111 replies to this topic

[JerseyJohn]

Wow what A great time I had !!!Being my first time to a foreign land LOL i didn't know what to expect. When I walked outside from the airport and saw PALM TREES i knew i was in a strange, new land . I found Orange county very clean, the people very friendly, but what I loved most of all was NO road construction, NO tolls and the absolute best was those awesome legal u-turns !! DRIVING WAS A PURE JOY.

My first move was to Brian's shop. Upon entering I saw Pdl hard at work and when I saw Brian we man hugged as old friends glad to see each other. After a great lunch at a Mex joint provided by Brian and PDL, it was off to the track.

BPR..When I arrived at the track I was greeted by my main Buds Greg and Oscar. While I was looking for a pit spot, Greg brought me into the family room of the Track, where I pitted next to My buddys for life Oscar, Tom Eatherly, Greg, Jeff Easterly, Charlie Nelson, Craig Corria and Jay Henry . Court was in session. LOL Debbie the owner is a great and lovely women and I'm glad I also got an opportunity to Meet her Husband Jim. Meeting the legends of So CAl racing fame was a huge thrill. John the Jet, Terry Schmidt. My Bud Dennis Samson, Howie and yes Pdl was awesome. The local racers are a great bunch of guys who made my trip all the more fun. Talking in depth with some gave me a great perspective of the humanity of slot racers. Mill, my friend it was great getting to know you and what you do for your kin is priceless. You and Dennis helping a buddy is what its all about in life and slot cars brought it together. 

THE COOL DUDES. every track has the cool dudes. BPR was no exception. Tracy Chin and Jay Henry you guys have east coast coolness.

THE CHARACTERS...every track has its bunch of colorful guys who add spice to the place.  Bling, Nesta and Termite come on down lol

THE RACING. all I can say is despite power, and track issues I had  great, competitive,fun racing withe the SCRRA and was thrilled and proud to see Mike Isles podium in the A-main . DURAN you are one bad A** racer. I was speechless when I met him and could only bow to his greatness.

THE END, In the end it was an experience of a life time, Racing in The CHECK POINT CUP and meeting All of the SO CAL folks that make it so special is a memory i will cherish. To all of my new friends, Thank you for the hospitality and love you shared with me, I miss you all. Stay healthy and be kind to each other.

Till next year Your friend JJ

[TSR]

John,

The whole time spent with you was truly worth it. Thank you for being you. 

[Tom Eatherly]

I'm here to say that Jersey John has got the SO-Cal love. Talk about a guy who really knows how to take in an event, thats JJ.

It was great meeting ya John, and ALL the East coast guys. JJ, you know you have a permanent pit place at BPR. Me, Oscar and Greg will see to that. Can't thank you enough for your help and friendship John. We ruled!!

[usadar]

JJ,

I am so glad to hear you had a great time at the Checkpoint Cup.

Although I will see you at Retro East races this year, looking forward to seeing & racing with you at the Great Race in January, 2014.

Keep racing,

Haruki

[Foamy]

The whole power situation at BPR is un-necessary.

There five different power supply/battery setups on the track, and that's at least 3 too many.

You have;

USRA Qualifying 16 volt power

USRA 13.6ish volt race wower

Retro Race 12ish volt power

RetroPro 13.2ish volt power

Everyday Track Rental power, whatever that is. . .

 

The Raceway has about 8 monthly races a year and 2 or 3 bigger promoted races for wing cars. The wingcar people  are the ones that keep changing the track for them(all 6 of them), and the hell with anybody else. The race director software thing this past week is a perfect example of that. There should be USRA power, and everyday rental power, and that's it. Make your stuff run on that. Gear it to not blowup.

 

Motors. This latest batch IS slower than the ones from about six months ago. Everybody had to use them, so whatever. . .

I used a Trinity Motor Machine to breakin and test my motors. I did about a dozen for myself and four other racers, and the RPM difference was about 600. That is sorta close, but the best was 2,000 lower than the ones from middle of last Summer. Falcon7's are about 1000 lower than the last of the Orange label ones. Like I said, everybody had to use them, so whatever. . .

 

I ran Canam for the first time in about 5 years. I borrowed a Kamo chassis at the last minute, and it was pretty swell. A little too stuck I guess, but that can be fixed for another time. The stuff I worked on for others ran well, and they were mostly happy.

[DCR]

........You Tell them Foamy,Iv got your back!!!!!!!......................LOL

[bbr]

yes, I rather have the power and rpm from higher voltage and tuning the gear ratio so you don't blow up than trying to make speed with bigger pinions

[John Gorski]

Day After Bench Racing at Warmack Enterprise !! Great Shop Bryan!!

[TSR]

The wingcar people  are the ones that keep changing the track for them(all 6 of them), and the hell with anybody else.

 

I am afraid that there is truth in that. What "we", retro racers, have been trying to do because of the power issues we had before, not counting the power trip on which the former series tyrant was on, is to insulate ourselves from that very mess. What we have now is what Barney Poynor and Yours Truly engineered and paid for out of our own pockets, a suitable power pack delivering 50 amps at the CORRECT voltage to run our frozen-spec motors. All eight cars on track with full spike (at the start of a race or a segment) have always failed to trip the power supply into fail-safe mode, so please don't come and tell me that there is not enough current.
 

The issues encountered have actually been very minor:

1/ The A-holes that keep screwing with the voltage knob (you know who you are). It is 12.8, no more, no less, LEAVE THE DAMN THING ALONE, thanks.

2/ The location of the pack in a place where it sucks all the raceway's dust, and we learned that the hard way last Saturday.

 

There were issues a year ago when we installed it: in one race the pack went into "safe mode" (heating up too much) from 12.8 to 8 volts. This lasted a few seconds during a race, then it cooled itself and the power went back up. We then put a fan on front of it and did not have another problem in that event. It showed that it needed a better environment.

Then, some guys tried to run G27 cars without switching the power and I heard it described like the entire world had collapsed. After kindly educating the racers that there is a switch under the track to turn on their favored higher voltage and current, that was the end of that ruckus.
 

Later, the pack was mounted on a higher base to provide better ventilation, and for an entire year of SCRRA racing, not a SINGLE incident I am aware of.

 

Then, we had the incident last Saturday, due to the build-up of dust in the venting holes, meaning that the pack did not get its required cooling. It lasted the whole of 15 seconds (and everyone had the same reduction in speed so it is not like it was a catastrophe), and the raceway maintenance gentleman came with an air hose and blew the dust away. There was to my knowledge, no issue after that.

These were the only incidents we had, and it is of course unfortunate that the pack chose that day to act instead of in a monthly race. Please note that this pack has been "on" for over 365 days, day in and day out, without ANY actual failure after it was inspected last year after the first incident when it went in fail-safe mode. I would call that a good proof of reliability.

 

So before everyone bitches and moans about that power pack, think of it this way:

1/ Our little motors have been in use of nearly 7 years now and are closer in performance than the more expensive and more sophisticated ones used by the "other" series. Not my saying but that of many ("other series") racers on my email all the time. We do not have Hershman Specials here.

2/ They LOVE 12.8 volts, they HATE 13.6 volts and AC leakage. It means that at the recommended voltage, they LIVE longer and lose about 1/10th of a second on a 4.2-second lap. Crying babies speed-crazed morons, go race your Flexis and leave us to race our antiquated machinery, thank you.

3/ The VERY few incidents we had with this pack are a learning experience, and we now know what to do time to time: keep the thing clean and for big events, a small fan could be added for extra insurance.

4/ If you have a better solution, pay for it with your own money and I will be pleased to take this thing back home with me.

Got it?

 

Thank you.

[Joe Mig]

if anyone has the like new motors they are unhappy with and want to part with them I would be willing to buy a fewthat still might need to be broken in properly.please message me if you have and they did not go in the trash but they must be like new.

[bbr]

Mr. P, as I see it the SCRRA is a community, everyone that races at BPR has a vested interest.
There is no other place to race in the area.
And everyone should be able to voice their concerns, and then it would be up to the BOA to address those topics.

[redbackspyder]

Funny, the people at the top in the A Main all ran between 4.15 and 4.24,  so how much faster do these things need to be ?   There were issues in practice, but they got resolved.  So no one broke the track record, who cares?  Great close racing all day, sorry to those that did not do as well as they expected of themselves, but that is why we have a race, to solve a difference in opinion.   The C Main had classic top racers in it, Tom Hansen-Howie-Tore-Jay Kisling-Phil Nyland etc.... It just does not get better than that , does it?

 

All in all, the problems that the Checkpoint Cup had were not in the hand out motors.....  The motors were marked, the racing was close, there were very few if any magic bullets,  but we did have some guys that had problems setting up their cars with tires and with gears.   I will leave Philippe to do the tutorial on how to set a gear mesh and solder on a pinion. 

 

Does anyone ever ask themself,  How come Gorski, Duran, Bryan, Mike Iles , seem to be able to come up with magic cars all the time ? ? ?  

 

Seems that the harder someone works, the luckier they get ! 

 

A case in point is Gary Donahoe....  Anyone notice how Gary steadily improved ...  Now Marc Franco is doing the same.   Why ?  Because they are putting in time to practice, test , tune, upgrade and they learn from all the others willing to share their knowledge.   They do not claim to know it all, they listen and now are reaping the results....

 

Me, I guess I am just lucky.......

[bbr]

Mill, I never believe in luck... you have been working hard on your racing program.

[TSR]

Mr. P, as I see it the SCRRA is a community, everyone that races at BPR has a vested interest.
There is no other place to race in the area.
And everyone should be able to voice their concerns, and then it would be up to the BOA to address those topics.

 

Mike,

I have no problem with anyone voicing their concerns, I have problems with people making up stuff to push their own interests.The discussion of issues must be based on facts, not fiction. If there WAS a true issue with that power pack, why is it that there weren't any problems for 24 monthly races?

The problem was fixed in two minutes, but the bitching continues. Gets irritating.

 

 

[bbr]

Learning from this experience, the BOA should inspect the power supply before the next big race.
I've put on big races... and its a lot of work, but to ensure a trouble free event, all details has to be look at.

[bbr]

Btw, PDL...
You worked hard at doing all the tech inspection, thank you.

[Zippity]

Learning from this experience, the BOA should inspect the power supply before the next big race.
 

 

 

Wow. I'll bet they never thought of that

 

Sheesh

[TSR]

Zip,

 

"We Sank You For Your Kooperation"

[parko061]

To defend what someone had said about the "wing people"

 

We have purchased the power with our own MONEY as a group.

 

Yes, we are in a down swing with entries that happens when people don't have the money to race.

 

The current USRA voltage is 14.2v not 13.6v.

 

Basically the power on the retro racing is bad because no one will invest in it, bottom line.  It's no possible to run on batteries alone and only one power supply.  You guys are killing your very very old batteries which by chance and the ones the wing guys had purchased before.

 

No one was complaining at the Nats when the raceway was making great money from us "wing people" and the same will happen at the worlds in May.  Which the Worlds are 0 payouts, all entry fees go to the raceway.

 

I think Jonathan and anyone else has the right to complain for the fact all you guys did was complain with any decision that Paul and Keith made. 

 

What the biggest thing that jumped at me was after Can-Am qualifing that "the board" decided to have two move ups to the "A" main which put Duran (the best guy is your racing) into the "B".  I was very happy when I seen that he came back up ended up winning the "A" also.  This should have determined before qualifying not after since you already knew how many total entries there was.

[Slotgeezer]

 

Me, I guess I am just lucky.......

 

If you've got any of that ' luck ' you can spare, Mill, I sure could use some!

 

 

Jeff Easterly  

Team Zombie West chassis butcher

[Foamy]

Zip,

 

"We Shank You For Your Kooperation"

Fixed

[JerseyJohn]

John,

The whole time spent with you was truly worth it. Thank you for being you. 

You make it easy Buddy, same here

[Foamy]

It's not possible to run on batteries alone and only one power supply.  You guys are killing your very very old batteries which by chance and the ones the wing guys had purchased before.

Excuse me but we raced group 7's on batteries only for YEARS! They are amp suckin pigs compared to the Retro FK motors.

[John Gorski]

Check out the Fast Lap Times in these A Mains. I don't think times could be much closer.

[Chewy]

Looks like it was a drivers race to me John.