CORRECTED : H-D Flated Bottom End - JAP Top Ends

Thanks, for the correction, jib !

Attached is a couple of pics of an engine that was sent to me of an engine someone made.

I think he said it was for a hill climber.

He also said it was a pretty powerful engine.

It has a H-D Flathead bottom end and the top end is suppose to be from a JAP.

hi, looks like the top ends of two j.a.p speedway egines.
see how the ports in the ''v'' dont line up like the twins do which have a shared inlet manifold.
regards jib

I believe you are correct. The guy who sent the pics said it was either a Brough-Superior or a JAP.

I couldn't remember the JAP name when I posted the pictures, so I left it off.

Thanks for the correction, jib !

no problem, brougth used jap engines and i guess anyone could think ''v twin jap = brougth engine''
regards jib
but it seems jap also made v twins with twin carb set ups for racing etc see link below and scroll down ..

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... %3D1I7GGLD

Quite interesting..

Thanks for the link.

Went to the web site, lot of reading yet to do.

George

Thanks for the link, jib !

J.A.P. V-twins also were used on Morgan 3-wheelers.

JAP made an extensive range of V-twin and single cylinder racing engines through the 20s, 30s and 40s in sizes from 250cc to 1260cc. Most of them never returned to production after the Second World War, but the 350cc and 500cc singles continued to the late 1960s, with limited production for some years after that. Google 'Alf Hagon' if you want to see a V-twin in action.

the 'double-single' type v-twin with two single-cylinder top ends was first tried at Brooklands and for World Record purposes by the late Eric Fernihough and subsequently by Noel Pope, who ran one at Daytona and Bonneville among other places, Pope's machines were supercharged but Fernihough used conventional carburettor induction. Fernihough was killed in a crash before his machine set any records, and Pope's machine suffered from severe handling problems caused by the imperfectly-understood streamlined shell and again, didn't achieve anything.

I've never seen a Harley bottom end used for this before! The top ends are the early '5-stud' type, these were often converted to fit the later 4-stud cases - as these ones have been - and seem to be the early left-side inlet type, later ones all had the inlet to the right for speedway racing ( the right side of the mudguard on speedway bikes of the day had a valance to keep flying shale out of the inlet ), although they could be converted. I'm not 100% sure whether any left-side inlet engines had the later enclosed valves, or whether they were all the original 'dog-ear' type

Without trying to be rude none of you know what you are looking at ! See the letters on the rocker covers? G C stands for Gus Carlheim ! He was a famous ( in midget race car circles anyway!) tuner of engines from the Bronx! He first started modifying JAP 8/80 engines and gradually ended up remaking just about the complete engine to a much more robust specification as parts of the JAP blew up. The UL Harley bottom end was added by someone along the way and who knows what else was done! This all said, I WANT ONE OF THESE ! I do have a set of cylinders and partially machined heads. I would be content at this point to find some 8/80 rocker boxes and other bits.

Gus Carlhein may be famous in US midget car racing circles, but he's completely unknown in England, so I don't have any comment on that.

The cylinder heads are clearly 5-stud type, the 5th stud hole can be plainly seen on the drive-side image. British 500cc cars used single-cylinder JAP or Norton engines, often with distinctive Alfin barrel conversions for road-racing or hill-climbing ( because they used petrol ).

the JAP V-twin engine was seen in drag-racing, sprinting and grass-track use in sizes up to 1260cc, often supercharged, but not as a car engine. I've never seen a H-D conversion like this because sidecar speedway ( which would have been about the only use for it ) was dominated by Vincents

sorry, but you are wrong again. these are not 5 stud JAP heads but are Gus Carlheim heads. I have each of these in my collection and here is a picture for comparison purposes. The most obvious difference is the intake port location. What you thought of as a fifth stud placement is a tapped lug. This could be used to attach a bracket for float chambers etc.

here is the underside which will better show the differences

FRANCIS BEART BARREL ON MY DOUBLE KNOCKER EX COOPER FORMULA 3

I'd be most interested to see the pictures, but they don't seem to be coming out on the webpage.

Francis Beart, now there's a name. Some very original work and very successful for a long time. I particularly connect his name with Ariels, but he did a lot of work on Nortons.

the Gus Carlheim name is completely unknown to me, I have to say, and no-one I've emailed has heard of him, which presumably means that he worked entirely in the US.

most JAP engines do indeed have right-side ports, some early ones have left-hand inlets. Usually these are 'dog-ear' type engines but I have seen 5-stud ones so fitted. Eric Fernihough had an engine so equipped using 8/80 parts in a 'two-of-everything' configuration, although the final version of this engine had conventional speedway-type heads.

send me your email address and I'll send you the pictures. trust me, Gus Carlheim engines are rare even over here. how about Koslows? I am sure you have never heard of them either . ohv conversion circa mid 1930's , twin carb, twin port exhaust , robust castings make contempoary Knuckles and JAPs look like toys

pm on the way.

there are all kinds of one-off engines about, ever heard of the MSN - an Australian V-twin? I'm always interested to see new specials.

Carlheims and Koslows were not one offs. Are you on high speed internet over there? just wondering why you can't see the pictures.

mail received... I've never heard of Koslows, no. What is the bike? At first glance it looks like a 45 with an ohv conversion using 1930s Ariel parts

Andrew Koslow was an engineer and a competiton hillclimber for Excelsior Henderson in Chicago. Of course you probably realize they were the Schwinn bicycle company as well. The Koslow bicycle shop still exists in Chicago run by Andrew's 3rd and 4 th generation offspring! After Schwinn stopped building motorcycles in 1931, Koslow adapted the top ends from the factory hill climb race bikes to VL Harley and possibly other bottom ends. My conversion is mounted on a UL flathead bottom end . It displaces 84 cubic inches. It goes. The actual Koslow heads are very similar to the Super X hillclimbers but are bigger. You may be aware of a legend named Pop Dreyer. He was a factory Indian racer. He mastered the Flxi sidecar and was a genius welder and fabricator. He began as a teenager welding headers in Duesenberg's race shop! Anyway, he also built quite a few midget race cars in the thirties and used Koslow top ends. There is a picture in his biography ( written by his son and impossible to put down) of him and his machinist in their shop preparing a Koslow . This is merely a precis of the entire story.

interesting stuff. The Excelsior brand name in UK was a completely unrelated manufacturer, a famous name in its day, but no connection whatsoever to the US one. I don't believe the US Excelsior or Henderson brands were ever imported here. There was no midget car racing in the US sense either.

for that matter, with JAP, Rudge and Blackburne selling purpose-made racing engines, and Norton, AJS and Matchless selling complete machines, there was no real market either for the sort of limited production engineering you describe. The nearest equivalent would be the Luckhurst and Street 4-valve Jawa conversions, Cole engines, Weslake and Godden speedway and grass-track bikes of the 60s, 70s, 80s.