durangofox

The midget racecar you are referring to was built by Frank Van Dersarl. I originally read about the car in a magazine and a few years later I met Frank and we became friends. We talked about that car and Frank told me that if you could solve your oiling problems with an upside down engine you got an immediate 10% increase in horse power. Makes sense with gravity helping the piston go downhill on the compression stroke. He pointed out that a number of early aircraft engines were upside down. He told me that the engine "had a really unique sound". The first night at Lakeside Speedway in Denver, Buddy Shay was turning hot laps when the crowd in the grandstands began to flee. They were running out of the grandstands. The unique sound of the engine had set up a harmonic in the metal roof of the grandstands and got them vibrating which then caused them to disgorge many year's accumulation of pigeon guano. The rafters were raining pigeon shit. Frank was an early flyer and builder of aircraft and from that he figured that running the engine backwards would tend to hold the racecar into the turns on a left hand track. I have a picture of Frank, ? Mortimer and Buddy Shay in the racecar. Buddy's brother Vic was later killed in this car. I'm trying to write a book about Frank to garner for him some of the recognition he deserves in the aviation world.