Scratch building chassis evolution

[slothead]

[bill from nh]

Slothead, a couple comments, if I may. In my opinion, Steve O'keefe is one of the top five scratchbuilders in the U.S. today. If you want to look at more of his work, he has his own online forum at Slotblog.net. Since he wrote that article in 2002, 1/24 scale commercial racing has had a renewed interest in running scratchbuilt cars. This has been happening for the past 8-10 years. There has some interest in running 1/32 scale scratchbuilt cars commercially too, but it's growth has been slower. Locally, in the early 2000's we ran a class using 1/32 scratchbuilt inlines, a Playfit motor, & a Betta F1 body from the 70's. It was a fun class that lasted 2 or 3 years.

[HomeRacingWorld]

An article very important to me as well as others.

It's that spirit of building we do try and honor around here. It doesn't matter if your chassis looks like one of Chris' or Bill's works of art...or like one of my twisted heaps.

The point is having FUN creating your own slot car.

I am on the 5th or 6th (lost count) try on my "Hindwinder". I might have swore at it a couple times...but really I am having fun with the challenge. If it doesn't work perfectly, I really do not care. Where it places in the upcoming race is meaningless to me. It's the fun I had building and sharing it here.

Maybe we can keep the spirit of building going in our own, simple home racing way.

[strangebrew]

Can't stay outa' this thread!
I ALWAYS have an idea to try out. I'll bet I spend one hour building for every minute on my track.
(& I'm being very conservative)
I might build for a week & never fire up the track. I can't stop building something.
I've printed paper bodies, I have styrene chassis, resin chassis, epoxy chassis & brass.
(I've got a pretty fast chassis cut from corrugated sign plastic)
I've tried suspensions, independent fronts, four wheel drive, offsets, rear engines, transmissions,
dropped guides & lots of stuff I can't remember & threw away.
I haven't bought a car in 50 years.
I won a Carrera Cobra in our lottery & think I'll donate it for something or give it back to Harry.
I ran it less than 10 laps & I don't like it. Takes longer to tune it than building your own.
I don't care much for commercial tracks.....Everything's a blur & I can't see it run.
I'm strictly an oval track guy & I want realism....I spend 5 times more time on the body than the chassis.
I cast my own bodies, tires & sometimes wheels.
It's not that hard...I've been at it only about a year.
Guys on this site have faster cars than me, but I'm kinda' new to the proxy world & I'll build something
fast one of these days.
I guess my point is.....Slots to me is turning an idea into a reality & scratchbuilding is the only way to do it.
I've tried building identical chassis.....can't do it.......gotta' do each one different.
Harry's right....it may take more than one try to get it to work. THAT"S THE FUN PART.

[slothead]

One of the best things about HRW is the range of perspectives about slot car racing, looking at it through the 'home racing' lens. Some folks here also race at/on commercial tracks (as I probably would too if there was one in the area), but that can get much too competitive for my taste. Building my own stuff for home, or joining a proxy here, is a different animal entirely.

What I got out of the article was how when the move to aero down force cars took place shear speed overtook the fun of building your own stuff and the comradery of hanging out with good people racing 'toy' cars. That might be the key - I had trouble thinking of those flying wedges with hand wound motors, delicately balanced armatures, hundred dollar chassis (1970 dollars), clear plastic sail panels and spoilers as toys. They were elite and expensive gizmos that had very little to do with model car racing. I remember when guys started putting goop on the track so the turns were set up the way they wanted for their car. No wonder we didn't rotate lanes back then, you drew for lanes and lived with what you got. I never understood why track owners let guys put goop on their lanes, but then again they were in business to make money and if that's where the insanity had taken the hobby so be it.

Anyway, we share a great hobby and as long as we keep fun as the top priority, with realism close behind, our community will be fine.

Slothead

[bill from nh]

I had been a model car kit builder from 1958 & got interested in slots via the model car magazines. I started in 1963 with an AMT Model Car Turnpike Set & knew I wanted more. I designed a 1/32 road course for my bedroom, but never got it built because 1/24 commercial tracks opened up during the fall of 1967 in the area of Maine where I was living. I was hooked! I stayed involved in commercial racing until the last commercial raceway in NH closed in 2010. I built my first brass chassis in 1967 or 68. I didn't own a Dremel, didn't know what flux was, used a soldering gun, & never heard of brass rod, so I used tubing. Except for the motor, I still have that car today. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for scratchbuilt brass chassis. I used to print out photos of any chassis that interested me. Today I save photos on a laptop. I have hundreds of chassis photos, but unfortunately, most I never categorized. These photos include local commercial cars, cars from eBay, & cars from SCI, HRW, & other slot boards. For the last 2 or 3 years, I occasionally race with a hard body club. One of my favorite classes is the jalopy class running scratchbuilt inline chassis, H & R Hawk motors & either model kit or resin bodies. I've always enjoyed building as much as the racing. I'm getting up there in age, so I'm not really sharp in either area. But I agree, as other have said, this hobby has many different facets. If you find one, or several, that you enjoy, stick with them. Others may not always agree with your choices, but if you're having fun, your choices still matter to you. :twocents-mytwocents:

[ccobra]

I'm probably more like Strangebrew. I haven't raced on a commercial track for when I watch them once there was no way my cars would keep up with those and that was to much to spend for one of those. My first car that I built was the sunbeam Alpine that was the 'Get Smart' model kit. I melted plastic together to get a frame to fit under the body and would run that over at my buddies track and my track. Today I spend more time modeling up a chassis in Inventor, print it out, build it, and then run it on the track. I may run the cars on the track about every other week. To me the real challenge is to make the chassis look as close to 1:1 as I can get to print out and then stay on the track when I do go out and run it. Anyway like was said before, Slot cars can be measured in the fun factor that you get out of them.

[Pappy]

If you guys want to get into building and racing your own chassis you need to check out the IRRA (International Retro Racing Association). You can find all the rules, classes and local racing series in the country. The biggest Retro race each year is the R4 and it takes place at Tom Thumb Hobbies in Columbus, Ohio.

[Czar]

I used to do all my own building in the 60's. I keep threatening to build another chassis, but the RTR cars are so nice, that I have just been too lazy to do it. I do admire the work form those of you who do brass work. But, if we are going to talk about he hobby surviving - or even thriving - then you have to look to digital racing. Two, three or four fixed lanes are not appealing to a kid today who has grown up with video games. With video games the youngster is able to configure his/her car, change courses with the touch of a screen, and race against people all around the world without leaving their room. My own grandson (12 in November) really liked slots until about two years ago. Asked what changed, he says, "Boring." Not too long ago I converted to digital. Now Nathan enjoys racing again because he can change lanes, duel with ghost cars, an have a more realistic and satisfying experience. As for me? After less than three months with a digital track I can safely say that if I could not race digitally, with all of its advantages, I would probably stop slot car racing. It may not be for you (but give it a serious chance before you make that decision) but in any discussion about the future of slot car racing digital technology has to be considered a very major factor.

[strangebrew]

I've read & re-read Czar's comments & it took awhile for me to figure out what troubled me.
Here it is.................Two things
"A KID TODAY WHO HAS GROWN UP WITH VIDEO GAMES"
"WITHOUT LEAVING THEIR ROOMS"
I've spent 60 years with slots in 2 countries & many states ever since I snapped together my
Strombecker track on the bed. I've been modifying & scratchbuilding almost since
the beginning. (Try cramming a Kemtron in a 1:32 Strombecker midget)
I'm not saying any of this stuff worked, but it was FUN
We'd sit at the card table building & making mouth motor noises imagining the cars wooshing
around the track while we cut, scraped & glued stuff instead of doing homework.
The anticipation was often as much fun as the racing.
We had commercial tracks come & go, so we built our own. I retired after programming
a bit for AT&T, so I know a little of computers. I raced & built 1:1 dirt cars for 28 yrs. I confess
I know nothing of digital racing, unless it's those SIM car things I find on line.
If your talking about lane changes on a track with chips....To make fast laps you have to get
into a rhythm & hit your marks. (Look at the smiles on those of us at Harry's BORING 4 lane oval)
I don't know how you do that worrying about pushing levers to change lanes.
To me there's nothing better than imagining, designing & building something you can
hold in your hand & then watch it perform, then learn from that & make it better each time.
I wish today's kids would turn off the computer, climb a tree, play kick the can after dark,
build their own kite to fly, get a garage pass for a 1:1 race somewhere & help their dad
work on his hot rod in the garage.
Computer games aren't the future, but the end of slots.
THE NEED FOR INSTANT GRATIFICATION & COMPUTERS ARE ROBBING OUR KIDS OF IMAGINATION & CREATIVITY.

...Sorry for the rant....I sincerely don't mean to offend anybody.....Just my opinion.

[Pappy]

I like your opinion. You pretty much described my childhood when slot racing was King in the 60's.

[Czar]

Strangebrew, I take little exception to your statement. But, times change and expectations change. Just like Shotgun Dave said, technology is a double-edged sword. I am not saying you can't have fun with non-digital slots. There is a huge amount of fun to had with analog slots, but that is based our past experiences and expectations. Today's kids have different experiences and thus, different expectations. I have raced slot cars for a long time (with a long break in between) and digital racing is fulfilling my wildest dreams; making this hobby fresh and exciting again.

[Retro Racer 44]

As most of you know, I am very much into scratch building, especially the brass chassis. I built hundreds in the 60s, but only ever had about a dozen at a time, as I built them for friends or others at the local slot track. Although I had some successful racing, the building was the best part.

What killed slot cars in the 60s was the move away from scale models of real cars to the thingies and wing cars, some of which didn't even have real front wheels. Those who needed speed at all costs left the rest in the dust, and the hobby dwindled.

The hobby was rekindled in recent years by the improvements in scale realism brought on by Ninco and Fly and others. This was carried over to the other manufacturers to the point that plastic chassis cars were competitive. This was never the case in the 60s.

Companies like Slot.it, NSR, etc raised the bar with even more competitive cars, but they still aimed for scale appearance, and they also made tuning parts of higher quality available.

First the plastic cars could be upgraded and made to run faster, then people realized they could just buy parts and build their own cars. Fortunately some of us old guys are still around to let people know the ins and outs of chassis building. Others have produced good resin bodies for rare or unusual cars, and added to the fun.

My philosophy on chassis building is to keep it simple. The brass and piano wire masterpieces of the 60s had even me baffled, and ones like the angle winder in that article are a mystery that I never learned. I am slowly adding tricks to improve my cars, but will always try to have a car that looks like a real 1:1 race car.

Building a brass chassis is easy, and simple designs like Harry's Stinker are a good starting place. There are lots of articles with pics and good explanations to help the rookie build the first chassis. Give it a shot.

Keith