{"id":78266,"date":"2021-03-10T13:11:40","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T21:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=78266"},"modified":"2021-03-19T07:23:41","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T14:23:41","slug":"steyer-powered-4wd-butterball-racer-causes-stir-at-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/steyer-powered-4wd-butterball-racer-causes-stir-at-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Steyer-Powered 4WD Butterball Racer Causes Stir at Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"jetpack-slideshow-noscript robots-nocontent\">This slideshow requires JavaScript.<\/p><div id=\"gallery-78266-1-slideshow\" class=\"jetpack-slideshow-window jetpack-slideshow jetpack-slideshow-black\" data-trans=\"fade\" data-autostart=\"1\" data-gallery=\"[{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.racingjunk.com\\\/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2021\\\/03\\\/DSC_0855-min-scaled-e1615410676447.jpg&quot;,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;78268&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Steyer-Powered 4WD Butterball Racer Causes Stir at Freedom&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Steyer-Powered 4WD Butterball Racer Causes Stir at Freedom&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;A unique racing car dubbed \\u201cThe Butterball Special\\u201d has had its home in the FWD-Seagrave Museum in Clintonville, Wis., redecorated. The Four Wheel Drive Auto Co. (FWD) took an invention made by two local blacksmiths and machinists and in 1908 turned it into the first four-wheel-drive automobile. The company soon switched to making four-wheel-drive trucks and business really took off when its Model Bs were purchased by the U.S. Army and British Army for use on the battlefields of World War I.\\n\\nIn 1930, the company\\u2019s first President, Walter A. Olen, persuaded the FWD board to contract with famed race car builder Harry A. Miller to design a four-wheel-drive racing car. The two-man racer\\u2014called the FWD Special\\u0026#8211;competed in several Indy 500s. In 1932, Barney Oldfield and Mauri Rose managed the car and Bob McDonough drove. There wasn\\u2019t time to test it thoroughly. It overheated and left the race on the seventh lap.\\n\\nAnother legendary race driver\\u0026#8211;Frank Brisko\\u0026#8211;drove the FWD Special in 1933. He hit 150 mph, but quit due to engine problems. Rose drove it at Indy in 1935. The car made its best showing there in 1936, also with Rose driving. It was then mothballed until the early \\u201850s, when William F. Milliken, Jr., a researcher, engineer and racing enthusiast, borrowed it for road races. He won the 1950 Equinox Mountain Hill Climb with the car and also ran it in SCCA and AAA events at Pikes Peak, Watkins Glen and Edenvale Airport.\\n\\nMilliken discovered that a four-wheel-drive system was much better suited to road-racing events than to oval-track racing. While the FWD Special was not the fastest ride around in the early \\u201850s, it could corner better than most typical racing cars of that era. Milliken was fascinated by his successes and that led to him buying the Butterball Special.\\n\\nThis car, which also had four-wheel drive, was originally constructed as the A.J.B. Special. Those letters stood for Archibald James \\u201cA.J\\u201d Butterworth, an Irishman who built the car in England in 1948. Butterworth\\u2014who lived from 1912 until 2005\\u2014was an inventor and automobile racer. He was the winner of the Brighton Speed Trials in 1949 and 1951.\\n\\nThe A.J.B. Special was built at a cost of 300 British Pounds. It used a war-surplus air-cooled Steyr aircraft V-8 made in Austria. Butterworth\\u2019s inspiration was Sydney Allard\\u0026#8217;s Steyr-powered single-seater that won the British Hill Climb Championship in 1949. The A.J.B ran on a mixture of: methanol, benzol and unleaded gas. Today, its 4423cc 90-degree V-8 features Alfin cylinder barrels, a Harrison oil cooler and eight Amal carburetors. With a 14.9:1 compression ratio, it will produce about 280 hp at 4900 rpm.\\n\\nAn 11-in. Borg \\u0026#038; Beck clutch drives a special Butterworth five-speed constant-mesh transmission that incorporates a transfer drive. A separate reverse gear is provided. There\\u2019s also an inter-axle differential that can be locked or unlocked. The positive stop, progressive gearshift has a spring-loaded mechanism that returns it to the mid position.\\n\\nThe car has a front swing axle and rear coil springs with special Houdaille piston-type shock absorbers. It also has Halibrand wide-base magnesium wheels with modified Cadillac brakes and Dunlop racing tires. The car\\u2019s formidable power-to-weight ratio is 7 lbs. per horsepower. When it was raced, the car could do the standing quarter mile in 12 seconds at 130 mph. Top speed with one of the many alternate axle ratios was 160 mph.\\n\\nIn September 1951, Butterworth wrecked his car at Shelaley Walsh, an historic motorsports facility in England. After the crash, Butterworth quit racing, but continued supplying racing engines of his own design, notably to Bill Aston for the Aston Butterworth Grand Prix car and to Archie Scott Brown for the Elva-Butterworth sports racer.\\n\\nMilliken saw the A.J.B. Special in England and tried to buy it. Butterworth declined the offer, but took a second one after his accident. The remains of the A.J.B. were shipped to the United States in 1952. The Butter Yellow car was rebuilt at Cornell Aeronautical Lab in Buffalo, N.Y. where Milliken worked. He renamed it the \\u201cButterball Special.\\u201d\\n\\nThe Butterball Special placed third overall in Pennsylvania\\u2019s Giant\\u2019s Despair Hillclimb on July 22, 1955; second in class at that event in 1956, third in class and 15th overall at Watkins Glen, N.Y. on Sept. 15, 1956 and seventh overall (fifth in class) at Watkins Glen in its last race. It set a track record in the Holland Hill Climb in New York on Aug. 25, 1957. In the fall of 1957, the car was donated to the FWD Museum in Clintonville.\\n\\nToday, the car is intact in its 1957 configuration. The engine is frozen and in 1917 museum volunteers were looking for ways to get an aircraft engine \\u201cunstuck.\\u201d They had carefully removed the spark plugs and used a bore scope to inspect the cylinders, which look to be good. The car does not have a starter (it was designed for push starting) and the volunteers are looking for ways to make starting it, once running, a little easier.\\n\\nIn 2016, FWD announced that its museum would be expanding. The FWD Foundation\\u0026#8211;formed to preserve the company\\u2019s history\\u0026#8211;purchased an 80,000 sq. ft. factory building in Clintonville to use as a large annex to the tiny original museum.\\n\\nThe original museum building on the city\\u2019s 11th St. is the actual blacksmith shop where four-wheel-drive was invented. It holds only 12-13 vehicles, while the annex can hold over 80. The floor of the old museum was wooden and oil soaked. There was concern that a fire could destroy all the history stored there and vehicles such as The Butterball Special. That\\u2019s why the building was redecorated during the past winter.\\n\\nCurrently, the building project is continuing. The Butterball Special and some other early four-wheel-drive vehicles have been pushed into an area of the building for temporary storage. The floor has been cleaned and the walls have fresh paint.\\n\\nThe historical photos that were pinned on the walls for decades were removed and scanned so better copies could be remounted on the walls. The scans will also be preserved. There will be photo displays of different phases of FWD history, including the company\\u2019s racing heritage. The Butterball Special will be displayed in the old shop along with photos of it and the FWD Special. The latter car is now in a private collection in Utah.\\n\\n\\nClick Here to Begin Slideshow&quot;,&quot;itemprop&quot;:&quot;image&quot;},{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.racingjunk.com\\\/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2021\\\/03\\\/DSCN2005-min.jpg&quot;,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;78267&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Steyer-Powered 4WD Butterball Racer Causes Stir at Freedom&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Steyer-Powered 4WD Butterball Racer Causes Stir at Freedom&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;itemprop&quot;:&quot;image&quot;},{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.racingjunk.com\\\/news\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2021\\\/03\\\/DSC_0919-min-scaled.jpg&quot;,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;78269&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Steyer-Powered 4WD Butterball Racer Causes Stir at Freedom&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Steyer-Powered 4WD Butterball Racer Causes Stir at 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\u201cThe Butterball Special\u201d has had its home in the FWD-Seagrave Museum in Clintonville, Wis., redecorated.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":78268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3447,5044,3700,3697,17,3470,4879],"tags":[8349,8350,6991,994,304,41,1632],"class_list":["post-78266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classic","category-cool-cars","category-featured-vehicles","category-galleries","category-guest-column","category-news","category-slideshow","tag-buterball-special","tag-front-wheel-drive","tag-fwd","tag-gunner","tag-john-gunnell","tag-news","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/DSC_0855-min-scaled-e1615410676447.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-kmm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78277,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78266\/revisions\/78277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}