68 replies to this topic

[68Caddy]

I heard stories what people used to do during racing in the early days of racing, way back then and how they got away with it?

I know nobody is doing this today, of course; the cheaters are gone by now but, do you guys have any good stories to tell?

Remember most of these guys were in their late teens and early twenties.

Nesta

[Bill from NH]

Well, it wasn't exactly cheating, but a few years ago I had a car destroyed by an individual during an endurance race. A few months later I was race directing one of the local weekly races and forgot to call that individual in to start a race heat. Guess who lost the race by a lap or two?

Now there's another guy who destroyed a friend's car I was racing during the same period. Lucky for him he's moved to Arizona. But someday I'll get even.

[Pappy]

I ain't never cheated, and my win/loss record proves it!

[Larry Mattingly]

When we used to race 4.5" NASCARs on R-Geo's oval, the guy winning all the races admitted LONG afterwards that he had two or three identical cars... one set-up for the lower lanes, and another for the top lanes. He would switch them during lane changes...

LM

[Noose]

The Tech Nazi is watching and absorbing...

[Rick]

Noose, they ain't giving any of the new cheats, just old ones, hahahahahahah...

[Noose]

Shhhh... ya never know. Pride might make them fall into the trap!

[Mike Patterson]

Back in the mid-'80s, I was racing Group 15s in the Tri-State USRA on an intermittent basis, and with little success. At the time, 15s were a one hinge chassis. I ran this:



It had one hinge, on those little brass pans in the front. It also had floating rear pin tubes. I don't know if I was cheating or not, I was never called on it. I remember Joe Hutton describing it during tech as "interesting". It passed. The following year the switch was made to manufactured chassis, no more homebuilts. This is when I retired from racing for the second time.

I have one other "trick", but I still use it!!!

Mike

[Mopar Rob]

I would never cheat, but have once or twice been accused of using the gray areas of the rules. To me cheating is a blatant rules infraction like using a Big Dog arm instead of a Puppy Dog or dewinding an arm,

Once in a Northern Illinois Faclon series race. the rule maker was really bad at writing rules and he said any 1/32 JK body was legal, not knowing that Jerry had a 1/32 ultimate body in the catalog. So I put one on my car. I was technically legal, but probably the intention of the rules maker was the LMP bodies. I did win the race though.

[Mopar Rob]

We would fluff our braid up to make tech, then fix or change them for the race.

 

I think everyone learns that one in about the second race they enter.

[Jairus]

I lied about my age once...

[team burrito]

I had heatsinks on my motor for an enduro and the owner said I couldn't use them. But it was written in the rules, so they only cheated themselves.

Needless to say, my partner and I went on to win the race. They still thought I was cheating. Maybe next time, they should read the rules more carefully.

[68Caddy]

I wouldn't even call you guy's cheaters this are minor infractions, Did you guy's ever do something to the other guy's while racing to trough them of their game?

Nesta

[Larry Mattingly]

I'm sure Tony P. will chime in with some Jerry Brady stories...

[Big Durl]

My favorite (read: only) "cheat" is with tires that are slightly under tech height. Right before tech I soak them in lighter fluid for about 15 minutes or so. They absorb the liquid and puff up real nice. Then you go get your car teched. It will pass. Then, while waiting for the race to start, the naphtha evaporates, the tires go back down to their "pre-legal" height. Boom. You're cheating.

Enjoy.

[68Caddy]

Big Durl,

That's sweet, I love it. Is it old NorCal stuff?

Big Durl, all I can say the SoCal guys never cheat as far as I know, but I'm pretty sure they can tell us some stories about the old days . Have to say it's great that the guys from the right side are giving us some stories.

Big Durl, missed ya...

Nesta

[Lou Cicconi]

You guys need to check with Noose. I never cheated and I pass tech the first time every time. Isn't that correct, Noose???

[Noose]

Lou...

How long have you been suffering from this dementia?

[Pappy]

de·men·tia ((d¹-mµn“sh…) n. 1. Deterioration of intellectual faculties, such as memory, concentration, and judgment, resulting from an organic disease or a disorder of the brain. It is often accompanied by emotional disturbance and personality changes. 2. Madness; insanity. See Synonyms at insanity. [Latin dementia, madness, from demens, dement-, senseless. See DEMENT.] --de·men“tial adj.

Noose, I'd say dementia is pretty common at these geezer races.

[Big Durl]

Nesta, I learned that trick from a wise old NorCal master, who sadly no longer races with us, but get this, was once known as "The Tech Nazi"! Oh, the irony. I was young and impressionable back then in '02, and thought that if he did it, it was okay. Oh, I was such a fool. But old habits die hard, and seeing as how it's never made a difference on how I finished a race, I still do it now and then.

One caveat about that trick is that the naphtha also breaks down the rubber somewhat, further increasing tire wear. This means you can only do this once or twice to a pair of tires, before you simply have to cough up for some new ones.

As for there being no cheaters in SoCal, I assume you're joking or else you're just not paying attention. I have it on good authority (a Mr. Juan Hoonose) that your neighborhood is no better or worse than anywhere else when it comes to adjusting particular realities.

[Cheater]

OK, Nesta, I'll repost some confessions I made on another slot board back in 2004, just for everyone's amusement. I know some have read these stories before, but I suspect many have not.

Here's the first one:

The Fishing Line Guide

The old American Model Raceways 220-foot Sovereign track (commonly called a Purple Mile, as 220-feet is a 1/24 scale mile) at Georgia Hobby Center was a T-slot track (BTW I am told that not all AMR tracks were). That is, the slot was routed with a cross slot at the bottom and in profile looked like an upside-down "T" rather than a sans serif "I". It occurred to me that a guide with lips along the bottom of the blade might perhaps hook into the bottom of the slot as the guide tilted, with obvious benefits for a slot car.

So here's what I did: using an appropriate wire-size bit, I drilled a small hole at the very front lower corner of the guide 90 degrees to the blade, about 1/16-inch from the bottom edge of the blade. Then I drilled two holes in the rear lower corner of the blade, starting each hole from the same point on a small flat filed on the narrow vertical rear surface. One hole angled forward to the right at approximately 45 degrees; the other angled left. I then scraped a small groove on both sides of the guide blade, extending from the front cross hole to the rear angled holes. Next, using clear monofilement fishing line of about 10/12-lb test, I put a piece through the cross hole, carrying the ends back along the bottom of the blade and into the angled holes at the rear corners, and out the back edge of the blade. Pulling the two ends of the fishing line as tight as I could, I tied a couple of knots. A few drops of CA to "pot" the fishing line into the two grooves made it almost disappear into the black plastic of the guide. The knots were sealed with CA as well and once the glue was fully hard, I carefully sanded most of the knots way.

What I ended up with was a guide flag with durable, smooth lips along the bottom edges that could be felt but were virtually invisible to the eye. I made certain that the lips did not make the bottom of the guide too wide to fit into the slot in the track tech block, which was always used to check clearance before we raced.

I ran this guide in a race exactly one time (believe it or not!) and it worked VERY well. Though it did not prevent the car from ever coming out, one really had to work hard to get it to deslot. Those viewing the race may have noticed that I wasn't falling off much, but when I overcooked it coming around the tight lead-on onto the long main straight, and the car spun out well over 90 degrees to the slot without coming out of it, eyes really got wide!

There's a follow-up to this story. One well-known racer I will not name was shown the guide after the one time I raced it and he decided he would make one for himself. Unfortunately he used much larger fishing line and also neglected to check whether the modified guide would go into the tech block slot. And when the scrutineer noticed that his guide wouldn't drop into the slot at all, nor could be forced in, the jig was up for him.

I'm willing confess to a few other sins from my misspent slot racing youth, if anyone's interested. There's the tale of the bottomless can as well as the story of the inside-the-endbell shunts, just to whet your appetites...

[Cheater]

The Tale of the "Bottomless Can"

At the time we were racing stock Parma 16Ds (not sealed units; this was well before sealed motors were being marketed) and we were not proscribed from replacing arms, rebuilding motors, etc. The chassis of choice (heck, IIRC it was the only modern stamped steel chassis available at the time) was the original Parma Flexi, what we now refer to as the Flexi-1.

Even with decent soldering skills, it was not uncommon to knock motors out in hard crashes so I began sweat-soldering my motor cans to the chassis for several reasons. First, sweating the motor onto the chassis meant I NEVER knocked a motor out. Second, doing this made the chassis act as a heat sink for the motor, and running on that Purple Mile the motors would get toasty warm as we geared rather high due to the very long straightaway. The bad part was that I had to build my motors on the chassis, which was a serious pain in the butt. And one had to get the can positioned just right before firing up the torch. But overall, attaching the motor in this manner worked very well.

One problem with this trick was that the older Parma 16D cans were not stamped very crisply and the flat sides of the motors weren't very flat at all. So I began my road to perdition by sanding that side of the motor in order to get better solder contact. After doing this a few times, it occurred to me that I could lower the motor in the chassis by sanding the bottom of the can more than would be required simply to get a full solder bond. I think those old cans were stamped from .040" or .035" stock, so I just kept sanding until the bottom face was .025" thick, and noticed improved handling due to the lower center of gravity that resulted. Well, if sanding off a little helped, sanding off more would help more, right? I tried sanding the bottom to .010" thick and yep, the handling was improved further. So I started sanding the bottom of the can to as thin as I could get it. Once the motor was sweated to the chassis, what I was doing was virtually undetectable and my cars handled much better than before.

As I was installing the magnets into a can already soldered to a chassis, I noticed that the 16D magnets were quite a bit narrower than the can itself, perhaps as much as .050". You can guess the next step, I suspect. I just kept sanding the can until the bottom was completely gone and until the curved sides were shortened to just the height of the magnets themselves. The chassis metal itself then acted as the bottom can face, keeping the magnetic field essentially unaffected.

Once the motor as soldered to the chassis, with solder fillets along the lengths of both sides, the fact that the motor can no longer had a bottom could not be seen, especially with the endbell in place and with the motor bracket shielding the other end of the can from view. Even after I stopped racing this arrangement, when I asked people to look very closely at the chassis and motor, no one ever saw it until I explained what they were looking at.

Of course, I had to move the can bushing a little, to keep the arm concentric with the air gap, as well as to file a bit on the endbell, both to keep it from holding that end of the motor off the chassis and to relocate the bushing to the proper place.

I will admit to racing this setup for an entire series and was pretty hard to beat, because with its much lower center of gravity my car would corner MUCH better than other cars. Was this out and out cheating? Your call, though the rules we then used made no reference to can modifications and my cars passed tech inspection before every race!

I did move on to higher classes after that series, as I knew that the stock Flexi class was no place for that sort of sophisticated workmanship. In fact, it was not until I was conned by a teammate into racing USRA 16D classes about two or three years ago I ever raced anything but a C-can motor.