49 replies to this topic

[TSR]

This is a 1968 Emott car I restored with an original Dave Bloom painted, Dynamic Lola T160 body and a Champion "Orange Picker" motor. It was modified with a  Bob Kean armature and a modified endbell with machine screws and the bearing plate properly retained on the plastic molding with hex nuts epoxied on its inside face (the factory endbell setup on these motors is simply terrible). The endbell is properly vented with cutouts on the can and endbell's sides. As you will read on post # 11, we know know which car it is and when it was raced. I have now to make some changes on it to get it right.



Because the chassis was not corroded, I kept it "as found" to keep its original appearance intact.
The body came from Bob's house basement and was unused, so I married the two and added correct period aero devices.





After adding the rear spoiler and front diaplane, with the small Swingline ground stapler, just the way it was done in the Classic Era:



The front wheels are REHco (soon to be changed to the correct RVM), the rears are Mini Wheels NOS, over what appear to be Riggen wheels. The gears are Cobra, 8-32 ratio. Lead wires are Marklin (they will be changed to the correct triple Champion stuff) and the guide is of course a Cox "Quick Change", the "Jet Flag" did not yet exist...
The side pans cross hinge (the famous so-called "plumber hinge") is set behind the front axle. There is still a "motor box" made of wire around the motor, and the multiple main rails date this chassis quite precisely in the pro racing chassis evolution.
The chassis shows plenty of wear and dents, proving had racing by Emott at the California Arco in November 1968, and at least in one more race as the lead wires were changed.

One more joining the shelves, the next one going through my "restoration farm" will be a sister car to the one Bob raced at Tottenham Raceways in London in September 1969. It came with its original Kean motor still soldered to it, and we have a beautiful body for it.
 

[Martin]

Another beauty, P. 

 

Slotblog seems to be up again. Thanks for fixing. What was the problem?

[TSR]

Martin,

You have to ask the forum's owner, Greg Wells, not me!

But Greg told me that the problem was a mistake during a maintenance session by one of the host's technicians. He also said that the host was very cooperative and restored Slotblog as well as likely, hundreds thousands of other sites as quickly as they could. Which they did.
 
P

[zipper]

Got this close relative from Tom Scott collection sale. Down the memory lane - it's just like the chassis I began racing 1970 - except I had pink Cukras motor and blue Sunoco Lola body.  

[tonyp]

PdL,

I don’t believe those are RVM fronts but REHCo. RVM were narrow with no rubber hanging over rim.

I forgive you; we are all getting old. LOL.

[tonyp]

That chassis looks like the California Arco. Maybe it was one of the cars he loaned out to Morrissey, etc.

[TSR]

Tony, thanks! I will check the newspaper to see if I can find it in the old Morrissey pictures from the Cal Arco. Yes, the wheels are REHCo, my mistake! They will be switched to the right stuff ASAP.

Pekka, your chassis is a production Phaze III, in nice condition. They generally need complete re-soldering before use, but yours appears to have enough of the "glue" to stick together! 

[SlotStox#53]

Are the REHCo wheels at least magnesium like the RVMs?

[Pete L.]

Fascination details on these cars...I like to check back every day to find out what new information is added. Fellas, thanks for keeping these threads going !

[brucefl]

Is that a Kean motor as the body says; doesn't look like it.

If it is could you take a photo showing Kean's winding style? Would appreciate it a lot since I've not seen one since the early '70s.

Thanks.

[TSR]

That chassis looks like the California Arco. Maybe it was one of the cars he loaned out to Morrissey, etc.

 
Tony, it is in fact the car used in the California Arco on November 2, 1968, by Bob himself, and I scanned Morrissey's rag's page as clear evidence. But now I have to change the motor to an earlier version, one using a Mabuchi FT16D "BB"" (ball bearing) can but with the black Mura endbell. That will be easy because I have all the necessary bits handy. This will also allow me to properly redo the leadwires, since the double leads that were on the chassis are different from what appear to be triple Champion stuff. Everything else looks OK, except that I will change the front wheels for magnesium RVM jobs.



The body is listed in the tech chart as a "Dynamic Lola T160" so it has the correct body on it, something I was a bit hesitant about. That it is the genuine article and not a copy is also great.
 

Is that a Kean motor as the body says; doesn't look like it.

 
Bruce, Bob Kean first used Cox NASCAR cans and Mura endbells (he sometimes put a big Mura can bearing on the Cox cans), then on this particular car, a Mabuchi can (the type with the ball bearing and aluminum housing) also with a Mura endbell, then he used Champion "black" cans and Mura endbells, as clearly documented in the old newspapers.

We still have a half dozen of his armatures, that we are using in the restorations of the many Emott chassis we now have. I will take detail pictures of one for you on Thursday as I will be at the LASCM.
 
Below is a picture of one of the first Emott cars we found about 15 years ago on... eBay, at a time when no one cared. It went for a ridiculous 38 bucks. It still has its Kean motor in it, and Bob authenticated it as a car he drove at one of the Hinsdale Arco races, finishing in second place, if I recall correctly. He sold it to a local, and that same local kept it all those years, then parted with it for that paltry amount.

[tonyp]

The chassis above is one of my favorites Bob built. It was probably one of the early two-rail cars.

 

The next step was to drop the brass rail for a piano wire one.

[TSR]

Tony,

 

He must have built quite a few of that "Batwinder" style because besides the half dozen we have at the LASCM; other former racers such as John Gorski have/had several. The tapered rails are beautiful and the general design purity and simplicity make a mockery of the "plumber's nightmare" nickname applied to these chassis.

[Mbloes]

Not to nitpick, but those wheels in the article look more like a Riggen AA that was cut down. The metal finish looks too "shiny" for the RVM magnesium wheel – even in the scan you can see this – and it appears that the inside of the wheel is black anodized.

[TSR]

Mike, in post # 1, it says:

"The front wheels are REHCo (soon to be changed to the correct RVM), the rears are Mini Wheels NOS, over what appear to be Riggen wheels."

Sometimes, the parts at hand are not what they should be, because you can't just go to your local raceway and purchase a set of 50-year old RVM front wheels "just like that."   

The REHCo wheels are as it says, on the car temporarily and will soon be replaced by the correct stuff.

[TSR]

If it is could you take a photo showing Kean's winding style? Would appreciate it a lot since I've not seen one since the early '70s.

Bruce, I selected this Kean 23S from our trove; it is unused and in pretty good shape:







This was wound over Champion blanks with the gray/blue insulation before tab welding was introduced by Zimmerman and Thorp, so you can date it from right when the Emott car shown above was built.

[tonyp]

23 gauge wire was really big *** wire for that era.

[TSR]

Yes, but what a thrill through the banking if the car made it! 

[Dave Crevie]

I don't remember doing anything bigger than 26, and that was a drag motor. Of the wire that I still have from back then,

the biggest is 28, and I have a lot left on that spool, so I don't think I did many arms with it. 

[MSwiss]

I just came across this .459 diameter, 16t23.

We ran 15t23's for qualifying, and 16t23's, in some races, on low power.

Always a pain.

With the higher amp draw, they were hard on comms, and hard on braid.

At the end of my wing "career", I had switched to .480 64's, and just ran hi time endbells.

My last World Record was set with a 15 degree, 64 "race arm", with a +7 degree endbell.

You could take off easier, without arcing the braid, and get more than 1 or 2 good laps.

At the 2001 Nats, I TQ'ed the Warm-up, and TQ'ed the Nat's, setting the WR, with the same motor, without taking it apart.

 

The Riggen rubber tires "gave up", but the motor never slowed.

That was pretty unheard of at the time.

[TSR]

Mike, you should have that arm cleaned up and recond, just for the memories! 

Bill Steube provided me with several rocket motors with 23 arms, generally, 18 or 19 turns of the stuff. Short in brakes especially as our 1972/1973 cars weighed over 4 oz and had limited down force, you had to let off just coming out of the banking on a King, but so much torque coming out of the corners. I won several pro races with a 23, but they were running as hot as it gets, the Steube pea-soup green painted cans turning black, which pissed off the old man to no end... but they never gave up the ghost during racing.

As far as the Kean arms, we have some 23, 24 and 25, nothing smaller.

[zipper]

Even the modern capped comms really can't handle a 23 - I tried with two over 10 years ago. The first one did almost 2 laps, the other one just 1. Now, 74.5 or 84.5 arms with some 28 degrees + upto +10 on the endbell are used and they may do several laps at best. But the conditions are so different from the past. Luckily spray glue is gaining popularity.

[TSR]

Pekka,
there is one big difference of course, in the old days, power was 13.6 volts max. Generally more like 12.5... plus we ran a simple pair of ceramic magnets, not 48 slices of cobalt! 

But I can tell you from experience that I raced Steube S23 arms at least 8 times in 1972, and remember, we ran the same motor for 40 minutes, it was rather unusual if we had a motor change during a race. In fact, the only time this happened to me was at the '73 Nats, because new Mura motor brushes had not been tested in actual racing conditions and were chewing the comm, and the motor failed roughly 4 minutes in the heat, and I had a team of volunteers switching motors (fortunately I had 7 of them!) much faster than I could.
Well, sh*t happens. 

[tonyp]

I ran some Steube 23’s and they always lasted except on tracks that ran with the batteries and charger at the same time. When I won the IM Nationals on Elmsford Raceway’s 220 engleman it made the semi and main.


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[elvis44102]

around the time 23 wire was being experimented with the power was so bad (and glue) that i actually ran a 25 wire at the first nats in parma and was 2nd fastest qualifier simply because others consistently had issues with power/glue all 161 one of them....lol simply mentioning 23 wire brings back a lot of grief