139 replies to this topic

[Dave of '60s Lancer]

Yeah, I'm old   but life is good and I have a ton of great memories.

 

I signed up for this site many years ago but somehow got sidetracked - life does that to you and I never really got started here.

 

Greg sent me an email about this site being down and now back up and he jogged my memory.

 

I'm not sure if anyone is interested in Lancer's history from one of the "horse's mouth" (there was more than one horse ). A lot of what I've read on other slot car sites is... well... history slightly re-imagined or maybe slightly "bent" into something a bit more "glorious" sounding. Anyway it was great fun for many years, with great people, but I won't bore you at this point.

 

Not everyone is keen on the past. Maybe some history later if there's interest.

 

It's fun to be here. I have snooped around the forum and it looks pretty cool.

 

All the best,

 

Dave

[Don Weaver]

Lancer's history from the "horse's mouth" would be interesting reading, especially the back stories that I'm sure are there. Please go ahead...

 

Don

[ajd350]

The accounts of those who were there at the time are getting harder to come by. Please share with us. 

[Racer36]

I can’t wait for the horse to speak!

[MattD]

Waiting anxiously to hear your stories and history!

[Maximo]

I am all ears and eyes! Lancer is a great story we all want to know about, so please proceed!

 

Maximo

[C. J. Bupgoo]

I have some oats...    

[Eddie Fleming]

Your name is not Ed, is it, Dave?

 

Love to hear the story. Go for it.

[Jairus]

About time, Dave! You told me about this years ago.

But, we like pictures so...

[Steve Deiters]

Story of the Indy car mold that never made it to the Lancer P/N list...

[Bill from NH]

Dave, you won't find anyone here who is not interested in hearing the details of Lancer history, myself included. I still own a couple factory- painted Lancer bodies I bought in '67 or '68.

[Dave of '60s Lancer]

Thanks so much, guys. It's nice to see the interest. There's a lot of history to share as well as some fun back stories, so I'm sure this will be an on-going thread for a while.

 

Let's see - Where to start?

 

Lancer Co. was a fun place to work. We were all pretty young, even the owner and his partner. We all knew each other before Lancer was born so we were like a family There were always some kind of shenanigans and rowdiness taking place as well as some silliness and stupid guy stuff like playing tricks on someone. We got our work done, but we had fun doing it.

 

Lancer Co. was born in the back room of a local hobby shop that I and my friends had gone to through junior high and high school. It was a place where strangers became friends quickly because they shared common passions. When you walked in there was always someone there you knew or would get to know.

 

Lancer began in San Bernardino, California – the home of the original McDonalds Hamburger Drive Inn, which was going strong at the time... 25 cents for a hamburger and Coke and 10 or 15 cents for fries – man, what a deal  !!!

It was the late '50s and early '60s and life was great. Everyone had a hot rod or custom or were building one. It was car heaven and Wolfman Jack was on the radio doing his thing in style, and we all loved it.

 

Cruising on Friday and Saturday nights through McDonalds and listening to the Wolfman howl... ahhhooo!   – awesome!!! Just loved it.

 

Lancer Co. was born while I was in college. It began in the back room of the hobby shop of my youth, and progressed from there when the slot racing hobby began to grow and become more popular. Eventually, they had to move into a dedicated business location, and John the money man and owner had to sell the hobby shop and Lancer Co. was born.

 

More to come later. 

[Bill from NH]

I don't think I've ever heard who actually owned Lancer before now. Lloyd Asbury gets a lot of credit for the body designs and their molds.

[Dave of '60s Lancer]

Post #2
 
John Brunson was the money man and sole owner of Lancer.
 
Lloyd Asbury, the pattern/moldmaker, helped John start the company with his amazing talents and skills. Lloyd at one time was a well-known genius at building large scale static 1920s and 1930s era model biplanes.

With his mad skills, he helped John start Lancer company and was paid handsomely, but never given a partnership in the company.
 
A lot of stories have been started and spread over many years alluding to Lloyd's part in the company from owner to equal financial partner.
Even family members have kept some of these stories alive, but the truth is Lloyd was a very talented, highly-paid employee. I was there.

With their first manufacturing location acquired they began to grow, but I was in college and not aware of the changes John had made.
One day during college summer vacation I ran into a high school and model car building friend and he told me about Lancer Co. and invited me to come visit down on South Waterman Ave. at the southern part of San Bernardino. He had gone to work for John, liked it there, and liked his job.
 
So, one day I went down to see Lancer Co. and to rekindle my friendships with John and Lloyd. In earlier years I had been to both their
 homes and become friends with them and their families.
 
It was fun. It was small. They had one forming machine and made eight bodies at a time. Forming them, trimming them out, putting labels in the bodies, and then boxing them up for shipment.

All very nicely organized.
 
I went back several more times as I found the whole process fascinating. It was nice seeing John and Lloyd again and the guys working there were really nice. I actually knew several others working there.
 
After nearly wearing out my welcome, one of the guys asked if I'd like to try trimming a body. it was cool. "Pretty good," he said, "Would you like to do a few more?" I did and did good again.
 
He told John, and John came out and said, "I hear you did good and you sure spend enough time here. Would you like a summer job??

 

Eee-haa... I was off and running.

It was an easy place to work and we were always having fun.

 

We were all young kids and John and Lloyd were in their early 30s. Someone was always playing a prank on someone else – even John and Lloyd.
If it wasn't dumb guy stuff, we were outside before work waiting for John to show up, racing each other up and down the street in our hot race cars we built. No laws against street racing then. Ya just couldn't go over the speed limit. Not like that now.
 
That's it for now.
 
Any questions, please feel free to ask.
 
More to come another day. More about Lancer and less about me.

[Mr. M]

We are dying to know what was the secret of the molding process that built in more detail than anyone else? History says that this was a closely-held secret.

[Dave of '60s Lancer]

Post #3
 
Mr. M,

Your question is really appropriate as it leads into where I'd be going on this next post.
 
There were several secret processes to create the high detail and the deeply-undercut compound curves on the bottom sides of the formed parts, and the complicated detail on the topside. Lloyd Asbury was a genius designer who came up with the idea of multi-piece molds to form over, and the sequence to remove each part trapped by the formed plastic over the mold, sometimes three or four pieces. I learned it from Lloyd training me.

Once the mold was finished by Lloyd or me, whoever built the mold would have to go into the forming room where production was done and form the parts ourselves and see if what we designed worked, and once happy with the process, depending on the car replicated, we would then begin the training process for the production workers of how to remove the parts and the sequence needed.
 
The design of the separate base that the car mold sat on was another part of the forming process that allowed us to create other complicated shapes and form the parts tightly, using the plastic properly so there was no unwanted webbing of the plastic where it formed improperly and left unwanted shapes on the bodies not meant to be there.
 
Many of the other shapes on the body that gave such great detail were handmade out of pieces of brass and stainless steel, filed, hand-shaped, and then installed on the master mold.
 
Most every mold had a variety of metal pieces to accomplish the intense details we were able to create. It was a lot of fun because it drove the other manufacturers crazy and the magazines at the time would rave over the detail, crispness, and clarity of each part. There was a magazine in England that would do a review of each new release by a star system, 5 being the highest, and we would always get 5 stars.

John and Lloyd agreed that no matter how long it took to make a master pattern, they wanted the very best or better!!!

[Maximo]

Please describe in the future the exact process of trimming bodies. I have heard all kinds of stuff but you can clear the air and give us all facts!

 

Thank you for finally starting this valuable thread.

 

BTW, talk about yourself if it is part of your story, we don't mind!

 

omixaM

[Bill from NH]

Dave, what can you tell us about the brass rod inline chassis, both sports car and F1, that were sold under the Lancer name. I understand they made by another local company to be sold by Lancer. These chassis still occasionally show up on eBay, with the sellers often not knowing what they are.

[Dave of '60s Lancer]

Maximo,

Great question.

There were basically two styles of bodies... F1/Indy car style and four-wheel race car style. Each car, no matter the style, had a separate base the cars sat on while being formed and the bases were secured to the machine's forming grid with screws.

The bases could be low and flat or higher and at any angle from front to rear, to successfully form the body with optimal results. This was one of the closely-guarded secrets to forming bodies with such great detail and be able to finish trim the parts so cleanly.
 
The bodies were formed eight at a time on a grid that was 30" x 30" as I remember. A frame held a sheet of plastic that was heated by an overhead heater. When a timer tripped, it would cause the frame to go down and the parts would be formed. The machine operator would then swing away the manually-operated heater, grab the sheet of eight formed bodies, lift them off the bases, and throw the hot sheet on the work table where he would then separate the bodies with a large pair of scissors. There were usually four people to a workstation and the operator would push two untrimmed pieces to each trimmer.
 
Scissors-style X-Acto knives with #11 blades would be used to first separate the formed part from the scrap plastic surrounding them, by trimming around the base of the mold, and if there were wheel wells there was always a carved -guide to follow with the knife to open up the wheel openings. These guides would eventually become a trough and would have to be repaired periodically by using a liquid filler that would harden, similar to what the molds were made of, then filed to shape and a new guide carved in to follow.
 
Trimming the bodies was an art that had to be learned and it was an art to learn not to slice yourself. There were plenty of band-aids,
 
Maximo, I hope this answers your question.

[Zippity]

Anyone got any photographs to go along with this narrative?

 

Trying to imagine what Dave is talking about is difficult for this old brain to understand. 

[Jairus]

Dave Susan is a member of (or was a member of) Scale Auto Builders Association. A local model car club and a multiple award winner.
I joined in 1982 or '83 and he joined a bit later. But his builds were and are fantastic and inspired me many times with his creativity and clean worksmanship.

It was not till years later... probably 2005 or so that he told me he worked for Lancer at one time.
I think it was 2010 that I asked him to join Slotblog and tell his story.

Keep going, Dave!  

[MSwiss]

Great info, Dave. Keep it coming.
 
In 1982, I wound up with a Lancer painted body display (fold-out ??) from the Chicago area sales rep for Lancer, William Korr. Were the bodies painted in house?
 
How about the displays?

[MattD]

This is great. Sounds like the molds may have had a cut line molded in that was the guide for trimming. Was the guide a separate piece for each style body that was laid on or under the body to use as the trimming guide?   

[Maximo]

Dave, 
 
Thank you greatly. We have been told about using a "Hot Wire" to quickly trim bodies. Was that part of the trimming process? I don't think that you mentioned anything about that.
 
maximo

[Dave of '60s Lancer]

Post #4
 
Great questions, guys.

No pictures. Never thought of it back in the day. I started there in 1964, so we're talking nearly 55 years ago.
I was riding my motorcycle, driving a street rod, hanging out with my buddies, and chasing women. I was in my very early 20s and this was just a fun job. Life was good in the '60s. Still is today.
 
MSwiss,
The bodies were painted in house. There was a production crew of about 10 women who hand painted the bodies and
the interior blanks and driver heads that came with some but not all.
 
The displays were created in house, too. The frames were outsourced and came in as blanks then assembled with the bodies in-house.
 
Mattb,
The trim line guides for the wheel cut-outs were hand-carved into the molds made of aluminum-filled epoxy resin. A very tough material. You simply followed the guide with your X-Acto knife and removed each piece if it didn't just fall away on its own.
 
Maximo,
No hot wire was ever used, just an X-Acto knife.