28 replies to this topic

[Horsepower]

Well, when you were a kid , the worst was that you could ruin a good motor and not be able to replace it for a couple of months until you saved up a couple of bucks. Now that we are all older and incredibly wealthy it no longer means as much. I'd be bold trying to rewind ANYTHING considering my (lack of) manual dexterity.

[brucefl]

Yeah, everything you needed was available right over the counter... even individual arm parts... comms, plates, complete blanks, wire... even epoxy, etc. My friends and I were crazed with the whole "mystery behind the motor", and it was GOOD for slots because the tracks sold a bunch of this stuff and people were winding/trying/burning/winding again. That of course was outside of the fact that people were not just running those motors but racing them, too. Back then, if your car cleared the track by 1/16", the body covered the chassis and it wasn't wider than allowed... anything was allowed as far as motors.John where did you race when you were a kid at vic cabreras or glen oaks,and around what year,I was wondering if we knew eachpther,I used to go to big daddies race track,glen oaks raceway,been to elmsford and nutley,and one other near glen oaks,on union tpke and little neck parkway.I was just looking at this old blog,and i just wondered.(years between 1968 to 1971 on and off).

 

Respectfully... not at all because of what I said above. Spec motors and homebrew both *could* easily have a place in current slots... it's the money that's the problem, not the motors, and there's no reason why those motors have to be part of a many hundreds of dollars car. Sure, some people won't be able to drive them or even be attracted to them... but the kick from spinning up a motor that you wound yourself (even if it's not the best thing around) is hard to beat.

It's no big deal anyway, as hackers like me can always be into this end of the hobby for themselves or for vintage-type cars, but this was a great part of the cool history of slots.

[don.siegel]

Well, the kick is still there! 

 

Just got home from the annual Bordo vintage meeting and a friend ran one of my rewinds and IT LASTED THE WHOLE RACE! He ran well too, finishing 12th out of 45 after losing about 10 laps when another car ran into his and destroyed the front... 

 

It was a pretty mild wind, about 75 of 31 if I remember right, but was getting very hot in practice, so we were a bit worried, to say the least... I got a whole case of Hong Kong made 16Ds, later generation with can drive and floating bearing, and thought I got a bargain, but they must have been the industrial variety, with about 10K rpm, so I've started rewinding them... not at a very fast pace, but one by one... 

 

Carry on rewinders! 

Don 

[Bill from NH]

Don, you'll soon be known as "Havlicek-Paris".