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Variations on the Parma FCR chassis


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#1 Jocke P

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Posted 13 December 2013 - 04:32 AM

Here is how we race them.

Please join in with your material.

20131213_101851 small.jpg

This mod is the most common, easy to do and sturdy. The screws are attached to a strip of aluminium glued inside the body, the holes in the chassis are opened up until satisfactory slack is achieved.

We call this class American Thunder. Rules are few and liberal.
Joakim Pegers




#2 Jocke P

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Posted 13 December 2013 - 04:42 AM

Here is another one that I am putting together.

20131213_103500 small.jpg

A slightly loose body improves performance, nothing new there....
Joakim Pegers

#3 Jocke P

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Posted 13 December 2013 - 05:27 AM

... a development hack...

XJ Coupe.jpg

Wider, lower, lightweight body from White Point. Performance matches the Scale Autos raced at our track.
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#4 Rich Goucher

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Posted 14 December 2013 - 03:47 PM

At this point it is no longer an FCR, but essentially a rough Retro chassis. Why? Just go retro if this is what you want.


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#5 Jocke P

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Posted 14 December 2013 - 05:13 PM

I am not yet skilled enough to scratchbuild a fine retro chassis, but i have modified quite a few, some bad , and a few good.

With the FCR we do not want to go retro, we just want to go faster.
This is essentially taking a cheap, readily available chassis with a lot of potential and developing it.
If I just put scale correct Wheels on it, and a heavier, scale correct body, new or old, I loose speed.
Our goal at the track is to find out what mods are both easy and sensible, I have seen some hardbody solutions on the FCR in other threads and thought it might be nice to gather the information.

Who knows, maybe Parma will find some inspiration, I hope they, or someone, will step up and match AMT....a one horse show is not satisfactory.

We also race the FCR in original configuration....

What retro chassis are you thinking about?
Joakim Pegers

#6 Ricky Vegas

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Posted 14 December 2013 - 10:12 PM

Like what your are doing Joakim.  Thanks for sharing how you race them.  It would indeed be incredible if Parma found some inspiration!  :good:


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#7 Jocke P

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Posted 15 December 2013 - 04:12 AM

Thank you Richard, there will be more vehicles documented as i get Pictures of them, some are nuts and bolts solutions, european style.
Joakim Pegers

#8 Mayberryman

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Posted 15 December 2013 - 10:07 AM

Jocke, I have raced many years and the classes that I love most are somewhat based on your ideas for the FCR.  Starting back on the late 90s I raced with a group from The Lancaster/Myerstown area of Penn. that races beautiful wing sprint cars and dirt mods. that ran on a parma brass womp chassis that was narrowed down to between one and one and a sixteenth inch wide.  These classes remain today having been run in the Penn. area, the Old Eastern Oval Series and later the Dirt Oval Series.  The sprint class is still running today at tracks like Scale Speed Raceway, Awareness Speedway and other great tracks in the Penn. Area.  Today I run a series called, "The Clash for Cash" that not only runs these cars but also a class called Old Time Mods that are built on a narrowed FCR.  These cars range from Pintos and Gremlins all the way to the 36 Chevy that ruled local tracks for years.  These cars are run complete with roll cage and two piece body.  I do not have the capacity to post pictures, however, if you would like to see some of these cars you can go to either Portsmouth Motor Speedway or Scale Speed Raceway and look at the cars.

 

I know this might come as a shock to some people, but there are racers who are happy running the current stamped brass or steel inline chasses, either stock or altered, and not everybody aspires to become a "Retro Racer".  Some of us ran the retros when they were not called Retro, they were just called the newer and better chassis.


Spencer Wilkinson

#9 Guillermo Suar

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Posted 15 December 2013 - 11:44 AM

This is an easy build I used for club racing a couple of years ago. We were using Deathstar motors and hard bodies. It handled pretty good.

 

2013-12-15%2010.30.33.jpg


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#10 spudboy

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Posted 15 December 2013 - 10:32 PM

Joakim,

 

I looks as though you guys are having fun there.  I am curious about the track you race on.  Could you describe it?

 

Thanks.


Nate "spudboy" Bemis

#11 Jocke P

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Posted 16 December 2013 - 04:26 PM

Guillermo,
That looks great (and very neat compared to mine), function is very similar to my #3 post, the Jag chassis, only diff. is yours is hinged at the front, mine is rattling at both ends....I will definetly have a go at that solution as well. What kind of bodies did you run?

Nate, we have two tracks for 1/24 racing.

One is a Hillclimber, used mainly for 1:24 production cars with deathstar motors, this track is 8 lanes with glue.

One is flat and is mainly used for Hardbody racing, this track is black, gloss finish, no glue, 6 tracks. Here we race Hardbody Nascar, Trans Am, Scaleauto (all with nuts and bolts chassis) We also race FCR here. We call this track The black Adder.

On occasion we have a go at racing the Nascars or the Trans Am cars on the Hillclimber.

As far as our own tracks I will have to make some Pictures, the KSRC, Karlskoga Slot Racing Club is not big on documentation....
Here you can see some pictures from the tracks

https://www.facebook...48457328526910/
_______________________________________-

The Nascar Community also travels to other tracks in the vincinity.

Here are links to the tracks we visit in Karlstad (4 lanes) and in Askersund (8 lanes)



and in Askersund (8 laner)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151672424334968
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Joakim Pegers

#12 Guillermo Suar

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Posted 16 December 2013 - 09:23 PM

This is an example of the cars we used to run. 

Wrestling%202010-0388.JPG


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#13 Jocke P

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Posted 17 December 2013 - 03:41 AM

Nice! Looks exactly like our American Thunder cars.

What do you race today?
Joakim Pegers

#14 Jocke P

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Posted 17 December 2013 - 07:06 AM

Spencer, i did have a look, a dirttracker with huge wings looks quite top Heavy, how do you tune them? I assume the wings create downforce at high speeds...A very different approach to wing cars.

Did you make a jig for this conversion?

I will have a go at using the PSE for retro GP as well, cutting one down to 30mm width, we will see how that goes.
Joakim Pegers

#15 Mayberryman

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Posted 17 December 2013 - 07:42 PM

Jocke, of all of the cars this one is perhaps the most evil to drive.  We tune them with lead and the average car weighs in at between 130 and 140 Grams.  The wing does offer some down force as at times we race them without the wings and they handle quite differently.  I do not have a jig, however, one for your basic parma 573 chassis would work.

The beauty of these cars is that even though we do have many wrecks with them we do not use corner marshals and each off results in a tack call.  One other thing is that about two months ago I attended a race at SSR and ran third place with my #33 Sprint.  After the race the man who originally built the car came up to me and stated that the car was about 10 years old and that was the best it had run in the last five years.

 

So, I guess that in a funny way we are running a form of retro racing, not that we are running cars that look like the cars of the 60s and 70s but on a given day somebody running a brand new chassis can be running against a chassis that is over 10 years old.


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#16 Jocke P

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Posted 18 December 2013 - 01:28 AM

This brass version of the Parma chassis is the latest version of something that started a long time ago, I consider them a Classic design.
Joakim Pegers

#17 Pappy

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Posted 18 December 2013 - 04:04 PM

When you solder on that much brass it's a lot easier to use a little butane mini torch. It's a trick I learned from Pablo. Try it on some of the joints you have on your existing cars, just put a drop of Stay Bright flux on your solder joints and hit them with a mini torch and see what happens. 

 

Those stockers look like they would be a blast to race.  :good:


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#18 Jocke P

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Posted 18 December 2013 - 04:54 PM

Butch, I have done most of my conversions with nuts and bolts previously, but a fellow racer and i decided recently that we should step things up a bit, so we ordered jigs and some stuff from rick, and are now sourcing the right materials for proper scratch building. one problem so far has been to obtain Stay Bright over here, the whole market is either offering useless environmentally correct stuff or you have to purchase through a business Contact.
We have found Koford 5% silver solder, and i have good hopes that we will have a small quantity of Stay Bright here real soon.
In the meantime i do what I can with radio solder and a 100W weller. I have also a butane torch but am not happy with the results yet...i need somthing with acid for that i guess....
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#19 Jocke P

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Posted 01 April 2014 - 08:57 AM

Two recent builds on the FCR chassis,

20140330_205902.jpg

Parmbeckers...

20140330_205917.jpg

Both have body mounting plates that rattle.

20140330_210447.jpg

Russkit repop rims are ok fit with the original inserts.

These were a part of a trading deal, will be interesting to see how they run....
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Joakim Pegers

#20 W. J. Dougherty

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Posted 01 April 2014 - 09:54 AM

Silver solder is used by some for builds that require extreme joints and is very hard to work with.  In one building article, TonyP (one of our best "retro" style builders ever) said that uses 60/40 solder for his builds because it is easier to work with and most soldering efforts just don't require silver solder.

 

Just a thought...


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#21 NY Nick

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Posted 03 April 2014 - 10:53 AM

I like your cars, back in 82 we were cutting up wop chassis and running stock cars bodys
Don't have any left.
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#22 Gator Bob

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Posted 03 April 2014 - 11:09 AM

Good stuff, fun stuff.

The FCR and Womp is a great platform to play around with.

 

I did a Womp stretch hardbody Corvette about 25 years ago. The class was started but never really took off at the local track.

I'll dig it up and post a picture.


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#23 Jocke P

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Posted 03 April 2014 - 04:07 PM

Check out Hard body racers on Facebook if you will, they are in the Chicago region i Believe, seems to be a lot going on there.
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Joakim Pegers

#24 Ramcatlarry

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Posted 03 April 2014 - 04:28 PM

Jocke - that facebook page is "MA hardbody series".  We currently are rotating races at Mike Swiss's Chicagoland Raceway and At the Track in South Bend, Indiana.  This series rules only allow ridgid frames and 1" tires with the 1/24 plastic kit bodies at this time.  Most common are standard FCR frames with the bushings raised to the top of the upright after nibbling out the brass and womp frames stretched to the models specific wheelbase with piano wire and brass angles soldered in - all velcro body mounts.  Motor bracing is allowed with the demon/evil-9 motors more popular at 8/31 or so gearing.  Cars are more like the dirt oval racers in our midwest. 

 

I have a corvette and cobra project that I will build with retro torsion bar suspension....still open to non velcro body mount ideas. These will be more aligned with the California D3 hardbody rules....an alternative to JPvR.

 

The womp frame is narrow enough to make an easier build for many of the narrower model kits.


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#25 Jocke P

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Posted 04 April 2014 - 01:17 AM

I get a lot of inspiration looking at the Pictures, will build a couple according to the specs to show at our raceway.
We have to use the Deathstar motor and closed wheelhouses right now...the deathstar is really too much for the kids, lots of crashes...this class now runs on 9 volts which is better....
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Joakim Pegers





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