1987 Penske March 86c rear engine covers.

[illeagle10]

In all my years at looking at these cars, I never caught this before! 

Here is the 1986 Pennzoil Penske March 86c.

Here is the 1987 Pennzoil Penske March 86c

If you look closely at the two cowlings on these cars there is a marked difference between the two!

As promised I have been researching the difference in rear engine covers of the Penske March 86c.  Here are a couple of pictures from the 1987 Pocono 500.  Sorry about the grainy pictures.

As you can see these are profile pictures of all three Penske cars.  The first car is that of Rick Mears March 86c Pennzoil car and the eventural Pocono 500 race winner.  This is a March 86c/Chverolet.  It is obvious that the rear engine cover is much sleeker that the other two.

The second picture is that of Al Unser's 1987 Cummins March 86c Indy winning car, prepared for Pocono.  This car is a March 86c/Cosworth, so we should expect that the engine cover would be what we found on last years car to cover the Cosworth engines that were run in 1986.

The third picture is that of Sullivan's March 86c Miller American car.  This car is a March 86c/Chevrolet.  However, even though he is running the Chevrolet engine the rear engine cover is that run on the Cosworth car.  I was able to get pictures of the engine covers for Unser and Sullivan.

You can see that they are the same type of cover.  I am disappointed that I do not have a picture of Mears' engine cover.  I also don't have an answer at this point as to why the difference in engine covers.  Hopefully, I will get an answer, when I do, I will let you know.  Of course if anyone has an answer please feel free to comment!

Jim

[illeagle10]

I can’t believe that it’s over a year since this question had come up. I am still looking for a definitive answer to this question.  In the meantime I have made some observations.

One observations being that the rear cover on the Mears Pennzoil car seemed to be the same as that on the 1987 March 87c. It was known that the chassis’ were driven by different drivers, such as chassis #22. Between 1986 and 1987 all three Penske drivers drove chassis #22 at one time or another. In 1987 whenever Mears drove an 86c he would have the “87” rear engine cover on his car, while the other two drivers would have the standard 86 rear engine cover. I thought at first that it might be because of the engine. Mears always had the Chevrolet, while Unser always had the Cosworth. However, Sullivan ran a Chevrolet and ran the standard 86c rear engine cowling. Could it be that the team only had one 87 rear engine cowling and since Mears was basically the number one driver on the team, was he was given the cover? It is hard to imagine that Mr. Penske wouldn’t buy 87 rear engine cowlings for all the cars if there was some advantage to it. Maybe the advantages were negligible, but continued to carry it on Mears car for the 87 season.

One thing further, if anyone is planning on converting an 86 March 86c into an 87 March 87c, that is another changed that needs to be made on the AMT Cummins March 86c.  The rear cowling will need some attention.  

If anyone has further information regarding this issue it is more than welcome.

Jim