{"id":5401,"date":"2023-11-02T22:36:28","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T03:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/?p=5401"},"modified":"2023-11-02T22:36:28","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T03:36:28","slug":"lloyd-racing-enterprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/lloyd-racing-enterprise\/","title":{"rendered":"Lloyd Racing Enterprise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I received this email from Sean 10\/1\/2023:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hello sir and good day. \u00a0My name is Sean Zeiders. \u00a0I 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 \u201821. \u00a0I\u2019m sorry to say I just now read through your history with one of Charlie Lloyd\u2019s boats. \u00a0I finished up there some months ago but I\u2019d have to believe you would have found a lot of interest in that place just as I did. \u00a0I 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. \u00a0Back in those days, where did you go when you needed help with torsion tube heights on a chassis? \u00a0Turn to the master craftsman at Lloyd racing enterprises. \u00a0I had been racing 2 strokes and was building everything out of another racers shop. \u00a0Freddy Ricupero\u2019s 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\u2019s how I first met them. Roughly 35 years later I found myself back at that shop<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Highspire, now Middletown. \u00a0It was very sad to see all that racing history come to an end. Those guys were true artists, craftsman, innovators. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. \u00a0I had looked up to Mike and his work. \u00a0A Lloyd chassis was hard to beat in those days. \u00a0I was excited and honored to do the project. \u00a0And a project it was indeed. \u00a0They kept everything from Charlie\u2019s stuff in the 50\u2019s and on up. \u00a0I don\u2019t know if you ever ventured down to their shop or not. \u00a0As passionate as you are about that boat, I\u2019d bet you have been there. \u00a0 If you haven\u2019t been there, you might not believe the amount of racing history was contained in all those buildings. \u00a0 \u00a0Endless. \u00a0I could go on and on boring you for hours with the stuff I turned up there. \u00a0Or talking about the millions of unfinished projects. \u00a0Just to look and figure out what they were going to build was an adventure itself. \u00a0I spent waYYYY TOOOO MUCH TIME THERE \u00a0but I couldn\u2019t 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 \u201850\u2019s \u00a0hydroplane trophy. \u00a0I have one or possibly multiple of Charlie\u2019s block for the 2.5 liter class I believe. I was told they were racing with iron dukes as engines. \u00a0Innovative Charlie took the all aluminum Buick \/ Olds 215 cu inch V8 and sleeved it down to 150 cu inches. \u00a0That added some weight to that block but that was still a V8 advantage. \u00a0I was told they cleaned up the class for some time. He sleeved them down so far he had to cut a valve relief in. \u00a0I\u2019ll send a picture of the block up on my shelf of \u201ccool old stuff\u201d in my warehouse (see below). \u00a0I couldn\u2019t see it go to scrap when I knew this was Charlie\u2019s work. Definitely had his hands on this machine. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sorry I hadn\u2019t found or actually took the time to read it or I would have invited you down. \u00a0Lots of chief\u2019s stuff was still there. \u00a0The tables he built boats on, the hand planes, rasps, fiberglass molds, on and on it went. \u00a0You likely knew they were into airplanes also. They even had a 1\/3rd scale wind tunnel there that they built themselves. \u00a051 or 52 small tubes hooked up to a model of the sprint car named \u201cpocket rocket\u201d and the other ends led to monometers. \u00a0That\u2019s getting it done! \u00a0 That\u2019s 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. \u00a0 Oh my the stories that\u2019s place had to tell. \u00a0Heck maybe I\u2019m 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. \u00a0I 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. \u00a0I found your story fascinating and think it\u2019s just awesome. \u00a0I\u2019d love to see your boat one day. \u00a0How cool is it to have one of Charlie\u2019s first boats. Are you the one who convinced him to built that last hull I heard about? \u00a0They said somebody convinced him to make \u201cone more\u201d. \u00a0He did it, blind and all. \u00a0 Thank you and God bless<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kindest regards,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sean Zeiders<\/a> R.I.C.E. Auctions LLC<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I received this email from Sean 10\/1\/2023: Hello sir and good day. \u00a0My name is Sean Zeiders. \u00a0I 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 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-racing-memories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5403,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401\/revisions\/5403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagehydroplanes.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}