10 replies to this topic

[Mopar Rob]

Here are a couple of 1/32 cars from Bill Worden's collection.

I believe the the Toyota is a Betta chassis built by Charlie Fitzpatrich and the Jag is a 101 chassis?

We would run these on various club tracks with Super Wasp motors. The Jag seems to have a green wire Mura and the Toyota has a Pro-Slot arm. Not sure who hand painted the Betta bodies? Mabe Bill will chime in?

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[gascarnut]

Very cool!

I don't remember 101 making bodies, so the Jag could also be a Betta, or perhaps a CAT.

Those are lovely frames, they bring back some memories too! We ran very similar stuff in the mid to late 1970's, but with GP20 or GP27 arms mostly. The construction details are exactly what we and the guys in the UK were doing too - the cans being part of the frame, the full flexi-iso hinge design, the whole deal. They look a lot like what Ian Fisher or Pete Hore or Steve Walker were building back then, before we started with spring steel centers.

To me, the bodies are a bit more modern than the chassis designs for what we were racing at the time. By the time those Toyota and Jaguar bodies were available we were running 13UO and 101 cans with polymer cobalts and 40T28 arms. The C-can stuff was obsolete in a few months once the 13UO cans started working, and back then we only had the one class of car, so they were relegated to the trash or to some deep dark corner of a workshop. I gave all my C-can stuff away to a guy who was trying to open a 1/32scale raceway so that he had something to sell. That would have been back inabout 1985 or so. In 2006 when I was in South Africa, I came across one of my old springsteel center sections from that pile of stuff at yet another raceway - some things just don't bio-degrade it seems

[Mopar Rob]

Modified my original post. Both have Betta bodies and the chassis are Betta and 101

[gascarnut]

Oh, OK - I thought Bill had made the frames. no wonder they look like UK stuff!

Dave Harvey at 101 built some very nice stuff back in the day. I heard that he was back into slot racing again, see here: Won-O-Won Products

Come to think of it, he said he was going to look for some polymer magnets for me, I need to jog his memory!

[Mopar Rob]

I think all the frames made by Bill are in the "where are they now file" or in the possesion of Larry (Ramcat) Kelly ?

[Ramcatlarry]

These "C" can frames fell into the British 'saloon car' classes for sedans. We raced them with GTP bodies....AND went to as many CAMEL Races at Road America and other locales for livery details.

YEH I got more of them....inline and sidewinder F-1 as well. Some spring steel,some mixed steel and brass; some PDS from Holland, too. I think Bill has made some using the basic design for patterns. He is a great machinist.

Bill's three lane club track is somewhere under all those (?) also available for a new home. Bruce Necker's club track is still getting use in Berwyn, IL but with more Falcon motors that might be running every bit as fast as those old unbalenced wasps did.

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

I have a couple like this in a box not in running condition. Mine were supplied as parts by 101 while we were talking about P cans. But my memory is vague on the date. I THINK it was 78, about a year after I had moved to Denver.

Didn't Dave Harvey live in Toronto for a while, Dennis? I seem to remember him sending me photos and stuff about a program there at the time.

I had no one to race this stuff with then. I was racing 1/24s, but these were like many things, just for fun. I was getting all these reports from ECRA about the racing.

This was the era of the black tire ban in England. There were no real clearance rules by US standards. That is, in the US we had to clear by 1/16. In the UK, no one could finish a heat with black tires and not scrape, so they banned them, and the racers were running WHITE foam that was a little harder. When, I was suggesting starting with 063, Ian and others aid "impossible, just impossible, nothing will handle". I bought a lot of cheap excellent black foam that gave me a huge advantage in the US at the time. Bought CHEAP!

Good times.

Fate

[Ramcatlarry]

I recall the Brits required ORANGE foam tires(1990's) on their otherwise scale cars - all pre fishy natural rubber of today.

These chassies all led to the midwest development of the Euro frames we use today as Chuck Gambo, Jim Hugger, Jerry Kulich, and others raced these in club and raceway settings in and around Chicago. Chuck is the engineer/designer of many of the JK line of frames.

[Mopar Rob]

This is the chassis that ended Brass and Wire car club racing in Chicago.



This is a Gambo 1 slab that I had surface ground, but never built. I believe Chuck had about 20 of these cut and was selling them very reasonable to club racers to get us to change. I'm thinking around 1992ish? I base that on that I didn't slot race until I graduated from college and that was 1991.

Chuck's second design soon appeared after this one and was sold through JK products. We raced them until until the Chez chassis outdated them. Not sure when those came to the United States? I had purchased 202 and some other spring steel Saloon chassis from England, but they never seemed to work as well as Chuck's second design.

I think Larry has most of the European chassis that I had purchased over the years? Actually Larry has just about every chassis I've ever owned other than what is currently in my box

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[Ramcatlarry]

ACTUALLY, Rob This is the second or third steel Gambo design. The first used two machine screws to hold the flag plate. I got that one also as well as a very nice European one from JP's worlds at Chicago from '89...

[Mopar Rob]

ACTUALLY, Rob This is the second or third steel Gambo design. The first used two machine screws to hold the flag plate. I got that one also as well as a very nice European one from JP's worlds at Chicago from '89...

That was a 1/32 Eurosport chassis. This was his first 1/32 "C" can chassis