135 replies to this topic

[tonyp]

I am shooting pictures of some of Bob Emott's chassis. These are all in the original state after spending years out in his cold garage.

Here is a two-rail he did. 4" wheelbase, 3/4" guide lead. Two rails .063", one brass rod and one piano wire. .063" plumber rail, .032" pans.







Bob used brass tubing for lead wire holders. Right behind the pan down stop you can see an .015" piano wire spring.



The drop arm is a Cobra 1.25" x .063" piece which Bob modified by cutting the guide holder off and frabricating his own. The 1/8" front axle tube is cut away then braced with piano wire and of course tied to the front uprights. The .032" crosspiece for the plumber doubles as the down stop for the drop arm.



Typical guide set-up. Cox guide, with the screw and washer melted into the guide. Marklin train wire for leads. Wires are all tied to keep them neat.



If you look right behind the front pin tubes (which are all filed flat to save weight), you will see notches in the pans. The rules had just changed from 3" to 3.125" chassis width and Bob did not have time to re-drill his jig when he built this car.



Here you can see the remaining body brace to keep the body from moving too much side to side and hitting tires.



The drop arm is engraved. Looks like Bob built this one for himself.

[endbelldrive]

Wow! That's got to be one of the earliest two-main railers I've ever seen.

Thanks, Tony! 8)

[tonyp]

There is a whole box of frames. I'll post them one at a time as long as there is interest. Hopefully we can get Bob to post his own comments about them.

[Pete L.]

Tony,

Thanks for the photos, keep 'em coming. And while you're at it, can you send us some shots of your work?

[dc-65x]

Hey, dc-65x, do you need another project?

Of course I do, Bill!

Thanks for the photos, keep 'em coming. And while you're at it, can you send us some shots of your work?

Pete,

Tony sent me a 1975 Arco-winning Iso chassis to restore and replicate. I'm going to start that this weekend. I'll be posting pictures of Tony's chassis, the building of our replicas, what Tony has told me about it, and a 1972 Iso chassis article he did for Model Racing Journal.

Thanks, Tony, for posting these pictures and the loan of your chassis! :up: 8)

[tonyp]

Bob Emott's second place California Arco Chassis. This one has real provenance as there is a tag on it telling where it was run.

4" wheelbase, .900" guide lead, four rails, three of .063" brass rod, one of .063" piano wire, .025" bat pans 3" wide with a .063" plumber rail. All the hinges still function!







The plumber hinge is behind the front axle. There is a piano wire "U" soldered to the plumber rails that rests on the front of the drop arm. When the plumber lifts up in the back the "U" pushes the drop arm down. The drop arm is a Cobra 1" model .063" thick.



Lots of brass tubing lead wire retainers. You can see that one of the pieces of lead on the rear of the pans is still glued on. Bob probably ran this car with lead on the drop arm and rear of the pans.





Another shot showing the lead on the drop arm and the use of a sort of "dropped axle" front end.



I think I was the first to use this system with a solid axle as it was easier than trying to bend the rails around the motor cage and up to the front axle. The fact Bob would think it was worth using was certainly a honor.

[tonyp]

Rick, Thank you! It is an honor you would want to replicate one of my chassis.

[endbelldrive]

This looks like the race report to go with Bob Emott's second place California Arco chassis:

Steube Turns Back The Eastern Tide at Don's

[tonyp]

That's it.

[tonyp]

This F1 chassis was never used. We only raced F1 sidewinders a few times on the east coast because they ran so poorly.

This has a 4" wheelbase and a .925" guide lead. Two rails of .063" brass rod and one rail of .063" piano wire. The plumber rail is .063" and hinged on the 1.25" Cobra drop arm.



You can see the engraving on the drop arm, there is no name on it, just "built for".



If you closely at the front axle you will notice what looks like fourth outer rail soldered to the front axle tube. The rail only extends down to the plumber rail and rests right on it. It is a pivot for the plumber rail. When the plumber rail lifts up it piviots on this point pushing the drop arm down.

No moving body mounts, just .063" tubing soldered to the plumber rail. The front mount elevated to alow the drop arm to move. This chassis shows the "Emott" style of big flat solder joints all nice and square and uniform.

[loudspeaker]

Hi Tony.

The F1 sidewinders didn't run that poorly. I remember that I won the F1 Car Model race at Hamilton Raceway in the spring of '68 with a sidewinder. This was right after Gene Husting ran his sidewinder on the west coast and the first time we ran sidewinders in the east.

I bet Bob's ran like a wild thing and hotter than a pistol. Bob?

[Uncle Fred]

Sandy's car was the first anglewinder we saw on the east coast. I remember Sandy showing it to me at the Hamilton Car Model race. We couldn't understand how the gears could mesh at that angle (they did) or the F1 body fit over it all (it streeetched).

Sandy had just returned from the west coast and told us the amusing Jerry Brady fake-out story were everyone practiced with their inline cars and then raced their anglewinders. Mr. Personality said he would still beat them but last in the main was his result.

[TSR]

Indeed, Sandy was one of the first (if not THE first) to build an anglewinder chassis in the East after the revolution that happened overnight on the Left Coast. This is the subject of an entire chapter in the new book, as it took no less than THIRTEEN WEEKS for the local pros to get their act in gear after Gene Husting showed them the way.

I hope that Sandy will be able to make it, as well as his former teammate Howie and many Eastern pros, to the grand opening of the museum sometimes next year...

[Bob Emott]

I learned about the birth of the anglewinder in a phone call from Bruce Pascal the night after the race in California. Bruce tried to explain what the cars looked like but as he was not a builder, the design of the chassis was not clear. I thought the rules required that the gear had to be under the body like the inlines so I built a car that had a big angle on the motor to place the gear under the exhaust pipes of the Ferrari body (which was the most popular F1 body at the time...) On my car, the motor can was part of the chassis so the motor was assembled in the car. Bob Kean zapped the magnets with his monster zapper and assembled the motor for me at his house. (Bob's zapper drew so much current that he had to turn off everything electrical in the workshop section of the house and still the shop light dimmed when he pushed the power button...) My car worked OK and I think I was third in the first East coast anglewinder race at Hamilton behind PVA and Sandy Gross (who had talked directly with racers on the West coast and got a much better idea of how the cars were built... now why didn't I do that???)

A good picture of my chassis appeared in the paper a couple of weeks later. Bruce Pascal wanted to buy the car (as he did with many of the winning cars of Mike Steube and other pros). He asked me what I wanted for the car and I said "just send me some bananas". Bruce was a vice president of Standard Fruit, the second largest importer of bananas and pineapples into the USA.

A couple of days later, a limousine appeared in my driveway and a gentleman in a suit rang the bell. Bruce had sent someone from his New York office out to my house in a limousine. He said he had something for me. He brought in two BIG boxes of bananas that Bruce had sent in exchange for the car. My dad took some photos; I sent them to Bruce and he had them put in the paper...

Bruce was the "father of Pro Racing" as he put together the first East coast vs West coast pro race in Atlanta that started the whole pro race scene... Bruce also arranged for my trip to England and Germany where I raced at the Totenham Car Model race which was mentioned in an earlier post. But that is the subject for another long boring story...

Anyway, BRUCE, THANKS FROM ALL OF US!!!

[TSR]

You said that right! Thanks to Bruce who donated his collection to the museum three years ago, many survivors are now being fettled and restored for display, while the stories will fill chapters of the book, including the looooong boat trip to England...

[tonyp]

The next big race was at Nutley Raceway a few weeks later. Every car entered was a sidewinder. I do remember that for F1 cars the rules may have reverted back to inlines. I remember running at Glen Oaks (Cape Oaks) in a Car Model race with inline Formula Ones. All the cars had lots of lead toward the rear wheels to try and duplicate the sidewinder motor position.

I did not run at Hamilton but remember running F1 sidewinders only one time at some type of Cobra (I believe) amateur race at Nutley. The problem with the F1s was they were so fast they tended to launch and basically chatter a lot. If you got a good one it ran well but most were just not that good.

[tonyp]

Bob Emott Low CG Flat Wire Chassis

This frame was probably built right after the big Cobra Mura race at Buzzarama, the biggest pro race at the time. It is fairly typical of what we ran on Nutley's blue King Track.

Wheelbase, 3.825"
Guide Lead. .850"
Team Nutley .047" drop arm
Team Nutley .050" pans
Two rails of .063" x .055" flat wire
Half-rails .063" round wire



This chassis shows the trend on the East coast to make the chassis as low as possible. Probably not the right way to go as the cars worked well but were fragile and basically the chassis was all worn-out in a race or two. I remember the pans were always dragging on the track and if you ever crashed your car was wrecked.

This car has the center section made of .063" paino wire that has been surface ground on each side to a total thickness of .055". Bob used this wire for both mail rails as well as the plumber rail. It is interesting to note the inner rail is one piece. This chassis also had the rear split pans attached to the center section but was converted back to a standard setup.



Top view shows the low CG pan stops. The brass cross piece in front of the motor is not on top of the rails but inset. Drop arm is as long as possible and has been filled back in. Chassis has the 3/32" axles as pioneered by Bob and Jerry Brady.



Another shot of the center rail and cross piece:



The plumber hinge tube is .063" tubing. The .032" wire hinge is recessed into the plumber rail. The .032" brace on the back of the plumber tube goes to the top of the drop arm where it doubles as part of the drop arm down stop.



This shot shows the .063" tubing drop arm hinge, lead wire holders and the use of .032" wire for the cross piece, which is placed as far back as possible.

[TSR]

Ah, the cool flat wire...

The typical Emott attention to detail shows well in this advanced frame (for the time period). Lovely!

[Bob Emott]

Tony...

That may be the first 3/32" axle car... I think it is the car I built to run at a big race in Texas that I didn't get to race in... Huh!...

Jerry Brady and I were sharing a room and we overslept and missed the close of tech after working overnight to finish our cars... The race director asked the other racers to vote on wether we should be allowed to enter late. So being sleep-deprived and a bit stupid, we put our cars in paper bags so no-one would see our new SUPER DUPER STATE OF THE ART LOW-CG chassis, and waited for the vote... He explained that if ONE person voted no, we would not be allowed to enter... Well, there was one no vote... I don't remember who. So we made the trip to Texas for nothing...

But, we did get to meet the immortal "Hump", one of the neatest guys I ever met in slot racing... But Hump is another long story... PVA and Jerry would remember him!!!

BTW, I tried my car at Nutley after we got back and it was nothing special, just a good car... But from then on, everyone changed to 3/32" axles... And I gave up on the ultimate low CG idea... Too much work for too little gain... but it seemed like a good idea at the time...

[Jairus]

Great story!

Wish we could share a beer together sometime...

[TSR]

And I gave up on the ultimate low CG idea... Too much work for too little gain... but it seemed like a good idea at the time...

But one HAD to try, and Bob was THE guy. More chassis engineering discoveries than anyone at the time. A definite Hall of Fame candidate. :up:

[loudspeaker]

Hi Bob!

That is a great story. I bet Jerry had some choice words for them. Did you get the message I sent you?

[tonyp]

Wasn't it an East coast driver who voted not to let you guys race?

[TSR]

Whoever he was, that was pretty much chicken deposit... :|

Talk about a moron...