There is a great article in the British magazine Aeroplane on Supermarine 
Snieder cup racers built back in the late 20's and early thirties.

On of the tricks designer R.J. Mitchell used to reduce the
weight was to move the forward float struts up under the engine.
As I mentioned in the Long EZ motor mount message this drastically
reduced the weight of the motor mount as the impact loads from the
floats now went directly into the main mass... the engine.

Another interesting tid bit was the the fact that the S.6B's RR engine
was rejecting 40,000 BTU each minute by the surface radiators
covering almost every square inch of surface on wings and floats.
40,000 BTU's/min  is 703,333 Watts! Or 1,280 HP worth of waste
heat. In the earlier, S.4 design, the conventional cooling radiators 
mounted in the wings were responsible for 38% of the total drag.

The mechanical HP out on 60% methanol, 30% benzole, 10% acetone
and a spoonful of lead, was about 2,600 HP. The TBO at full power 
was 5 minutes! The engine was burning fuel at the rate of 216 
imperial gallons per hour of this mixture. 
The airplane was pulling 5G's in the turns so the fuel pumps quit
working. The engine ran off a gravity feed header tank in the turns.

Lots of very interesting details in this article.
I highly recommend a subscription. 

http://www.aeroplanemonthly.com

Paul Lamar
 
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