Maxwell Racers

[rapidrobert]

Greetings to all - I would be very interested in connecting with anyone in the Maxwell community that has accurate information on the 3 Maxwell, Harroun designed (1 gas, the other 2 kerosene powered), factory racers constructed for the 1914 season, driven by Tetzlaff, Carlson and Hughes. I am interested in accurate technical specifications such as wheel-base, track and tire size for starters. Also any specs about the engines, drivetrain and other equipment. Does anyone know if any drawings or blueprints exist of these cars. Anything would be helpful and appreciated. I am not interested in the racers built after 1914.

Thank you.

[grahama]

Robert - have you find out more about the spec of the racers? I have a standard rolling chassis that would be nice to modify along those lines but apart from some photos I cannot find any technical material about similarities with normal cars. There must have been a lot of period tuning tricks for these cars - where do you start to look?

Graham

[rapidrobert]

Graham -

Thanks for the reply. Here is what I have learned about these racers:

445 cid 4 cyl with overhead valves.

106.3 in. wheel-base

55 in. track

Front tires - 33x4.5 in.

Rear tires - 34x4.5 in.

On Houk wire wheels

Color: Black

As far as I have been able to determine, these racers bore no resemblance to production Maxell passenger cars. They were designed from the ground up by Ray Harroun. The engines made use of many alloys and ran with counter-balanced crankshafts set in ball-bearings with no flywheels. 2 of them had special manifolds that heated the fuel with exhaust heat before combustion. The fuel, in this case, was kerosene.

My interest in these cars stems from my working on a set of drawings, right and left side elevations and a front elevation view of these vehicles that I may include as illustrations in a book I am writing.

Robert

[grahama]

Robert - thanks for the info, you confirmed my guess that they had little in common with the road cars, although the front axle does look like a heavy tourer axle to me.

Best of luck with the book,

Graham

[Steve Hammatt]

You may want to go to RacingHistory which is a group of over 700 early American open-wheel racing historians, authors and researchers. The group's area of interest is 1900 to 1970.