RIP Bill Shiells

[mullins]

Sadly Bill passed away last Sat (30 June 2007) in Waikato Hospital. His funeral service will be held this Wednesday (04 July 2007) at Seddon Park in Hamilton at 11am. Everyone is welcome to attend.

For anyone who doesn't know Bill, he was an extremely talented engine builder and racer who started Rotorsport back in the 1970's. He built championship winning engines for many Kiwi motorsport legends including Rod Millen.

RIP Bill, you will be missed.

[Carl]

That is sad,
I'll bet he gets a rotary cavalcade send off!
Regards
Carl

[RotorHeid]

Found about Bill Sheills from 10 tenths motorsport web.
Richard Radisich from NZ wrote in about Bill Sheills.
Interesting story!


It's sad that Bill has passed away, but he has left me with plenty of great memories.
Bill and my father, Frank, went way back to before I was born, and it was a life long friendship, working together in the early days, then working on various projects and sharing race cars throughout the years.

I have memoreis of Bill as far back as I can remember, but some of the brightest was as a kid visiting Rotary Power on Aucklands North Shore, where I spent may hours as Bill and my father worked on various Rotay engine developments. I was always welcome to watch and help, as they worked on developing what would become the Periferal Port setup on Rotary Engines. Bill was always in a hurry, limping around (moving way tooo fast) with his hip problems, but at the same time he was always willing to take time (providing I could keep up with him as he almost ran around the building) to explain to me what was going on and why things were the way they were.

Bill worked hand in hand with the Mazda engineers to develop these engines, sending all his findings back to the factory, but not much credit was ever given to Bill by the factory, but amazingly the "works" engines that appeared after this time incorporated Bill's ideas.

He is probably best known for his work with Rod Millen with the RX3 in Rallying, but at the same time my father was runing a parallel testing program on the circuits around NZ with a converted March 72b (I think it was originally a 72). That car was the loudest thing ever, and I remember push starting it and being deafened by the noise as it started up. It was this very car that my brother, Paul, got his first taste of circuit racing, driving the car at Baypark (and other circuits) in testing, despite him only being 12 or 13 (the track managers either didn't know, or turned a blind eye).

The 13B development that Bill and my father were doing was an exercise to see how far they could push the little motors, and the lines and lines of damaged and experimental rotor housings showed that they were testing plenty of different things. It always facinated me to see Bill, hacksaw and grinder in hand cutting a new port into the side of a housing, just to see what it would do. Kiwi ingenuity at it's very best. It's a pity that the car never got to race much, and only saw outings in a few formula libre races, as it did not fit in with the classes of the day.

Bill and my father went on to then develop various Mazda's for circuit racing, driving together in the Benson and Hedges series and otehr races for a number of years, and developing the fleet of "Track N Street" Mazda RX2's, in which I think my whole family raced at some point.

My memory is a little cloudy these days, but my father and Bill did drive together at Bathurst in 1977. It was an RX3 sourced from the late Barry Jones if I remember correctly. Again if my memory serves me right (I haven't checked with my father) there were some problems with the motor in either the last practice or in qualifying, and there was no spare race motor, so they took a stock motor that had plenty of miles on it and raced it, circulating all day competitively, recording a very good finish.

I'll always remember that race, as hanging on the wall in my fathers office all these years (it's probably still hanging there I am sure) is a large black and white photo of the RX3 from 1977 at the end of Conrod straight under braking for Murrays corner with a huge flame spitting out the exhaust pipe, an amazing black and white picture. It was at that race, at the scruitineering bay after the race that I turned to my brother, and we agreed that one day we would race there ....

Bill was always involved with various university based research projects, and had an interest in alternative fuel technology, and spent years developing CNG/Diesel buses, spending a lot of time in South America where there were fleets of buses running with technology he developed.

My last memories of Bill are unfortunately not that current. In 2000/2001 before I left New Zealand, I spent some time with Bill at his home in Hamilton working on some projects that he added his thoughts and expert opinions to for us. He was as usual in a hurry and it was just like being back at Rotary Power all those years ago.

Bill was a true gentleman and a real life genius.

Chris Radisich.