123 replies to this topic

[deslot27]

Downey Archery Lanes was on Bellflower and Imperial and was never a bowling alley, it was archery, pool, slotcars. I was a th grade janitor at the place at night, Pay was track time......

[Tom Eatherly]

Well, after 40 years, it seems I'm back to it ![ay BPR} I grew up racing ALOT at Speed and Sport. It always amazed me how Ron Granlee ran that . I actually helped Ron's cousin[?], Don Brown build the Riverside track. That was a fun track. This was all back in the 60's. Then came desert dirt bike racing for a number of years. And now, back to slots. Imagine that! Love the D-3 Can-Am series. Well, hope to see you guys at BPR Nov 26. Later.

[Tom Eatherly]

Just occurred to me; have any of you guys heard anything on Mike Kondor? We grew up racing together, then he teamed up with Morrisey, and left me in the dust.

Got some really good motors from John Thorpe[thru Kondor] for a spell, then, like I said, went into dirt bikes and girlfriends!

 

Now here I am, probably bumming a car from Ken Bott or Bryan Warmack for the Warmack Nationals. One of you guys gonna loan me a fast car!?

[Dan Searcy]

Can't remember the name of the track but it was in Oxnard, CA. There were at least 2 tracks in town. This one was on A Street. I would go there as a 5th or 6th grader around 1967 or so with my Classic Ind. Manta Ray and my Cox controller. I remember marveling at the older guys with the cool wooden boxes full of cars. I think there were 3 tracks and a drag strip. The drag strip didn't require controllers. There was push button that would start the power in both lanes and a wadded up parachute at the top end to stop the cars. There was also an adjustable voltage dial; you could crank it all the way up to 36 volts I think. I remember putting my poor Manta Ray on the strip, punching the button, and when my car got about 1/2 way down the strip I'd turn the voltage all the way up.

I wish I still had that car.

Dan

[TSR]

How about Frank's Hobby Shop on Tustin Ave. in Tustin? I used to get all my stuff there when working for Cox...

Tom Hansen wrote:

I remember racing in an enduro against Warmack, Anderson, and Grant (with leg cast!) there, the amateurs against the pros. We had them them first half, the second they out-motored us.

Actually, this is what happened:

On March 23, weeks before the revolution that was soon to take place, the team of Bryan Warmack, Team Champion's John Tore Anderson and "Motorcycle Dave" Grant, still wearing a cast on his leg from a recent motorcycle mishap, joined forces to drive Warmack's Lola T70 in a 12-hour enduro run at Frank's Hobby Shop in Tustin, California.

Tom Hansen, Tim Fields and Chris Franz gave them a run for their money, leading by a mere 9 laps after 3 hours. A blown motor slowed them to a 129-lap insurmountable handicap by the end.

The winning car followed totally conventional early 1968 practice with an inline, 4-rail chassis around a reinforced Russkit motor bracket and floppy brass-rod and plate body mounts. Two Champion 517 motors were used as the first one wore its brushes after nine hours of racing.

Amateurs, hey?

[S.O. Watt]

Yeah, that was the 2nd of 3 battles that Our Gang Racing and the OC Pros squared off and duked it out in an Enduro. That "Riverside" track there rocked, I started actual competitive racing on that track with a birdcage chassis with a Russkit 22 power with a Chaparral (2B I think) is what I had . That's my chassis as the 2nd place car in that article and Morrisey called it a "Typical Example" of jail doors then in use across the country.

January to Mid April, '68, there were 3 enduros in Orange County, 2 twelve hours and a 4 hour, and the out come was always the same. Anderson/Warmack/Grant/Henline in some combo winning against some combo of the Our Gang of Fields/Frantz/Hansen. We led every one of them, sometimes as much as the 1st half and then fade, finishing no worse than 3rd. Racing in Orange county was pretty competitive amongst the locals. The 3rd of those enduros (Henline/Anderson winning) was the last for In-line sports cars in LA as the following weekend was the angle-winder takeover.

[PCH Parts Express]

Do you guy remember Race Masters in Santa Paula? I think they had the tracks from Circle-T. Racing 4" Nascars there in the 90's was fun. They had an Orange and one other.

[Dallas51170]

We had Go Faster Raceway in Lancaster California in the early 80's We had a Blue King track there.

[Jay Mendoza]

I just remembered the Family Fun Center, located of the 5 fwy on Via de la Valle in Del Mar California had a huge multi lane track, 12 or more lanes..is that correct? I think this was the site of one of the largest international competitions held in California, it was written up in one of my long lost 1960s hobby magazines. I saw the Del Mar track once when I visited my cousins in San Diego County.

There is a brand new custom track I just visited earlier this month in Santa Barbara, called Hobby Central Raceway, and the owner Dave sold a larger Blue King track to the raceway in Oxnard Ca., located off the 101 on Oxnard Blvd.

Does anyone have pictures of the the Shenk's Rolling Hills Raceway? Kieth, I seem to recall they had three tracks there, correct? The Orange if I recall was at the front, and had coint opperated timers, then there was the Imperial, and beyond it, past the counter was the other track which we never used. There was a growler for testing your armatures at the edge of the counter near the large front window. They had tons of brass custom hand made chassis, mostly angle winders with winged wedge style bodies. I can still recall the distinct smell of tire sauce they used, kind of similar to Paragon we used on 1/12 and 1/10th scale onroad R/C pan cars like the Associated 10L.

Jack, glad to see you found slot blog, see you at the next vintage kart meet at Adams,

Jay

[Phil Hackett]

There's a question about the track on the Redondo Beach pier:

It was called Thunder Thumb Raceway and was owned and operated by the Redondo Beach City Parks & Recreation Department. It had a 280-300 foot Engleman wedged crosswise into the building. I **think** the track had been previously at a location on PCH. The reason the track was on the pier was Redondo Beach had over developed the pier and there were few businesses taking up leases so there was a lot of empty space to fill and that track did it nicely (in one location at least).

TT, as we called it, was where I re-entered slot racing. The track had limited hours, mainly Friday nights opening at 6pm to 10pm, Saturdays and Sundays opening at 1pm to 11pm. Summer hours they were open 5 days/week. They sold parts at a 20% discount and would order anything you wanted giving you the same discount! Checkpoint armatures were a favorite order item.

Some of the benefits of being on the pier was the temperature never got higher than 72 degrees and the barely covered females walking by....

The track itself was different than any other Engleman I've ever seen. It had the bank to the **left** of the drivers panel and the cars went right to left across the drivers panel. This made the "deadmans" a left turn instead of a right. The track was **very** big, so big, the area between the esses and the back straight could have several people in there marshaling, pitting cars, gluing. There was a place for a turn marshall to **sit** for marshaling the "lead-on" to the main straight. The bank was so high that I could hardly see over it and I'm well over 6' tall.

The track closed because the building became leased. The track was sold and resurrected in Upland, California where they took about 80 running feet out of the track to fit it into their building. Shortening the track ruined it. Where it is today I have no idea. Probably land-filled.

[Dyno-Don]

I realize this is an old topic, but I thought I would add one more place to the discussion, and see if anyone remembers it.

Duarte CA, Go-Go Raceways, it was right on Route 66 (Huntington Drive). I believe the store opened in 1966. In 1967 my dad, who was the Music/Band teacher for the local schools in this small town, bought the store. This was Nirvana for an 11 year old kid! We had three American tracks, A Regal 90 ( it was the Black track, flat and most guys didn't like it), a Monarch 100 (this one was Orange and our intermediate size, it saw lots of use), and an Imperial 150 (red, our BIG track, there was regularly a waiting line to get on this one). We also had two drag strips for a short period of time - one in HO scale that was only up for a couple of weeks. The other was an 80' long 1/32 that was there for about 6 months. It was right on top of the Glass Showcases and dad took it down when he came in one night and we had poured lighter fluid on it to make "Flame Burn Outs".

At the end of 1970 the landlord wanted to raise the rent by a substantial amount, so we deiced to move. We took over a building down the street, it was originally Miller Meats, but there were some problems with the city, so we moved again across the street to an OLD building. We got partially set up and the fire department said the building wasn't up to code, so we gave up. We sold the black and orange tracks and set the Red Imperial up in our garage! Boy was I popular in the neighborhood. But we soon decided to move out of the area and we gave it to the Boy Scouts.

 

We had some really great times with that store - 24 hour races where the cars had to have working lights, NASCAR only races, things like that. John Thorpe used to come in all the time and test at our track and we carried his motors in the store.

 

If anyone remembers this store I'd love to hear about it! My 82 year old mother is looking for pictures.

[CharlesE]

Back in the late 60's / early 70's, I hung out at the Chequered Flag in Inglewood.  I remember two tracks there, one flat (road course) with a very large scale model red Jaguar XKE in one of the off course areas.  The other couse had one very large radius highly banked turn of almost 180 degrees, which could be driven almost flat out.....slight letup required on entry to the turn.  It also had several very tight turns, and one sequence of very tight "S" turns, at the end of a moderately long straight.  Regulars learned that as long as they drove through the "S"'s under full braking they could approach them at full throttle.  It took Team Russkit (Russell?) several laps to figure this out. 

 

My memory is that the shop was owned by a "Bob" who had a small unimat in the back which he used for small tasks for customers.  For about a year and a half, I worked behind the counter with Bob.

 

My cars progressed from a Ball Bearing equipped Pittman 706 Chapparal (memory may be wrong on the model) to Mabuchi's to Tyco motors. Most of the chassis were scratch built using brazing rod soldered into the appropriate shape.  I enjoyed trying to form the entire chassis from one piece of rod.  Still remember searching through a bin of Tyco motors at "Chuck's" hobby  store for the one motor with the strongest magnet.

 

I raced there and at the Revell raceway which was relatively close to the Chequered Flag.

 

I well remember the smell of wintergreen oil, used to soften the tires when we entered the building.

[Dennis David]

That will alway be the smell associated with slot cars for me.

[CharlesE]

Just before the flat plate sleds came into vogue, a gentleman named "Paul Gassen" (sp?) built up several lightweight magnesium chassis, exquisitely machined, with lightening holes that literally made the sheet magnesium into trusses.  He ran these.....my recollection.....with Thorp motors and tires.....  Norm Thorp was a frequent visitor to Chequered Flag and his tires were often trued on the backroom unimat.  The magnesium chassis were extremely fast on the Chequered Flag track, but on other tracks, with power supplies that fed all lanes from a common source, the Thorps which at that time were wound for efficiency lost out to the larger wind motors.  Those threw more heat, but also drew most of the tracks current leaving the Thorps at a disadvantage.  Simply put, like the old McClaren Can Am cars, there was more horsepower available than the tires could handle, particularly in a lightweight chassis, thus the flat plates which were heavier, but had a lower center of gravity won out.

 

We also ran several experiments with spoilers, wings and body vents, all of which helped lower lap times, particularly on the higher speed courses.   I ran a one sixteenth inch thick balsa wing, which I formed over a cylindrical glass to curve, then sanded to an airfoil shape.  After two coats of filler, a primer and red paint, it was glass smooth, and worked very well.

 

I always found it was critical to have a chassis that was straight and that was evenly cornerweighted.  I checked that by setting the car on a flat platform and pressing down on a tire with a thumb.  The opposite side of the chassis would rise, and I would tweak the chassis until it moved evenly at all corners.  The front tires typically were hard rubber, coated with clear fingernail polish, with each individual front tire facing outwards slightly, so  that it would tend to steer out of a skid, when in a corner.

[Eugene Serrano]

I "raced" at Santa Ana Raceway in the 1960's....Cox Chaparral, Viper, a NASCAR stocker, and a Cheetah.....I wonder if anybody remembers the two tracks that were on 1st Street in Santa Ana....one was in between Standard and Main St. and it had a balcony you could race from, looking down on the track.....the other was between Bristol and Fairview across from Consumer City....it also had a balcony...We would go to one or the other if SAR was crowded....I was a snot-nose kid at the time and do not remember their names...Thanks!! 

[Tim Wilkins]

The September 1967 issue of Car Model magazine had a comprehensive list

Attached Images

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[Dave Crevie]

Modelrama was the track in Santa Ana I frequented. Not sure of the street address. My cousin always drove.

We also went to the YMCA in San Diego, but I don't remember that track. I do remember it was always packed

with sailors on Friday nights.

[Samiam]

The September 1967 issue of Car Model magazine had a comprehensive list

WOW! Cali' was the place to be for slot car racing in 1967.

 

Idaho.... not so much.

[Bill from NH]

That must be why most only race retros at BPR. They got tired traveling around to all the Cali tracks in the 60's. 

[Eugene Serrano]

The September 1967 issue of Car Model magazine had a comprehensive list

Thanks for that, Tim!!...That listing for Santa Ana Grand Prix rings a bell...I think it was the one on 1st Street between Standard & Main...the building is still there...it's now a Mexican vaquero outfitter!!..Still think of the fun when I drive by!!!!

[Dave Crevie]

SoCal was the place for slot racing, even before I started going to the commercial tracks in '63. Shopping plazas

were popping up all over, and one not too far from Canoga Park had 17 storefronts, eleven had slot tracks. Most

were not hobby oriented, but threw up tracks to get in on the fad. One was a laundermat that had a Formica surfaced

track, which did not co-exist with the high humidity. The Formica buckled and the track became unusable. One was in

a magazine shop. I think only three or four were actually in hobby oriented stores. If I remember correct, it really started

to boom in '64. You couldn't sling a dead cat without hitting a slot track. I'm sure there were more than there were surf shops.

[Samiam]

Ahhhh....Canoga Park.

In " Joe's Garage "

 

Central scrutinizer:
We take you now to a garage in Canoga Park

It wasn't very large
There was just enough room to cram the track
In the corner over by the dodge
It was a twisty four lane

With a cross over on the bridge
And a cheesy old power supply
With a sign on the front said American Model Car Raceways

And a second-hand lap counter
It was a home made job on top of the Bar

 

Sorry...I'm no Frank Zappa

[Dave Crevie]

Where in Canoga Park? I was on Sherman Way at the West end. My cousin knew every slot track and speed

shop within 50 miles of LA. My other cousin was a surfer, so days were spent surfing, and nights were spent

slot racing or cruising. I did not realize how great life was.

[Eugene Serrano]

SoCal was the place for slot racing, even before I started going to the commercial tracks in '63. Shopping plazas

were popping up all over, and one not too far from Canoga Park had 17 storefronts, eleven had slot tracks. Most

were not hobby oriented, but threw up tracks to get in on the fad. One was a laundermat that had a Formica surfaced

track, which did not co-exist with the high humidity. The Formica buckled and the track became unusable. One was in

a magazine shop. I think only three or four were actually in hobby oriented stores. If I remember correct, it really started

to boom in '64. You couldn't sling a dead cat without hitting a slot track. I'm sure there were more than there were surf shops.

We lived close to SAR and I remember all the "buzz" in school about the track opening...and all the people waiting to get in when it opened....and we had 6 or 7 tracks within 15 min. drive time!!!...(1960s 15 min. drive time!!)

[Mark H]

R&L Raceway 1964


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