Cyclone Power Technologies, Inc. (fka CYPW)

[BuddyWhazhizname]

What's interesting is how the speed record story has changed over time.

There was an earlier speed record boat promoted by Cyclone (Tom knows more about this), then it disappeared without having been run and the GG Mom boat was custom built at shareholder expense. It's the one in the photos in the CYPW intro section.

Harry used to post a lot on the steam car club discussion board. The GG Mom was going to set the speed record for steam boats using the Mark 5 engine. Period. (The boat has only ever had a non-functional mockup engine in it.)

Then Chuk Williams was building a car to set the steam car speed record and Cyclone offered to provide an engine. So Chuk built his car to fit the Mark 5. He delivered the working car chassis to Cyclone to have the engine installed, and then the excuses started.

In the photos in the intro section, Chuk is in the green shirt with Frankie and Harry.

In the next picture Chuk's car has been painted Cyclone yellow, and by this point Harry started calling it the Cyclone car, even though Cyclone had still not provided a working engine.

In March 2012 or so Chuk took his car back. Harry threatened to sue Chuk for stealing the body, so Chuk gave Harry the yellow Cyclone body back.

Chuk put in the old outboard engine that was converted to steam and did run the car on the Bonneville Salt Flats that year, but without a real body.

Very soon after the partnership broke up, Cyclone announced the creation of the "Performance Division" and had hired Nelson Hoyos to run it. They hired a race car shop to build the chassis and Cyclone built the fiberglass body. The car as it sits today was finished by December of 2012, with Harry bragging the whole time about how great it was going to be and how powerful the engine was.

The car was written up in Racecar Engineering magazine: https://archive.org/stream/Racecar_Engineering_2013_02#page/n19/mode/1up Interesting statements in there:

- The British team set the record and spent 10 million British Pounds, or about $16 million at the end of 2012. Nelson Hoyos said Cyclone intended to spend less than a tenth of that. (In another article I can't find now he said they were spending half a million.)

- The engine generates 200 hp and 1100 ft/lbs of torque.

- The car was going to do 200 mph in the first quarter of 2013 and to 400 mph by the end of 2013.

Two pages in they quote Harry making a bunch of unsubstantiated claims such as a Cyclone engine in a car would get 1.5 times better mileage. Best line: "The LSR is to prove we have a viable product." That was almost four years ago.

In 2013 the excuses started in earnest. Originally with Chuk's car Harry said they would run a stock, unmodified Mark 5 to prove how well it works. The new car switched to a specially built high power variant rather than the Mark 5.

Harry's plan was to run the car on the road in front of their shop, then at a drag strip, then at the NASA space shuttle runway, then at Bonneville. They even put out a PR claiming NASA had "invited" them to run.

There was always some delay, however. They couldn't run until they fine tuned a setting on the engine. That took many months. Then they needed someone to sponsor safety equipment for $20K or so, even though Nelson Hoyos has all kinds of safety equipment for race cars and, really, how much do you need to run the car on the road in front of their shop?

By June 2105 the safety equipment price went up to $125K https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/clean-cyclone-steam-engine-to-set-speed-record#/

Meanwhile, the car has never moved one foot under its own power nor has a video of the engine actually running on the dyno been made public.

Oh, and the boat that came before the car? Wouldn't it be easy to run that while waiting for sponsors of "safety equipment" for the car? Well, Harry has that covered, too. He will run the boat if and only if the car sets a world record. And then only if it's guaranteed the boat will set a record the first time out.

Bottom line is the fact the Mark 5 engine simply doesn't work never has to be admitted by Cyclone.

And last week, Cyclone announces yet another excuse in response to a Facebook question:

Thank you for your interest in Cyclone Power. Currently we are not selling engines to individuals. We know that in the future as Cyclone has the wherewithal to afford the liability insurance and all the other things it requires to sell to individuals that we will. The engines are currently being integrated and tested into two products both for generating electricity. Please keep watching as we grow.

Ah, just like why they didn't demonstrate any engines at the December 2011 shareholder open house: it's "the insurance" won't let them.