A most Un-cooperative SOB tonight !

[Papa Charlie]

@Janderso that brings back fond memories of the friends I grew up with.

 

[projectnut]

I never used a McCulloch chainsaw. They were too rich for my blood. My only exposure to McCulloch products were the MC-10 go cart engines. Again I never owned one, but they were big competition in the late 1950's and into the early 1960's. We had Mantis go Kart built somewhere in Kentucky powered by the cheaper Clinton "Panther" engine.

At the time the Clinton A490 engine (2.5 hp @ 3,800 rpm) sold for around $50.00. We went through our share. You could always tell when they were near the end of their life because the RPM's would increase dramatically. Then all of a sudden there would be a muffled boom and the rod would disintegrate into pieces about the size of a marble. Sometimes we'd get lucky and could rebuild it. More often it took out the reed valves and scored the cylinder wall.

Go Kart racing was big for the kids in our neck of the woods through the mid 1960's. There were several tracks within a 40 mile radius. The most popular one was in Milton Wisconsin. If I remember correctly it was a miniature version of the Road America track at Elkhart Lake WI. The whole thing fell apart for the kids when the professionals started showing up around 1963. The kids couldn't compete with the factory sponsored teams that showed up with a dozen karts, professional mechanics, and trailer loads of spare engines.

In those days the rules were pretty loose. Some of the factory teams had custom engines that would put out 3 times the HP and more than double the RPM's of the same size stock engine. They would change out engines, tires, and any other part that would give them an advantage, and often do laps around the kids. The whole thing fell apart in the mid 1960's. The kids and local spectators stopped coming because they knew they couldn't compete. The track closed and eventually became a city park.

 

[westerner]

I never used a McCulloch chainsaw. They were too rich for my blood. My only exposure to McCulloch products were the MC-10 go cart engines. Again I never owned one, but they were big competition in the late 1950's and into the early 1960's. We had Mantis go Kart built somewhere in Kentucky powered by the cheaper Clinton "Panther" engine.

At the time the Clinton A490 engine (2.5 hp @ 3,800 rpm) sold for around $50.00. We went through our share. You could always tell when they were near the end of their life because the RPM's would increase dramatically. Then all of a sudden there would be a muffled boom and the rod would disintegrate into pieces about the size of a marble. Sometimes we'd get lucky and could rebuild it. More often it took out the reed valves and scored the cylinder wall.

Go Kart racing was big for the kids in our neck of the woods through the mid 1960's. There were several tracks within a 40 mile radius. The most popular one was in Milton Wisconsin. If I remember correctly it was a miniature version of the Road America track at Elkhart Lake WI. The whole thing fell apart for the kids when the professionals started showing up around 1963. The kids couldn't compete with the factory sponsored teams that showed up with a dozen karts, professional mechanics, and trailer loads of spare engines.

In those days the rules were pretty loose. Some of the factory teams had custom engines that would put out 3 times the HP and more than double the RPM's of the same size stock engine. They would change out engines, tires, and any other part that would give them an advantage, and often do laps around the kids. The whole thing fell apart in the mid 1960's. The kids and local spectators stopped coming because they knew they couldn't compete. The track closed and eventually became a city park.

There used to be a 1/8 mile flat track that everybody raced on, with a bunch of different machines. Whoever ran the track had a good handle on what classes needed separated. My uncle introduced the whole scene to me in about 1971, ish.
Every thing about that track is gone, and has been for a decade or more. Kids today have no idea what they are missing.