379 replies to this topic

[Alan Draht]

This is my first Slotblog post.

Someone asked if copies were made of Howie Ursaner's car - the one featured in this topic.

I'm proud to say that I scratchbuilt a car which was almost exactly identical, including its adaptation to and use of a similarly-painted Lola body (also rigged for lights to run in a Steinway Race 12-hour enduro), although it was used mainly for F1 racing, equipped with a 1964 Ferrari Tipo 158 body painted in NART blue-and-white livery.

I had studied Howie Ursaner's car extensively at Polk's Hobby, which is where I first met Howie and became acquainted with that chassis. I saw Howie run it in NYC area F1 races and in practice on Polk's fourth floor track. There was a marshalling position inside of a "carousel"-like section of track situated before the main straight, and if you looked closely, you could see this car lift its inside rear wheel slightly when it cornered hard, as it also "drifted" through the turn. It was a beautiful thing. I loved the torsion-bar front suspension on that slot car, the dynamics of how it worked, enabling the car to handle better.

I had already logged plenty of time on Polk's track. I had built, tested, and was racing a decent scratchbuilt car (Pittman 196B motor, upgraded with ball bearings on both the armature and its cast aluminum rear axle bracket, a torsion-controlled pivoting tube front suspension very similar to Howie's car but without his chassis' torsion-sprung ride height feature) carrying a Maserati Tipo 61 Birdcage body. That car was sweet. In hindsight I should have campaigned the Maserati much longer than I did.

At some point, Howie let me drive his car on Polk's track. It was a revelation. The car felt planted. It was much better than anything I had built or driven before on this track. It was a joy to drive: balanced, forgiving, stable. For the first time I realized how important a good car is to better driving.

Before the Mabuchi motor/brass-tube chassis designs evolved and became competitve on the NY scene, Howie's car was unbeatable. It's no wonder that car won a huge number of races. It really was in a class of its own. It was smooth and enabled consistent driving, especially in someone like Howie's hands on long complex tracks, like EMMRA and Wilke Barre.

After driving Howie's car and admiring its construction, I felt compelled to build the same car for myself, not necessarily to win races, but because the car was such a neat package, looked terrific on track, and I wanted to own one.

Machining the raw piece of 1" aluminum channel into a chassis frame was the main challenge for me in building a copy of Howie's car, since my machine shop consisted of an electric drill, some files, C-clamps, and a few hand tools. I didn't know what a milling machine was, but I did know about lathes and drill presses. I wanted my own small, portable Unimat lathe badly in those days, and free access to a drill press. Today, I own and use a Sherline tabletop milling machine and a Sherline lathe. Both are fantastic machine tools.

By the time I got the car built and sorted out in late 1964-early 1965 (?), it was becoming obsolete. I used it mainly for F1 races. I also ran it a sport car body in a 12-hour enduro at Steinway Raceway in Queens. I had the Lola body on it and rigged it for lights, again, similar to Howie's car. There was a major difference, however, in that Steinway required the Enduro cars' lights to be powered independently of the track's power. I inserted two AA batteries, one on each side of the car, in each of the plastic body's hollowed-out balsa wood mounting blocks. Unfortunately, the lighting system failed repeatedly, causing lots of down time in the pits for repairs.

I never won any races with this car, but Howie did. He borrowed my car for an EMMRA race in 1965 and won it hands down. I'll relate the details of that story and what became of the car in a future post.

[Cheater]

That may be the best first post anyone has ever made at Slotblog...

Welcome, Alan.

[MantaRay]

Any chance of reposting the pics?

[TSR]

They were posted on the old Electric Dreams website, and are no longer available there, so here they are:













I will try to retrieve the others as soon as possible.

[Steve Deiters]

I look at those pictures and it's hard to believe how far we have come....or have we? LOL

[Bryan Warmack]

This car was run with Tradeship bevel gears. The front suspension pieces are missing in the photos.This car had a center hinge.

[admin note: Bryan advises that Howie actually made this post on Bryan' computer.]

[TSR]

Indeed. These pictures were taken several years ago before we got more information from Howie and Bob Emott. Since then the car has gone into a second restoration with a new aluminum pan, new gears, new rear tires.

One must understand that we started with junk leftover in Howie's old box and it was not pretty...

[MantaRay]

Thank you for the pics, Did Howies car have the DC65 rewound arm?

[TSR]

Yes.
When the car is finished, we will post it again in detail.
Here is a pic of its current state (before it got restored again) from old files:

[Alan Draht]

First of all I'm grateful to Slotblog for re-posting the photos of Howie's slotcar, pre-restoration. I have been looking high and low recently for the pictures originally posted on this Slotblog topic nearly five years ago, and not surprisingly, couldn't them. Thanks; and I look forward to seeing photos of the car in its fully restored state, and maybe photos of the restoration process itself up to this point in time, if they're available.

Even so, as it is, I've got enough to go on.

I intend to build a copy of my copy of Howie's 1964 - 1965 slotcar. I'm assuming that with guidance from Slotblog, I can source the parts and materials I need (including exotic vintage stuff like the brass beveled crown-and-pinion set, Pittman 196- and 65-X motors, and maybe Graupner airplane tires) to scratchbuild my old car as new, again.

In my description of the slotcar I had built and raced preceding my "Howie Ursaner replica - slotcar", I omitted mentioning that the Maserati Tipo 61 chassis used the same set of brass crown-and-pinion set as Howie's because, as someone pointed out earlier, it was the only gearset made at that time that could fit within the Pittman motor's factory-mounted cast auminum rear axle bracket.

It's important to note that the Pittman motor itself served as a stressed member of that chassis. I think that with a rising knowledge-base within the slotcar racing community at that time, we were sophisticated enough to know that bending and twisting forces on the motor's frame didn't do much good for the armature's free-spinning alignment within that frame. This may have been the main factor behind the original Howie Ursaner car chassis' design and creation, at least in terms of mounting the motor in a square, rigid, lightweight aluminum frame. I think that once I'd figured out that the stressed-member-Pittman motor chassis was an imperfect design, I fell out of love with it (even though the car worked great as a total package), and just had to build a state-of-the art replacement.

As was common practice in those days (Howie mentioned this too on Slotblog somewhere), I cannabilized the "Maserati" chassis in order to build the replacement car. Having sacrificed the old car to build the new one, I feel now that I should also re-create my original 1963 - 1964 "Maserati" chassis, stressed-member Pittman 196-A/B motor, brass gearset, torsion bar front suspension, and all. So, there's another set of vintage slotcar parts that I'm currently in the market for...

With these formalities out of the way, I'll continue my story in the next posts, using Howie's car as a sort of "muse".

[TSR]

Alan,

Howie's car had the Pittman axle mount cut off. The actual axle mount was machined inside the aluminum channel that forms the motor mount, placing the axle farther from the motor. So i was able to mount standard Cox gears with no issues. The Tradeship bevel gears feature a setscrew type or solder-on pinion that have a long collar but the distance is plenty fine in any case.

Good luck with the replica!

[Alan Draht]

In this picture from Howie's earlier post #75, can anyone identify the racer who is sitting on the Cooper to the left of Howie standing with his trophy in the photo located at the bottom right-hand corner of the magzine page?



Thanks.

[Hworth08]

Hi Alan,

The exotic pieces aren't that hard to find, they show up on eBay fairly regularly. The hardest peice might be a six volt DC-65 arm but I have one that I'll sell to you for the same $10 price I paid if you can't find one. Most of us have a number of project cars going on and it becomes about as much fun to find the parts as building the car.

I wonder if the gears actually were Tradeship? The Tradeship gears were probably the lowest quality of the bevel gears but could have been the best ratio for the car.

[TSR]

In this picture from Howie's earlier post #75, can anyone identify the racer who is sitting on the Cooper to the left of Howie standing with his trophy in the photo located at the bottom right-hand corner of the magzine page?

Alan,

It is not a Cooper but an Italian Tecno or Dagrada F4 with a Ducati 250cc motorcycle engine.

[Alan Draht]

Alan,
Howie's car had the Pittman axle mount cut off. The actual axle mount was machined inside the aluminum channel that forms the motor mount, placing the axle farther from the motor. So i was able to mount standard Cox gears with no issues. The Tradeship bevel gears feature a setscrew type or solder-on pinion that have a long collar but the distance is plenty fine in any case.
Good luck with the replica!

My car was nearly identical in every respect. Of course, the aluminum frame cutouts and finish details were slightly different than Howie's. I was fussy about aesthetics as well as performance. So, for example, I rounded inside corners of the motor and transmission cutouts in the bottom pan, the side rail cutouts, wherever stress cracks could develop in the aluminum frame. I cut off the Pittman's axle carrier, same as pictured, and "machined" the aluminum frame for a ball-raced axle as shown on Howie's car. The initial build of my car used the brass beveled crown-and-pinion set. The pinion was soldered onto the armature. I'm not sure if I ever installed anything other than the original brass gears on that car. Something for me to think about.

One difference from the original car's design involved the Pittman motor. I rewound the 65X armature, epoxied, balanced and polished it, same as Howie's. (BTW, does anyone remember the rewind/ commutator timing formula for that motor/ armature?) I installed it and ran the car for a period of time. Later, I read a magazine article touting better performance by shaping the motor's stock sideplates and correspondingly, the magnetic field (the article provided an illustration by way of templates, as I recall) which supposedly enhanced performance, whether through increased torque or RPM, I can't remember. Anyway, I made that change, and if there was an improvement, it was subtle.

[TSR]

Alan,

Do you have any surviving pictures or printed matter with you and your car? it would be great to see some...

[Alan Draht]

Alan, It is not a Cooper but an Italian Tecno or Dagrada F4 with a Ducati 250cc motorcycle engine.

Interesting. Stirling Moss wrote how his first race car was a 500cc Cooper-Norton. He later purchased and raced a 500 cc Kieft, also Norton-powered. These cars were built acording to F3 regulations (1948-mid 1950s. According to Moss, 500cc F3 formula cars, the Brands Hatch track in Kent, and countryside hillclimbs were his excellent training ground for F1.

Is this an Italian version of a 250cc formula?

[TSR]

Yes, they were, but Howie's car was definitely not a Cooper and by the way, Howie never picked it up. Where is that car today???

Howie also won an Austin-Healy in another race but there, the raceway owner refused to give it away because he did not get enough money from the entries so reneged on his promise.

[Alan Draht]

Do you have any surviving pictures or printed matter with you and your car? it would be great to see some...

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of that car, much less of myself in the slotcar scene from that time in my life (1963 - 1966). I'm fairly certain there's no printed material either, given the fact that, with a few exceptions, I didn't race at many of the national events covered by the magazines or local slotcar newsletter.

The truth of the matter is that I couldn't afford to commit - first, the money, and secondly, the time - what it took to effectively compete at the same level as Howie Ursaner, Sandy Gross, and some others in the elite group of pro and semi-pro slotcar racers which existed back then. I pretty much flew under the radar, missed many of the major races of the time - although there were a few notable exceptions. I'll describe these events later because they form part of my car's narrative and history, how it connected me to slotcar racing and certain racers and people at the time.

I did manage to save one of my other cars. I'll snap and post some pictures of that car next. In some ways the surviving car relates to the other car's history.

[TSR]

We would all love to read your stories.

[MSwiss]

Nice clean building.

[Alan Draht]

I finally puzzled through the image upload process. Here are some photos of the surviving car:

[Cheater]

Alan,

You still don't quite have the pic posting process down. I'll fix your post #202 and after I do, you might want to click "Edit" and then "Use Full Editor" to see the underlying code.

As an aside, posters have eight hours to edit any post they make. After eight hours, the "Edit" button disappears.

I'm a little mystified that you don't see a "Browse" button though. It appears for me with both Win XP/Firefox and MacOS/Safari.

[TSR]

Nice body, looks just like one we have at the LASCM found in Howie's old stuff...

[Alan Draht]

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of that car, much less of myself in the slotcar scene from that time in my life (1963 - 1966). I'm fairly certain there's no printed material either, given the fact that, with a few exceptions, I didn't race at many of the national events covered by the magazines or local slotcar newsletter.

The truth of the matter is that I couldn't afford to commit - first, the money, and secondly, the time - what it took to effectively compete at the same level as Howie Ursaner, Sandy Gross, and some others in the elite group of pro and semi-pro slotcar racers which existed back then. I pretty much flew under the radar, missed many of the major races of the time - although there were a few notable exceptions. I'll describe these events later because they form part of my car's narrative and history, how it connected me to slotcar racing and certain racers and people at the time.

I did manage to save one of my other cars. I'll snap and post some pictures of that car next. In some ways the surviving car relates to the other car's history.

We would all love to read your stories.

Nice clean building.

Thanks, Mike.

Before getting back to the story, and commenting on the car depicted in these photos as well as its ties to the other car, I want to mention that I met up with Howie a couple of years ago at Mike Swiss' Chicagoland Raceway. The event was a Sano race, I recall. I had been reseaching slotcar racing, became aware of this particular race, and went there to see Howie and other slotcar racing luminaries race IRRA cars -- this was my first contact with the sport in over (ahem) forty-five years. I wasn't disappointed. Since Howie was competing, he and I didn't have time to talk much once the race program got underway, and we haven't been in touch since. This is by way of saying that I need to email Howie and invite him to chime in here, check and add facts, and render his own opinions.

This car was successful, winning the most races and trophies for me of any car I built. I built it as soon as I was able to scrounge together enough parts and materials to construct a complete new car without cannabilizing the old one. By this time, Howie and Sandy were working and racing for Russkit as fully-sponsored drivers. A paradigm shift was underway in slot car technology at that time which was revolutionizing chassis design, motors, tires, controllers, and Russkit -- with Howie and Sandy very successfully racing, developing and representing its products at national events -- was at the leading edge of a lot of it. The old car was by now totally obsolete. The only racing it was still suited for was long-distance enduro's, and EMMRA's killer track. My new car incorporated as much of the new technology as Russkit and other slotcar suppliers made commercially available, and what I could afford.

The chassis shown is missing its two outermost brass tube rails, one on each side. These rails were soldered at three connection points alongside their sister rails and to the back of the rear axle hubs. (For some dumb reason, I must have unsoldered and removed these two rails to incorporate into another project, almost certainly not slotcar-related, since I retired from the hobby after my last race win with this car). It's also missing one body mount -- a short piece of stainless steel tubing on the left side of the chassis. The front suspension bracket, arms/ hubs are constructed with steel piano wire, as are the drop arm, and the rear axle bracket's cross bracing. The chassis' innermost brass rail tubes are strengthened with piano wire inserts along their entire lengths.
.
The missing motor was a Mabuchi I re-wound. It was noticeably fast and so much so that, after my last race, I ended up selling it to a rich, occasional slot racer from Long Island for $35. (This guy could easily afford it. He told me he was in the process of specing out a new Shelby Cobra to buy himself at age 16 or 17). I tried to sell him the entire car, but he only wanted the motor (which I'm sure he threw into a pile and forgot about). Had I succeeded, this artifact would be long gone.

The body was my first attempt to emulate Frank O'Conner's painting style, particularly the technique of using black pin-striping to outline contrasting, adjoining colors. A perfect example is the Lola he painted for Howie's car. He used this technique on a fair number of the bodies he painted for Howie, I recall. For outlining, the body I painted uses 1/32" black tape applied inside. It does the job, but Frank hand painted his black pinstripes and his are permanent. You can see where the tape lifted off the back end, spattered by Lubriplate. The body's cockpit is missing its required driver's head. Also missing are an aluminum mesh screen over the carb intake opening, and a bent clear plastic piece pinned to the rear end of the body which covered the crown gear like a bicycle fender. It was faux-painted black-and-silver "transaxle cover".

Now that I've pulled this car out of the cardboard box it's been sitting in, I'll restore it to its former glory.