Joe tipped me off to something interesting in race cars and engine companies, Kohler. Yes, that company best know for faucets.

powered by an engine that’s truly unique in the world of modern auto racing: a Kohler-derived, two-stroke flat-six.

Jeff Miller, who started racing SCCA B Production Corvettes in 1968, joined the Kohler company in 1970 and decided to bring his work home with him. “We saw D Sports Racers that were running around in the SCCA,” he recalls. “We decided we’d build one of those with one of Kohler’s snowmobile engines.” Jeff campaigned a Kohler-powered Lola in C Sports Racer and D Sports Racer as well as the under -2-liter Can-Am class, and he secured SCCA national championships in 1976, ’77, ’78, ’81, ’83 and ’96. “It was originally a three-cylinder Kohler snowmobile engine, 660cc in an 850cc class,”

“We transitioned out of that into a normal-sized car, and we upgraded the Kohler to a four-cylinder, flat-opposed engine,” he continues. “That engine was being designed for a military drone application. I was a corporate pilot for Kohler, and I used to travel up to the Canadian two-cycle plant and snoop around. I saw this [flat-four] engine on the chief engineer’s desk and said, ‘This will make a fabulous DSR engine!’” Jeff and his crew at Wynnfurst Racing started developing the four-pot two-stroker for competition in 1975, when he reckons they finished about half the races while working out the kinks.

Intially a one-of-a-kind design means there’s plenty of work to be done, and every race is partly a test session. “We kept refining the pieces over the years,” Jeff says, “better pistons, better valves, better materials throughout.” Certain upgrades have come with material advances, such as the carbon-fiber Moto Tassinari reed valves that let air into the crankcase. The compact powerplant displaces less than 1.5 liters, but as Jeff notes, “It’s about 280 horsepower, 160 ft.-lbs. at 10,000 rpm.” Instead of relying on the original casting, Wynnfurst now machines their own engine blocks from a single billet of 6061 T6 aluminum. “The block is something that never fails,” states Jeff. “We might have a piston seizure or a cylinder failure, but those are all individual components, like a Porsche or an aircraft engine. The crankshaft is a built-up part: You can press it all apart and put new rods and bearings on it and go again.”

At the 2015 SCCA Runoffs at Daytona, Jason’s car qualified third

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/articles/two-strokes-genius/

Wisconsin-based Kohler is best known for its plumbing fixtures, faucets, toilets and showerheads. Kohler also has an engine division, however, and it produces Kohler-branded two- and four-stroke gasoline and diesel engines in a wide variety of sizes, from really tiny to big.

Generators, small recreational vehicles (like ATVs and snowmobiles) and lawn tools are just some of the places you may find a Kohler engine.

Kohler is one of the largest privately operated firms in the United States, and has always been owned and run by a circle of family members who descended from the founder.

The Kohler Co. began in 1873 when John Michel Kohler and Charles Silberzahn purchased a foundry in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and began manufacturing farm equipment.

In their first years, Kohler & Silberzahn manufactured agricultural implements, such as watering troughs and scalding vats, castings for furniture factories, and ornamental iron pieces including cemetery crosses 

In 1880, with improved business prospects, the company established a newer, larger machine shop; however, this plant was destroyed by fire only months after opening, forcing the operation to move to a new location.

Rebounding from this costly setback, the small company introduced a line of unique enameled plumbing fixtures in 1883. While its significance was not yet fully realized, this line would propel Kohler into a period of strong growth. The company sold thousands of enameled sinks, cuspidors (spittoons), stove reservoirs, kettles, and pans, as well as the first Kohler bathtubs, fashioned from one of the company’s watering troughs.

 By 1887 these products accounted for 70 percent of Kohler’s revenues.

By 1900 Kohler employed more than 250 people, with 98 percent of its revenues coming from enameled iron products such as tubs, sinks, and water fountains. The factory in Sheboygan had become too small to meet growing production needs. Because it was not practical to expand the plant, which was now surrounded by homes, John Michael Kohler began building a new factory four miles west of Sheboygan in the small community of Riverside. The company entered a period of extraordinarily bad luck when John Michael Kohler died in November 1900 at the age of 56.

Less than three months later, before a new chairman could be selected, the company’s new iron foundry and machine and enamel shops burned down. Herman Hayssen and John Stehn’s widow sold their interests in the company to the Kohler family, and in February 1902 the company was reorganized as the J.M. Kohler Sons Company under the leadership of Robert, Walter, and Carl Kohler, the oldest sons of John Michael Kohler. Two years later Carl died at the age of 24, and in 1905 Robert died at the age of 35, leaving the entire company to Walter Kohler.

Walter Kohler was a strong believer in corporate responsibility. As most of his employees were newly arrived immigrants, Kohler built the American Club, a stately boarding hotel where employees could live until they had enough money to purchase housing and send for their families. He established a benefit organization to provide employees with sickness and death benefits, and even provided lessons in civics, English, and American history so they could pass citizenship exams.

Kohler also laid plans to establish an entirely new community built around the company. He commissioned architects, city planners, and landscape architects, including the Olmsted Brothers (who designed New York’s Central Park), to develop a city plan.

In 1911, after some years of stability, the workforce had grown to 950 and the company had ten sales offices, including one in London. That year the company introduced a revolutionary one-piece enamelware built-in bathtub with integral apron that was more sanitary than conventional two-piece tubs. The village of Kohler, meanwhile, had grown to 40 houses, and was incorporated in 1912 with a population of 254. In 1917 the Kohler Improvement Company began building houses in the planned community, selling them to Kohler Co. employees at cost. A second development was started in 1923, and others followed.

By the mid-1920s Kohler had become the third largest plumbing products company in the United States, adding such sales boosters as vitreous china toilets and wash basins and brass faucets, shower heads, and other fittings. The company also introduced a revolutionary new product called the “electric sink.” Essentially a dishwasher, but 20 years ahead of its time, the device did not catch on. Shortly afterward, Kohler introduced a slightly more successful novelty, the electric clothes washer.

Inspired by the growth of electrical appliances but faced with poor electrical distribution, Kohler began developing small electrical generators. The first unit, introduced in 1920 as the “automatic power and light,” provided 1,500 watts of 110-volt DC power from a generator driven by a four-cylinder gasoline engine. The small generator marked a significant improvement over existing generators, which merely charged batteries at 32 volts and were not as portable.

In layman's terms, they invented the residential backup generator.

While the generators were intended for farm electrification, they were pressed into service by maritime and railroad companies, European castle owners, and others in need of portable power sources. Admiral Richard Byrd later took five Kohler generators with him on his first expedition to the South Pole in 1926, and took seven Kohler generators with him on his return in 1933. Revisiting his original base station on the frozen continent, his team found the generators from the first expedition in perfect working order. Byrd named an Antarctic mountain range for Kohler

When the United States became involved in World War II, much of Kohler’s commercial operations ground to a halt. Iron, brass, and chrome supplies were diverted for war use by the government, which asked Kohler to resume production of military wares (during World War I Kohler had made mine anchors, projectiles, and shells). The company’s first military products were precision valves and fittings for use in aircraft, such as the DC-3 and B-29. Kohler also built a variety of electric generators for the armed forces.

Based on Kohler’s experience in precision crafted metallurgy, the government asked the company to produce 105mm and three-inch artillery shells, as well as forgings for rockets and other shells, fuses, torpedo tubes, piston rings, shell rotating bands, and engine bearings.

Given the occasional unreliability of utility-supplied power, many hospitals, banks, and other offices had to have their own emergency standby power, but required larger capacities than the ten megawatt models Kohler manufactured. Eager to supply this market, Kohler began development of 100 kilowatt dieselpowered systems. As the market continued to grow, Kohler introduced a 230 kilowatt model and, some years later, a massive 500 kilowatt system.

Entering the 1960s, the company’s engine division, still strong in Asia, gained momentum in the United States, where Kohler motors were used to power lawnmowers, garden tractors, construction equipment, and even snowmobiles. International Harvester, John Deere, Wheel-Horse, Jacobsen, and Bombardier (inventor of the snowmobile) incorporated Kohler engines in their products. By 1963 Kohler was one of the leading small engine suppliers in the industry.

It later won a suit against market leader Briggs & Stratton, which had tried to coerce its distributors to stop handling Kohler engines.

Having poured about $50 million into the resort from 1978 through the mid-1990s, Kohler created the only resort in the Midwest to receive AAA’s top five-diamond rating. The resort’s centerpiece was Blackwolf Run, which offered two world championship golf courses created by a top course designer, Pete Dye. Blackwolf Run hosted the 1998 U.S. Women’s Open Championship. The bathrooms in the American Club’s fancy guest rooms also served as showcases for Kohler Company products.

 In 1948, Kohler Co. began manufacturing small gasoline engines for industrial uses, which led to the development of engines for snowmobiles.

origin of Kohler, https://www.theclassroom.com/kohler-snowmobile-engine-history-13654265.html  Kohler's recent engine and generator development, and flesh out the entire post with facts from https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/economics-business-and-labor/businesses-and-occupations/kohler-company

Kohler's commitment to the industrial engine market is evidenced by the pace of technological development the company pursued. By 1951, production of an air-cooled single-cylinder engine began.

 The next major advance took place in 1959, when standardized mounting platforms and standardized crankshaft heights were developed so the engines could be easily interchanged. In 1965, an improved automatic compression release system was developed that made recoil easier during engine starts. All of these developments led to the introduction of the company's first two-cycle engine for snowmobiles in 1968. 

Early snowmobiles with Kohler engines on display. Some of those early machines include a 1958 machine called the Sno-Bi-Kin equipped with an 8 horsepower Kohler engine, the 1962 Polar Model 500, equipped with a 9.5 horsepower Kohler engine and the 1966 Fox Trac 412C snowmobile that used a 12 horsepower Kohler engine.

John Deere continued using Kohler engines until the company stopped snowmobile production in the early 1980s. Although snowmobile manufacturers have used engines from other companies in recent years, Kohler continued making significant strides in small engine development. Improvements include pressurized lubrication systems and electronic ignition systems.

Kohler and Liebherr initiated contact in 2008 and have since performed more than 50,000 hours of durability testing on these engines. Combined, the partners have more than 125 years of experience in the development of engines and generator sets. The new G-Drive engines will be available exclusively on KOHLER and KOHLER-SDMO generators around the globe. “We will manufacture these engines in our brand new facility in Colmar, France as well as an extended facility in Bulle, Switzerland. The two excellent production sites use the most sophisticated manufacturing tools and assembly processes for large engines,” said Gebhard Schwarz, managing director of Liebherr-Component Technologies AG. “We very much appreciate the teamwork with Kohler and look forward to the great results we anticipate achieving through this collaboration.”

2016 Co-Development by Kohler and Liebherr: New Kohler G-Drive Diesel Engine Range Delivers World-Class Power An entirely new line of G-Drive engines was developed to exclusively power the recently launched KD Series of KOHLER and KOHLER-SDMO diesel industrial generators. The compact and powerful new engines, co-developed by Kohler and Liebherr, deliver highly efficient and dependable performance and feature a modular design for optimal serviceability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohler_Co.

https://www.liebherr.com/en/usa/latest-news/news-press-releases/detail/co-developed-by-kohler-and-liebherr-new-kohler-g-drive-diesel-engine-range-delivers-world-class-power.html

This post took about 45 minutes to draft, it will likely take a few more to edit