An Abbreviated History
by Rockland Russo
Let me give you the short version first.
It is simple.
Everything in slot car design that worked was developed by 1974.
More, everything that worked was designed between 1964 and 1974.
Ten Years.
Beyond that everything else was a detail.
Mostly the stuff that worked was invented by some 1/32 club racer.
Everything since then has been detail improvement or rules change.
There were, in the beginning, two distinct groups - the builders
and the runners. 99% of the racers in any given period just want
to buy a car and go. The other 1% want to scratchbuild a faster
car and beat the kits and ‘ready to runs'. All the innovations
that work (and the ones that do not) happen with the builders.
Most builders are not writers. The bane of the magazine editors
is that they cannot print what is not submitted. So, some of this
stuff was seen and talked about among the scratch builders, but
appeared (if at all) after it became obsolete, or was picked up
by the manufacturers of kits.
Like many things, the machinery did not improve until the participants
decided what it was that they were doing. They all agreed that
they were trying to make a model car run. The devil was in the
details.
A great many modelers wanted a system where model cars would motor
around layouts in conjunction with trains and boats to produce
a model layout. Some systems used a raised railroad like rail
to control the vehicle. Some used a buried slot. Some used raised
walls. Most of this happened in England.
In the late 50s Scalextric and VIP settled on a simple system
with a sunken slot with power strips on each side. This worked
so cleanly, was so simple to manufacture, that it became the agreed
upon system except that no one could agree which side of the track
was the positive connection!
Between 1950 and 1963, the big effort was making a car that would
reliably run on a model roadway. Racing was incidental. The slot
car of 1962 looked like this: The motor used an iron lump for
a magnet and was of railroad train origin. The frame was a very
simple connection between the motor and the axles. The guide just
sat there in the slot, commonly it was just a pin with brushes
dangling on either side. The rubber tires were derived from some
other source, such as static car kits or model aircraft or Toys.
If the racer had a factory built car, it was slow, probably had
a steering front end, and probably came from Scalex, VIP or Strombecker
(American Scalex as it was jokingly referred to). Of the three,
the VIP was preferred by the people actually racing. The scratch
built car was only marginally faster mostly due to the superiority
of tires manufactured from model airplane use, and the selection
of motors for the track's individual condition. Bodies were either
of model origin (Plastic), carved from balsa (sometimes covered
in nylon), or made from fibreglass. Scale was usually 1/32 scale
or 1/30.
In early 1963 the typical car changed. Cars without steering got
a drop arm. Tracks were rough, the drop arm was supposed to follow
the vagaries of the track surface. We struggled with this turkey
idea for years and never did get it right. In any case, the first
Vac-u-formed bodies came out, most notably from American Russkit.
They were very scale. 1/24 and commercial tracks became common.
In 1964 slot racing became an American Hobby. There were clubs
everywhere in 1/32, and more than enough 1/24 commercial centres
to be noticed and running gear was similar to that of 1963. Drop
arms were more common and steering existed only on British cars.
The 1/24 motor of choice was the Pittman 704/705, the chassis
usually a Tube "space frame" of 4 rails in a box configuration
holding everything together, or a Kemtron or Pitman 65 powered
car. Tires were usually derived from Veco model airplane sources.
Dynamic Aluminum frames were competitive with the scratch builts
and gave a real boost to commercial track racing. Most would-
be racers were not carbuilders.
Lionel, Varney, Eldon and Aurora weighed into the big car classes
lending credibility to the hobby. In 1/32 scale, the next big
change in chassis was underway in the Midwest. It became known
as the pan chassis. Until the pan, all chassis were essentially
designed to just tie things together. The pan/plate was the first
chassis idea developed whose intent was to make the car faster
in the corner.
In late 64, the first "real" Mabuchi motors became available.
A couple years earlier, Strombecker had started using a barrel
shaped Mabuchi called the "15R". The brushes were held
under pressure by fibre spacers but the motor was hard to mount.
Mostly, it was slow. Racers largely ignored the motor. It was
easier to continue to run the hotter open frame motors derived
from railroad sources.
In mid 1964, Revell and Russkit started improving the Mabuchi
16D, the literal ancestor to the motor in every slot car today;
and they started importing the 36D. This was the same motor but
much larger. The 16D motor was 16 millimeters high; the 36D was
24 millimeters high. I have no idea where the 36D part came from.
The 36D was the weapon of choice on the commercial tracks for
the next couple years. It was much cheaper than things like the
Pittman DC65 and Kemtron motors, made similar power, and displaced
the railroad motors on the commercial tracks. The Smaller 16D
was the motor of choice for the 1/24 racers building skinny Formula
1 racers of the period, and in the 1/32 club circles stated replacing
the small railroad open frame motors. The adaption of the Mabuchi
16D was the second big step in getting to the modern slot car.
In 1965, slot car design started breaking up. The usual 1/32 club
track was 30 to 50 feet long with 12foot straights and 9"
radius corners. The usual commercial track was 150 feet long with
30+ foot straights. The conditions were so different that winning
required radically different things from the cars. In the 1/32
clubs, cars got heavier and heavier in an attempt at better cornering.
In 1/24, the cars mostly got lighter and lighter. The motors were
not that strong, the average modern home-set womp-womp has more
power.
"Rewinding" was the big fad, producing a lot of blown
motors and armature wire dropped on the track and melted endbells.
Big motors in light chassis dominated. Mild rewinds, and rewinds
from motor companies were winning a lot of races to the extent
that there was a movement to protect the average racer. In the
1/32 clubs this surfaced as a class for "Stock" Pittman
196's geared 3.5:1. In 1/24 it came out as a "12 volt"
class. 12 volt motors being defined as having a wind of 2 ohm
or more and derived from an approved list of motors. Class racing
to make it easier for the hobbyist rather than the no limits racer
failed as the "fast guys" sneered at the guys who wanted
slow cars.
The usual 36D had a #30 single wind, the same wire as the modern
Parma 16d, a 2 ohm rating, the usual stock 16D had a #34 single,
4 sizes slower than the modern Parma, magnets at about half the
strength of the Parma, and endbells so cheap that they would often
melt.
1966 was a hot year. There were purportedly some 20,000 commercial
tracks in operation. In late 1965, I drove, pre freeway, cross
country. I spent several weeks doing so. I did not drive through
a single town that did not have a commercial track visible from
the main drag.
A lot of people were struggling to come up with a faster car.
And most of the ideas did not work. The 1/32 guys were still tinkering
with the pans. They all decided that having the pan loose and
rattling worked. The problem they had was that no one had enough
horsepower to carry that weight on the long straights of the commercial
track. 1966 was the year of a big controversy over motor placement
in Sports Cars. Sidewinders were seemed more driveable, inlines
allowed wider tires. How? What!!? Well up till this point, all
the bodies were pure scale models. Most serious tracks required
the tires to fit UNDER the body. The superlight inline Formula
one/Indy car had all the fast lap times in the commercial centers
because they did not have to struggle with these problems.
The dominant car was called "Morrisey Style" or "Russkit".
It had a brass tube frame, a Russkit 23 motor (also called the
"500B"can, endbell drive with hoods on the endbell)
and a rewound arm of #31 wire (the stock arm was a #34, the current
Parma 16D is a #30) and Graupner model airplane foam tires. The
whole thing weighed about 3 ounces. The tube frame was so fragile
that many people used solid rod or piano wire at some weight penalty.
This was the year when Mabuchi produced its first can end drive
motor in both 16D and 36D sizes. Confusingly most racers also
called this a "B" can, declaring the endbell drive motors
as "A" cans.
The model railroad derived motors just disappeared. Charles Pittman,
the best of the railroad motor guys tried producing his own can-style
motor. The quality was astounding, the speed was not. Cheap Japanese
motors that were being rewound by everyone in sight drove the
expensive Pittman out. Factory rewinds from companies like Dyna-Rewind
and Champion became available. And Mabuchi came out with a new
size motor, the 26D that was an attempt to compromise between
the torque of the 36D and the speed of the 16D. But so many builders
were working on 16D's, that the 26D proved to be a dead end. In
1967 the usual procar was made with piano wire, was in-line with
a 26D with a #29 single rewind. Sidewinders lost out as an option
in the pro-car circuit.
The real change that affected racing was the invention of the
Dynamic guide model #659. This is the father of every guide in
use today. Until this guide, there was no standard. Braid was
cut from strips and screw mounted to the guide. With the #659,
braid came with clips that plugged into the front of the guide.
The guide itself was secured to the drop-arm by collets or nuts.
The modern flag is just a development.
Air control came in. Until this point, all bodies were scale.
People stated lowering and lowering, flaring the fenders on sports
cars out to the (at the time) 3" limit. And adding wings!
Not the big, non-scale airdams of today, but scale sized wings
with endplates. The reason was that real full-size cars were also
sprouting wings. Power was so much better that the midwest style
1/32 pan became common on all the cars, any scale or type.
The typical California style pro-car was a brass or steel wire
chassis with outrigger pan mounts and a drop arm. In the east
the same car usually had a full pan so loosely mounted that it
rattled. Everyone used the 16D motor with an unbalanced armature
was probably about 65 turns of #30 wire. The motor usually had
a stronger set after-market set of magnets. Essentially the equivalent
of the current Group 10 flexi-motor. Some people were tinkering
with no drop arms,
a radical idea at the time. How fast were these cars compared
to today? On the blue king, there were 2 banked turns, the main
bank and 10 degrees in the finger. The fast lap of a pro car was
6.2 seconds. The car was usually four main rails of brass, with
a 26D and a #29 single wind but things were changing almost weekly.
During 1967 a guy named John Wessels started hinging pans on sports
cars. The cars worked so much better that everyone who could build
was doing it. In late 1967, Dynamic introduced the ‘handling'
body. All other bodies at the time were scale so racers, the serious
guys, started selecting the widest body they could find and chopping
it down as low as possible. A lot of tracks banned these and required
factory available bodies. Dynamic complied by marketing a line
of sports car bodies uniformly 3 1/8ths inch wide (the width maximum
of the time) and flat as they could get.
Unknown to most racers, the next big change happened in the Chicago
area in mid to late 1967. A guy named Glen Seegars was exploring
chassis options. Inlines were inefficient but easy and sidewinders
were a pain because in order to have enough room to have decent
width tires, you had to chop up the can. Half inch was commonly
sliced off the can housing and armature, and a hole drilled through
the magnet to clear the axle. A lot of work! Seegars decided to
compromise. He reasoned that motor angled off the axle about 20
degrees would clear the tire, letting him get away with not modifying
a motor. These chassis were originally called 'sidesaddle sidewinders".
Today we call them anglewinders.
In1968 things got crazy. Bob Schleicher, long a writer on the
subject of slot cars, wrote up the first article on the anglewinders
in the March 1968 Car Model magazine. He did so after seeing the
cars in the Chicago area on a business trip. A drag racer and
famous non-driver, Gene Hustings, took the idea to a 1/24 California
Pro race and won. Within weeks half the racers in California had
anglewinders. In August 1968 an article by Hustings was published,
and the rest of the pro racers across the country took notice.
They, too, started building anglewinders.
Anglewinders produced a big split between the hobbyist and the
dedicated racer. Until then, the hobbyist could be reasonably
competitive with a Dynamic or factory wire inline from champion
or Phase III. The anglewinder put the inlines out of business
quickly. In San Francisco, a company named Chaoti started producing
the modern air control body. No claim of scale was made, the bodies
looked like door stops (not meant to be derogatory) and were as
wide as the rules allowed. At the time, since a pretence of scale
was demanded, they were not allowed on a lot of tracks. The usual
chassis was either wire (brass or steel) with some brass strip
added and floppy pans. The motor was probably a 16D with hotter
aftermarket magnets by Champion or Mura and probably had a wind
of #30 or #29 wire. Tthis is the wind of the modern group 12 or
15.
Quickly the anglewinder changed again, more hinges were added
to the pans. One hinge allowed the pans to tilt forward, called
a "plumber" due to the complex tubing on the front.
You will notice all the flexi's, wire 12s and 15s use this hinge.
Stepping back to 1965 or so, commercial tracks, individually or
as groups, would attempt to run a limited money class. Often it
would focus on a kit or ready to run car. Monogram-only or Revell-only
races and similar were held. And all of them were failures. In
1967, the fast cars were of the Formula 1/Indy style. Motors were
limited, weight was paramount, Indy cars were lightest. Car Model
Magazine proposed something called "Formula III" which
was to be a limited class, limited to off the shelf motors and
chassis ("or their equivilent"). Most tracks put a $12
limit on this class. The class proved popular, usually the racer
ran a Dynamic magnesium inline chassis, or wire chassis from Champion
or Phase III or Ferret. A lot of cars would show up with severely
modified chassis and for some reason this was allowed. However,
even in Formula III, which was usually expanded to cover sports
cars (usually with the Cox La Cucaracha). This led ultimately
to the group 10/12 class we know today. The big rule was that
the whole car had to cost $12.98 or less!
In early 1969, Dynamic, long the standard in Formula III/Group
12 racing came out with a new car. The chassis was stamped out
of brass and it was an ANGLEWINDER. This was the car that made
"Group Racing" practical. It handled nearly as well
as the scratchbuilts. It came with a 16D motor, good magnets,
and #30 single wind armature very much like the Parma 16D in the
Flexi.
At the same time the manufacturers got together and agreed to
limited class racing. The Classes? Group 12, Group 15, Group 20,
Group 7 (open). For the first time, a racer could buy an off the
shelf car, travel anywhere and be legal.
By the end of 1969, we were almost there. Racing was falling apart.
There weren't very many tracks. Commercial track slot racing was
falling into a dark age where there were only a couple of hundred
tracks, not thousands. The foundations for a Renaissance in slot
racing was there. We had multiple hinged pan anglewinders with
trick motors with astounding winds and monster magnets. And we
had a successful nation program for limited class racing.
1970 came in with even fewer tracks. But the technology was still
growing. Lexan is the trade name for a polycarbonate plastic of
great toughness. Prior to Lexan, bodies were made of butyrate
plastic or styrene. With age they yellowed and became brittle
- actually they were always brittle. Vac-u-formed butyrate, at
least, was cheap and replaceable. And nearly as heavy as the Styrene
and Fibreglass bodies it replaced circa 1965 in the pro-cars.
But Lexan, ah Lexan, was tougher. It was literally the stuff used
for bullet proof plastic. And could be moulded in a thickness
only 1/4 that of butyrate, and still be stronger. And lighter.
Lexan made cars faster. And it made wings practical because it
was so tough when thin. The unmodified Blue King record was in
the 4.5 second range.
Oh, I almost forgot: Motors. In 1968, the usual Mabuchi had a
can inside the can to shim the magnets closer to the arm, and
close off the magnetic field. Mura introduced the "B Production"
motor. This was a #29 single wind in a new can that was lower
than a 16D. Despite the fact that in times past, various other
Mabuchi's were called the "B can", everyone started
calling this motor the "B Can".
A couple years later, Bob Green started producing a can that was
really just a can made out of the full can shim that used to be
in every pro label 16D. It was always called the "Green Can"
but only for a couple years. By 1974 everyone called this can
the "C-Can".
By 1974 a lot of car builders were using the 16D offshoot motor
called the "13uo". This motor was just a 16D with tiny
magnets and a smaller can. It was about 13mm tall. This motor
started showing up in 1970 among the 1/32 racers because a 13uo
allowed a tighter angle on the anglewinder in the limited spaces
of a 1/32 car. Oddly in 1/32, they never went to non scale racecars!
What was going on is that everyone realized that the smaller the
can, the lower, the better handling. The solution was to take
C-can magnets, sand them down to fit the 13uo, cut down the unmeltable
endbell of the C-Can to fit. They were powerful and racers started
cutting away the can for cooling. It produced a "strap"
looking can. A frame motor as open as the old Pittman motors.
By 1974 we were done. The most common level of racing was Group
Racing. Group12 used one of the stamped chassis RTRs with a #30
single wind. Group 15 used a single hinge wire and brass chassis
factory built with a special category for scratchbuilt single
hinge chassis (box stock and International) Group 20 was limited
to 2 hinges and the #20 wind. Group 27 was popular with a scratchbuillt
chassis and a #20 wind. Open cars were, well, open. Everyone used
a Lexan body with aircontrol of some sort. The hotter motors used
C cans or Strap Cans along with impressive magnets.
Details? Well, things like cobalt magnets were a development.
Airdams were derived from the wing endplates that everyone was
using in 68. (with the minor quibble that an airdam that made
the car wider under power would not be allowed in the sixties.
I know.....we tried!).
The Slot thing in the 60s was a FAD! Like Hoola
Hoops, Frisbees, Danial Boone, Pet Rocks, Chia Pets and others.
Unlike other Fads, ours eventually developed into a HOBBY.
I don't agree with you, Rocky. Slot car racing was a hobby that
became a fad. The hobby was commercialised, and s lot of people
made a lot of money from it. But when it got too expensive and
people started to lose > interest, they got out and turned
their backs on the industry.
I am sorry you missed my point. I did not Say
that slot cars were invented during the FAD, or the FAD invented
slot cars or that they disappeared afterwords. The original
post was musing about how today was like the 60s. Chia Pets
existed before their fad, and still get sold on late night TV.
My Point was that the FAD of the 60s was its own thing. Except
for a handful of collectors indulging in nostalgia, it has NOTHING
to do with slots in the 50s or slots in 2002. I am not sure
what you mean with "The hobby was commercialized". Course
it was. Still Is. Hornby doesnt make a profit, they are GONE.
"It got too expensive:".....My memory of 1973 through
1993 is this. Most racing consisted of little clubs in basements
and spare rooms with a large segment of Scaley types. Most scaley
were either kids with a one
time set, or collectors who did not run their stuff. The RACING
that persisted. The big organized racing that PERSISTED that
I know of was: ECRA in england, and Group 7 in Texas Series.
And, these 2 are easily the most expensive racing EVER. People
who wernt there in the mid 60s in the US dont have a clue about
how pervasive it was. In the US, at least, you would be hard pressed
to find any town larger than 5000 people that did NOT have a commercial
8 lane raceway in it. In 1965, my dad retired from the military,
and we drove slowly cross the country. No free ways. Slowly?
spent 2 months. Pre freeway ment that you drove through the
main street of every town and village. AND EVERY ONE OF THEM
HAD A SLOT TRACK visible from the main drag. What is going
on NOW, is just Hobby stuff. Smaller than rail, smaller than
RC cars(which are much more expensive), smaller than RC airplanes.
And definately smaller than GOLF!
Fate
I have several cars of this period running. So,
if it does not bore the rest of you I will talk about "keeping
them running". Hmmm Sidebar, PdL used a car not unlike
this(I am certain he will proclaim much better) to be the "french
national champion" in 67(I think) or 68. I have an old
Anderson car that is brass rod. I have several of my own. Though
most of the survivors were built for others who gave them back
to me when they were obsolete(well actually decades later!).
I would often use the Pactra Hemi modified with a rewind and
such. The problem with Hemis is that the Can bearing is only good
for a half hour or so. So, in recent times, i discovered that
the old unbalenced 16d/Parma set motor is the same in performace
and that is mostly what
they use as the modern parma slots into the old Hemi brackets.
I just trashed my last in the Stash of Pactra 66 Ferrari F1 bodies(I
run these cars a LOT), but PdL came up with some repros for me
that I have to
paint. The early superlight cars used mild winds of about 30s.
The Heavier Cars. like the Anderson car, used a 27 or 28 usually
a modified Champion 507 or 517. But years ago I discoved that
the old "Super16d" not the recent ones, rang up on my
meters with the same readings as the old motor. But easier to
keep in bushings and stuff. So, the heavier cars have old Parma
16ds with about 10 deg. timing, stock magnets and so one. Pretty
cool to run them know ing that you can replace the bits. I
buy foam blanks to mount on old rims unless I am being LAZY.
A few years ago when the Drag racing got popular it suddenly
became EASY,
to buy wheels and tires in the old sizes. My older 36ds use "drag
smoothies" that are 1 1/8th inch by 1/2 wide, the drag guys
also use 1" and 7/8ths meaning I can buy things RTR!
How do they run? Well, just fine. All the motors are in a milder
state than when I was racing them. But that is OK as I am not
SERIOUSLY racing them. I could probably build up a couple modified
Dynamics of the peirod of I wanted. Something that was popular
in the mountain west that I am not sure were run elsewhere. These
were designed by Ben Millspaugh in Denver(at the famed Celebrity
Sports). I know that Mike Gillett in the great White North ran
them on the plains.... Anyway, a bounty hunter would take the
dynamic bracket, and plug in a Wire and sheet front in that was
cinched down by the mount screws. This was popular, particularly,
in those tracks that had a limited cost class. I used one in
a series that required a 12 buck limit on the parts! I could
restore a couple of those. Hmmm. I cannot remember if I
have had Alan drive these cars. I KNOW that Luiz has(and he liked
them). A neglected period, to be sure.
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