11 replies to this topic

[blue&orange]

Simple question -- what was the difference between Group 20 and Group 22 arms.  Note that 2 of the arms have script tags and 2 have actual NCC tags.  And given that the NCC was trying to develop a national level playing field, why the 22?

Somebody out there knows.  Thanks.

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[jimht]

http://slotblog.net/...history-lesson/

[Isaac S.]

So that you dont have to scroll through all that, the 20s are all machine wound arms that were approved by the NCC, such as Mura and Champion. Group 22s are hand wound but have the exact same group 20 wind of 27 wire. Some of the 22s were much faster than the 20s so that is why they created separate classes I think.

[jimht]

Group 22s were not hand wound.

[Bill from NH]

The two arms on the right above are Camen 22 arms. The tag script & the purple strobe light marks on the front of the stacks indicate it's Joel's work. Some of the 22's faster speed is attributed to timing changes.

 

Jim, my Steube 22s are hand wound. So is my Steube 20, which I don't recall buying. There may be machine wound 22s, but I don't have any or ever seen one this far East.

[jimht]

NCC22  was designed to allow other manufacturers than Champion and Mura to get a piece of the pie, but to differentiate Thorp et al. from the originals, the 22 tag was required, but still all were machine wound.

 

When Checkpoint and others introduced their handwound Group 20 arms later, they were not NCC approved...because by then we'd buried the remains and formed the USRA.

[blue&orange]

OK, in the time I was typing this post a few more people jumped in.  Informative thread, but the origins of 22 still seem clouded. The suggestion that Steube found a better wind on a new Mura blank makes some sense, but why allow that modification -- except that the MRJ article suggests the NCC had caved in slightly over a year of Group 20.

 

Thanks for the ID on the Camen arms -- can anybody guess at the makers of the 2 on the left with the NCC22 tags?  Thanks.

[Bill Seitz]

The 2 on the left look like Mura arms to me, or someone else that wound on Mura blanks. Style of the tag lettering looks Mura.

[jimht]

The thread I linked before has answers...and even more detail http://slotblog.net/...on/#entry380221

 

I know it's hard for some of you youngsters to accept that everything didn't just happen all at once, but it didn't.

 

1) NCC introduces Group 20 and gives all the money to Champion and Mura.

 

2) 1970...Much crying and teeth gnashing so after a year the NCC placates Thorp, Certus, BuzzCo, etc, etc and creates Gp22, a class that still required a tagged $5.95 machine wound Group armature (tagged 22) but also allowed other manufacturers chassis and motor setups. The original Gp20 class still existed in the rules but all us Raceways just combined everything all together because it was the dark ages and slot car racing was dead as a doornail.

 

3) Another year later and Bill Steube realizes that anyone can also print a tag and put it on an armature so he puts out a handwound Group 20 armature priced at $9.95...and this was in no way approved by the now defunct NCC.

 

4)Things get real fuzzy for the next 2 years because nobody is approving anything. Despite the efforts of Ron & George Mura, Bob Haines and Bob Rule the NCC has a quiet burial.

 

5) 1972 Bob Chaney and I form the TSRA, 1973 the TSRA approves and adopts the California USRA rules along with Tony P and the gang on the East coast and we once again have a set of national rules that are strictly for us diehards that want to race Opens and think everything else is silly.

 

It's now 1974 and another year has passed and I have the USRA Nats and then the 1975 USRA Nats because there was no-one else in the country that wanted it (slot cars are dead, remember?).

 

If your memory of the details is different, OK, but in actuality there were no NCC approved hand wound armatures, ever.

 

 Ron  (Hershman) and I have discussed much of this sort of stuff off and on on the Board, but he's still a kid so I usually declare myself the winner.

[Isaac S.]

What youre saying makes a lot of sense. Thanks for putting me straight.

[Bill Seitz]

I wasn't really active in the 70's due to lack of raceways in my area and attending college, but I recall a somewhat awful Riggen NCC 20 spec chassis, a nickel-plated heavy weight. I've read other places that G27 got started around this time putting the reasonably fast and cheap NCC 20 motor into a Group 7 chassis. I wasn't sure how G22 fit into this, although I encountered these arms in the 80's and was told they ran together with G20 or G27. Thanks to Jim for providing this bit of history again for another one of the kids.

[ThunderThumb]

This was from Jeff Easterly: High cost was starting to become a problem w/ slot racing, & the manufacturers wanted to insure that everyone would stay involved in the hobby, instead of throwing up their hands in frustration for needing to "re-invent the wheel" every month...

Mura/Lenz, Champion, Dynamic, Cobra, Associated, et al got together, & created Group 20... Champion brainstormed a chassis that proved very durable, as thousands of these things are everywhere... Both the early & late versions... They updated the style of chassis periodically, so many different versions exist, & are marked "NCC20" or NCC20/22"... The intent was to run a series of races along w/ the National USRA series, so that the average guy on the local level could compete w/ his peers, & not get his clocked cleaned by the factory-sponsored racers.... I built-up a few of these, & they didn't handle badly... But, they were heavy, so driving them WAS a challenge!

Mura/Lenz & Cobra figured-out the best wind to use for the armature, & sold ready-to-run versions of the motor, along w/ Dynamic & Champion... I've owned my share of Mura 20's, & Champion 20's... 38 turns of #27 wire, on an "open" arm blank, w/ 20-25 degrees of timing... Biil Sr. wound his "Steube 20" armatures w/ 35 turns of #27, & had his name on the arm stack, along w/ the "NCC20" tag between the poles, over the windings... As these motors & armatures became more popular, the "GP22" tag was used, to differenciate the "stock" GP20 arms from the 35 turn "hotter" GP22 arms, for the scratchbuilder's class ...

Monaco Miniatures in Buena Park, CA had a nice Red track, & they held "run what'cha brung" crash-&-burn races there every Wed. night... Almost everyone ran Mura & Steube 20's, in an MPP or Green-cut early C-can, w/ the "B" endbell & the spacer plates, & the late after-market 36D brush hoods... W/ DZ's, white-dots, or blue-dot magnets, these motors were fast, cool-running, & easy on the pocketbook... I enjoyed building & racing these armatures, & a friend recently gave me an old GP22 arm, to use in a future project...

There are more people out there, w/ more personal insight into this subject, I'm sure... I hope they add to the discussion, as these are the kinds of stories that need to be remembered about the hey-day of slot racing in the early to mid-70's....

Thanks, everyone ... Take care, & good racing!