138 replies to this topic

[dc-65x]

"CALL THE PLUMBER!"

 

This build is a tribute to Howie Ursaner’s 1968 Cobra Invitational car he World Record TQ’d at Buzzarama in Brooklyn, NY.

 

It is going to be a team effort with:

 

Howie Ursaner - Team Leader

Steve Okeefe - Master chassis builder

Joe “Noose” Neumeister - Painter extraordinaire

Rodney Chew - Expert vintage builder and tuner

Sandy Gross - Cobra teammate and supplier of rare NOS motor parts

and Captain Rick putting all the pieces together

 

Here is Howie’s account of the Buzzarama race:

 

The Cobra Invitational race at Buzzarama in Brooklyn, NY, was a race held by Cobra, my sponsor, in 1968. It was one of the first big races after switching to anglewinders. This race attracted 116 racers from around the country. About every pro out there was in attendance. My car that I built for this race was one of four at this race using the latest plumber construction. I ran a Lotus 30 body and a production Cobra motor. Throughout 1968 Lou Graziano, head honcho at Cobra, forced me and Sandy to run production motors. I told him there is no way we would win any races and he said he didn't care and we had to run them. I did and was plagued at every race. What was happening is that they would get so hot the motors were melting.

 

Mike Morrissey, in Model Car Journal, described Buzzy's on this day as "Cough City". The power was so dirty, and the winds were getting so hot that almost all of the motors were blowing. I did TQ at this race with a time of 5.30 that Mike Morrissey claimed was a new world record for a King track. It was amazing that so many big names were not in the A Main. In the race I was in trouble quickly as there was no way to keep the pinion on. I was installing with high temp silver solder and in this race the pinion kept unsoldering itself and coming off. I never had pinions come off before this.

 

Brady had hooked up with Phil Ingles when he had no motor for the Main after running the Consi, and Semi. Phil was building great motors that ran cool. That is how he won this race. After this, and a few more like it, Lou wanted me to win so I went to running Emott chassis and Kean Cans. Bob was building a lot of his anglewinders and we won on Sunday and he sold on Monday. Sandy was under the same restrictions in this race and it shows in his finish as well. Sandy had pretty much disappeared at college at this time. Things were changing. Partying and girls had come into the picture and I was getting pretty distracted, and stayed distracted for 42 years.

 

Below I’ve included all eight pages of Model Racing Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, as it's a pretty cool issue. The race report starts on page 1 and is titled “First Cobra Invitational, Jerry Brady Continues New York Dominance”:

 

(Click on the pictures to enlarge them.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have one very dark and very fuzzy picture of Howie’s car to work from:

 

 

Thank goodness we have Steve! He will be doing a post soon with all the chassis details he worked out with Howie and several of his wonderful Excel chassis drawings.

 

Stay tuned!

[slotbaker]

[Richard G With]

Excel chassis drawings?

 

The answer to the "why plumber" as I recall is that it looked like a "plumber's nightmare" with wires and tubes running every direction imaginable.

[SlotStox#53]

The channel is locked and will be listening out for updates

[Pablo]

Should be a simple build, Rick. Just find a vintage motor marked "Uncoughable" and you'll be good to go

[Bill from NH]

Excel chassis drawings?

 

Check the Independent Scratchbuilder forum here on Slotblog. You'll find numerous examples of Excel chassis drawings.

[Steve Okeefe]

A few months ago Captain Rick asked me to produce a drawing of one of Howie Ursaner’s first plumber chassis from 1968.

 

The drawing was to be based on a single photograph published 48 years ago in the Model Racing Journal.  The photo itself is terrible; almost all of the finer detail is simply absent.  In fact, the photo looks like it was taken in the same dark room where the film was processed.

 

Fortunately, we have a secret weapon on this project; Rick has enlisted the help and support of the original builder.  Now we have a much better chance of puzzling out all that missing detail with only a minimal amount of guesswork.

 

Through a series of PMs we decided the chassis would be built as an analog copy rather than a replica or re-creation.  Not only is the completed car to be a potential museum-piece, but we all wanted it to be a functional slot racer as well, with speed and handling characteristics equal to or maybe even better than the original.

 

Mechanical style drawings of chassis have always fascinated me, so when I build a historically accurate pro chassis I also do a drawing of it to compliment the photos.   Being too cheap to buy CAD software, and too lazy to learn how to use it (my hobby is slot cars, not computers), I figured out how to use the “drawing package” in Microsoft Office, and specifically MS Excel, to make full color renderings to a fairly high degree of accuracy.

 

One giant advantage to creating a digital drawing is that you can email it to other people, in this case the original builder, and sort out even the most complex details (dimensions, angles, proportions, relationships, etc.) before cutting the first piece of brass or piano wire.  I’ve done this on past projects and it has worked great.

 

Howie was very patient with me for a couple of weeks while I bombarded him with a series of “what’s this?” and “how did you do that?” questions.  Between what we could figure out together, what Howie could remember directly (it was 48 years ago after all), and after dozens of large and small changes to the drawing, here’s what we came up with:

 

 

Subtracting the motor and running gear (another advantage of a digital drawing) here’s the bare chassis:

 

 

To better show detail, here’s the center section:

 

 

And finally the plumber and side pans:

 

 

In addition to the drawing, Rick has asked me to build the chassis for this project car.  So, that will be the subject of my next series of posts.

[don.siegel]

You guys are amazing.... 

 

Don 

[dc-65x]

Amazing detective work and a great looking set of drawings Steve!

 

I needed to send Steve the goodies needed for him to begin the build, but we had a problem.......

 

We needed a 1" wide Cobra stamped drop arm. I had a new 1 1/4" wide arm but I hated to cut it up. My buddy Martin Windmill came to the rescue sending me a 1" drop arm. Here it is before sprucing up next to the new 1 1/4" arm:

 

 

I had to square up the overall length which was cut at an angle and re-cut the chamfers. But the biggest problem was with the guide flag hole. It had not only been enlarged but it was now off center. Mr. Milling Machine got the hole back on center and I machined up a little bushing for the new hole:

 

 

The guide tongue was also reshaped and 2 notches cut to more closely resemble Howie's. Here it is all buffed up and ready to ship:

 

 

Here are the goodies I sent Steve to work his chassis fabrication magic. Included were the Korrect size Riggen wheels/tires (though not the ones we'll be using) a Mura 16D jig motor with motor bracket, a Weldun 64P spur gear and the Cobra drop arm. :

 

 

We're off and running!

 

 

[SlotStox#53]

Howdy Steve

Amazing bit of detective work & designs Great collaboration & team working all the details out. Going to be one sweet car!!

Nice little package you're sending off Rick.

[Half Fast]

What a difference a year makes!

 

Compare this angle winder chassis to the 1967 jail door chassis as recreated by Rick and Pablo. Amazing development in a very short period of time.

 

Build on.

 

Cheers

[endbelldrive]

Thanks to the the team of Rick and SteveO for keeping it alive!

[havlicek]

Lovely!  Rick & Steve is a pretty danged world class team!

 

-john

[Noose]

I'm still cracking up over the Tony P chassis ad on Page 5 that says $14.95 Postage Included. 

[SlotStox#53]

I'm still cracking up over the Tony P chassis ad on Page 5 that says $14.95 Postage Included. 

Wonder if that price is still valid?

[tonyp]

Not that far off. It's worth 105.00 in today's money,

[Don Weaver]

Noose,

 

Were the $3.95 painted bodies with free lettering your work?

 

Don

[Noose]

Probably.  But they may also been Mike Tango's wife Connie's work.  I was cheap but not that cheap. The ting that throws it off is the free lettering. So maybe they were mine because Connie never did lettering that I can recall.

[NY Nick]

When the car is done you going to run some laps at Buzzarama?

Looks like a nice project thanks for posting it.

[Howie Ursaner]

Not that far off. It's worth 105.00 in today's money,

More like $150 in todays money 

[tonyp]

Guess I need to raise my prices. Lol

[Bill from NH]

I recall when the $25 chassis got free postage.  If you bought them at C&C, you didn't have to pay CT sales tax either.

[Pablo]

Guess I need to raise my prices. Lol

I'll second that

[Uncle Fred]

On page 2 the Calendar list a Car Model race at Glen Oaks the say's " No Sidewinders".

[Noose]

On page 2 the Calendar list a Car Model race at Glen Oaks the say's " No Sidewinders".

That's because it was a "GP" race.