26 replies to this topic

[Old pink can guy]

Do any of you remember in the mid to late 60's when GE made slot motors? As I remember they had loads of torque and low on the rpm's. you had to gear them high. Slow out of the hole but once rolling would run all day. Any pictures would be great. As well as some history. Maybe Mr PDL can help us out!

[Michael Rigsby]

Ken, I remember them well. They were made by GE at Dynamics request and had a silver case with a black and silver Dynamic sticker on them. They called it the Silver Hornet. Here is a link to an article on them. You are right, they had tons and tons of torque but no rpm and ended up being a failure pretty much. The magnets were really, really thin and moulded into the can which was about the size of a 36D. And the magnets were extremely strong. I had one in the inline Dynamic chassis that I tried to get to run, but the 36D would outrun it pretty much. More RPM out of the 36D and a little less torque to deal with.

Anyway, I never could get much speed out of mine unless I geared it 2:1 and finding gears to get that ratio was extremely hard. If you had small, wide tires and a large crown gear, the motor had enough torque to strip the teeth off a Cox crown with no problem.

Michael Rigsby

[TSR]

Actually, GE never made slot car motors to speak of. Dynamic found that motor, sized like a Mabuchi FT36, and asked GE to sell it for slot racing use. GE accepted and wound special arms for Dynamic, the first offering excellent torque but low RPM, so it was not really usable. The second "rewound" version had less torque and more RPM but by that time people were sunk into smaller Mabuchi motors and that was the end of that.
Dynamic marketed the motors in chassis kits as well as a few car kits that include the Mirage, then later to get rid of the poorly selling motors, several other body styles: McLaren M6, Ferrari P3 coupe...

[Steve Deiters]

I've always wondered, even when these motors came out, what they were originally designed and used for? I think Dynamic was hoping to have lightning strike twice by taking an industrial motor, ala Globe, and adapting it to a non-tradtional application, in this case slot racing, with at least the initial success of those round motors from Dayton, Ohio. Anyone have any ideas?

[Old pink can guy]

Thanks Michael and you to Mr P. The men in the white coats will not have to pick me up now. LOL. I am starting to realize senior moments can be a good thing! Thanks to all for making the blog soooo good.

[Old pink can guy]

Steve I think I remember readind an article about them being used for use on fins on missiles such as the side winder. Do not quote me on that but very sure I saw the article!

[don.siegel]

Steve,

A period article in Model Car Science called the Dynamic/GE an electric toothbruch motor but don't know if that was ever confirmed.

Anyway, a lot of these motors did double duty: seems that a very 36D looking beast is inside a hair dryer, another one was in an arcade game, etc. Don't know if you remember the Russkit 25, an all-metal version of a 16D, which Russkit introduced to compete with the 16D, but there are a bunch of these floating around that are definitely not slot car motors - so we assume these were adapted from an industrial motor as well!

Here's a comparison photo of these GE and Russkit 25 with their industrial counterparts (a bunch of the GE motors in industrial guise also turned up)


Don

[don.siegel]

And then there were all the slot motors adapted more or less directly from train motors...








or even boat motors...

[Old pink can guy]

Did I create a monstor or jog some Brain cells LOL. Thanks guys keep it coming!

[markdshark]

A GE/Dynamic combo is currently up on ebay. Check out item #120461533273. It's listed as AMT, but it's a GE motor, with a Dynamic chassis, in the original box!

[Gary Bluestone]

I had good luck with the GE motor. I have been running an inline Dynamic dynaflex chassis powered by the GE motor and people are always amazed at the speed and are checking the undercarriage to see what makes it go so well. This is vintage hardbody racing against other inline Dynamics mostly 36Ds. On seeing this thread I inspected the car and it has a 12T pinion pushing a 35T cox crown gear, 1" foam tires , just over 5/8" wide, 2& 3/4" wide track. The track on which we run is 165 ft long Kingleman
I liked this motor so much , I searched out the Dynamic sidewinder chassis that fits the GE. I needed to get a NOS chassis since it comes with an idler gear, motor adaptor plates, idler bearing and hardware that is impossible to find loose. On this build I was constained by the width of the chassis inside a predecorated AMT 57 Chevy, so I had to use narrow tires. I used a set of Cox American Mags with original rubber but this never really ran good , so I recently cut some fish rubber to fit the Cox wheels and hope to try it out on the big track next week. Gb

[idare2bdul]

I believe the same motor was used in electric toothbrushes.

I've got one of the dynamic idler gear set ups with a Cheetah body on it. Decent speed on the straight but almost zero brakes.

[Horsepower]

Ask the man who owns one (or more)! The motors came in different models, although they all looked similar. The numbers on the motors were slightly different also, as in 3ADM and 3ADM-4 for example. They DID have different type brush setups which were not interchangeable. Not only were some used for toothbrushes, one of the models of this type motor was used in old arcade games to move different items on the machines game board. I sold one to a guy who replaced one in an arcade game and he sent me the pictures of it.
Check these articles out..................
http://www.vsrnonlin...08/GEMotor.html

http://www.vsrnonlin...08.html#Letters

[don.siegel]

Thanks Gary - that's the info we needed! Greg Holland's VSRN was an amazing source of information, especially in the pre-Net days.

Did you ever try rewinding those slow GE motors?

Don

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

If it had hit the racks, say, in 64 or 65, it would have done the good assertian of allowing anyone to compete with the pros. Sadly, in '67 it was running against cars so flat and low they might have driven UNDER the GE! A couple of my friends had this as their First car, one put the Lancer Ferrari Can Am body on it. And we have fun little matches with it. with a lot of careful set up I can get it to run with a similar 36d rewound in a dynamic, but not against anything in '67 that I have that survived.

I know from my friends that they were running well back in the F or G main for them before they started scratchbuilding.

Fate

[don.siegel]

Exactly Rocky - in fact, all the period reviews were pretty much saying that, although they couldn't come out and flatly state it wasn't competitive, because they were nice guys and Dynamic was an advertiser!

Don

[MrWeiler]

I bought into the ad hype and thought "If GE is building slot motors, how can I go wrong?" I had my track order one of the first batch and the day it arrived I spend all afternoon building a chassis, mounting and painting a McLaren Mk 1 body and assembling the car. Put it on the track-dud. Tried all the gears in my box and still dud. Bought lots more gears-still dud. The chassis was fine (as far as I could tell with how slow the motor was) but the whole load was slower than my KTM padlock motor car. The next day I gave the car and motor away to some kid in the raceway to play with.

As I was in JR High and racing and buying parts with lunch money the experiment put quite a dent in my racing budget. I still think about sending a bill to GE for my time and money.

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

The fastest you could BUY!

Grin.

First time I remember that being a national campaign was with the dynochargers. Given they were smaller and actually a clever motor, they should have been better.

But the chassis looked great, and bent as it ran, and it turned out that the motor wasn't as advertised. In North Carolina, we had a this high speed figure 8. And an anual Indy 500 on memorial day for serious money. The adults were buying this box set using the Lotus body like crazy and just couldn't get them to go well.

Top Qualifyer was my Ferrari with a midwest style chassis and a 28 wind on a 36d... and the top 4 cars were all much like this(and built by me).

The adults who bought the campaign were very vocal at the owner about being scammed.

Fate

[don.siegel]

Yeah, I got taken by that Dyn-O-Charger ad too, was offered a Lancia-Ferrari in 65 or so - but remember that the claim was it was the fastest production slot racer in the world - and that may well have been true (although I kinda doubt it); you're comparing it to a pretty hot rewind!

The only real head-to-head test was the January 66 article in Rod & Custom, and once again the excuse was that there just weren't enough amps available for the Dyn-O-Charger - very possible on the American 150, but seems to me very unlikely on the dragstrip they used (unless they were limited by local laws to only using transformer power).

Don

[Horsepower]

Thanks Gary - that's the info we needed! Greg Holland's VSRN was an amazing source of information, especially in the pre-Net days.

Did you ever try rewinding those slow GE motors?

Don

Hi Don! I never rewound one. I took another one apart and like Greg Holland said, it didn't have the "right stuff". No Kirkwood, no shunted brushes and at that point I left it, never getting around to doing a gauss measurement. Getting the endbell and brushes back together is almost as bad as the Globe SS-101!

[tjsguns]

Rare Classic Stinger Coupe body mounted on a Dynamic Chassis powered by a GE Sidewinder setup w/ idler gear.
This thing is smooth as silk w/ plenty of power, great brakes AND it never gets hot!

[vsrn]

I think that in the GE ads at some point, they said that "there was plenty of room for rewinds",
and might have even offered a hotter wind.

I know I had an inline version at one time, and it never handled well...

Greg Holland
vsrn

[don.siegel]

Hi Greg - yep, they did say that in some ads. I think they realized pretty quickly they had a dog on their hands, and that it wasn't going to be competitive as is in the world of 1967 slots, with all the hot 16Ds...

They did come out with a rewind version (26 wire!), and I have one in fact, but that didn't change the main problem of a high center of gravity.

These days, in our vintage races they're considered excellent motors, and Ezio of Italy, who swears by them, has won a few races using the Dynamic/GE... I think he generally sets them up in a sidewinder layout, but without the idler gear...

Don

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

One of my friends from highschool who is mechanically inept has me maintain his. It would have been killer if it came out in 64!

Fate

[Edo]

I don't know why you gentlemen keep complaining about the GE motor!

I have a couple of magnificent cars which work beautifully with it and they're very competitive with many of the vintage rewinds I have found (on my track, that is)!

This Dynamic Eagle is geared 12/33 with D=24mm wheels and it is a fast car with great acceleration (true, it could use a few more yards on the straight to reach full potential :









This Dynamic Fort GT40 is geared 12/35 with D=22mm wheels and is a handful in acceleration and perfectly geared for my track:





Off course I understand that by 1967 motors were heavily rewound, but as a commercial motor it is'nt so bad to play with.