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cylinder head from Hydroplane 'Firefly' willys jeep engine

Posted: 04 Oct 2011, 06:58
by blown292
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Willys-Jeep- ... 9214319254

stole this off another forum...
It is made of bronze to better suit the racing boat application Keith Barry made it for. Keith fitted it to the Jeep L134 engine powering his three-pointer Hydroplane boat 'Firefly' and held the Australian 135 c.i. class record in 1948 at 55.34 mph. A similar head, but cast in aluminium was fitted to a supercharged Willys powered Amilcar based racing Special of that era that is still occasionally seen at Historic Race meets here.

Re: cylinder head from Hydroplane 'Firefly' willys jeep engine

Posted: 04 Oct 2011, 08:55
by hookster
What a piece of history there eh? The thing is a work of art and looks good enough to eat off, let alone what it would be worth to someone who is into those motors. I notice the seller has already had a query from someone in the US wanting to buy it. It's gotta be worth a lot more than the $348 which is currently on it I reckon. :o

If it stays that cheap I might buy it, melt it down and cast a bust of Julia Gillard out of it, because I love Labor so much. Better still, I could lay claim to being an abstract artist, and get a government grant to do the cast....I would expect to get somewhere in the region of $75 000 to do the job going on past gov't expenditure on 'the arts' :lol: