Iroquois Chief (Joe Guess built) and Plata Rey and Sumpin’ (both Fred Wickens built) getting ready to for the 5-minute gun in St. Pete 1965.The “Guess Who” Story, article page 1. Click to read both pages.page 22-NCopperhead II 1949 (click to enlarge)F-4 Guess Who Driver – Bob Sykes | Builder/Owner: Joe Guess 1953 (click to enlarge)Z-Z-ZIP
VINTAGE RACERS REDISCOVERED: “After many years of trying, I have been able to purchase the Z-Z-ZIP from Carl Schmidli of North Tonawanda, NY. Carl stored this 1955 Joe Guess raceboat in his pole barn for the last 20 years. He bought the Z-Z-ZIP from Gordie Reed, with the intentions of racing it, but that never happened. To my surprise the boat was kept in beautiful condition. Thanks to her previous owners, Al Brinkman, Gordie Reed and especially Carl. To me the most remarkable aspect is that all the original parts are there and intact. Including the Hi-J record holding propeller, the original aluminum cowlings, and the record setting Clay Smith, Bobbie Sykes and Keith Black DeSoto crossram fuel injected V-8 engine with a Wilber Houghton custom built gearbox. Would you believe that even Sid Street’s aluminum paddle was still in the cockpit! I’m a firm believer of giving credit where credit is due. The story here is Joe Guess. “To say that Joe just built the boat is an understatement. This truly is a work of perfection. Joe carefully planned his boats and the labor assumed the proportion of a career. One year, two years, whatever it took, time meant nothing. This is a masterpiece that equals anything seen at Indianapolis in the way of top quality craftsmanship. The result was a world record in 1958 at 146.945 mph”. Joe Guess built five boats. His first boat, a 135 hydro, was built prior to the WWII. After the war, Joe built two GUESS WHO 266 ci hydroplanes. Bobby Sykes drove the second GUESS WHO to a world record of 121.703 mph in 1952. Another one of his creations was the COPPER HEAD, a 225 ci hydro. The final Joe Guess hull was the Z-Z-ZIP built for Sid Street.” Above from Tom D’Eath’s “From the Vintage Notebook” [Sept. 1999] which was a series of articles that appeared in the American Power Boat Association’s Propeller magazine each month on the happenings of the APBA Vintage & Historic division.
There is a total of 11 newsprint articles from the 1980 NATIONALS in Dayton posted. Visit our media page and scroll down to the “1980 Dayton” articles, then click on each small pic to read the entire newspaper article.
Sorry, missing the last page(s). This article has lots of info on many of the boat engines Keith Black built. If you are on a desktop computer – the best way to view this book is to click the “toggle fullscreen” button, then use your arrow buttons on the keyboard to advance to the next covers. I scanned this at a larger format, so you can “enlarge the pages” to read by clicking the “zoom in” button. When you are done with reading the book, just press your “Esc” (escape) key and your monitor will go back to your normal view.
The flipbook starts out with an interesting 3-page interview from October 1998 with Robert Stack. Other info: From Wikipedia: By the time he was 20, Stack had achieved minor fame as a sportsman. He was an avid polo player and shooter. His brother and him won the International Outboard Motor Championships, in Venice, Italy, and at age 16, he became a member of the All-American Skeet Team. He set two world records in skeet shooting and became national champion. In 1971, he was inducted into the National Skeet Shooting Hall of Fame.” From Encyclopedia: In 1941, Stack’s film career was interrupted by World War II, in which he served as an aerial gunnery instructor in the U.S. Navy. He was absent from the screen from 1942 to 1948. Other photos found on the internet. If copyrighted, let me know and I will remove. Even though he was typically cast as a dramatic actor, I sure enjoyed his comedic parodies in both, Airplane and 1941.
“Eastern Competition Boat Builders” was an article written by Jack Sweeney for HOT BOAT QUARTERLY in 1966. If you are on a desktop computer – the best way to view this book is to click the “toggle fullscreen” button, then use your arrow buttons on the keyboard to advance to the next covers. I scanned this at a larger format, so you can “enlarge the pages” to read by clicking the “zoom in” button. When you are done with reading the book, just press your “Esc” (escape) key and your monitor will go back to your normal view.
The Farmer family send me a copy of the scrapbook that Will, Jr. made as a X-Mas present for his father. This was right after they built their last hydro in 1974. It was updated last in 2000. I received it soon after. My apologies to the Farmer family for taking so many years to scan/publish their scrapbook. I arranged it in a flip book format. The pages are in order by as I received the book and it was a copy of their scrapbook, so some of the older pics are a little rough. Some of the pics were from Phil Kunz and I replaced those photos with a cleaner copy from his archives. If you are on a desktop computer – the best way to view the covers is to click the “toggle fullscreen” button, then use your arrow buttons on the keyboard to advance to the next covers. I scanned this at a larger format, so you can “enlarge the pages” to read by clicking the “zoom in” button. When you are done with reading the book, just press your “Esc” (escape) key and your monitor will go back to your normal view.
Hello sir and good day. My name is Sean Zeiders. I am an auctioneer in PA and I had the absolute pleasure of spending a little over a year going through and selling the Lloyd estate after the unfortunate passing of Mike in ‘21. I’m sorry to say I just now read through your history with one of Charlie Lloyd’s boats. I finished up there some months ago but I’d have to believe you would have found a lot of interest in that place just as I did. I was actually in the shop as a kid about 10-12 yrs old. We were getting ready to build a micro sprint and needed some design help. Back in those days, where did you go when you needed help with torsion tube heights on a chassis? Turn to the master craftsman at Lloyd racing enterprises. I had been racing 2 strokes and was building everything out of another racers shop. Freddy Ricupero’s R & R machine shop in Enola. Freddy and Mike raced together in the Sprinters. When I asked Freddy if he could build me a micro chassis, he said we will need Mike and Charlie in on this. That’s how I first met them. Roughly 35 years later I found myself back at that shop
In Highspire, now Middletown. It was very sad to see all that racing history come to an end. Those guys were true artists, craftsman, innovators.
After all those years, all the auctioneers that Michelle could have found in the state, I got the call. She was referred to me because of my knowledge in what was there but not because she knew me. We had never met. I was only at the shop a couple times and I was really young at the time but I had a connection with it. I had looked up to Mike and his work. A Lloyd chassis was hard to beat in those days. I was excited and honored to do the project. And a project it was indeed. They kept everything from Charlie’s stuff in the 50’s and on up. I don’t know if you ever ventured down to their shop or not. As passionate as you are about that boat, I’d bet you have been there. If you haven’t been there, you might not believe the amount of racing history was contained in all those buildings. Endless. I could go on and on boring you for hours with the stuff I turned up there. Or talking about the millions of unfinished projects. Just to look and figure out what they were going to build was an adventure itself. I spent waYYYY TOOOO MUCH TIME THERE but I couldn’t help but to be thorough. Some friends had bought various thing from the estate and I gained custody of them because i supposedly have space. There is some pictures here, maybe a ‘50’s hydroplane trophy. I have one or possibly multiple of Charlie’s block for the 2.5 liter class I believe. I was told they were racing with iron dukes as engines. Innovative Charlie took the all aluminum Buick / Olds 215 cu inch V8 and sleeved it down to 150 cu inches. That added some weight to that block but that was still a V8 advantage. I was told they cleaned up the class for some time. He sleeved them down so far he had to cut a valve relief in. I’ll send a picture of the block up on my shelf of “cool old stuff” in my warehouse (see below). I couldn’t see it go to scrap when I knew this was Charlie’s work. Definitely had his hands on this machine.
I’m sorry I hadn’t found or actually took the time to read it or I would have invited you down. Lots of chief’s stuff was still there. The tables he built boats on, the hand planes, rasps, fiberglass molds, on and on it went. You likely knew they were into airplanes also. They even had a 1/3rd scale wind tunnel there that they built themselves. 51 or 52 small tubes hooked up to a model of the sprint car named “pocket rocket” and the other ends led to monometers. That’s getting it done! That’s how you design and build something that goes to the track and shatters the track record time by nearly a second on its debut run. Oh my the stories that’s place had to tell. Heck maybe I’m not telling you a thing, you may very well know all this and have been there more than me. But feel free to reach out if there is anything I might be able to help with. I had my hands on a lot of history there and I remember were many things went. A lot of Mike’s friends bought stuff at the various sales. I found your story fascinating and think it’s just awesome. I’d love to see your boat one day. How cool is it to have one of Charlie’s first boats. Are you the one who convinced him to built that last hull I heard about? They said somebody convinced him to make “one more”. He did it, blind and all. Thank you and God bless
Don Buddo posted this on Vintage Hydroplanes – Skiffs & Outboards (facebook), “My father testing his hydroplane on the Thames River in London, Ontario around 1948”
