my fav wb820

[Butch Kavanagh]

on ebay, 2-820's for sale orig carb hl134, pic shows diff carb, when did this come about. i understand which engine ok for vintage(dad in basement showing me, set points at .015, push stator plate all the way and when you go upstairs, have your mother order qne, ah, make that two rods from wiseco on monday). i have been out of racing since 1989, just want to know. curr project is lil red wagon w/knobbies. gf thinks its for our toy room. i used one back then for my starter and misc tools on the grid. guess my profile pic may chg nxt months. thanks on wb question. butch

[Gordon Duax]

Are you talking about this auction?:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Vintage- ... dZViewItem

If so those carbs are the latest HL Tillotsons.
Something like HL375s.
They have the newer 'constant radius' venturis.

Here is a seller going on about how only his 'Vintage' 820s are legal,
but he has modern carbs on them that are no where near vintage !

The US 820 (except for the newest 'Copper Head')
are way more period correct than those carbs.

Makes me wonder how 'vintage' those engines actually are!!

They don't call it 'screwBay' for nothing.........

[Rob Voska]

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[Butch Kavanagh]

gordon, thanks for your reply, don't know if engines sold. i forgot to watch. i could have asked the seller "but in all due respect" many of the sellers and many admit they don't really know what they are selling. anyway i have a good friend in ohio-rick chapman-he has stayed in racing with his son. he always finished 3heats with his mc9, tried an 820 recently, made how many laps rick??? thanks agn-butch

[Butch Kavanagh]

had spl to rick chapman and he explained more about the 820-carb. i would like to explain his recent venture was with a modified 820 like in my b-limited days, something about the piston not being round after a few laps. in fact, rick and his son over the years have been very sucessful in the us820 class with wins at wka races and mid-ohio. like he said, he was warned. butch

[Gordon Duax]

Butch,

About 18 or so years ago when my son was running Jr. Sportsman with an 820,
(everyone else was running that little stinking over priced POS 80cc DAP),
and had very good results with it.

We had to run a really thick head gasket,
had to have half the reed cage blocked off,
and had a maximum gear ratio.

What I found out on it was that once the thing was warmed up,
the richer you made the carb, the hotter the engine ran !
It was like a blow torch !
We knew it was right when it would melt the thermal couple off the head !!
I would set the carb lean enough to start, and make some warm-up laps,
and as soon as he seen 375 or so on the Digitron,
he would start opening up the high speed.
Somewhere around 500+, the thermal couple would fail,
and he was good to go.
We kicked a lot of ass with that Bender.
Seldom did he ever not qualify on the front row.
One time I was pissing and moaning about him ending up in 3rd position for a final in Waco, TX.,
when a friend of mine (David Moffit) brought me back to reality
by pointing out that there were about 10 karts behind him.........

We only ever smoked one piston doing this.

But we did go through a lot of reeds.
I found out running dyno pulls late one night,
that the engine made more power if the reeds broke off,
and blew out the exhaust.
So from then on, I scribed the reeds so they would snap off as soon as the kart made one pass down the strait.
Had to keep the idle speed way up,
and you could not restart the engine once they broke,
but it was FAST!

I drove tech people crazy,
because after each time out on the track, I would find them, have them watch as I changed out the one reed,
and then they would put their paint dab back on the carb nut.
No one ever figured out what we were doing.
And I did everything I could to discourage others from running the Bender..........
"Yeah, it's a piece of shit"
"Have to work on it all the time"
"Wish I could afford a DAP"
Etc., etc..

[Butch Kavanagh]

gordon-more wb820 speed secrets, my was just to finish 3heats. as a former rookie father, i can see you now tracking down a tech inspector after each heat, 'just don't make reeds liked they used'. little league parents, we're the best. rick and i started racing 1962 at the then legal age of 12. my 1st was 610, rick had his own kart and borrowed my bro'd mc6 since bro didn't race much untill his mc9. hometown akron ohio so we had some nice tracks to race incl dart kart speedway-mansfield(we all know track was located behind his factory). as lil kids we were so intigued by the twin engine class, the sound, the smell, carbs everywhere and couse with the brake system then, 'hold on, here comes another corner!!! started a racing diary 1966 to end 1989. quit racing 89, moved to fla and lost track of racing. so courtsey this site, hooked up w/rick agn and of course old war(kart) stpries. when he told me he had melted a piston on his old style 820 got me thinking, i don't think i ever stuck an 820 piston. total 11 wiseco blocks till oil clutches and sidewinder karts. 7 snapped rods incl 2jeff rods, 3 snapped cranks, 2crank bearing failures, 5 wrist pin failure, 3 sleeved blocks that separated. that's what is written, the other, cracked heads, coil separation, engine fall off. my dad did his best, even used steel expoxy for the groves in the wall, saftey wired the mag plate, yeah the mag plate, came lose even w/loctite. despite, we both have looked back and how lucky we were and still today. we were lucky to become part back then a growing sport and the many great people we met. rick is still in ohio and getting ready for his 60yr old body for TBO at freemont. me a sand inspector here at the fla beaches and dreaming-reflecting. continue good times-butch

[Gordon Duax]

OK, more 820 secrets.
Not really illegal, but definitely in the gray area.

WKA had a rule that you could not turn down the screws used on the coil, or stator plate, to limit advance.

If you run really big point gap, the coil would get out of sync with the flywheel magnets, you have little dwell time, and weak spark was the result.

Well,
electrical currant generated by magnets passing by a coil is effected by the number of steel laminations in the coil core.

If you ever pulled a coil off it's laminations, you will have noticed that there was plenty of room for a few more layers of steel.
So we took (if I remember correctly) 3 laminations from a donor coil,
and added them to our coil core.

We also re-magnetized the flywheel magnets before each race day.

These tricks got us the extra currant we needed to run a large point gap.

Got tore down several times,
coil screws were looked at,
but no one ever considered counting the laminations of the coil core )

Then the winter before WKA OKed the ATOM ignition module,
I gutted a stock condenser, and epoxied in a ATOM that I had cut all the plastic off from.
The plan was to either insulate the points, or adjust them so they never closed, and cheat by running the ATOM.
But as fate would have it, the rules changed, and we could just run the module.
WKA said it had to be the purple one, but I found that the yellow one gave better power.
RIT dye is great stuff !!

The first year that the 820 was legal in Jr. Sportsman,
the tech book ad the dimension from the bottom of the crank case, to the crank center line called out.
This left a lot of dead spec between the stuffer & the crank.

The following year, they inadvertently left that dimension out of the new tech manual.
Wow, a rare FREEBEE !!
All our blocks went in the milling machine, and got cut down so that the stuffer just cleared the crank. I think it was around .100" of a cut.

But the next year, the dimension were back, and all my blocks were then illegal.

[mcbob]

Now Now Gordon your letting a few cats out of the bag you old scoundral maybe you'd better PM a few of your Mac secrets what do you reakon old mate old buddy.

Snivalling Mc Bob......................

[Butch Kavanagh]

wb820 cheat err speed secrets, gordon, my dod always worked on the engines, we never bought a complete modified or blueprinted back then, we had no machine shop but he would just say--we got to race every weekend, sometimes twice, sometimes not so good but as mentioned before, the good people. we were called akron karting club. we would travel in caravans, loan each other parts-engines etc. anyway dad always played with the ignition, when you mentioned about the coil and addl laminations, that sounded familiar, his way of re-magnetizing the flywheel, hit the magnet hard w a hammer, don't know if really worked, all i know the engine always started. your cut on the bottom of the block measured to the center line of crank is crucial. my kid's mc49's were that close and remember that the tolerance on your crank stroke is what, plus or minus .015?? one of 49 blocks was cut so close that it was illegal with a different crank. even changing the pto bearing from needle to cage(91 bearing) was to close cause the cage bearing 'freed up' ie ther was more crank movement up and down, cage bearing was faster, mag bearing 7ball vs 8ball. any engine, the least amt of rolling resistance. mag plate-buy longer than stock allen bolts and cut exact length to bottom out inside block, agn stuffing, all the little 'stuffing' items add up. 49block, non-removable head, b-bomb spark plug never hit the top of the piston, dpn't forget to file the threads for no carbon build up. anything milled, muratic acid to dis-color, my engines were ok but this is a fun subject. gordon, you made me laugh tonite on the 820 speed secrets. hell at 12yrs old, i slept w/my 610 instead of a teddy bear(well maybe not) later-butch