Scratchbuilding - Why?

[Bill from NH]

Marty, once you complete the chassis building, how about continuing with it, do a car setup article, then a tuning article to get the most out of it at the track? Just a couple suggestions.

[fl_slotter]

Bill,

Do you have your "Karnack" hat on at this time?

The reason I ask is that you are reading my mind.

I was thinking about doing just that. The closest track to me is a King that came out of Mineral Spring Ohio. It's a flat but fast King track. I think it should give the most usable test results?

[oldweirdherald]

Mineral Spring or Mineral Ridge???

Here I go... slightly off topic again... but curious if your local King is the one from Raceway Hobbies in Mineral Ridge (which I raced on at the 2003 Scale Nats).

Back to Scratchbuilding...

[jmac]

I do know the King from Mineral Ridge did go to Florida.
John

[fl_slotter]

John,

You are correct, it was Mineral Ridge, Ohio. Dan Artman's raceway.

Thanks for updating me.

[Scale Series]

Hey Marty while were waiting for the good ole slow USPS to drop of some R-Geo goodies, why don't you post some photos of some of your Can-Am chassis with some descriptions of where and what types of tracks they worked on and where and why you didn't think they worked? I have the feeling that you still have most of the chassis you have built? Could save someone some time and shorten up their learning curve?

[fl_slotter]

Rob,

Great idea! I will do that.

Let me get organized and put on my thinking cap about them.

[fl_slotter]

Here's a very interesting chassis. It kind of set off all the bells and whistles and was deemed illegal because of having hinges in more than a single direction. I'm still trying to figure out a good way of duplicating and having it be 100% legal.

The construction is what I call "One and a Half Wires". It uses .062 wire and there is a single run of that diameter wire from the rear axle tube to the front section. Then I ran a shorter piece of .062 from the front of the rear axle tube to the bite bar mount.

This chassis worked so well on the entry to the infield on Greg Walker's Daytona Replica that I was scaring some of the racers on adjacent lanes. It just went through the entry turn and would pick up about 10 feet in the turn. Sadly though it was illegal. But the design works and I will come up with

I had called the devices in the middle of the chassis "Widgets of Mass Dampening" or "WMD's". It got lots of folks excited.

This is a good example of what not to build.

[fl_slotter]

This chassis is one that I had built for racing on a King. The wheelbase was 3.850 and it had a single .078 main rail. This was a chassis that used a minimal amount of parts, but had all sorts of controllable and tunable movement.

I had takent his chassis to a race and it was very dialed in. When I hit the Deadman, the car just dug in and ran it like it was on rails. The 90 and the Donut was no challenge. It was passing everything as it came up the Donut WFO.

When I built this one, I was experimenting - I do that a lot - with some different type of body mounts. The front body mounts are inside some pieces of 1/8 inch tubing. I took some insulation from the wires and wrapped the tube on the front body mounts to limit the movement. The rear body mounts were mounted in hinges soldered to the rear of the chasis.

One of the other racers came walking over to my pit area and said, "I'll give you $150 for that chassis, right now!" I simply started removing the motor, rear tires, axle and gears. He handed me $150 in cast and walked away with that chassis. Now that I think of it, I have to build another one.

Rob, this is a great idea. I get to look at all my old photos and remember all sorts of stuff about each of them. Thanks for the idea.

[fl_slotter]

When Bryan Warmack came out with his idea for not having straight rails on the chassis, I set out to build some and try them. I think I posted the procedure here and other sites, so if you want to, you can make one of these. With the wire bender from RickB, it's pretty much a snap to make.

The first time I took the chassis out, it was a bit loose. I did not have a whole lot of time to play with it and my plans are now to head out for a weekend of slot car playing at John's Slot Car Garage on June 10th, 11th and 12th. John's has a King and a Hillclimb, so it has a lot of potential for testing. The tracks are both smooth as glass and I should get a lot of testing done.

One thing this chassis is, if nothing else, is the quietest chassis I have ever driven. It is a standard 'offset' motor bracket, but you can hardly hear the car. I think the rear bend lets the motor 'float' in the chassis and none of that vibration is transmitted to the rest of the chassis.

I'm thinking I will have to run some sticky tires - probably Piranha untreated. I'll post more after my trip in a couple of weeks.

[fl_slotter]

Here's a chassis that is built from a C.A.R.E. package that RickB sent along to me. I guess he was cleaning out the shop and found bits and pieces that he had laying about. He packaged it all up and sent it to me to get creative with. So I did.

I called this one "the Ultimate Samurai". I lent it to a racer to test and I think I'm going to have to shoot him to get it back. He told me it handled very well right out of the box and he wants to play with it.

Once again, it is a .078 main wire chassis. The pans are cut from a Samurai 1 chassis plate and I soldered a some of the bits RickB sent along to stiffen the pans. They had holes that wound up being strategically placed, so I put them to good use and mounted the body mounts through them. It is a very interesting adaptation of one of TonyP's "Aero" chassis.

Perhaps one day it will find it's way home, I'll let you know how well it works.

[fl_slotter]

Here is one of the most interesting chassis I had built. It was a JK Spec chassis that started out life as a torsional chassis, then became a floppy pan chassis.

At one time, this chassis held the 'unofficial' record for a Can-Am car at ASR-IMS in Longwood, Florida on the King. It ran a 4.71 lap time in full IRRA Can-Am trim. It was a tad on the heavy side, but it was easy to drive and simple to put laps down.

Basic structure with .078 wire a "Tri-Mount" style pan mount with 2 hinges in the front on the main rails and the floating bite bar forming the mounts. There is very little movement in the chassis and it is just plain fast.

If you want to build a car that will be a winner in JK Spec Class, this is a legal chassis design that works very, very well.

While is it 'kit built' and not scratchbuilt, per se, you can't go wrong with having one of these in your car box.

[brassy]

I'm going to go back to Marty's question: "Scratchbuilding - Why?", and attempt to answer it. IMO of course.

What the seminal Parma Flexi-Kar brought to slot racing was a shift to standardized chassis and custom motors. Pretty soon everyone used the same manufactured chassis, and attention was focused on what racers could still play with: the motors. Building multiple motors, seeking the "best" or "special" parts, trying all the various combinations of parts, with the goal of creating superior, race-winning motors. When I built 50 motors for a Nats, only to see someone there with 200 motors queued up to test, I began to lose interest.

What reversing the paradigm, i.e. "flipping" the rules to require custom chassis and standardized motors, does is give racers the ability to exercise personal creativity and to design on a much larger canvas as compared to assembling "custom" motors. Chassis design and construction, by its very complexity and clean-slate aspect, is inherently more interesting than motor assembly work.

And the level of satisfaction achieved by designing, building, and racing one's own creation to victory over numerous other rapacious racers with the same ambition is unbelieveably fulfilling and very, very compelling. I believe this result has surprised some on the IRRA BoD, as initially we were very concerned that requiring scratchbuilt chassis in Retro was the biggest barrier, the tallest hill, the potential show-stopper for Retro, and that it was very possible that few might warm or come back to it. What I think we have seen is that the scratchbuilding requirement is actually the biggest hook, simply because it can generate feelings of personal accomplishment that not every hobby, sport, or leisure-time activity can provide under any circumstances.

There's so many guys who race slots and real cars, and I've talked to some who say slots in some ways is more difficult than driving real race cars, primarily due to the level of concentration necessary to do it well. I probably know 50 guys who race slots and 1:1, which strongly suggests to me that slots provides a lot of the same "thrills".

That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

[fl_slotter]

One day TonyP and I were riding back from a race. He had just moved to Florida and while we did not yet have GRRR up and running, I could see that a road trip to get Tony into a slot car race was very necessary. So we went up to Abbeville, SC to race at Don Berni's "Slots of Fun". If y'all ever get a chance to pay a visit to that raceway, I think you will agree with me that it is a mecca of fun. I do not think there is a better raceway owner around then Don Berni. If you do not enjoy racing at "Slots of Fun" you are not going to enjoy racing anywhere! This is one of the most friendly track owners you will ever meet.

Okay, back to the chassis.

On the way home from the race, TonyP handed me the chassis he finished second with that day. It's kind of like being in the presence of greatness - sort of like Luke Skywalker sitting with Yoda and talking about fighting with laser light swords. Tony just said, "Take this chassis and make a copy of it. I think you will like it." He left the chassis with me and I sat and studied it, saw all sorts of neat little things in the chassis and then did the best job I could at cloning it.

This chassis is one of the best chassis I have. It is pretty heavy - 114 grams ready to race with a Puppy Dog motor. But if you want a chassis that is not going to do anything stupid during the race, this is the chassis to build.

If made me feel like I was copying the works of one of the best chassis builders of all times. Oh wait, I was.

This is a .078 main rail chassis car with .064 x .250 outer pans and .016 x 1.000 inner pans. It is a "Tri-Mount" type of mount for the outer pans and standard mounts for the inner pans. The body mounts are tied to the inner pans and rest on the outer pans (very important). The inner pans can move upward without moving the outer pans. So the body is isolated from the out pans. They act like the weights on the end of a tightrope walker's long bar to provide balance.

Without a doubt, this is a super chassis. I'm going to have to build another one here and soon. I think my skills have progressed to the point where I can build it even better then this one. This is the chassis for a King track!

[fl_slotter]

Brassy,

Heck yeah, I remember the BrassyKar.

One day when I first heard about "Retro Racing" I saw the BrassyKar chassis sitting there and I started to think about it. "H'mmm, it's an anglewinder, but I could mount an inline motor bracket on it . . . . .

Out of the scrap bin it came, the soldering iron heated up and a transformation was started. Perhaps we should call that a "Transformer"?