McLaren Engines employee, retained McLaren to build an inspection line for steel wheels that he designed for Kelsey—Hayes’ Motor Wheel brand. “We built it inside the Eight Mile building,” said Wiley. “It was a huge thing. We fabricated and set it up in one of the units and John engineered it all. Kelsey Hayes then came to McLaren, tore it down, and took it to their plant.” “John Gracen was a serious kart racer,” said Wiley. “He was our first in-house guy that worked with Knutson to take a project from drawing through machining and production. By 1993 or 1994 he  had left us and was running Different Drummer. © 2020 SAE International



But  we  always kept in touch and he  brought back jobs for McLaren,” McCoy added. The Ilmor Engine Company used our fabrication and machine shops when they were setting up their new facility in Plymouth. Ilmor was founded by Paul Morgan and Mario Ilien, two former Cosworth engineers, in partnership with Roger Penske and GM Racing to do a new Indy engine for Chevrolet. GM has since sold their share back to Penske and Ilmor, and the company continues to build racing engines for various customers, including Honda. As of 2019, they are building Chevrolet Indy engines. McLaren built dyno drive shafts for TWR (Tom Walkinshaw Racing) of Valparaiso, Indiana, and for Menard, Mercury Marine, Schenk’s John Deere test facility, and for Detroit Diesel. During the late 1980s McLaren was involved in a project with Chrysler and First Auto Works (FAW), a Chinese auto company, to replace a Chrysler’s four-cylinder engine’s fuel injection system with a carburetor. The engine was to be used in an Audi 100-based Honggi luxury sedan produced by FAW. Three Chinese engineers were on-site at McLaren—assigned to an office in the engineering area while McLaren was doing validation testing on the carbureted engine. During the 1990s McLaren installed a water chiller to run thermal shock testing for Ishikawa. The procedure is to warm up an engine on the dynamometer and then quickly switch to supercooled water to put enormous thermal stress on various parts, such as head gaskets.

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This equipment was put to good use in 2010, when Chrysler’s SRT division was resurrecting the Viper, which had been dropped when Chrysler went bankrupt during the economic crisis of 2008. The car’s V10 engine had to be built from completely new tooling, as the original cylinder block tools were lost when the casting source was unavailable. This meant the engine, built from new parts, needed to be completely revalidated. Also, at this time, Dennis Carlson began a project with Boeing involving the local outdoor detection of nuclear biological warfare. The program was run by the Joint Project Office of the Department of Defense. Boeing engineers took residence at McLaren Engines during the project. McLaren fabricated 75 units to Carlson’s design, and they were tested in Korea. The IHI Turbocharger Group retained McLaren to demonstrate to GM that their turbocharger for the 6.2-liter GM Diesel was comparable to Garrett’s turbo. They succeeded in gaining the business from GM. This engine was later adapted for the military HUMVEE application. McLaren developed numerous dealership field services training programs for AC Rochester during the early 1990s, led by retired GM engineer Tom Hansen. He also supported O’Gara limousine projects. Chrysler was evaluating a Porsche-designed HarleyDavidson V4 engine. Harley wanted to sell the engine design to Chrysler, so the two vehicle OEMs hired McLaren to perform a vehicle packaging analysis. Ultimately, Chrysler did not buy the engine.

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This 1969 Brabham BT26A Formula One car was restored by the late Jim Daw, second from right. An Australian who previously worked for John Wyer on the Gulf Porsche 917 Le Mans cars, he was one of the longest-tenured McLaren employees. Others in the photo are, from left, Vince Coppola, Ray McCallum, who painted the car, Tom Stiles and Ed Babas.

Daw, left, and Babas finish the last bits before a shakedown run at the nearby Waterford Hills track.

© Roger Meiners

© Roger Meiners

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SECTION V. TRANSITIONS

C H A P T E R

23

The McLaren Engines/ASHA Merger “Back in the 1997-1998 timeframe, Bill Smith decided to sell McLaren Engines, with my assistance, said McCoy, “and I went through several attempts with him. We talked with Magna, ASC, and Tickford. Later on, we tried to buy Tickford to take advantage of its tier-one status with Ford.” “We were very busy following these Smith proposals. He sent his personal lawyer from Norwich to work on legal details. Finally, Smith turned to me and said, ‘Why don’t you buy McLaren Engines.’ I didn’t see how that would be possible, but to make a long story short, Bill showed me how it could be done. Roger Meiners1 and I went downtown [Detroit] to Clark Hill, a law firm he knew, and he introduced me to John Hern, the managing partner—in effect the firm’s ‘CEO.’ Working with him, I was able to buy the company.” The transaction was completed at the beginning of 1999. McCoy’s old friend Larry Cohen, whom he met during the BMW 320 Turbo program, was following McCoy’s progress in the McLaren Engines purchase. “He was an investment banker from New York and also a car nut,” said 1

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The author of this book.

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McCoy. “He and I  came together at the right time. We  had finished buying Smith out and he suggested that we merge the company with ASHA Corporation, a Santa Barbara, California based engineering company founded by former Ford designer Alain Clenet. Its board included several retired car company executives.” Clenet had hired a Turkish inventor named Murot who developed the Gerodisc, a new type of limited-slip differential for automobiles. ASHA had patents on everything—the whole process—and had sold Gerodisc licenses to Dana Corp. and New Venture Gear. They were busy getting ready for production with the Jeep Grand Cherokee. New Venture Gear had the contract to supply the transfer case and Dana had the front and rear axles. It was going to be the first time that an all-wheel drive had a limited-slip differential for the front axle. The Dot-Com bust had not happened yet. Tech stocks were what it was all about. The ASHA people didn’t know what this McLaren was, not being quite the same as the F1 team, but they liked the idea of becoming affiliated with “McLaren.” When the acquisition of McLaren Engines was executed, McCoy, with attorney John Hern’s help, completed the merger with ASHA on February 19, 1999. The new legal entity was initially called McLaren Automotive Group, but Ron Dennis of McLaren International objected. There was already a “coexistence” agreement in place between McLaren International and McLaren Engines to limit the American company’s use of the McLaren name, which McLaren Engines, Inc. had trademarked with the author’s help 10 years earlier in the U.S. and Mexico. McCoy, with help from Hern, had worked this out with Dennis when the management team purchased McLaren Engines from Bill Smith. Ron Dennis had reserved that

name in most other countries for his new auto manufacturing company but was initially blocked by the McLaren Engines trademark registration with the U.S. Patent Office. Ultimately, the company was renamed McLaren Performance Technologies (MPT). It took on ASHA’s legal status as a public company, listed on the NASDAC stock exchange. The first MPT director was Cohen. The other directors were Davey Jones, who was president of Outboard Marine Corp.; Bob Sinclair, retired president of Saab USA; Nick Bartolini, retired vice president of Ford Motor Overseas Marketing; and David R. Zimmer, chairman and chief executive of New Venture Gear.2 He was the executive who spearheaded the licensing agreement with ASHA for the Gerodisc. Jack McCormick was the chairman and CEO of ASHA. He was retired from American Honda and lived in Santa Barbara. While at Honda he led the introduction of Honda motorcycles to the U.S. After the merger the new company elected Wiley McCoy to the board of directors. He would continue as president and chief operating officer of McLaren Engines, Inc., which continued as a subsidiary of ASHA. “When Dana Corp.’s Spicer Axle Division purchased the license in 1994 to manufacture the Gerodisc for use on the 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee, it soon determined that it would have to be redesigned for manufacturing,” said McCoy. “They claimed that they were going to have to change it so much they it was a new design not covered by ASHA patents and so they were not going to pay any royalties on it. We disagreed and ultimately were forced to sue. 2

Before being named to this post, Zimmer was vice president and general manager of electronic products at Chrysler’s components subsidiary.

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“We eventually won, but the cost of the litigation outweighed the benefit to McLaren.” Licensing partners that lived up to their agreements with McLaren included New Venture Gear and the Steyr Powertrain Division of Magna for the Jeep Grand Cherokee Quadra-Trac II and Quadra-Drive transfer case systems using Gerodisc technology; and the all-wheel-drive versions of the Pontiac Aztek and the Buick Rendezvous that used a different technology under the name Twin Disc. McLaren Engines continued on as before, serving OEM customers' powertrain and related projects. Some of these are summarized in following pages.

The Cadillac LMP Engine In 1999, Cadillac decided to race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and in the related American Le Mans Series. General Motors Racing director Herb Fishel formed a team led by Joe Negri and Jeff Kettman to create a purpose-built car for the Le Mans Prototype (LMP) class for a year-2000 debut. GM chose McLaren Engines to develop and supply the engine for the car and selected Riley

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& Scott, a race car manufacturer founded by Bob Riley and Mark Scott, to build the car. The latter had previously been a part of the BMW GTP team at McLaren. GM’s Dave Spitzer and Andy Toton were the engine manager and development engineer, respectively. Both would work with McLaren on the project, known as “Northstar” after the Cadillac production V8 of the period. The race engine was to be based on the 650 hp naturally aspirated Oldsmobile IRL Aurora Indy V8 engine, which was introduced in 1996 for the 1997 IRL season and won virtually every IRL race since then. The engine had first been raced in IMSA’s GTS class, winning its class at the Daytona and Sebring endurance races, among other venues, and taking the 1995 and 1996 IMSA GTS championships.3 McLaren built an engine development facility in the headquarters building to support the Northstar development program. A new engine build area was created and new equipment and support personnel were added, including two high-speed 1,000-hp engine dynamometers dedicated exclusively to the project. 3

2000 Oldsmobile Motorsports Press Kit.

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Reliability was the key to GM’s strategy leading up to the Le Mans race. “Our focus is on finishing races,” said Wiley McCoy at that time. “We have to support the teams with dependable engines so they can develop the chassis.” McLaren supported GM to develop a new twin-turbocharged version of the engine, to be badged as the Cadillac Northstar LMP. McLaren’s designer, Don Miller, created the engine package and provided track mechanical support along with GM’s Toton, who provided engine technical expertise at

McLaren and at the track. Tom Klausler did engine develop­ ment at McLaren. The turbocharged version was selected for reliability reasons— it achieved the same horsepower as the base engine, but at a lower engine speed. This engine was used for the inaugural season in 2000 in the new Riley & Scott chassis with body design by GM Design studio chief Kip Wasenko. Four Cadillac LMPs raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, June 17–18, 2000, the first year of the program. GM Racing and the French DAMS team entered two cars each.

© Roger Meiners

 FIGURE 23.1   Cadillac LMP engines in the new engine build facility at McLaren Engines in 2000.

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© Andy Toton

 FIGURE 23.2   The first-generation Cadillac LMP race car, styled by Kip Wasenko’s Cadillac studio at General Motors.

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 FIGURE 23.3   The Cadillac team prepares for the 24 Hours in 2000. A second team

would also compete in the race, managed by the French DAMS group.

© Andy Toton

The Northstar V8s had been dependable at Daytona and Sebring earlier in the season, and in Europe, where the DAMS team ran three races. All told, Northstar engines were reportedly run over 22,000 miles during races, practice, and testing before Le Mans—8,000 miles by DAMS and 14,000 miles by Riley & Scott. Good results were elusive at Le Mans because of various problems with the car, including a disastrous fire on the first lap when one of the DAMS cars crashed into a barrier and burst into flames. The driver didn’t turn off the ignition as he fled the car and the fuel pump emptied a tank of gasoline on the fire, which was prominently featured on live TV. The other DAMS car ran as high as third place but suspension problems delayed it—the final straw being a suspension failure with three hours to go. The GM Racing team also had problems that prevented high placings in the race.

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Nevertheless, Cadillac’s engine manager Dave Spitzer said, “I am very lucky to have an experienced and devoted team of engineers and technicians based at McLaren Engines.” After the race concluded, Cadillac Northstar LMP engine program manager Jeff Kettman stated that the engines “raced along with near-flawless perfection.” For 2001, GM replaced Riley & Scott with a new team, called 3GR. It was managed by Wayne Taylor and including Jeff Hazel and Nigel Stroud, based out of the old Spice North America race car facility in Norcross, Georgia. The program used a new chassis designed by Nigel Stroud. GM’s Ed Keating was now responsible for engine engineering, assisted by Lee Carducci, a former Chrysler engineering executive, who came on board as a consultant. McLaren continued as the engine development and build source. Keating and Carducci, along with McLaren, engineered the switch to a more-powerful twin-turbocharged engine based on GM’s naturally aspirated Opel DTM (Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters4) version of that same Oldsmobile Aurora racing V8. “The methanol-fueled Indycar engine’s ports were way too big,” explained Carducci, “which didn’t fit what we were doing for the 600-horsepower turbo engine running on gasoline. The naturally-aspirated gasoline Opel DTM engine’s port configuration was a lot better, so we tooled a new block, new heads and front cover so the Opel-based engine was similar to the Cadillac.” “The GM guys were engineering it and all the support muscle was from the McLaren team,” explained Carducci. He, along with GM’s Keating and Toton, worked with McLaren to develop the new engine using McLaren’s resources. 4

German Touring Car Masters.

The second-generation Cadillac, known as LMP 2, is a complete redo of body and chassis by designer Nigel Stroud. McLaren continued to be the engine development and build source for the entire three-year program.

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“Don Miller did the design work on all the integration parts,” Carducci reported, “The McLaren team machined all the parts, did all the Bosch integration, all the sensor integration. All the support and dyno work was done by the team here at McLaren. Don Miller was the racetrack support—­ basically the mechanic. Andy [Toton] and I did all the data acquisition, calibration changes and race calling—we were the race engine engineers at the track. We didn’t run the car. That was done by the 3GR team.” Race results were much improved; finishing third at Mosport, third at Laguna Seca, second at Miami, and third and fourth at the season-ending Petit Le Mans, but the car did not score a victory in the face of a massively expensive (and massively successful) Audi effort. Cadillac pulled out of the series at the end of the season.

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The Ramjet ZL1 Crate Engine In the year 2000, Bob Cross, a General Motors racing engineer, discovered original tooling for the 427  in.3 ZL1 aluminum cylinder block. These blocks were used in Team McLaren’s M8 Can-Am cars as well as in other Can-Am cars, such as Jim Hall’s Chaparral and Roger Penske’s McLaren M6B. The engine was also installed in a few limited-production Corvettes and Camaros,5 which are today among the most valued muscle cars to collectors. General Motors Service Parts Operations (GMSPO) Performance Parts Division decided to resurrect and modernize the original ZL1 big-block engine, using this and other aluminum parts. The new engine would also have a non-closed-loop fuel injection system run with a Delphi MEFI-IV electronic engine control unit. GM Performance Parts would offer 200 individually numbered Ramjet ZL1 crate engines to enthusiasts. The author learned about the program early in 2000 in a conversation with GMSPO’s Gary Penn at the Performance Racing Industry (PRI) show in Indianapolis. He  arranged a meeting at McLaren Engines with Penn that led to a contract for McLaren to build four prototype engines. The four engines were to be assembled and at least one would be tested on the dynamometer. A report would be presented to GMSPO management by the end of February 2001. It all sounded simple. The quote assumed no machining would be required, only clearance measurements and compression ratio check on each engine. But problems arose, the most critical being cylinder liner shifting during dyno testing. 5

Known as “COPO” Camaros and Corvettes. “COPO” stands for Central Office Produc­ tion Order, a procedure Chevrolet used for dealers to order special high-performance cars.

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This required a design change to better capture the iron liner inside the cylinder block. The biggest change in the program occurred when GM decided that the fuel injection system could not be used right off the shelf. The MEFI-IV system would have to be calibrated. This was a long process—requiring hot and cold testing as well as high-altitude work—that McLaren compressed into less than a year. McLaren’s vehicle shop installed a Ramjet ZL1 engine in a GM-supplied test car, a 1967 Chevrolet Malibu SS convertible, and the calibration process was to be carried out by McLaren. McLaren retained Chris Briston, a former Ford calibration engineer for the project. Briston, an Englishman who collected vintage Grand Prix racing motorcycles and single-seat racing cars, has deep knowledge about racing history. At about that time, GM brought in a technical manager, Jim Stewart, a large, colorful, tough-talking character who at one time ran dynamometers at the GM Milford Proving Ground. He also ran a circle track car at local Michigan short tracks. When Stewart arrived at his first program review meeting at McLaren, he met Briston, who, in his dignified manner and precise English accent, carefully went over the calibration program and answered Stewart’s questions. The contrast to Stewart in both physical size and temperament was notable, but the most striking development was when Stewart discovered that Briston knew just as much as he did about local circle track racing. From then on everything went quite smoothly. The development program included calibration work in and around southeastern Michigan as well as work in the desert and mountains of Arizona. There was no test track involvement in Michigan, just local roads and expressways. As is typical, Briston frequently took the test car home during the four seasons so he could do cold starts. One time, Briston had the engine builder, Curtis Halvorson, drive the car on Interstate 96 near the GM

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Proving Ground at a low-traffic time of day, while he rode along to do some wide-open-throttle calibration. We will give no comments as to how long the engine ran at WOT or what speeds were reached while Briston adjusted settings with the GM calibration tool (called a “HUD” or head-up display). But Halvorson was getting nervous as they began to catch up with traffic that was probably miles ahead when it all started and Briston still had his attention glued to the HUD.6 At the end of the program the final calibration was downloaded to 200 MEFI ECUs by McLaren and shipped to the engine assembly operation to be packed with the engines for delivery to customers. A story on this engineering program appeared in Hot Rod magazine at the time.7

The Transition Continues: A New Investor “We were considering acquiring the Batten Engineering company,” said McCoy. Owned by Cyril Batten, the Michiganbased company was machining blocks for GM but was struggling financially. Batten did racing versions of the Quad 4—including a 900-hp turbocharged version that powered the Oldsmobile Aerotech (driven by A.J. Foyt), to set the world closed course Halvorson was inducted into the 300 MPH Chapter of the Bonneville 200 MPH Club in 2008 after setting a record at 307.876 mph on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats in a dieselpowered streamliner for which he built the 2,500 hp engine. He was a little bit nervous about doing nowhere that speed on the Interstate. The author happened to be at the awards dinner in West Wendover, Nevada, that night and was surprised to hear Curtis’s name called. 7 See https://www.hotrod.com/articles/hrdp-0211-gm-chevy-zl1-crate-engine/, accessed April 22, 2019. 6

speed record at 257.123 mph. This was an official Oldsmobile program that mated the body of the Aerotech show car with a March 84C Indy car chassis. Batten introduced McCoy to an investor named Hayden Harris. “We started talking about McLaren. He ultimately made a very large investment in McLaren—large enough to become Chairman of the company. Hayden introduced me to Steve Davis, a retired Penske Corporation executive who would later play a big role in McLaren Performance Technologies.”

Indy Car Racing: One More Time Hayden Harris, a McLaren board member, decided to go racing in the IRL IndyCar series in 2002 with a team called Blair Racing. He wanted McLaren to supply the Chevrolet Indy engines for the project. But there was a problem: Blair Racing was not an officially supported Chevrolet team, so it was difficult to source the needed engine parts. Nevertheless, McLaren took on the project. “Doug Peterson, the engine supplier for the Chevroletsupported Ganassi Indy team, was helping me with parts,” said McCoy. “If it wasn’t for Doug, I would have died with that IRL program. He has my everlasting gratitude.” Blair’s driver, Alex Barron, finished fourth in the Indy 500. The team ended the season with other engine builders due to budget constraints.

Acquiring Dart Machine, Ltd. On April 12, 2001, McLaren Performance Technologies acquired Dart Machine, Ltd., a specialty manufacturer of precision

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powertrain components for OEM applications and the automotive aftermarket. Based in Oldcastle, Ontario, Canada, Dart Machine, Ltd., was renamed McLaren Performance Products and became a wholly owned subsidiary of McLaren Performance Technologies. The new company served such customers as DaimlerChrysler’s Mopar group, Ford Racing, GM Powertrain/ Motorsports/GMSPO; as well as Getrag, Orenda Aerospace, and World Products. Dart’s General Manager Geoff Owen stayed on, serving as vice president and general manager. Sam Cocca is another Dart employee who remained with the company and is currently Linamar’s VP of global sales.

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Technologies closed the ASHA facilities in Santa Barbara, California (which at the time were being run by Lou Infante) and consolidated its traction business unit, its patented Gerodisc traction-control technology, and all related research and devel­ opment, to the company’s Livonia headquarters. “One of the really bright guys from ASHA California named Joe Triber, originally a Delphi electronics guy, created a new electronic Gerodisc,” said McCoy. “We showed a prototype to Eaton Corp.’s driveline group and made a deal to sell them the technology,8” he added. That officially concluded ASHA’s and McLaren Performance Technologies’ long saga with the Gerodisc.

Selling Gerodisc McCoy had started to pare down McLaren’s business portfolio, including the Gerodisc. In February 2001, McLaren Performance

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8

Eaton Corporation introduced the new “EGerodisc” electronic limited slip differential as a standard equipment on the front and rear axles of the 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee Quadra Drive II package.

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Linamar Acquires McLaren During the ASHA era, McLaren had business relationships that attracted the attention of Canada-based Linamar Corporation, a world-renowned manufacturer of precision-machined components for OEM powertrain and chassis markets in North America and Europe. Ex-McLaren Engines chief engineer Lee Carducci at this time was working at a Michigan-based machining company named MINSOR, which was involved in a joint venture with Linamar. Carducci previously had been a consultant to McLaren Engines after a career at Chrysler, where he had run Mopar’s Performance Parts Group and managed engine engineering at Lamborghini in Italy after Chrysler bought the company in 1989. At some point, Carducci left MINSOR and within hours received a telephone call from Linamar chairman Frank Hasenfratz asking about his departure. Hasenfratz invited him to a meeting, which was also attended by Frank’s daughter Linda, president of Linamar, and Linamar executive Mark Stoddart. Frank was interested in starting an engineering company and wanted Carducci’s assistance. Carducci suggested that they take a look at McLaren Performance Technologies as an alternative to starting a new company. Hasenfratz agreed, so contact was made with McLaren that started an acquisition process.

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“I knew Frank Hasenfratz already,” said McCoy. He walked into our building one day in 1997 or 1998 and introduced himself. He had somehow heard about McLaren and came directly to us from a meeting at Ricardo Engineering.1 He had just done a deal with Onan, the smallengine company in Wisconsin, to take over one of their product lines because he wanted to be in the engine business. But the current engines did not meet the new emissions standards. The new emissions regulations for stationary sources (engines powering generators, irrigation pumps and the like) were quickly advancing during 1997–1998. We spent a whole day with Frank. He wanted us to give him a proposal to help him get his engine ready for emissions,” McCoy explained. “I told him we needed to look at these engines first. He said, ‘No problem,’ and shipped them to us. We tore them down, benchmarked them and concluded that they would need fuel injection in order to meet the upcoming EPA regulations. He said that was too expensive and dropped the idea. Following a period of due diligence and negotiation between Linamar and McLaren, the McLaren board and stockholders agreed to a merger agreement with Linamar. This agreement was accepted by the stockholders at a special meeting held on September 25, 2003, after which McLaren became a wholly owned subsidiary of Linamar Corp. 1

The acquisition necessitated a corporate reorganization, and McLaren Performance Technologies first reported to Stoddart, via a group he managed in Guelph, Ontario, called PDT (Product Development Team). His plan, according to McCoy, was that McLaren would be an R&D center that Linamar funded and would produce new product ideas while continuing its own traditional business—mostly testing, prototype design, and engineering among other mainstream programs. Later, Linamar bought the Visteon all-wheel-drive group. It was a business unit of Visteon Automotive Components Holdings, which was made up of 17 plants that had been separated from Visteon and put on the market. Linamar bought one of those plants, in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The acquisition included the mechanical-AWD product program and team of driveline engineers. Originally known as Linamar TDE (transmission driveline engineering), this business unit became part of the new McLaren subsidiary. The plant produces primarily driveline products for Ford but also supplies Volkswagen, supported from a dedicated plant in Germany. “When I retired, former Ford driveline guy, Phil Guys, became the head of McLaren Engineering. He asked me to stay on to look for new opportunities,” said McCoy. “So, for a couple years, I worked with Bruce Falls and Rich Oppman, an ex-Pontiac engineer, to develop a core technology knowledge of the electric drive business. We talked with potential customers such as UPS and Blue Bird Bus while investigating the commercial vehicle side. We went to Chevy, Ford, Chrysler and GM.”

Ricardo USA Detroit Technical Center (DTC) in Van Buren Township, Michigan, near the Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

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McLaren Acquires New OEM Programs Generation III Viper Engine Development McLaren’s first involvement with the Viper V10 engine was in the early 2000s when Chrysler sourced McLaren to do testing on a version of the engine being developed for the 2004 Viper Ram truck. That led to a contract to perform mechanical general durability (MGD) testing in support of the 2004 Generation III Viper engine program. Durability test engines run continuously at full throttle for 200 or 400 hours, with a few minutes at idle every hour or so. “We had six dyno cells doing 24-7 testing, burning 22 gallons of fuel per hour, per engine,” said Carducci. “15,000 gallons of fuel were being delivered every two days to refill our storage tanks.”

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The Generation IV Viper Engine1 Chrysler began a rethink of the next-generation Viper engine that would be introduced in 2007 for the 2008 model year. The Viper engineering team was led by Pete Gladysz, and included Dick Winkles, supervisor of engine development, and Kraig Courtney, supervisor of engine design. They would work with McLaren and Ricardo Engineering, housed at the old ASC (American Sunroof Corporation) location in Southgate, Michigan. The performance objectives for the new engine were almost mutually exclusive: Make more power and improve emissions— particularly emissions-related engine misfire detection, which was difficult to do with a V10. The Gen III engine was living under an EPA waiver for the latter, which would not be available after the 2007 model year. The new engine would have to meet all emissions as well as produce at least 560 hp, the goal set by management. The team examined many solutions (including abandoning the V10 engine altogether). “We started investigation work in early 2005,” Winkles said, “So we only had about two years. It was pretty tight to begin with.” The initial step was to “hot-rod” an existing engine by adding high-performance versions of the existing cylinder heads and a hot cam to the base engine block. The cylinder head’s port design was a product of the teams’ work with input from Mike Chapman, an airflow guru based in Woods Cross, Utah. “We developed the head, built the mule engine—we called it ‘MD-1’—here at McLaren during the Christmas break,” said 1

The author wrote a two-part story about the Viper Gen IV engine program in 2007. It was entitled “The Snake gets a Bigger Bite” and appeared in the Summer and Fall issues of Viper Magazine. Parts of those articles, including quotes, appear verbatim herein.

Carducci. “It had a fixed [lobe]camshaft. It made 605 hp. We then sent it to Chrysler to run.” This engine proved that the program could meet Chrysler’s power goals with the classic Viper pushrod V10 layout. “We tested a lot of stuff over probably a year period to try to fix idle quality,” said Winkles. Chrysler even built a special evenfire engine to determine if this was a solution. The engine required a custom-built crankshaft with offset rod journals to achieve even-spaced power impulses. The engine ran smoother and sounded exotic, and it would have made it easier to detect combustion instability. But this configuration had problems with rocking motions side-to-side that SRT did not want to address in the short program timing that was available. SRT also had concerns with the cost and durability of a split-pin crankshaft. The final misfire-detection solution was twofold: First, improved crankshaft position sensing to detect changes in crank speed that might be caused by misfire. “In our old engine we had a crank position sensor with only 10 unevenly-spaced notches in it. Each notch was for one of the ten cylinders,” Winkles explained. “The controller would look at the notches and it would calculate crank speed based on the time between those notches. There are large spaces where the system can’t read anything because of the odd arrangement of the notches, and a lot can happen dynamically in those spaces. “We increased the number of teeth from ten to 58 (we call it ‘60 minus 2’). They are evenly spaced. Now you have six times the number of teeth that the processor looks at, and it can calculate crank speed between those pulses. So now we have the data resolution to a quarter of a degree,” he noted. The second part of the misfire-detection solution was to run less valve overlap at lower engine speeds to get a smoother idle. “This seemed impossible,” Winkles said, “because, to pump

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© 2020 SAE International

 FIGURE 25.1   Linamar and McLaren worked together to develop a low-cost method to

fully machine a combustion chamber and intake/exhaust ports. The result was called “OptiPower,” which was used on the GM LS-7 Corvette and the pictured Dodge Viper cylinder heads.

© McLaren Engines

enough air to make big power at high revs the engine needed to close the exhaust valve late and open the intake valve early. This kind of valve event phasing at low rpm produces a rough idle. It sounds cool, but won’t pass EPA requirements. Also, how do you independently change intake and exhaust phasing in an engine with only one camshaft?” Chrysler’s ultimate solution for certifying the revamped V10 was called “Cam-in-Cam.” It’s a device essentially comprised of two separate camshafts—effectively a tube inside a tube—each independently adjustable, allowing valve overlap to be continuously adjustable. Mechadyne, a British company, holds patents on the device, which is manufactured by Mahle. It allowed the team to develop a cylinder head that would meet the program’s performance goals and still be able to meet EPA emission standards. The production Gen IV two-valve cylinder head featured valves inclined at 12° instead of 18  in the previous version. Combustion chambers were fully CNC machined by Linamar as were the bowls under the valves. McLaren worked with Linamar to redesign the entire manufacturing process for the cylinder head to get a CNC combustion chamber in a production application at a very reasonable cost. This was originally done for GM Powertrain to enable fully CNC-machined heads and ports for the LS-7 Corvette. “It was a milestone in the Linamar/McLaren relationship, applying McLaren’s high-performance knowledge to Linamar’s expertise in manufacturing to create an improved, cost-effective product,” said McCoy, “And we applied that new process, called Opti-Power, to the Viper Generation IV cylinder heads. Prior to this, the only fully CNC-machined cylinder heads were done for racing. Typical cost was $2,500 per head, which was out of the question for a production engine.

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Valve seats were ground in seven steps with five of these being fully functional on the valve seat—a classic multiangle racingtype valve job for maximum airflow. The seats themselves nest together to accommodate the large valves. Airflow was increased 20% over the Gen III Viper engine. According to SRT, the new head had very consistent airflow port-to-port and from engine to engine: 1.0 to 1.5% difference. There was also a new intake manifold with new electronic throttle control (ETC) units to go along with the new cylinder heads. This engine was in all Gen IV Vipers in the from 2008 to 2010, when the sports car went out of production. It was re-created for the revived Gen V Viper from the 2013 through the 2017 model year.

Lamborghini Huracán Competition Engine Programs Chris Ward, senior manager, motorsport at Automobili Lamborghini America, was looking for a U.S.-based contractor

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to maintain the 5.3-liter V10 engines for two Lamborghini racing programs in 2018. Lamborghini’s initial plan was to send the engines back to Italy for service, which was deemed inefficient. Ward called Roger Bailey for suggestions and Bailey arranged a meeting with Wiley McCoy. McLaren Engines made a deal to take on the engine service task. It was a good business for Linamar, too, as Volkswagen is one of Linamar’s largest customers.

engines for the Lamborghini’s Huracán GT3 Evo teams competing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Challenge.  FIGURE 25.3   From L, engineers Gary Knutson, Wiley McCoy and Roger Bailey, seen here reviewing the Lamborghini V10 engine, represent at least 180 years of racing experience.

One of the programs was the Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo, a one-make series in the U.S. for the Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo Evo sports car. The other was to service

© Roger Meiners

© McLaren Engines/Wiley McCoy

 FIGURE 25.2   Dan Archer works on a Lamborghini engine at McLaren. The company built and maintained these engines in 2018 and added Audi for 2019. The engines are virtually the same.

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The IMSA WeatherTech Challenge is the most important American championship for GT cars and prototypes, with events such as the 24 Hours of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, and the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta in Georgia. Competition cars are divided into four categories: Daytona Prototype, LMP2, GTLM (Gran Turismo Le Mans), and GTD (Gran Turismo Daytona).

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Lamborghini Huracán GT3 Evo customer teams competed in the GTD class, comprised of 10 rounds during the 2018 season, including the 24 Hours of Daytona, in which Lamborghini cars finished first and third. The winning car was run by the GRT Grasser Racing Team and the third-place car by the Paul Miller Racing team. Miller won the next race, the 12 Hours of Sebring, to take the lead in the championship, which it would never relinquish for the rest of the season.

 FIGURE 25.4   The No. 48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo finished first in the 2020 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. It was the third straight victory for Lamborghini and for

© Jamey Price

McLaren-built Lamborghini engines.

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But it wasn’t as easy as it appears. The Miller team’s advantage fell to one point in the middle of the season. They clawed back to an 18-point lead with three races to go and then saw that dwindle to six points going into the final race, the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. The team used a conservative racing strategy to finish third there, just good enough to win the season championship by four points. They also took the driver championship and Lamborghini won the manufacturer’s championship. McLaren performed 30 engine rebuilds during the season. Lamborghini’s program continued in 2019 with a repeat GTD victories at Daytona and Sebring by the GRT Grasser Racing Team and a second consecutive GTD championship by the Paul Miller team. McLaren also managed engine rebuild services for the Audi R8 LMS GTD team, which used the same V10 engine.

 FIGURE 25.5   Wiley McCoy (center) has been involved in developing corporate expertise in electric vehicle powertrain. He is here with former McLaren Engines president Gary Knutson, left, and Bruce Falls, former General Motors and McLaren Engines engineer and current director of AVL’s California engineering center. The framework in the foreground is a development of the EV system McLaren installed in the Cadillac in the background.

Electric Vehicle Powertrain

© Roger Miners

In 2013 McLaren began to develop a rear-wheel drive electric module for front-wheel drive vehicles to provide all-wheel drive capability. A prototype system was installed in the Cadillac SRX for testing and evaluation. As of 2019, McLaren is working with a major corporation to develop a similar powertrain for trucks. The project is now in its second phase, which will produce a refined and much lighter module.

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 FIGURE 25.6   Linamar’s Dual Motor eAxle replaced the rear axle in Linamar’s Cadillac

 FIGURE 25.8   McCoy at the McLaren Engineering test lab in Livonia, with a powertrain testing dynamometer and an electric vehicle module for trucks.

 FIGURE 25.7   The Cadillac SRX, equipped with the Dual Motor eAxle on a northern test

© Linamar

drive. Plenty of traction.

© 2020 SAE International

© Roger Meiners

© Linamar

SRX research vehicle.

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The new three–story headquarters building serves Linamar and McLaren Engineering. The attached one–story structure in the distance to the left (east) is the original McLaren Engines building dating back to 1969. Eight Mile Road is to the left. Photo © Roger Meiners

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A New Headquarters and a New Name When Wiley McCoy officially retired, Bruce Schaumberger became the new general manager. He and Scott Maxwell managed the construction of a modern new three-story building on the Eight Mile site, next to, and attached to, the original building. Maxwell is still on site but now serves in another executive position with Linamar. During the dedication of this new headquarters on May 18, 2016, Linamar announced McLaren’s new name, McLaren Engineering. The dedication program featured comments by Linamar CEO Linda Hasenftatz and by Jim Jarrel, Linamar president, that explain the McLaren Engineering of today and the future.

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© Linamar Corporation

 FIGURE 26.1   The Linamar and McLaren Engineering headquarters

Project Unity: Going Forward Jarrell defined Project Unity as “Coming Together for a Common Purpose” It brings together all the organization’s business entities—machining; fabrication, engine design; engine build, sales; corporate and business development; driveline engineering, supplier quality, driveline build and test, group office, gear lab, production floor, purchasing and administration. “And what is our purpose?” Jarrell asserted. “Our purpose is to be Number 1 Team with Number 1 Mission, which is to do

what we do best better to the benefit of all stakeholders. And what do we do best? We design and manufacture over 370 million products per year—or 20 parts per second—that are safety and functionally critical for consumers in the marketplace.” McLaren Engineering also continues its historic role as a racing engine builder and also a developer of high-output production engines, the latter now most notably for the marine environment. The company is also entering new phases of electric powertrain development aiming toward production for commercial and limited-production high-performance OEM applications. © 2020 SAE International

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The reborn company appropriately sports a new logo, revealed at the 2016 dedication. It features the stylized image of a Kiwi bird, linking the company to its New Zealand-born heritage in

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the Canadian-American enterprise in Livonia, Michigan—the very ground where legendary racing engines once thundered and where the winning attitude remains.

 FIGURE 26.2   A McLaren Can-Am car in the McLaren Engineering shop. McLaren engineer Andy Toton is at left with the car’s crew members. Engineering offices at right overlook the

© Roger Meiners

shop floor.

© 2020 SAE International

Ron Lathrop © 2019 SAE International

appendices Appendix I: Race Results Can-Am 1967–1972 1967 M6A (Engines by Gary Knutson) •• Elkhart Lake (Sep 3): Hulme 1st; McLaren retired •• Bridgehampton (Sep 17): Hulme 1st; McLaren 2nd •• Mosport (Sep 23): Hulme 1st; McLaren 2nd •• Laguna Seca (Oct 15): McLaren 1st; Hulme retired •• Riverside (Oct 29): McLaren 1st (Hall’s Chaparral 2nd); Hulme retired •• Las Vegas (Nov 12): McLaren retired; Hulme retired McLaren 1st, Hulme 2nd in Championship

1968 M8A (Engines by Gary Knutson) •• Elkhart Lake (Sep 1): Hulme 1st; McLaren 2nd •• Bridgehampton (Sep 15): Hulme retired; McLaren retired •• Edmonton (Sep 29): Hulme 1st; McLaren 2nd •• Laguna Seca (Oct 13): Hulme 2nd; McLaren 5th •• Riverside (Oct 27th): McLaren 1st; Hulme 5th •• Las Vegas (Nov 10): Hulme 1st; McLaren 6th Hulme 1st, McLaren 2nd in Championship

1969 M8B (Engines Built at Colnbrook under George Bolthoff) •• Mosport (Jun 1): McLaren 1st; Hulme 2nd •• St Jovite (Jun 15): Hulme 1st; McLaren 2nd © 2020  SAE International

•• Watkins Glen (Jul 13): McLaren 1st; Hulme 2nd •• Edmonton (Jul 27): Hulme 1st; McLaren retired •• Mid-Ohio (Aug 17): Hulme 1st; McLaren 2nd •• Elkhart Lake (Aug 30): McLaren 1st; Hulme 2nd •• Bridgehampton (Sep 24): Hulme 1st; McLaren 2nd •• Michigan (Sep 28): McLaren 1st; Hulme 2nd; Gurney 3rd (in spare team car) •• Laguna Seca (Oct 12): McLaren 1st; Hulme 2nd; Gurney 3rd (in spare team car) •• Riverside (Oct 26): Hulme 1st; McLaren retired •• Texas (Nov 9): McLaren 1st; Hulme retired McLaren 1st, Hulme 2nd in Championship

1970 M8D (Engines Built at McLaren Engines under Bolthoff) •• Mosport (Jun 14): Gurney 1st; Hulme 3rd •• St Jovite (Jun 28): Gurney 1st; Hulme retired •• Watkins Glen (Jul 12): Hulme 1st; Gurney 9th •• Edmonton (Jul 26): Hulme 1st; Gethin 2nd •• Mid-Ohio (Aug 23): Hulme 1st; Gethin 9th •• Elkhart Lake (Aug 30): Gethin 1st; Hulme disqualified •• Road Atlanta (Sep 13): Gethin 7th; Hulme retired •• Donnybrooke (Sep 27): Hulme 1st; Gethin 2nd •• Laguna Seca (Oct 18): Hulme 1st; Gethin retired (see Reynolds ad) •• Riverside (Nov 1): Hulme 1st; Gethin retired Hulme 1st, Gethin 3rd, Gurney 9th in Championship 225

226 Appendices

1971 M8F (Engines Built at McLaren Engines under Knutson) •• Mosport (Jun 13): Hulme 1st; Revson 2nd •• St Jovite (Jun 27): Hulme 2nd (Stewart 1st); Revson 3rd •• Road Atlanta (Jul 11): Revson 1st; Hulme 2nd •• Watkins Glen (Jul 25): Revson 1st; Hulme 2nd •• Mid-Ohio (Aug 22): Revson 7th; Hulme retired •• Elkhart Lake (Aug 29): Revson 1st; Hulme retired •• Edmonton (Sep 26): Hulme 1st; Revson 12th •• Laguna Seca (Oct 17): Revson 1st; Hulme 3rd •• Riverside (Oct 31): Hulme 1st; Revson 2nd Revson 1st, Hulme 2nd in Championship

1972 M20 (Engines Built at McLaren Engines under Knutson) •• Mosport (Jun 11): Hulme 1st; Revson 3rd •• Road Atlanta (Jul 9): Hulme retired; Revson retired •• Watkins Glen (Jul 23): Hulme 1st; Revson 2nd •• Mid-Ohio (Aug 6): Hulme 4th; Revson retired (engine) •• Elkhart Lake (Aug 27): Hulme retired; Revson retired •• Donnybrooke (Sep 17): Hulme retired; Revson retired •• Edmonton (Oct 1): Hulme 2nd; Revson 6th •• Laguna Seca (Oct 15): Hulme retired; Revson retired •• Riverside (Oct 29) Revson 2nd; Hulme retired Hulme 2nd, Revson 6th in Championship

Indianapolis 500 Results Finish Start Car No

Driver

Sponsor/Entrant

Car/Engine

1970 9

19

75 Carl Williams

McLaren

McLaren M15/Offy

22

16

73 Peter Revson

McLaren

McLaren M15/Offy

1971 2

1

86 Peter Revson

McLaren

McLaren M16/Offy

17

4

85 Denis Hulme

McLaren

McLaren M16/Offy

25

2

66 Mark Donohue

Sunoco

McLaren M16/Offy

66 Mark Donohue

Sunoco McLaren

McLaren M16/Offy

7 Gary Bettenhausen Sunoco McLaren

McLaren M16/Offy

1972 1

3

14

4

19

28

17 Denny Zimmerman Bryant Heating & Cooling

McLaren/Offy

20

26

24 Gordon Johncock

Gulf McLaren

McLaren M16/Offy

22

29

31 John Mahler

Harbor Fuel Oil

McLaren/Offy

31

2

12 Peter Revson

Gulf McLaren

McLaren M16/Offy

Lindsey Hopkins Buick

McLaren/Offy

1973 3

14

5

5

3 Roger McCluskey

5 Gary Bettenhausen Sunoco DX 89 John Martin

Unsponsored

McLaren M16/Offy

8

24

9

1

31

10

15 Peter Revson

Gulf McLaren

McLaren M16/Offy

32

12

12 Bobby Allison

Sunoco DX

McLaren M16/Offy

33

17

77 Salt Walther

Dayton-Walther

McLaren/Offy

7 Johnny Rutherford Gulf McLaren

McLaren/Offy McLaren M16/Offy

1974 1

25

5

9

73 David Hobbs

Carling Black Label

11

22

89 John Martin

Sea Snack Shrimp Cocktail McLaren/Offy

14

3

68 Mike Hiss

Norton Spirit

32

11

17

14

3 Johnny Rutherford McLaren

8 Gary Bettenhausen Score 77 Salt Walther

Dayton-Walther

McLaren M16/Offy McLaren M16/Offy McLaren M16/Offy McLaren M16/Offy McLaren/Offy

1975 2

7

10

23

33 Bob Harkey

2 Johnny Rutherford Gatorade Dayton-Walther

McLaren M16/Offy McLaren/Offy

22

4

68 Tom Sneva

Norton Spirit

McLaren M16/Offy

25

13

16 Bobby Allison

CAM2 Motor Oil

McLaren M16/Offy

27

16

89 John Martin

Unsponsored

McLaren/Offy

32

6

7 Lloyd Ruby

Allied Polymer

McLaren M16/Offy

33

9

77 Salt Walther

Dayton-Walther

McLaren/Offy

© 2020 SAE International

Appendices 227

Finish Start Car No

Driver

Sponsor/Entrant

Car/Engine

1976 1

1

6

3

2 Johnny Rutherford Hy-Gain 68 Tom Sneva 6 Mario Andretti

McLaren M16/Offy

Norton Spirit

McLaren M16/Offy

8

19

CAM2 Motor Oil

McLaren M16/Offy

9

22

77 Salt Walther

Dayton-Walther

McLaren/Offy

25

24

86 Al Loquasto

Frostie Root Beer

McLaren/Offy

29

31

33 David Hobbs

Dayton-Walther

McLaren/Offy

33

25

19 Spike Gehlhausen

Spirit of Indiana

McLaren/Offy

Norton Spirit

McLaren M24 Cosworth

1977 2

1

8 Tom Sneva

10

16

36 Jerry Sneva

21st Amendment

McLaren/Offy

22

27

29 Cliff Hucul

Team Canada

McLaren/Offy

26

6

CAM2 Motor Oil

McLaren M24 Cosworth

9 Mario Andretti

28

15

86 Al Loquasto

Frostie Root Beer

McLaren/Offy

30

29

38 Clay Regazzoni

Theodore Racing Hong Kong

McLaren/Offy

33

17

2 Johnny Rutherford 1st National City Travelers Checks

McLaren M24 Cosworth McLaren M24

1978 5

7

6 Wally Dallenbach

Sugaripe Prune

13

4

4 Johnny Rutherford 1st National City Travelers Checks

Cosworth McLaren M24 Cosworth

14

28

88 Jerry Karl

Machinists Union

McLaren/Offy

28

22

77 Salt Walther

Dayton-Walther

McLaren/Cosworth

31

32

30 Jerry Sneva

Smock Material Handling

McLaren/Offy

33

27

29 Cliff Hucul

Wendy's Hamburgers

McLaren/Offy

13

25

72 Roger McCluskey

National Engineering Co.

McLaren M24 Cosworth

15

2

1 Tom Sneva

Sugaripe Prune

McLaren M24 Cosworth

18

8

4 Johnny Rutherford Budweiser

29

18

1979

29 Cliff Hucul

Hucul Racing

McLaren M24 Cosworth McLaren/Offy

McLaren Team Cars in orange highlights. Team Car and Penske Offenhauser and Turbo Cosworth Engines by McLaren Engines, Inc.

© 2020 SAE International

Appendix II A. McLaren-Chevrolet Big-Block Development History By David Kimble (Reprinted with the author’s permission) This excerpt is from Kimble’s article in the February 2016 issue of Hot Rod Magazine. He interviewed Gary Knutson, as well as Chevrolet engineers for this story. Kimble was an engineer at Bartz’s shop when Knutson was working on the aluminum big block for the 1968 season. Teddy Mayer asked Kimble to do a cutaway of the M8A just before the Riverside Can-Am race, so he took photos of the car at the shop. Gary Knutson built McLaren’s big-block Can-Am development engines at Al Bartz’s shop on Stagg Street in Van Nuys, California. He stayed with the blocks’ 4.250-in. cylinder bores and used for production 3.76-in.-stroke crank forgings machined by the Moldex Crankshaft Co. in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. The stock inverted-tooth timing chains were replaced by a Cloyes roller chain spinning 0.600-lift camshafts supplied by Vince Piggins’ group. Production of solid lifters, ForgedTrue pistons, and Carrillo rods completed the short blocks. The engines’ dry-sump lubrication systems used external Weaver Bros. pumps driven off the front of the crankshaft by toothed belts. McLaren’s shallow magnesium oil pans were cast by the same foundry as Chevy R&D’s Chaparral dry-sump pans and sat on the chassis ground-clearance line. The 1968 aluminum L88 cylinder heads had 2.19-in. intake and 1.84-in.-diameter exhaust valves, but the ports were enlarged and recontoured with Crane aluminum, roller-tipped,

228 Appendices

needle-bearing rocker arms with studs on top. The magnesium intake manifolds had a 2.9-in. bore vertical throttle body for each cylinder. A fuel injector sprayed into each of the curved and tuned-length stainless steel velocity stacks. Fuel was routed through the injectors and returned to the tank from the metering unit. Plumbing the fuel systems this way was thought to keep the intake manifolds cooler. The intakes were improved versions of the aluminum manifolds available from Crower. Gary Knutson had MacKay Bros. make the intakes (along with his Lucas metering units, Vertex magnetos, and tach drives) from magnesium, and they were free to sell them to other engine builders. On the exhaust side, equallength 2-1/8-in. primary pipes fed into 4-in. collectors, and this combination was good for about 650 hp at 7,600 rpm. McLaren press releases at the time rated them at 620 hp, perhaps to not completely show their hand. Chevrolet Product Promotions made sure these and other developments were available to everyone running Chevy engines in the Can-Am, and Bill Howell handled Vince Piggins’ group’s liaison with the teams. Howell had done the dyno development of the Mystery Motor and the Mk IV big blocks before being invited to join Piggins’s group in 1967, so he knew these engines well and could offer guidance on running them. The only Chevy-powered competitor that was not part of the program was Chaparral, with its engines coming straight from Chevy R&D, developed behind closed doors, and they were independently working on a Lucas-based fuel injection of their own. This was being done by Jim Kinsler, who had started his own fuel-injection company in 1965. Kinsler was recruited by Chevy R&D in 1967, leading to the 58-mm Weber carburetors on the Chaparral 2G’s aluminum 427s being replaced by Kinsler’s fuelinjection system in 1968. Fellow Kiwi Denny Hulme joined McLaren in 1967 as Bruce’s teammate, and their pair of pastel orange M8As were the

sensation of the paddock when they made their appearance for the first race of the 1968 season at Road America. These cars were still underdeveloped but that didn’t slow them down in qualifying, with Bruce on the pole and Hulme second quickest, followed by Jim Hall in his aging Chaparral 2G. The race started on a wet track and finished under dry conditions, with McLaren second and Hulme first—although he finished on seven cylinders with zero oil pressure. Things only got worse at Bridgehampton, with Bruce’s engine suffering main bearing failure and Hulme’s throwing a rod, while Mark Donohue won, driving Roger Penske’s McLaren M6B with an aluminum 427 Chevy built by Traco Engineering. This was the low point for McLaren’s fast-but-fragile big Chevys, but they were reliable for the rest of the season, finishing first and second at Edmonton, with Hulme winning the race. However, Hulme finished second and McLaren fifth with healthy engines at Laguna Seca. The race was run in a deluge and John Cannon outfoxed the field by anticipating the weather and winning with Firestone intermediate rain tires on his Bartz small-block-Chevy-powered McLaren M1B. Bruce McLaren’s only win of the season was round 5 at Riverside, and Hulme won the season finale at Las Vegas, where Jim Hall survived a horrific crash-but the 2G did not-with Bruce finishing sixth. Denny Hulme was the 1968 Can-Am champion, with Bruce McLaren second in the final point standings. But the McLarens hadn’t dominated the series the way they had in 1967 and would again from 1969 until 1972. In 1969, Can-Am engine builders didn’t find the openchamber heads to be much of an improvement, but they appreciated the stronger ZL-1 blocks and liked the 4.375-in.-bore version that Vince Piggins’ group made available. With a 427-in.3 engine’s 3.760-in.-stroke crankshaft, these big-bore blocks brought displacement up to 465 in.3 With the 1970 4.00-in.-stroke 454 crank, displacement increased to 494 in.3 © 2020 SAE International

Appendices 229

It was at this point Reynolds Aluminum came out with a new block that had the potential for even bigger bores. To promote Reynolds’ A-390 high-silicone alloy being used to cast Chevy’s 2300 Vega engine blocks, Reynolds supplied Product Promotions with Can-Am blocks with 4.4375-in. aluminum bores that the pistons could run in without iron liners. The Reynolds blocks were often bored to 4.500 in. for 509 in.3, with a 4.625-in. bore possible. TRW made special pistons for these engines coated with iron by electrolysis and fit with chromeplated rings to prevent galling from the aluminum-toaluminum contact.

B. George Bolthoff, Can-Am Engine Builder By Doug Nye (Reprinted with the author’s permission) Nye gives background on Bolthoff and details his Chevrolet big-block engine build process at the McLaren factory in Colnbrook, England, during the 1969 season. Not covered here is the change that year to a high-revving short-stroke 430-in.3 version of the engine that was well-received by the drivers. Ace engine builders are few and far between, but one such unsung hero is the man behind this year’s McLaren domination of the Can-Am series—George Bolthoff. His interest in performance cars and in extracting the utmost from otherwise stock power units began in high school back in California in the early 1950s. There he built his version of the traditional “flathead Ford roadster” hotrod and took it out once a month to the dry lakes to pit his preparation and driving skill against others of the genre. © 2020 SAE International

Service in the U.S. Army intervened from 1954 to 1956, and on his “release” he went to work as a rocket engineer for North American Aircraft. Engine tuning and car preparation were still a consuming interest, but George soon found that drag race meetings in the center of town offered more interest than saltlake record runs once a month 200 miles out in the desert. Rocketry continued as bread-and-butter employment, and from 1959 to 1963 the amateur drag-racer worked on the beginnings of the Apollo lunar landing project at Lockheed. So successful was he becoming at blasting along quarter-mile strips that his winnings began to top his basic salary, and so he left Lockheed to concentrate on professional drag racing. George had built his own slingshot chassis and prepared 800-plus-hp Chevrolet and Chrysler gas-class engines to propel it. His rocket experience seems to have come in useful for the name ‘George Bolthoff’ began to appear in national gasser record lists as he set a record of 7.97-second elapsed time for a 197-mph terminal speed in the quarter mile. He was making his drag racing pay particularly well by preparing and maintaining his own car and engines, driving his own transporter-cum-caravan to meetings all over the nation and generally holding expenses down to a minimum. But when George married, some certain security became vital and so he retired from driving and went to work for Jim Travers at Traco Engineering, preparing and building race engines. There he spent three years doing all the engine assembly work for Roger Penske’s Trans-Am Camaro and USRRC Group 7 championship contenders, as well as for Traco’s other, less august, customers. At the beginning of this year he heard that Gary Knutson was returning to Chaparral after a very successful spell with McLaren, and February 1969 saw the Bolthoff family moving lock, stock, and barrel to England, and George taking overall responsibility for the team’s Can-Am motive power.

230 Appendices

McLaren Racing’s Colnbrook base lies under the west-bound flight path from Heathrow Airport and there a small engine assembly shop is staffed by Bolthoff and his Kiwi assistant John Nicholson. Basis for the Can-Am mills is the Chevrolet ZL-1 427 in.3 (7-liter) high-performance option. This is an all-aluminum unit offered as the ultimate in Corvette goodies and selling over the counter for around $3,000 in the States. For the Can-Am program, eight of these were purchased, and the modifications made are surprisingly minor in view of the successes they have achieved. Starting with the block, the castings are generally cleaned up and “de-burred” to remove casting flashes and any other possible cracking sources. The stock heads have their exhaust ports smoothed a little, and the intakes are carefully matched to the specially made McLaren manifolding. The intake ports are straightened and polished, but evidently the basic design leaves little room for drastic improvement. Finally, the combustion chambers, which are ‘semi-hemi’ in form, are matched to the bores and to each other for volume, and with an optimum 12:1 compression ratio. Reciprocating parts are surprisingly stock items in the main, starting with Chevrolet’s standard ZL-1 crankshaft. This runs in high-performance Chev main bearings, but the bearing caps are secured by specially made high-grade bolts. Another optional item used is a high-performance crankshaft damper carefully scribed with timing marks to make final tuning easier. The conrods are stock items again, being de-burred and shot-peened to strengthen them. All these stock items are Magnaflux-tested before final preparation to detect flaws and only perfect components are built into the finished units. The aluminum pistons are specially made by Mahle in Germany, reproducing the basic Chevy design to McLaren order. Some alterations have been made to the stock shape, but George wasn’t too specific on these. Three rings are carried, two 1/16-in.

compression rings and a single 3/16-in. for oil control. Stock pistons have been used in the engine, which Bruce raced at Watkins Glen, but cracks were found in one of them before the race started. The team took a calculated risk in running the unit, but it seems their calculations were wrong for the piston did break up, putting Bruce out. George is still keen to run the Chevrolet pistons again, however. The single central camshaft, running in the vee between the cylinder banks, is another high-performance stock item, as are the pushrods, but stock rockers are replaced by beautifully made Iskenderian components. These proprietary Californian hot-rod parts are cast in aluminum and pivot on needle-roller bearings, and as with all other hotrod items used are supplied by Reath Auto of Long Beach, California. High-grade valve springs made by Engle Cams are another expensive imported goody, but the enormous valves themselves are stock Chevy highperformance parts. McLaren’s own induction system is used, this stemming from an original injection setup produced in California two years ago by Crower Cams, another of the specialist hot-rod equipment manufacturers. This comprises a bulky but extremely light magnesium manifold with tall big-bore intake trumpets and Lucas electronic metering unit and upstream injection nozzles. Other specially cast mag parts are the dry sump and the rocker covers, which have ‘McLaren-Chevrolet’ lettering cast in. A Weaver Bros. large capacity hot-rod oil pump is fitted and the M8Bs have an oil tank of about 4 gallons (U.S.) capacity carrying 2 gallons of Gulf oil. Only other mods to the engine concern the tapping of two large diameter bolt holes to attach a chassis A-bracket, through which the unit is semi-stressed when mounted in the M8B chassis. Ignition is by Vertex magneto and Bosch plugs. When the standard ZL-1 engines arrive at Colnbrook they produce around 475 bhp, a Chevrolet figure, which George © 2020 SAE International

Appendices 231

reckons is probably underrated. When they leave his shop, output is up to around 600–650 bhp, but he can’t be sure of the exact figures because McLarens do not have their own dynamometer. Early in the development cycle, units were run up on Cosworth’s brake in Northampton, and Lucas Engineering’s in Huntingdon, but, like Rolls-Royce, output is obviously “sufficient.” A logistical problem exists in building and preparing engines on one side of the Atlantic to support a racing program on the other, and for the three M8Bs at any Can-Am round there are five engines present—three in the cars and two spares. The other three mills are then either at Colnbrook being stripped and rebuilt or somewhere in transit between home base and the works team. George reckons to take three days to build a completely new engine, three hours to strip a raced one, and anything from 12 to 16 hours to rebuild it. In each strip all reciprocating parts are Magnafluxed and the rods, bolts, and rings replaced as a matter of course. The stock bearings are replaced as standard practice after two races, and even then looks fit enough for several more. After a lot of trouble finding a company competent and wellequipped enough to do large-capacity V8 balance over here, George came up with Hilthorne Engineering, of Hanwell, and they do quite a bit of other contract work on the units, such as head-leveling and so on. McLaren’s own small machine shop at Colnbrook does quite a bit of work on the engines, and George and John are sometimes joined in their clinically clean workshop by John Dornay from the F1 team. They found he had experience in cylinder head work and when there’s a porting job to be done he has co-opted to do it. But perhaps the most surprising feature of McLaren’s engines is the fact that they are so stock in specification; it makes one wonder what kind of road car the optional ZL-1-powered Corvette must be like! Apparently, it goes like stink and gulps gas at about 6 mpg, © 2020 SAE International

and when Bolthoff-prepared it goes even better and still with 4–4.5 mpg “economy,” which for a racing 7-liter engine can’t be bad. George hastens too points out that “It’s not what we do, it’s the way we do it that gets results,” and it is patently obvious that painstaking care goes into preparing these engines fit for a champion. The only question remaining is, who will it be this year—Bruce or Denny?

Appendix III Development of the McLarenCosworth Turbocharged Indy V8 By Steve Roby With notes by principal engine builder Bill McKeon Steve Roby was crew chief of McLaren’s Indy team from 1976 to 1979. He then followed driver Johnny Rutherford to Jim Hall’s Chaparral team. A graduate engineer, Roby’s interest in racing began in Australia during his youth when, through a friend, he became a race team “gopher.” That introduced him to the Australian racing fraternity. He won an engineering scholarship with British Leyland, which led to an internship with the automaker’s Competitions Department’s service team in Australia for the LondonSidney Marathon. After graduation he went into racing full time, joining the Surtees racing team in England. “I worked for Surtees for two years and then Brabham for two years, and then I went to Graham Hill’s Embassy Hill team—because Graham always had an Australian guy running his car. Why? Because Aussies are all good mechanics!” Roby told the author.

232 Appendices

In 1975, Roby decided to get out of racing, partly because of Embassy Hill driver Rolf Stommelen’s disastrous crash at the Spanish Grand Prix that year, when five spectators died. “I was just burned out of it. I mean it’s hard work; we keep saying it’s the good old days, but it wasn’t that good. You see lots of bodies. So, I decided, ‘all right, I’m done.’ And Watkins Glen was going to be my last race.” In those days, the F1 teams were organized by the tire engineer—that way, they didn’t have to run everywhere. “Our team and Penske’s and one other were always grouped that way [with the Goodyear engineer],” he explained. “[Mark] Donohue used to tell me all these stories about America. I told him this was my last year, and then I was going to drive around America.” When Roger Penske heard Roby’s plan, he offered the use of a car if he would stay after Watkins Glen while the team conducted testing. “Penske gave me this car to deliver to Reading [Pennsylvania] and pick up another to deliver to Long Beach the Monday after the Riverside race. After that, I went home, did a whole Tasman Series with my buddy I.G. [Ian Gordon] and then I was going to get a real job.” But then McLaren Engines’ Tyler Alexander called with a new project. Prior to the decision to develop a Cosworth DFV-based turbo engine for Indycar use, McLaren Engines had built and serviced the turbocharged Offenhauser engines used by the team with great success. The Offys of this period initially ran with unlimited boost. In 1973 Johnny Rutherford qualified on pole at Indy with a speed of 199.071 mph; he later noted the run was made “at 120 inches of Hg boost with the boost needle bending against its stop.” After the accidents and fires in the 1973 race, USAC reduced the allotted fuel capacity from 75 gallons to 40 gallons and the cars had to run the race with a maximum of 280 gallons of fuel.

A pop-off valve was mandated and boost levels reduced to 80 in. Hg. These restrictions made the Offy less competitive as it was heavy, tall, and configured to run high boost. Nicholson McLaren Engines in Hounslow, U.K., had been rebuilding DFV engines for both the McLaren works F1 team and for Graham Hill Racing, so a wealth of DFV knowledge was available for the Indy engine project, which became known as the DFX. Cosworth boss Keith Duckworth was not interested in turbocharged engines at the time, so development of the turbocharged, methanol-fueled DFV became our project at McLaren Engines in Livonia. In early 1976, we received two ex-F1 engines (block numbers DFV122 and DFV172) from Nicholson McLaren Engines. The goal was to develop a 2.65-liter Indycar version capable of producing 800–900 hp using 80 in. Hg of turbo boost. The V8’s projected duty cycle of perhaps 90%–100% extended wide-openthrottle (WOT) per lap for 500 miles. Typically, we qualified using 80 in. Hg of boost but had to race at 76 in. Hg to meet the USAC fuel-mileage requirement, which was legislated at 1.8 mpg. To keep things in perspective, one should understand that the DFV in F1 format was naturally aspirated, 3.0 liter, and gasoline fueled. It produced 460–480 hp at 10,500 rpm. The duty cycle of the F1 engine was typically more slanted to bursts of power-no more than perhaps 25 seconds extended WOT per lap for 200 miles, although at the fast slipstreaming races like Monza and Hockenheim in that era, the duty cycle for WOT would have been more like 80%–90%. The 2.6-liter turbocharged Offenhauser engines then used by McLaren employed a Hilborn fuel injection system that featured two downstream-facing injectors per cylinder. This set-up formed the basis of the new turbo V8’s fuel delivery system, later moving to upstream-targeted injectors.

© 2020 SAE International

Appendices 233

The Cosworth V8s initially used crankshafts supplied by Moldex, located in nearby Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Other key components included connecting rods from Carrillo in California; pistons from ForgedTrue, and then TRW; specially made piston rings from Sealed Power in Detroit, bearings from Clevite, and camshafts from both Cosworth and Herb Porter. The standard DFV F1 cam was designated DA1; the Cosworth sports car cam was designated DA2. The DA2 had a profile with shorter duration and less lift but the same basic shape as the DA1 up to 9,600 rpm. We ran the valves from the sports car engine as they had thicker shafts. At Milwaukee, a short (approximately one mile) oval track, which required low-rpm power off the corner, we tried BD3 cams (from the Cosworth BDA engine) and they worked very well. Unfortunately, however, the BD3 cams produced a different sound for all to hear so our competition knew what we were up to. We won that race and, as I recall, we stayed with BD3 cams for short tracks. Analysis showed that the Cosworth cam profiles were so good that they did not float the springs within the rev range. We also tested a lot of Herb Porter cam profiles. Valve springs were a constant problem for us. Typically every night the first task after running was to perform a leak-down test on each cylinder to check for valve-to-seat leakage. Invariably while doing this on the cooling engine we would hear a ‘ping’ and know that a valve spring had just broken—signaling time for the engine drill! The cogged belt on the front of the V8, which ran the oil and water pumps low down on the engine, and the half speed drive in the vee between the cylinder banks, which powered the magneto and distributor, started to shed teeth and fail after years of consistent reliability in F1. These belts, made in Germany, were sourced by McLaren from Cosworth.

© 2020 SAE International

At first Cosworth did not want to know about this problem until they ran out of belts, or when Roger Penske (on whose engines these belts often failed) complained too loudly. Then Keith Duckworth became involved. He found out that the belts were manufactured with excessive tolerance but shipped to Cosworth anyway. As if by magic, one day a package arrived from Cosworth with a set of pulleys and a batch of clear belts, and a note to “try these belts.” Problem solved—although we never did find out exactly what happened. I suspect that the belts that failed were made from a polymer, which was not oil proof. When we were running at 80 in. of boost, the rod side of the main bearing would wear excessively. To rectify this issue, Clevite made us eccentric bearings with more material on the rod side and less material on the cap side. It always seemed to be a battle to get enough Mallory metal into the crankshaft throws to offset the piston mass, so the DFX shook a bit-but not as much as an Offy. In an attempt to achieve more cooling for the tops of the combustion chambers, the engines were fitted with copper water pipes (like those sold in hardware stores for household plumbing) around each chamber, external to the heads. This piping was a visible loop, from cylinder to cylinder. The insufficient heat rejection that prompted this strategic cooling solution was causing the exhaust valve seats to tip in the head castings. Because of the seat tipping, the exhaust valve would fail to seal and the seat/ valve would be torched through by the exhaust flow. Whenever the engine was a bit lean, such as during part throttle/high boost conditions encountered when the car was turning into a corner at a long track, this failure mode would rear its ugly head. It was especially prevalent in California where the air was hot and dry. We  less-than-fondly called it “The Laguna Leanout.”

234 Appendices

In 1979 Wiley McCoy found that the Cosworth cylinder heads were much softer aluminum alloy than that used in the BMW heads (Brinell hardness 120-130 BHN) on the turbocharged BMW IMSA engines. We built a massive head heat-treat fixture in which thick steel plates sandwiched the heads while they were being heat treated—but the entire structure would warp, rendering the heads useless. All cylinder head work were done by McLaren in house—and actually all-in-the-building, as McLaren Engines was located in the north end of the building and Duor Die Machine had the south end. The combustion chamber finishing was done by Duor Die on one of their pantograph machines. Bill McKeon’s notes have the following hardness test results done on 16 heads dated 4/7/79. Serial #

BHN

Serial #

BHN

1727

100

1950

92.6

1736

100

1951

100

1942

100

1953

92.6

1943

100

1955

96.3

1946

100

1956

100

1947

96.3

1957

100

1948

92.6

1958

93.3

1949

92.6

1959

100

Perhaps this soft head problem contributed to our exhaust valve seat tipping. Early in the DFX program while trying to solve the exhaust seat problem, Tyler Alexander, Gary Knutson, and Don Beadle decided to move the pitch of the exhaust ports further apart to resemble the pitch of the inlet ports. Their aim was to provide more metal around the port to better support the valve seats. As was typical, Cosworth wanted nothing to do with our turbo project, so Nicholson McLaren engines in the U.K. had 36 heads cast, heat treated to a greater hardness, and partly machined by

Cosworth with the exhaust valve ports, valve stem guides on one side of the head, and the exhaust side cam bucket bores on the other side of the head un-machined. I will never forget the emotional trauma this project wrought on Graeme Bartels, our machinist. Nicknamed “Rabbit,” he had a restless creative mind and always had sideline projects going, including his own Super Vee, a home-brewed 2-liter BMW-powered midget racer, and another formula car. Rabbit learned how to operate the dyno simply as an intellectual exercise. He ran a Bridgeport mill with X, Y, and Z LED positional readouts but was otherwise totally manual. By comparison, at the time Cosworth was using self-made, tape-controlled CNC machine centers for machining cylinder heads. The head machining process began with a mountain of head castings, stacked 36 per pallet, 12 layers high. The pallet was placed on the floor right beside the Bridgeport, so Rabbit could not escape it. He tackled the job with his usual creativity. For the eight exhaust valve ports in each DFX head, Rabbit would machine the basic valve seats on a lathe, then machine each seat recess and valve stem guide bore into the head, shrink the seats into the head, then finish-machine each seat and valve stem bore. He made a fixture to flip the head and machine the guide bore for the cam follower buckets on the top side of the head, eight per head. Our development of piston liners was extensive. Initially the turbo V8s produced a lot of blow-by, not surprising given the increase in cylinder pressure, and as a result the liners were cracking. We  tried Cosworth steel liners but they wore out quickly. These were replaced by Cosworth cast-iron liners, which themselves were replaced by (Curt) Nicholson Machine 43br40 nitrided steel liners. Later the steel liners were flash chromed to prevent flaking on the backside (water side). On the return trip from Ontario Motor Speedway (OMS) for a car test, we were hauling a palleted box (about 3 ft. × 3 ft. × 4 ft. high) of raw liners back to Livonia from Nicholson’s Machine’s © 2020 SAE International

Appendices 235

shop in Irvine, California. The poor Ford Econoline van was struggling up hills with four people and this huge box of steel liners and we dared not think of the consequences if it got away from us on the steep grades of the three-day drive. At least we were smart enough to remove the second row of seats this time to put this heavy cargo midships in the van. It was not a pleasant trip. On another west coast trip early in the DFX project we got stuck in a snow and ice storm while entering Indiana. This time we had an Offy engine in the back of the van. The van was so tail-happy that it slid down an icy banked corner going about 10 mph. We stopped, moved the engine to the middle of the van to get the handling somewhat more neutral, and set out for California with the van more stable albeit probably not so safe in an accident. It was on this trip, following our semi-trailer that I asked Wombat, who was doing about 15 mph if he knew where his trailer wheels were, as the rear of the trailer had slid down a lane on a banked, icy curve. In an attempt to get Edsel Ford interested in our project the basic McLaren engines had “Ford” labeled cam covers. On the F1 DFVs, the Ford label appeared twice on each cam cover—a reminder that Ford had funded the DFV’s design and construction. At the same time, the Vel’s Parnelli team (owned by Parnelli Jones), who were also doing a turbo DFV project, used “Cosworth” labeled cam covers. Then McLaren’s Bill Smith took it one step further. He had the “Ford” milled off and replaced it with “FORD MCLAREN” in large cast letters glued onto the cam covers. Don Beadle reported that Edsel Ford came into the shop and demanded to know what McLaren Engines were doing with “his F1 engines.” We used Boris Kondaroff’s Mallory magnetos. We gave Boris an office in the chassis shop so we could keep track of him and get rebuilds when we needed them—and to try keep him out of the Schnapps till later in the day. Boris also developed a unique CD ignition system, which we raced often. Unfortunately, we only ever had that single unit. © 2020 SAE International

Boris took delight in showing newbies the corona effect by running the magneto on his test rig, with the lights off in his office, so we could see the corona leakage off the coil and plug wires and how the verglas tubing over the plug wires prevented the leakage. He also showed us that the Mallory decal, which was made of mylar, prevented the leakage exceptionally well so we ran the Mallory decal under the coil wire. As an aside, one of the best features of an Indy car of that era was that the car ran a magneto and thus had no need for a battery. An ugly memory for those of us who worked in F1 or F5000 was to always have a battery, or two, on charge in the bathrooms of our motel rooms every night. So, having a magneto and no battery was a great feature of the Indy car racing for us. Radio static “noise” was a huge problem on the DFX. It was never easy with the Offy but the V8 had twice as many spark firings per second, so it was a lot worse. We tried all manner of fixes on both the chassis and the engines—grounding one end of the shielding around the coax cable was one fix. We tried going to a base station with a repeater on the truck so that we  simply overpowered the electronic noise was the most successful fix. Prior to this setup we used to have problems when we ran at OMS, due to a local gravel truck business who obviously were not conforming to FCC rules. Rutherford would be out on track performing his duties when he would be told to go to some address and deliver a load of #2 gravel. These guys were very loud in our headsets! From the start of the DFX program in 1976 to late 1978 we struggled to keep the exhaust pipes from cracking. The pipes were made from SS321 tubing, in various diameters. The exhaust system started as a single piece weldment with four-primaries-into-a-collector with bellows only in the “Y” piece. The next step was to have bellows on each primary pipe, plus bellows from the collector to the “Y” piece. In each of these steps the port flange

236 Appendices

(which was bolted to the cylinder head) was cut from flat plate to which both the primary pipe and several wraps were welded. By the end of the project we had slip joints on each primary, which then went to the collector. The collectors were then veeband-clamped to the “Y’ piece with a bellows in each leg of the “Y” piece. The last step in exhaust pipe design, circa winter of 1978, employed an investment casting made for the port flanges. For this version we tucked the pipes in close to the block to lessen the amplitude of the vibration. These pipes had slip joints with no surrounding bellows in each of the primaries. The purchased bellows actually had slip joints inside the bellows, so we really just did away with the bellows. Looking back, I think that the exhaust pipe failures came to a halt when the engine shop started using Laystall cranks. Moldex, our local crankshaft supplier, had some kind of short-term manufacturing dilemma and could not deliver crankshafts, so we went to Laystall in the U.K. They were Cosworth’s crank supplier before Cosworth developed its own manufacturing line. Laystall manufactured the shorter-throw 2.5-liter (Tasman Series) crankshafts for Cosworth. The Laystall crankshafts reduced the engine vibration amplitude, which also may have been aided by our changing the piston mass and adjusting the amount of Mallory metal in the crank throws. At some point when each side exhaust was a single weldment, we suspected that the vibration and continual heat cycles were hardening the material. In an attempt to counter this, we built a massive steel fixture so the entire weldment could be heat treated and annealed. Unfortunately, it made absolutely no difference. The pipes would stress relieve themselves; if they fitted up to the collector just fine when you mounted the pipes on the engine, by the time the car had run a few times the pipe weldment could be off by half a pipe diameter. We had many struggles with levers and so forth to get the pipes to mate up on the engine in the car.

In the 1978 Indy 500 we were doing okay until the exhausts on the left bank broke. It took us 20 laps to change them. A large amount of that time was spent trying to lever a set of pipes to get the secondary pipe to mate up with the “Y” piece upon which the turbo sat. With Rutherford driving we still finished 13th, which was like a non-finish for us, and for that experience we had a lot of burned arms, hands, and fingers. That year also marked the first Indy 500 win by a DFX-powered car (Al Unser, Sr., driving a Chaparral), starting a 10-year winning streak for the Cosworth turbo V8 at Indy. For both the team and for our customers Phil and I built many sets of exhaust pipes. Fabricating exhaust pipes during the winter off-season was not so bad as it was part art, part science, and part skill. We had coat hangers bent to simulate the centerline of each pipe and bags upon bags of special pipe bends done for us in the Detroit area. We simply dug into the bag for the appropriate bend, eyeballed the cut (which always had to be perpendicular to the centerline, so the mating parts fit nicely), then cut the tubing. Welding the wraps onto the pipe and flange was a noisy process which, combined with the buzz from the welding, gave one a headache. On the inlet side of the DFX we had a variety of aluminum plenum chambers, of different volumes and runner lengths. Some plenums had the entry radius of ram tubes initiate on the plenum floor, and some had the entry of the ram tubes elevated from the plenum floor. When running 80-in. of boost it was quite difficult to keep the plenum from pulling away from the injector and lifting off the engine, despite the inclusive angle of the ram tubes and double clamping. We typically tie-wrapped the plenum to the engine and had a variety of more robust fixes, which constrained the plenum such that it could tolerate the thermal expansion in the engine but not pop off the ram tubes. On the M16 Offy, which ran initially at 120 in. Hg of boost, the inlet plenum was held on the engine with four large Avimo © 2020 SAE International

Appendices 237

connectors. We initially thought that by just applying lessons learned from the Offy—including four Avimo connectors on the four corner ram tubes (numbers 1,4,5,8), silicone hoses fitted with hose clamps, and threaded tee bolts on the other runners— that the combined fixes would constrain the plenum chamber. But it was never that simple. For the short tracks and for road racing I  “borrowed” a battery-operated oil pressure switch from the dyno spares and made it into an adjustable boost light. At short tracks like Milwaukee and Phoenix, Rutherford (J.R.) could not both read the boost gauge and precisely turn into the corner at the end of the short straights—which is where we wanted the boost to max out. We constructed a range of small inlet plenums and crept them down in size until J.R. could see the red light pop on at the end of the straights. At 80 in. boost, and a 1.39 A/R turbocharger turbine housing (known as the “snail” because of its shape) the car would accelerate very aggressively down the short straights with rear tire grip being the constraint. At the reduced 60 in. of boost and then 48 in., getting max boost became more important, so we resorted to the boost light to help us get maximum boost and thus torque. It must be said that J.R. was very good at these short tracks so a little improvement in engine or chassis performance typically resulted in wins for us. For this project Gordon Coppuck designed the McLaren M24, which was an evolution of both the Indy M16 and the F1 M23. The M24 used the foam-filled, crash-absorbing radiator ducts similar to the design of the smaller M23 as conceived by John Barnard. In simple terms the M24 had M16-like suspension grafted onto a larger, M23-like, tub with a turbocharged DFV engine replacing the venerable turbocharged four-cylinder Offy. The original cars had the floor of the side pods flat, but we had to lift the right-hand side pod floor an inch, just so we could get our quick-lift jack under the car in a pit stop. © 2020 SAE International

Bill McKeon’s Notes on Cosworth Indy Engine Development Bill McKeon grew up in Howell Michigan, about 30 miles from McLaren Engines. As a young man in the 1960s, he worked for Jack Conely, an engine building legend in the Midwest racing scene. Bill attended the University of Detroit before serving as a U.S. Army sergeant in charge of a Transportation Command motor pool at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, circa 1966-67. On his return to the U.S. he was with Conely for a while before joining the factory AMC-Hurst racing team as an engine builder/track tuner in 1969. He went on to serve as division manager at General Kinetics, a camshaft manufacturer in Detroit. Later, he was at Diamond Racing Pistons before joining McLaren—hired by Fritz Kayl in the early 1970s. Kayl had been at Diamond before becoming McLaren’s general manager after Colin Beanland left. McKeon worked on Chevy small block NASCAR development, along with GM’s Bill Howell. After this, he  built the first Cosworth turbo V8 test engine, completed on January 22, 1976. He continued to build and develop turbo V8 for Team McLaren and later for other Cosworth DFX users, including Mayer Motor Racing. He built McLaren’s BMW GTP turbo four-cylinder engines in 1985 and 1986. (Jack Conely’s son John also was an engine builder there, working on Buick Turbo engines and assisting Bill McKeon on the BMW project.) After leaving McLaren, he was briefly an auto dealership fleet manager before joining Price Engineering in 1993, where he built the Ford [Aston Martin] V-12 development engines. The development engines, DFV 122 and DFV 172, had both previously served as Formula 1 engines, hence the DFV nomenclature.

238 Appendices

DFX 122 1st Development Engine: January 22, 1976 Following a 0.6-hour dyno run and one power check dyno run. 1. Engine seems to have excessive blow by keeping the dyno float pegged at 10 CFM 2. The tops of pistons and the combustion chamber look very dry 3. All pistons showed signs of heavy rocking 4. The top land (of the piston rings) show cylinder wall contact 5. The inlet valves touched the pistons at the valve pocket edges 6. The piston pin bores look fair 7. The gas-filled sealing rings look cooked 8. The Cooper rings look fine (ed the cooper rings seal the heads to the liners in place of head gaskets) 9. The oil level would not stabilize 10. Installed two-12 (Aeroquip) breather lines into the dyno sump but the oil level was still unstable Mk II build and run: 1. The pistons were reversed to move offset away from the thrust face (ForgedTrue pistons) 2. The valve pockets in the tops of the pistons were enlarged 3. The top lands were taper-turned 4. The engine was reassembled with all-new Cooper rings 5. Sump was modified to Mk 111 version 6. Engine was again run on the dyno. After a 0.2-hour warm up and six power checks the engine was put in M24-001 and run at OMS. (Note: Mileage not recorded.)

DFX122 Engine Teardown after OMS test 1. # 3 piston was burned 2. #3 liner was cracked 3. Piston rock was much less than after the first dyno run 4. Bearings look passable 5. Cooper ring sealing was excellent 6. Valves still touched the pistons 7. Mk 111 oil system appears OK 8. Left side of engine appears drier than right 9. Pin bores picked up in several places 10. Used 9600 rpm map

DFX 172 (Third Development Engine) This was the first build on this engine. The engine was not run on the dyno in Livonia or even started prior to it running in the car at OMS. 1. Engine had no pin-end float on assembly on some cylinders. This is a normal condition as end float appears after engine has run on the dyno. 2. This unit saw +9000 rpm during initial track run-in. 3. Several pins had seized in rod bushes lightly, then pin galled in piston (this is a normal chain of events). 4. One pin seized in its rod, then galled the piston badly, then the rod bush turned in the rod. Bush then came loose from the pin and moved over into the pin boss (heavy pin boss wear). Piston has cocked on the rod. Rod bearing out on that rod—could be from rod misalignment under load along with low side clearance. 5. Top ring on one piston had scuffed in groove and groove was badly worn. © 2020 SAE International

Appendices 239

6. One cylinder head is leaking water—cause not yet known. This chamber was touched by piston after bearing failure. 7. No liners cracked (visual inspection only—Zyglo later). 8. All piston skirts look good. 9. All rod bearings show heavy contact—possibly due to high revs with low cylinder load. 10. Center main (ed. bearing) shows heavy loading. Operations performed on engine DFX 172:

1. New pistons 2. Tighter bore clearance 3. Larger valve pockets 4. Cosworth steel liners 5. Remove dampener and can flywheels

3. Moldex crank—Tuftrided 4. New rods for 1-in. pin 5. Cylinder heads repaired

DFX 122 5th Development Engine Observations taken after 2.8 hours on dyno: 1. All during test the engine never really ran properly—had persistent misfire. 2. All pistons had magnetic rust deposits on top. 3. LH cylinder head cracked worse than before. 4. All valve seats sunken. 5. Steel liners worn out. 6. Above problems attributed to bad fuel—excessive water.

DFX122 4th Development Engine

Operations performed on engine:

Observations taken after 6.4-hour on dyno:

1. New thick iron liners installed (Cosworth). 2. Cylinder heads from DFX 172. 3. New magneto and housing



1. Four-into-one exhaust system evaluated 2. Large and small logs evaluated 3. Cycle durability 4. Burnt piston #2 5. Scuffed # 2 liner 6. Crank picked up on #6 journal (side) 7. RH head exhaust seats sunken 8. LH head cracked 9. LH exhaust timing slipped to 100°

Operations performed on engine: 1. Replace liner 2. New pistons TRW © 2020 SAE International

DFX 122 6th Development Engine Observations taken after 3.5 hours on dyno, followed by Indy test totaling 25 miles. Engine ran poorly on all tests. All during test the engine never really ran properly, had persistent misfire

1. Ruined center main bearing 2. Rods bossed in pistons 3. LH head cracked 4. RH head guides bad

240 Appendices

1. Increase mains clearance 2. Replace cylinder heads 3. Machine piston pin bosses



DFX 172 7th Development Engine

Observations after Milwaukee test 162 miles and 2.5 hours on dyno:

Operations performed on engine:

Observations taken after 4.4 hours on dyno, followed by MIS test totaling 260 miles:

1. Four-into-one race car prototype exhaust system 2. Single/twin log evaluation 3. Power consistently good 4. Power fell off at end of test due to broken collector pipe 5. Engine ran on dyno after MIS. Good power but failed center main on second power run at 9600 rpm 6. Measure RH side water flow with twin Vega radiators 7. First Kay exhaust system Operations performed on engine:

1. Engine align-honed 2. Nicholson 4340 nitrided steel liners 3. Heavy counterweight crankshaft 4. Lower compression ratio 5. Shorter rod eyes 6. Newer cylinder heads 7. New main studs

DFX 122 8th Development Engine 1. Evaluate lower compression 2. Exhausts 1¾ with 2-in. collector to turbo pipes



3. Nicholson 4340 liners 4. Second design Hilborn injector 5. Run twin inlet turbo snail 6. Ran Milwaukee test, 162 miles

1. All bearings looked fine 2. First compound spindle broke at block end 3. #2 and #6 rods touched—galled slightly 4. # 3 rod bushing cracked 5. #6 rod bushing spun 6. Pin bores are all terrible looking

Operations performed on engine:

1. Raise compression ratio to normal 8.1:1 2. Use full Clevite lower main bearing 3. Narrow rod’s big end for more side clearance 4. Drill 4 rods for test pin oiling 5. Drill 4 pistons for test pin oiling

DFX 122 9th Development Engine 1. Evaluate prototype mag pumps 2. Measure water flow in RH side Observations after MIS test 104 miles and two full power runs on dyno: 1. #6 plug fouling 2. #8 plug hotter than normal 3. Second ring scuffed on #4 cylinder © 2020 SAE International

Appendices 241



4. Pistons and rods with drilled holes appeared better 5. Water flow appears to be down 6. Possibly too much spark 7. Oil temperature 240° to 250°F 8. Lost 10 psi oil pressure due to increased main clearance 9. Engine still looks very dry

2. Porter Exhaust Clearances .050 Open @ 49° BBC .050 Close @ 14° ATC .050 Open @ 59° BBC

.050 Open @ 49° BBC

Operations performed on engine: 1. Burnish pin bores 2. All rods and pistons to get drilled for oiling 3. Flash chrome liners to prevent flaking 4. New ring package 5. New bushing material 6. Shim PR valve 7. Large impeller in water pumps 8. Extra oil cooler 9. Crankshaft rods and pins 10. Pistons—prepare new set with oil holes, reduce second and third land diameters, measure and record pin clearances 11. Hardness check skirts 12. Lap valves and cleanup #6 chamber (possible new valve in #6) 13. Ring groove diameter 14. Replace #6 liner

DFX cams—Porter HP-52 1. Porter inlet clearances

.050 Open17°BTC .050 Close @ 58°ABC Lift @ TAC 0.118

© 2020 SAE International

17 ü ï 48 ý 115ïþ

110°CL 0.030 @ 10°ATCV / P

113° CL 0.06 V/P

.050 Close @ 14° ATC 103° CL 0.021 V/P

.050 Close @ 24° ATC .050 Open @ 56° BBC

110° CL 0.047 V/P

.050 Close @ 17° ATC

Valve Spring Data HP-52 Camshafts 0.405 gross lift; 0.395 net lift Seat Pressure

Installed Height

Open Pressure

Open Height

Distance from CB

70

1.400

216

1.005

0.125

80

1.370

230

0.975

0.095

90

1.340

240

0.945

0.065

DA-2 Camshafts 0.381 gross lift; 0.370 net lift Seat Pressure

Installed Height

Open Pressure

Open Height

Distance from CB

70

1.400

205

1.030

0.150

80

1.370

217

1.000

0.120

90

1.340

230

0.970

0.090

We also ran Cosworth BD3 camshaft at short tracks

242 Appendices

Appendix IV

Tyler Alexander attended from England, where he was still associated with the McLaren F1 team.

A Fabulous Milestone: McLaren’s 40th Anniversary

© Roger Meiners

© Roger Meiners

Roger Bailey studies photos among memorabilia brought by Barry Smyth, the Gulf Oil representative who worked with Team McLaren during the Can-Am and Indycar eras.

© 2020 SAE International

Appendices 243

© Roger Meiners

Guests listening as Tim Mayer exercises the #7 car’s big block engine.

© Roger Meiners

Can-Am and Indy cars. Part of the vehicle display on the back lot at McLaren Engines (now occupied by a parking deck). From left, 1971 M8F and 1972 M20 Can-Am cars and the M16 Indy car that won the 1974 Indianapolis 500.

© 2020 SAE International

In 2009 McLaren marked the company’s 40th year since its founding by Bruce McLaren, Bill Smith, and Teddy Mayer in 1969. Smith returned for the event, along with Tyler Alexander. Mayer’s son Tim attended, representing him. Linamar president Linda Hasenfratz, along with her family, welcomed everyone. Livonia and State of Michigan dignitaries were there, including Mayor Dennis Wright and former Mayor Jack Kirksey along with members of the Livonia Chamber of Commerce and City Council, and members of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. Detroit Red Wings star and racing enthusiast Larry Murphy was also there. Many of the early employees, engine builders, race team members, and drivers also reunited in Livonia to celebrate with their compatriots and with the current staff, some of whom were there during the company’s racing heyday. These current staff included Wiley McCoy, the recently retired CEO and now chairman of the company’s Technical Committee. Another engine builder, Jim Daw, had been there nearly as long. Several historic cars were on special display that day, including the 1965 prototype McLaren M1-B, an M16 Indy car, 1971 M8 and 1972 M2 Can-Am cars. Johnny Rutherford, winner of the Indy 500 in 1974 and 1976 in M16s for the McLaren team, attended. Thanks to Indy winner Bobby Rahal, who manages the BMW Historic car collection, there were two McLaren-raced BMW cars: one of the 1977–1979 320 Turbos and a 1986 BMW GTP car on display. David Hobbs, a multiple winner in the 1977–1979 320 Turbo campaigns and a BMW GTP driver in 1986, was there, too.

244 Appendices

 FIGURE A.1   A bunch of BMWs, with a David-Hobbs 320 Turbocar in the foreground.

 FIGURE A.2   Leaning on an M8F wing during the 40th reunion, from left: Teddy Mayer’s son Tim, Bill McKeon, Steve Roby, Bill Smith, Tyler Alexander, Alec Greaves, Syd Carr, Barry Smyth, and David Hobbs.

© Roger Meiners

© Roger Meiners

David himself is being interviewed in the right background. McLaren headquarters can be seen in the background.

© 2020 SAE International

Appendices 245

Tom Klausler, David Hobbs’s sometime 320 Turbo teammate, joined the festivities. He has been a valued engine builder-developer at McLaren on 8 Mile Road since 1977. That’s 42 years as of this printing.

 FIGURE A.4   The author at right with Rutherford. Alexander is looking away behind them and Lee Carducci is further back, extending his arm. The McLaren headquarters in the distance.

© Roger Meiners

© Doug Bain

 FIGURE A.3   From left: Johnny Rutherford, Tyler Alexander, Don Bartos, Steve Roby, Syd Carr, Roger Bailey, and Colin Beanland.

© 2020 SAE International

Roger Bailey, one of the early McLaren Engines team members, also enthusiastically participated. As is chronicled in these pages, Bailey built Offy Indy engines and Chevrolet Can-Am engines in 1971–1973, ran the BMW 320 team from 1977 through 1979, and then brought in enough Cosworth DFX service business to keep the racing business current after BMMR and BMW stopped their race programs.

246 Appendices

GNX engineering project manager Lou Infante brought a prototype Buick GNX. He originally donated use of his Buick Grand National for GNX package development in return for the car being completed as a GNX. Its dash-mounted sequence number reads “000.” A production version was also shown, courtesy of the local Ken Lingenfelter collection.  FIGURE A.5   Two of the McLaren Buick GNXs and the McLaren-built “UPS” truck that

Mary Petitpren drove her 2008 Viper up from Atlanta, and former McLaren engine builder/developer Bill McKeon brought his Corvette Z06. These cars’ engines represented McLaren/ Linamar engineering programs: the entire Viper engine and the Corvette LS7 cylinder heads, respectively. They both also used the McLaren/Linamar-developed Opti-Power system, a technique for CNC-machining the ports and combustion chambers for high performance.

featured a hand-built space frame with all-independent suspension.

© Roger Meiners

© Roger Meiners

 FIGURE A.6   McCoy addresses the 40th reunion guests.

© 2020 SAE International

about the author An automotive writer since 2003, Roger S. Meiners served in editorial roles at Mopar Magazine for ten years, as well as writing stories and taking pictures for the auto enthusiast press. He has been an automotive industry businessman and lawyer for over forty years. He joined Motorola’s Automotive Products Division in 1973, serving in marketing and product management in the Chicago area, and account management in Detroit, where he worked automotive OEM accounts, including Ford, Chrysler, AMC, and Volkswagen. Later, he practiced law in Detroit, during which time McLaren Engines became a client,

© 2020  SAE International

and he eventually moved to that company in 1986 as director of operations and marketing. In the early 1990s, he began working independently as a legal advisor and consultant to McLaren and to others in the industry. He is a lifelong auto enthusiast, beginning amateur road racing in 1982 in the Skip Barber Formula Ford series. He thereafter raced primarily in vintage cars such as a Ferrari 250 SWB, Lotus 23B, Brabham BT26A F1 car, Alfa GTA, and a Porsche 550A Spyder, none of which he still owns (unfortunately). He also did some few races in IMSA (Honda CRX) and SCCA (Lola S2000). Most recently (2016) Meiners “also ran” in a Lemons event, driving a BMW 328 built by Wiley McCoy and a team of veteran McLaren Engineering racers and friends. He refuses to say he is “retired” from racing.

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index Alexander, Tyler, 4, 13, 15, 18, 50, 53, 70, 72, 79, 85, 88, 89, 102, 114, 117, 129 American Racing Series (ARS), 131 Amon, Chris, 48, 60, 61 Anderson, Alan, 61 Anderson, Tom, 50 Andretti, Mario, 94 Ardun Ford V8, 24, 25 ASC-McLaren agreement, 156 ASC-McLaren Capri, 157 ASC-McLaren Convertible, 157 Buick GNX, 157–161 Code of Federal Regulations, 40 CFR 86, 156 deterioration factors, 156 Mercury LN7, 157 ASC-McLaren Capri, 157 ASC-McLaren Convertible, 157 Attard, Tony, 71 Bailey, Roger, 8, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 68, 70, 78, 82, 107, 111, 114, 117, 119, 121, 131 Bartos, Don, 78, 79, 80 Beanland, Colin, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 18, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, 42, 43, 55 Belden Court, 179–181 Bell, Derek, 110 Big-block Can-Am development engines, 227 Big-block 502 Mark V engine, 147 Bishop, John, 107 BMW engine programs, 118–119

© 2020  SAE International

BMW Formula 2 engine, 88 BMW M88 engine, 114, 119 BMW Motorsport, 93, 104, 106, 107, 109 BMW M12 racing engine, 105 BMW 320 Turbo Engine, 101–106 BMW 320 Turbo racing sedans, 146 Bolthoff, George, 4, 26, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 42, 44, 54, 55, 75, 229–231 Brabham BT26A Formula One car, 196 Brabham, Jack, 8, 9, 10 British Formula 1 cars, 28 1964 British Formula 3 Championship, 60 British Grand Prix, 9, 38 Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. (BMMR), 3, 4 Tasman Cooper, 17–18 Zerex Special/Cooper-Oldsmobile, 18–20 Budweiser McLaren M24 team cars, 98 Buick GNX, 141 assembly facility, 160 brainstorming sheet, 158 follow-up meeting, 158 Grand National, 157 Indy engine program, 158 production program, 157, 160–161 rear arm attachment, 159 torque-arm rear suspension, 159 Buick Hawk, 134–136 Buick LeSabre Turbo V6 Bonneville Car, 133 Buick Turbo V6 Drag Car, 133 Buick Turbo V6 Racing Engine, 127–130 ARS Engine, 131 Buick Hawk, 134–136

Buick LeSabre Turbo V6 Bonneville Car, 133 Buick Turbo V6 Drag Car, 133 IMSA, 131–133 Buick V8, 24 Buick V6. MOMO, 142 Buick Wildcat, 185 Bunetto, Joe, 118 Burgess, Ian, 9 Busby, Jim, 109, 110 Cadillac LMP engine, 201–204 California 500, 50 Cam-in-Cam, 215 Canadian-American Challenge (Can-Am), 4 1966 Can-Am season, 27 1970 Can-Am season, 51–53 1971 Can-Am season, 70–71 Cannon, John, 75 Carlson, Dennis, 95 Carter, Pancho, 130 CART IndyCar World Series, 186 CART Technical Committee, 118 Catalytic converter testing and development, 194 Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART), 97 Chaparral, 228 Chevrolet big-block, 29–30, 72, 75, 76 Chevrolet Caprice limos, 190 Chevrolet marine engine, 147 Chevrolet Product Promotions, 228

249

250 Index

Chevrolet racing, 53–55 Cosworth Vega, 55–56 NASCAR engine development, 56 Chevrolet’s End Products Group (EPG), 146 Chevrolet small-block, 24, 26–29 Chevy R&D’s Chaparral dry-sump pans, 227 Chrysler and First Auto Works (FAW), 195 Clark, Jim, 63 Cobb, Price, 122 Code of Federal Regulations, 40 CFR 86, 156 Colorado hill climb, 24, 25 Conte, Phil, 132 Cooper F2 car, 8 Cooper Formula 1, 10 Cooper Formula Junior team cars, 14 Cooper, John, 8 Cooper T-51, 10 Coppuck, Gordon, 47, 67, 82, 87 Coram, Dave, 122 Cosworth DFV, 85–91, 232 Cosworth DFX, 117, 127, 128 Cosworth Indy engine development DFX 172 third development engine, 238–239 DFX 172 7th development engine, 240 DFX cams—Porter HP-52, 241 DFX 122 engine teardown, 238 DFX 122 1st development engine, 238 DFX 122 4th development engine, 239 DFX 122 5th development engine, 239 DFX 122 6th development engine, 239–240 DFX 122 8th development engine, 239–240 DFX 122 9th development engine, 239–240 valve spring data, 241

Cosworth Vega, 55–56 Crawford, Jim, 132 Crower/MacKay design, 75 Dart Machine, Ltd., 206–207 Data acquisition systems, 194 David-Hobbs 320 Turbocar, 244 Daytona International Speedway, 164 DeLorean Motor Co., 184 Delphi, 192–193 Dettloff, Tom, 122, 124 DOHC Buick V6, 186 Donohue, Mark, 60, 67, 68, 69, 71, 77 Drake Engineering, 63 Dutch GP, 9 Dynamometer facility, 62 Dyno ‘bomb threat,’ 55 Dyno cells, 44 Eastern Airlines 3-Hour Camel Grand Prix, 140 Eaton Corporation, 193 Eddy-current dynamometers, 147 Electric vehicle powertrain, 218–220 Elva Formula Junior car, 14 Engine Manufacturing Development Operations (EMDO), 177, 178 Fiat 124 Spider, 185 Fields, Jack, 128 F1 Indy Ford, 25–26 Follmer, George, 71 Ford Motor Co. Belden Court, 179–181 dynamometer testing, 178 EMDO, 177, 178

engine durability testing, 176 engine fabrication and assembly, 178 engine programs, 176 Ford GT 40 project, 177 FR 500 V10 Navigator, 180 Harley-Davidson truck, 180 Taurus V6 engines, 178 UPS Ford F100 panel truck, 177 Zeta program, 177, 178 1974 Formula Atlantic Championship, 102 Formula 1 Cooper, 10, 18 Formula 2 Cooper, 8, 9 Foyt, A.J., 94 French Grand Prix, 9 FR 500 V10 Navigator, 180 Galles Racing, 129, 130 Ganz, Whitney, 132 Garrett TV-71 dual inlet turbocharger, 148 General Motors, 190–191 General Motors Service Parts Operations (GMSPO), 205–206 Gerodisc technology, 200, 201, 207 Glen, Watkins, 114 GMC SUV, 189 GMC Syclone Prototype, 169–170 Goodyear engines, 62 3GR, 204 Gracen, John, 128 Grand National rear suspensions, 159 Gregory, Masten, 9 Guards Trophy, 20 Gurney, Dan, 51 Harley-Davidson truck, 180 Harvey Aluminum Special, 24 © 2020 SAE International

Index 251

Headquarters, 42–45, 221–223 Heenan and Froude G490 water brake engine dynamometer, 43 Hobbs/Watson car, 141 Holmes, Howdy, 118 Howell, Bill, 36, 37, 76, 104 900-hp McLaren-developed engines, 141 Hulme, Denny, 48, 50, 53, 70, 71 IHI Turbocharger Group, 195 Ilmor Engine Company, 195 1986 IMSA Camel GT Kodak Copiers 500, 141 IMSA GTP car 900-hp McLaren-developed engines, 141 2-liter turbocharged BMW 4-cylinder engine, 139 M12 Formula 2, 139 turbo M12 engine, 142 IMSA WeatherTech Challenge, 217 1973 Indianapolis 500, 79–80 1975 Indianapolis 500, 82–83 1976 Indianapolis 500, 83 1977 Indy 500, 96 IndyCar Championship Trail, 62 IndyCar program, 77–78 IndyCar racing, 206 1977 Indy 500, 96 M24-DFX, 94–95 1978 season, 96–97 1979 season, 97 1974 IndyCar season, 80–81 International Race of Champions (IROC), 119 International Sports Car Race, 19 Johncock, Gordon, 50, 94 Jones, Parnelli, 85 © 2020 SAE International

Kainhofer, Karl, 96 Kerr, Phil, 7, 44 Klausler, Tom, 102, 108, 119, 121, 128, 129 Knutson, Gary, 24–25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 44, 59, 61, 62, 72, 74, 80, 94, 95, 102, 128, 129 Kohs, Gary, 120 Lamborghini Huracán competition engine programs, 215–218 Legend Industries, 183–185 Linamar, 209–210 2.7-liter Coventry Climax FPF 4-cylinder engines, 17 Livonia dynamometer, 73 Looper, Chuck, 128 Lotus 11, 24 Lotus 27, 35 LT-5 engine management system, 151 Lucas-based fuel injection systems, 28 Mayer Motor Racing (MMR), 117–118, 129 Mayer, Teddy, 4, 5, 13, 14, 15, 25, 49, 50, 74, 93, 101, 102, 113, 114, 117 Mayer, Tim, 14, 15 M8-B Can-Am car, 35 M8 Can-Am car, 47 McCoy, Wiley, 43, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 114, 118, 119, 127, 129, 131, 136 McKeon, Bill, 87, 90, 135 McLaren, Bruce, 3, 5, 7, 15, 17, 33, 36, 37, 38, 47, 54 British GP, 9 Burgess, Ian, 9 Chevrolet big-block, 29–30 Chevrolet small-block, 26–29 Cooper F2 car, 8

F1 Cooper T-51, 10 F1 Indy Ford, 25–26 French Grand Prix, 9 Gurney, Dan, 51 Knutson, Gary, 24–25 Monaco Grand Prix, 9 Oldsmobile F-85 Aluminum V8, 23–24 McLaren-built 502 cu., 190 McLaren-built Ford F100 pickup, 181 1970 McLaren Can-Am engine configuration, 52 McLaren-Cosworth turbocharged Indy V8 1.39 A/R turbocharger turbine housing, 237 BD3 cams, 233 cogged belt, 233 corona effect, 235 Cosworth cylinder, 234 Cosworth DFV-based turbo engine, 232 crankshafts, 233 DFV F1 cam, 233 DFX program, 234, 235–236 eccentric bearings, 233 ex-F1 engines, 232 exhaust pipe design, 236 hardness test, 234 2.6-liter turbocharged Offenhauser engines, 232 M24, 237 Nicholson McLaren Engines, 232 OMS, 234 radio static noise, 235 valve springs, 233 McLaren Donzi, 121 McLaren F1 car, 20 McLaren Indy car, 47–50, 67–69

252 Index

McLaren M6 Can-Am cars, 28 McLaren M8A, 29 McLaren M8Bs, 36 McLaren M8D, 51 McLaren M16, 77 McLaren M16A Indy car, 68 McLaren M20, 71, 74 McLaren M-24, 94 McLaren Mustang, 120–121 McLaren Performance Technologies (MPT), 200 McLaren’s 40th anniversary, 242–246 MD-1 mule engine, 214 Mercury LN7, 157 Mercury Marine Co., 147 Mercury Performance Products (MPP), 147 M8F Can-Am car, 70 M23 F1 car, 86 Miller, Paul, 122 MINSOR, 209 Misfire-detection solution, 214 M166 3-liter V8, 26 Monaco Grand Prix, 9 Morgan, Dave, 20 Morgan, Jim, 104 Moss, Stirling, 9, 51 Motorola, 194 NASCAR engine, 29, 56 NASCAR Grand National series, 128 Nedell, Tiff, 132 Neerpasch, Jochen, 101 Nicholson, John, 3, 35, 36, 44, 51 Nicholson McLaren Engines, 232 No. 48 Paul Miller Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3, 217

Northstar, 201 Nye, Doug, 36 OEM programs electric vehicle powertrain, 218–220 generation IV viper engine, 214–215 Lamborghini Huracán competition engine programs, 215–218 Offenhauser engines, 45 O’Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt, builder of limousines and funeral cars, 188–190 Oldsmobile Aerotech, 206 Oldsmobile F-85 Aluminum V8, 23–24 Oldsmobile IRL Aurora Indy V8 engine, 201 Ongais, Danny, 130 1973 Ontario 500, 80 Ontario Motor Speedway (OMS), 234 Opti-Power, 215 Parnelli Viceroy VPJ6-Cosworth DFX, 85 Patterson, Jim, 119 Pearce, Harry, 34 Pegasus Racing, 131 Penske, Roger, 18–19, 96 Peugeot V6 Turbo, 121 Piggins, Vince, 29, 54 Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo C-P-C engine engineering, 165 C-P-C vehicle group, 162–163 electronic control unit, 165 engine calibration, 166 EPA/CARB certification, 166 four phase process, 162 Garrett T-25 turbocharger, 162 Getrag 5-speed manual transmissions, 164

initial engine durability tests, 166 to NASCAR, 164, 165 powertrain management, 165 production components, 163 production program, 165 product planning, 161 turbo 3.1 powerplant, 163 5000-unit production program, 162 Porsche-designed Harley-Davidson V4 engine, 195 Porsche Turbos 924 and 944, 121–124 Porter, Herbie, 62, 63, 64, 68 PPG Pace Cars, 185–188 Project 734 turbo big-block APBA/UIM operation parameters, 148 big-block 502 Mark V engine, 147 Chevrolet-based engines, 147 dual circuit cooling, 148 dyno testing, 149 engine management system, 148 exhaust system, 148 Garrett TV-71 dual inlet turbocharger, 148 internal components, 149 LT-5 electronics, 149 mercury performance products, 147 six-liter Big Block Chevrolet Mercruiser engines, 150 thousand-horsepower diesels, 147 torque management system, 150 tuning and calibration, 150 U.I.M. Class 1 offshore racing rules, 147 Project unity, 222–223 Race results 1967 M6A, 225 1968 M8A, 225 © 2020 SAE International

Index 253

1969 M8B, 225 1970 M8D, 225 1971 M8F, 225 1972 M20, 225 Indianapolis 500 results, 226–227 Ramjet ZL1 Crate Engine, 205–206 Renault PPG “Door Stop” pace car, 186 Rev-Em Racing, 13–15 Revson, Peter, 13, 14, 15, 50, 68, 69, 70, 74, 77 Reynolds Block, 52–53 Roby, Steve, 47, 68, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 96, 131 Roehrig, Kurt, 133 Ron Nash 5th-link rear suspension design, 159 Rosche, Paul, 106 Royal Automobile Club, 37 Ruby, Lloyd, 50 Rutherford, Johnny, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 96, 97 Saleen Automotive, 122 Saleen Mustang, 122–124 Saleen, Steve, 122 1962 SCCA National Championship, 14

© 2020 SAE International

Segrave Trophy, 37 Simpson, Bill, 86 Skunkworks F1 Engine BMW 320 Turbo Engine, 101–106 1978 season, 107–109 1979 season, 109–111 Small-block Ford V8, 123 Smith, Bill, 13, 14, 15, 19–20, 26, 42, 91, 102, 114 Smith, Tom, 104, 106, 120 Smyth, Barry, 77, 78 Sneva, Tom, 118 Special Engineering Services (SES), 194 Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), 15 Stone, Jimmy, 71 Supercharged Oldsmobile W-Car Quad 4 program, 170–172 SVO car, 120 Tasman Series, 17, 18, 60 Think top-10 cult car, 158 Thompson, Mickey, 24, 28 Torque curves, 76 Tourist Trophy, 20 Trans-Am small blocks, 37 Trintignant, Maurice, 9, 10

Turbocharged Cosworth DFV, 85–91 Turbocharged Cosworth DFX engines, 146 Turbo M12 engine, 142 Twin-turbo big-block Chevrolet engine, 72, 73, 74 U.I.M. Class 1 offshore racing rules, 147 United States Auto Club (USAC), 24, 42, 50, 55, 81, 86, 94, 97, 111, 127 United States Grand Prix, 9, 10, 15 UPS Ford F100 panel truck, 177 Vel’s Parnelli Jones team, 85 Visteon all-wheel-drive group, 210 Weaver Bros. pumps, 227 White, Lee, 121, 122 Whitmore, John, 59 Wide-open throttle (WOT), 87, 119, 176, 232 Widman, Steve, 145, 146 1959 World Championship, 10 Young, Eoin, 26 Zerex Special/Cooper-Oldsmobile, 18–20 Zeta program, 177 Zwicker, Irv, 135