91 Valvoline Madison help

I went ahead and purchased plans for my 91 Valvoline Madison build. The framing view shows the transom angled up and back while the graphic view shows it up and forward. One of these isn't right. Anyone know wich one to use?

Pretty difficult to see your plans clearly in a photo but from what I can see your rear shoes have a slope to them. Try not to get confused by that, in the framing photo I think I see what you mean but again, don’t get hung up on what you see. The actual transom should been 100% vertical, it is your rear shoes and swim decks that you need to understand what their appearance should be and in what direction they slope. A critical part of any scale build is getting your hands on as many photos of the boat as possible so that you can verify these details and build accordingly. It wouldn’t be the first time that there has been found a drawing error in the plans, they are just a guide and you may change many things throughout your build.

You will spend countless hours staring at plans and photos before you make a single cut, wait until you get to the sponson bottoms I took most of one winter building cutting and fitting to build in all the scale details into the final product, I built the 93 Frosted Flakes and for the most part it’s the same boat. You’ll be a master builder when your done!

I've gone round and round with people about this one over the years. The correct set up would be shown on the construction sheet, not the paint scheme. The dimensions shown are incorrect, however. The top corner of the sponson inside, for example, actually extended back 26 inches from the transom on the full sized boat. I can post pictures on how I did mine tomorrow, if you like, with all the dimensions as well. I guarantee all to be accurate as I spent many hours getting measurements off of the actual boat. AFAIK, the only changes made, after the turbine conversion over the winter of 90-91, was the location of the bulnose and the canard configuration. In the 91 configuration, the bulnose was 126 inches back from the tip of the sponson inside IIRC. This was later changed to approximately 90 inches when the canard was moved forward the first time and stayed at that location at least until the boat was sold.

These should help, friend gave them to me to help with my 93 build, really helped me to wrap my mind around the shoe and tiplet appearance. These are from the 92 boat but same idea, gather 91 photos and prove to yourself what it should be, only way to be certain.

Nice pics Greg. I think I may have some, from 1991, floating around someplace. IIRC, those are from 1992, not that it matters since the boat was the same, other than the tiger stripes running down the deck, the Kellogg's logo on the sponsons and Tony's picture on the tails and air scoop. The boat actually still had the same paint job on it, under the graphics, as it did after the repairs and engine cover replacement needed following the Columbia River blow over in 1991. You can actually see the tri-color stripes extending out from under the tiger stripe graphics on the right side deck on some pictures

Greg, those pictures, They're Great! Pun intended.... That’s the detail I needed. Thank you.

Keep in mind that things like rear shoes, sponson ride pads, non trips and such often changed race to race in the 90s as teams looked for every little advantage they could find so don't lose your mind over the small differences you may see in pics. The majority of my favorite unlimiteds are of 90s era (I've built quite a few of them) and found out much of these race to race changes doing pre-build research. I'm fairly certain I've got a batch of pics for the '93 version but I need to find them.......

If you have any showing the transom from above that would be really helpful. I'm trying to figure out the turbine tray.

The plans call out for Navy Blue. The one picture on the Newton site looks purple to me. Of coarse I've had this problem before :-O

Hey Don,

I just spent some quality time going over your Smoke Joe's build album. Thanks for putting that together, helpful and inspiring.

Wes Ellet has a Tony Tiger Scale. You might want to give him a try, And he can make your graphics.

I have dozens of photos of the 93 transom and cowled and uncowled turbine tube pics but don’t know if it’s exactly the same as the 91. In 93 it had a pretty elaborate turbine tube cradle that I had to fabricate, one of the best scale features on my 93, real tedious to build. Out camping now but can load them and send them to you on Sunday if you like?

I know you're looking for information on the transom and shoes but this shot, of the bottom, might interest you as well. It shows a full length belly pan with the front made wider to match the cockpit shape. Might be helpful later, when you're getting the boat "teched" prior to racing it
Was going through some of the pictures I have and found there were really very few changes to the boat after it was "turbinized" between the 90 and 91 seasons. The only obvious one's I've found are the previously mentioned moving the bulnose and canard forward, the removing of the rear tiplets, the shortening of the rear engine cover( Mike Hansen told me the cover was shortened by roughly a foot, I'm guessing after he became crewchief), and the reconfiguring of the exhaust pipe and mounts several times. By the time the boat was sold, the pipe had gone from the huge "Budweiser" style bent pipe to the short one shown below in a shot I took just prior to the 2006 Seattle race

Hi Mark, that first picture had me going for a few. I just woke up... I was wondering what the photo shopped things were. I got to the tiny Dewalt screw driver and finally realized that it was the full sized boat! I better go have some coffee now.

Hey Greg, I would love to see the 93 pictures. No rush.

Nothing photo shopped, at least that I know of. That first picture was taken at the Miss Madison boat shop prior to the canard being moved forward and after the tiplets were removed so, adding the dark green visible on the sponson transoms, that either had to be during the winter of 95-96 or during it's first few years as the Oberto. The color somewhat matches the green from the Jasper paint scheme used in 1995 and is too dark to have been used with the DeWalt sponsorship after that. It could be Oberto green as well but I think it's a bit dark for that too. Since the boat was painted white in 1994 when it was the Powerball/Miss Madison, that pretty much narrows it down to after the 1995 season or during the winters between the 2000 and 2003 seasons as the canard was moved to the front of the sponsons and the nose shortened for clearance prior to the 2003 season . I found that shot, years ago, on the former Miss Madison website. Many of the pictures that used to be available on that site are gone as they weren't transferred when a new webmaster set up a new site over a decade ago.
The second shot, as stated above, was taken in Tukwila Washington between the Tri-Cities and Seattle races. Unfortunately, the boat was turned in such a way that, even with the heavy overcast, my camera's light meter was fooled into under exposing the shot. It is still fairly clear as to the details, the colors are just darker than they should be.

Thanks Greg, a couple of pictures saved us about 2000 words and oral toilet paper........................

Okay, I have to make a correction to my last post. I just mistakenly blew up the picture(yes, this is a good thing) and noticed that this has the pivots for the forward mounted canard, meaning this was during it's Oberto years and shot between the winters of 2003 and 2006. I didn't see the pivots prior due to the spreader bar between the sponsons. Other than that, there was only one change that was made, after Mike Hansen became crew chief, and that was a notch taken out of the right shoe's running surface at the back. Since this was after the 2002 season(Mike drove the U-9 to a Gold Cup win that year), it's not a change you need to worry about

Hi Grayson, when I pulled out all my pics I remembered how I arrived at my turbine cradle/tray build strategy. My photos are a little too far away and when blown up they get grainy, I used them for the final appearance estimates and along with my plans I worked it all out.

Sorry that I don’t have more to share.

Thanks for looking Greg. The shots you already posted are worth a ton.