52 replies to this topic

[Highnoon]

Just got back into slot racing and have been reading all of the cool articles on here, great memories, some vivid and others a little foggy.

Stumbled on this story and it brought back a lot of memories.

I started racing in 1963 when I get an eldon race track for Christmas. Not too long after that my dad who frequented a bar called Barrons in Parma, said a slot car track opened across the street. Parma Raceway, he took me down there, with my little eldon car, I signed up on the signup sheet to race. They had a figure 8 and a back track road course. I got on the figure 8 with some type of rented controller and got totally blown off the track. Literally bigger cars would go by in the banking and my car would fly off.

I asked my dad to buy me a faster car, he told me sorry son we don’t have that kind of money go earn it so not long after I started delivering the local morning paper. I had that job till I went to college. I bought a few cars, Cox, Russkit, dynamic, etc but I got into figure 8 stock car hard body cars, perimeter piano wire with 36d or 26d motors, silicon tires and then thingies. We used cox controllers that had modified resistors that we got from The Godfather of figure 8 racing, Bob Wargo.

Then we got our first issue of model racing journal and wow all the west and east coast legends, the cars, I was hooked. I had my dad who was a body man teach me how to solder and cut. I started copying and then modifying chassis. But the only track to race on was the 1/32 6 lane track, so I raced there. I switched over to the Russkit controller then modified it after reading the article on how to modify your Russkit controller, I didn’t like the resistor so I got a rewound one with black furnace cement from Gary Fuchs who was friends with Bob Wargo. Gary had one also.

Not sure what year this was 1967? but I remember When Ken got all the Russkit stuff and he decided to get into building controllers. I was not involved in any development on the first controllers, there wasn’t much. When he started up mail order I built all of the pro controllers with ball bearings and he started production upstairs at the raceway for all of the non pro controllers. Gary Fuchs was winding resistors. I remember they would blow up all the time and they pros would send them back especially Cukras who had a rotation.

Someone was working on better resistor coating and after a few months, Gary Fuchs stop winding them. Then the ceramic coated ones came out. I was building controllers in my basement when I got home from school. I think it was a couple dollars A controller. This did not last too long a few months at most. Ken said he was bringing production in-house and told me he wanted to move into mass production, thats where the money was. The upstairs staff took over production and shortly after that they stopped the pro controller program.

I was glad as I was all about building frames, hated doing controllers. He said he would sell my frames which at first sounded great. But given the wholesale price, I was losing money on each one. So I just built them and sold them to local guys.

I learned a lot about business from Ken, all the local racers were devastated when he closed the raceway, but to him it was the best move he ever made, started him down the road to Parma International dynasty.

I remembered sometime in the 80s or 90s going to Kens house on west 130 for some sort of reunion for racers. He had building after building with actual Indy, Canam, etc race cars. He did very well in business, I talked to him for a little while but spend more time talking to Joyce. She asked about my little sister who was use to run around Parma Raceway, she got the nickname The Barracuda” by the figure 8 guys and Joyce always was nice to both of us.

Lot more stories but I’m busy trying to remember everything I forgot about racing slot cars. Having a blast.

[Bill from NH]

Gary, keep telling your stories as time permits. I & others find them interesting to read.

[Martin]

Great stuff, you were lucky to have so much involvement at that level.