97 replies to this topic

[Slotgeezer]

I agree... a VERY nice-looking Mura open-class armature, Rick... aND the 16D sized brush hoods mean that armature has never reached it's "full potential" !!

I'm unclear as to the yellow dot magnets... maybe Dokk can inform us?

Keep goin', Rick... Us "old timers" are really enjoying your good fortune... this is better than Christmas! ...

Jeff Easterly

[dc-65x]

Thanks, Jeff.

Here's another Champion CEE can that's been extensively worked over:





Cracked open...



... and cleaned with up Blue Dot magnets, a lathe-turned Mura endbell, a highly-modified can, and another possible Mura open arm:



The motor was locked up when I got it. That might have caused this boo-boo to the arm:



Bummer. It meters .1 to .2 ohms on all poles. Maybe a little dab of epoxy on the boo-boo will make it OK for limited use?

Next...

[Cheater]

Dang, Rick, that stuff is really rusty. Was it all stored in a flooded basement or possibly anointed with acid flux when it was boxed up?

[dc-65x]

What do you mean, Greg ? What rust?







After a little, well, a lot of elbow grease we have a nice little NCC20:



Next...

[dc-65x]

This-a one was-a not-a so good:



Look at that Valley of the Comm!

I saved the nice 20/40 milled can, the end bell hardware and the Super-B magnets on this one.

Next.......

[dc-65x]

The last B-motor for the evening is this lovely first gen can with something painted on the side:



Opened up we find a nice looking open arm with engraving:



It looks to me like another Mura engraved as a 24...



... with this also engraved on it. Greg, do you have your reading glasses handy? To me it looks like COBEA but what makes sense is COBRA. :



Nice-looking arm. I saved it and the magnets. Good thing I have some endbells for these Bs.

Next...

[gascarnut]

Like everything you post here, this is a most wonderful thread to follow - thank you, Rick!

[Bill from NH]

Rick, that's an "R" rather than an "E." It definitely reads COBRA. Bifocals don't lie.

[havlicek]

Holy moly, Rick... looks like you hit the mother lode! NICE finds.

Good thing Bill has the bifocals on, because to me it looks like it reads "CDBeA".

[Bill from NH]

The paint on the can reads COBRA too, except the guy didn't have room for the "A."

[havlicek]

... Well, that's what happens when you go to mark your motors with...

a 9" paint roller and Sears semi-gloss.

[One_Track_Mind]

Hi Rick,

Great find! I'm glad for you, now you have more stuff to show us how to build some great cars and motors.

Just wanted to share my bubble gum drop Mike Tango motor. It's got a 26-28 engraved on it also. The word "Tango" is engraved at an angle to the stack while the 26-28 engraving is straight across the stack like your word "Tango".



Ron Hershman tuned power plant, with shunt wires.



Professor motor drag gears.



The 64' Ford Thunderbolts powers to a 1.080 down the strip.

[Bill from NH]

Brian, not to get off-topic here, but Tasca Ford in E. Providence still sponsors a 1:1 funny car. Do these old motors Rick is showing remind you of the one of your's I still have?

[dc-65x]

Thanks, Dennis.

Hey John, I think I'll go with Bill's COBRA.

It's great to see that big Tango B running today! Nice Thunderbolt, Brian .

Here's another Champion CEE can motor:





This looks like a customer job that didn't turn out to well. The end \bell is a hacked-up B and the mounting holes are just shotgunned into the can all over the place. Kind of ruined the can. Got some Blue Dots though...



... .and an unknown S24 armature with a comm that needs help??



Next...

[Cheater]

Just how many of these rusty semi-piles you got, Rick? LOL!

All from the same snag?

[havlicek]

... I'm not sure, but I think that comm might have a groove worn in it, Rick!

Boy... I keep waiting for the day when someone tells me they have a hundred or so old Mura .007" blanks and comms they found and have no use for. I wonder if I should hold my breath or not?

[dc-65x]

Hi Greg,

Yup, all from the same eBay lot... but what do you mean, "rusty hulks"? This one's for you





This one is so bizarre I can't bring myself to touch it.

[TSR]

Send it to the King, he likes these things.

[dc-65x]

Send it to the King, he likes these things

Not a bad idea and it's an anglewinder, too!

Philippe, what do make of this:



Of course anything could have been put in that box but this is what was in it:



It's got thin laminations with fiber end plates. The drill balancing is not flat bottom like earlier Mura's:



It's not a "green goop" Mura blank at least.

[Slotgeezer]

Here's where I disagree w/ Dokk.... ...He claims there's no winding code for Mura/Lenz arms... I've been told different...

The color markings on the can-end of the armature indicate that it's a Mura/Lenz arm, depending on rotation... The wire size leads me to believe it's a parallel-wound double-wind...

My buddy Steve Beck worked at American Raceways in Beverly Hills... He memorized the Mura/Lenz color-code, so he could identify armatures that would come to him from customers who had bought them used, or had forgotten which "flavor" they had purchased ... I remember the purple-yellow markings indicated a 27-28 double wind... My favorite "flavor" of Lenz armature...

I keep trying to get Steve to write down that color code, so we can use it as a reference for the myriad of Mura/Lenz, Cobra, Dynamic, & Certus armatures that Mura wound up in San Leandro... That way, if there's a bit of color left on the can-end of the arm, we can identify what the wind is... Sadly, I haven't had contact w/ him in quite awhile, but I will keep trying...

The "green goop" arms didn't appear until late in Mura's production scheme, & then they stopped using the stuff all over the armature, & used it to insulate the wires from the blank itself, & returned to using epoxy on the windings... So, the arm pictured was wound before the "green goop" insulation period, & before the bubble-gum arms... Probably a D-can arm, looking at the comm tying style...

I watched as the Mura/Lenz line changed drastically over a 3-4 yr. period... Lots of innovation, & developement of the B-can motor... Until someone figured out that 36D brushes needed to be used on 16D-sized motors, to deal w/ the high-current draw, these motors were good for 30-35 minutes in a 40-minute A-main... After... what.... 6 different can styles?... ...Mura finally admitted defeat, & settled on the Green can ( or C-can, as we've come to refer to it...) as the best solution to open motor longevity...

Great arm, Rick... Love this thread!


Jeff Easterly

[dc-65x]

Hi Jeff,

So you think it could be an early Mura even without the flat bottom drill balancing holes?

Glad you like the thread. I'm about burned out on cleaning up old rusty motors. Still have more to go though!

[dc-65x]

Here's a pretty nice NCC20 chassis:





Here it is all spiffed up and waiting to be built up into a period car GP20 just for fun:





Maybe I'll use these 3/4" front wheels



HOLD ON . OK, Mr Micro Blaster fixed them up. What an amazing save. The ultra fine media doesn't hurt the tires. I love that thing:



The wheels came off this crap wagon:





The motor turns out to be a nice Mura 20/40 milled B-can with Super-B magnets.......



.........and an NCC20 arm in good shape:



I might put this motor back in to a new Riggen GP22 chassis. I think the crap wagon Riggen chassis is a bit too far gone with all the new ones still floating around.

Next..........

[TSR]

Jeff, we have both Mura and Lenz arms from the same period, and the color markings on the back are identical. I don't think that these painted marks were a "code" as your friend thought, but simply a way to figure out which pole needed drilling under the balancer's strobe, and applied indifferently and with the colors du jour. it would be easy enough to separate the CW arms from the CCW arms in production.

Now, every Mura arm I have ever seen from 1967 onwards had the characteristic "sheet-metal drill" flat-bottom balancing holes until that changed in 1970 when bob Green was hired, and I am absolutely certain that this arm is not a Mura or a Lenz for that matters. The earliest Mura and Lenz arms used a smaller-diameter standard drill and deeper holes in the stack.

What this arm is, is difficult to assert, but I see no reason not to believe it to be a Certus. The fiber plates over thinner lams look very amateurish actually, but John Thorp used them pretty late. I would bet that this is a Certus arm manufactured to their specs by Thorp. Before or after Gil landed there is the question.

[Champion 507]

Rick - did you tumble the NCC20 chassis to get it that nice?

[dc-65x]

Hi Doug,

I tumbled it but it only did half the job. I finished it off with a Dremel and wire wheel and metal polish by hand. Sometime elbow grease works best