31 replies to this topic

[Jesse Gonzales]

Hi All, after looking at John H's Mura Two Hole custom motor offer it brought back some good memories of racing in the 1972 era. Cee or C Can open motors just howl so pretty and brass & piano wire chassis with drop arms and plumbered bat pans always felt so darn nice to drive though rivers of glue. Is anyone out there interested in racing what some call vintage cars as opposed to retro? Ceramic mags, some sort of C can and any endbell that will take the heat of an old longstack open arm fit into a fully articulated chassis. Maybe even NCC era air control, maybe we could get that guy that used to buy all his horsepower and chassis to get back into racing and see whose bum he can kick.

 

Wanna race!

 

Jesse Gonzales

[MSwiss]

The UK Retro org races such a class.

They call it Tottenham cars.

They are very cool.

I think a finite amount of motor parts might hurt it's chance to ever catch on here.

[team burrito]

get an old brass & wire gt-12 chassis, bolt in a x-12 motor & pin on a retro gt body. that's what i did.

 

 

[MSwiss]

Cool, but nothing 1972 about it, other than it's an anglewinder.

[havlicek]

That is a neat car Russ, but Swiss' comment is pretty much what I was thinking.  I "think" Jesse was talking about the old "lead sleds" of the period.  As for the motors, the parts are getting scarce, and most every one I do requires a bunch of effort just to get them in good condition.  The only place I remember seeing NOS stuff is Electric Dreams and they were pretty pricey last I checked.  I guess allowing the Trinity and (I think?) later-but-similar cans like the Champion would help.

This is a subject that has come up here before, and doesn't seem to have gotten much traction.  The "Tottenham" cars I've seen are pretty great looking, and seem to be 100% period.  Maybe there's more parts on the other side of the pond.

[MSwiss]

Andy Brown Searle / AB Slotsport, of the UK, posted either here, or on FB (or both), soliciting for old Mura Green cans.

 

The guy who has enough of that, including vintage arms, to supply a regional series, by himself, is the infamous Vitter.

[Dave Crevie]

I would be very supportive of a class like that. I missed out on that period of slot racing, and I would like to see what it

was like.

[Foamy]

Maybe with modern arms so they don't blow up. 40+ year old arms will not last very long.

[Pablo]

I'd be interested, if the rules were clear. But I'm not going to travel across the USA to do it.

For me, it would have to be via proxy.

[Half Fast]

No

[jimht]

Many of us that raced that stuff are still around.

 

There was a reason we got rid of the orange tires and the copious brown glue that was needed to make those overpowered lead sleds handle...

 

Not because they didn't work but because we improved things to make racing more pleasant.

The museum in Cali is chock full of the unobtainium necessary to race the old stuff and that's where it belongs.

 

C cans evolved to match the newer cars and track conditions and as was stated above the originals are difficult to come by.

 

The car pictured by Russ Toy is what we would have used if we'd known better and is probably faster around the track than anything available in 1972.

 

The current geezers that have returned to race have created Retro anglewinder classes that have been reminiscent of the Seventies...without any huge success.

 

The period between 1970 and 1980 had a really really really small group of fanatics racing mostly hand made cars half of which were obsoleted every race.

 

One could pick a time frame of a few months and recreate the cars and the racing we did with them, but it would just be a snapshot of the time and not much fun for very long...just as it was then.

 

We moved on.

 

 

[MSwiss]

Good post, Jim.

 

Here are a couple UK Tottenham cars.

 

They certainly have a lot more personality than any of the current Retro Pro chassis.

 

The only thing I'm meh about, is the steel guide tongues..

 

I'm not sure if that is a nod to more durability.

 

What helps makes these doable is the tracks the UK guys run on.

 

AFAIK, nothing big or super-fast.

 

IOW, there isn't a reason to make them light.

 

And way less terminal velocity to destroy them.

 

Race a '70-'72 car on a Gerding, with G7 motors, with open winds, and they would get torn up, just like Retro Pro cars get torn up, that run X12 motors.

[Jesse Gonzales]

The Tottenham cars shown are pretty close to the beautiful chassis built by Lee Gilbert, Billy Steube, Dave Fortner, Big O Monty Ohren, Tom Hansen and others. Guys like John, Stu Koford and some others could make armatures that are new and more than able to last a 40 minute main. I understand the reluctance to go back to 1972 as it was a fast but high maintenance period due to glue and orange rubber. with modern rubber and tracks the "Big Block" Cee Cans would bellow like the old Can-Am 427's of old.

 

I have blanks from Thorpe and could wind a few along with some of the old NOS arms I have of mine. I will not sell my Zimmerman 24, Steube 27-28, Pooch 24 as I bought those just for looking at. The best looking one is my Pooch, I callously put it in a setup at Speed & Sport after grenading a 26-28 and threw solder. I had to resort to one of my 25's to race, had ponies but seeing a blue for only the second time in my life for about half hour track time only was not conducent to finishing high in placing.

 

Anyhow, to those that are so inclined go for it for those not sorry for taking your time. With no place for me to race I've taken up Gunsmithing to restore my two late Viet Nam vet brothers firearms to keep busy.

 

Jesse Gonzales

[havlicek]

 

 

Guys like John, Stu Koford and some others could make armatures that are new and more than able to last a 40 minute main.

 

Well, since these motors haven't been raced in earnest in decades (*outside of the Tottenham stuff), it remains to be seen whether they could last for a 40 minute main Jesse.    Still, I've always thought this would be a cool thing, and obviously it works "across the pond", so there is interest out there.  ***It's not about why this type racing came and went, it's whether there's interest in the cars and racing them.

*As for interest, well just look at the builds Rick T (and others) does and how they stir the memories of older racers, as well as the imaginations of those who didn't race then, but can appreciate the cars now.  So, there is undoubtedly interest in the cars from that era.

*As for actually building new ones and racing them, that remains to be seen.  It takes some pretty major skill to build cars like the "Tottenham" ones shown above and/or just replicating the classic builds.  For those who can't build such a chassis, I would imagine that having one built is a fairly pricey deal...but that's a guess.  Add to that somewhere around $100 for a motor and whatever a body costs, and things can get pricey.

Like I said, this idea HAS been floated before and there didn't seem to be much interest.  Then again, there's nothing to stop a track or even an "area" from having a go at it.  "Thingie" racing happens every once in a while, so you never know.

[Jesse Gonzales]

hi John!, building a chassis for old open class racing is something any old racer was doing a new chassis every other week for local races and at least two or three new chassis when going out of town to race. Anywho.... it was just something your old open motor offer sparked in me, it looked very much like the motors I and many others would build routinely just to race. Remember in those days there were no sealed motors or group motors until the NCC started that trend, it was all open all the time for amateurs, semi-pro and pro.

 

I have confidence that any modern winder would be able to make an arm the would live 40 minutes except for not being able to gear like it didn't mater due to comms scattering, Koford would have an edge there but the comms you use and I have are better than post asbestos kirkwoods (the brown fiberglas ones) so maybe they would live if not geared to pull through rivers of glue.

 

Thanks for building such nice memory motors for others to reminisce over and those that were not there to see what the old guys raced.

 

Jess

[elvis44102]

there was so much tire glue on the track and in the atmosphere that i took to wearing a one piece sip up coverall so as to keep it off the clothes lol..

[Bill from NH]

Lighter fluid was used to clear the glue haze off eyeglasses.

[Tom Katsanis]

I know a lot of people don't think it's worth it but if someone setup a proxy for this I would probably send a car in I have a John H built green can & a trinity c can plus a decent chassis that would probably date back to about 73.

[team burrito]

That is a neat car Russ, but Swiss' comment is pretty much what I was thinking.  I "think" Jesse was talking about the old "lead sleds" of the period.  As for the motors, the parts are getting scarce, and most every one I do requires a bunch of effort just to get them in good condition.  The only place I remember seeing NOS stuff is Electric Dreams and they were pretty pricey last I checked.  I guess allowing the Trinity and (I think?) later-but-similar cans like the Champion would help.

 

That's how D3 started, but 6 months later, chassis designs radically changed into something completely different from the original concept. My idea of retro would be based on the 1970 NCC rules without any restriction on building technique; multiple hinges in any directions, center pivots, EDM parts. It's stupid not to allow better ways to fabricate parts; we had spring steel centers in the early 70's, for crying out loud.

[Pablo]

"With no place for me to race I've taken up Gunsmithing to restore my two late Viet Nam vet brothers firearms to keep busy."

 

If you have no place to race, where are you planning to "Racing 1972 era C-Can Opens"?

[Jesse Gonzales]

That's a good question Pablo, I had thought of sending cars to select guys that wanted to race so they had a car to try, run it once or twice then send it back for refurb. I was going to do this when I was going to mass produce motors but put that on the back burner for a bit. I have enough blanks & comms for about 500 various types of arms. I was thinking if this class took off I'd order a hundred blanks at .500 is and do some 75's, 64's and some doubles commonly run back in the day. I know of at least two buddies in LA that would get cars from me to keep. Oh, after your excellent build of Joel's 1973 car I found some champion Cee Cans and will someday wind one up and fit it with old style long & strung ceramics and send it to you.

 

Jesse

[Dave Crevie]

There are always a million reasons not to do something. What we need is a class to get racers enthused again.

[Half Fast]

 What we need is a class to get racers enthused again.

 

There is... its called retro  racing (IRRA®, SCRRA, RETRO). It has rekindled interest in many racers who had not raced in years. it is the biggest racing class, by far, in many sections of the country.

 

Cheers

[team burrito]

this is what we used to race back in 1995 to 2005. it was called the retro-pro class: brass & wire chassis, int 15 c-can motors & pro racing bodies. great fun & pretty fast on our flat track. we some other cool classes too, check it out here: http://www.facebook...._PreJ__UivnVleA

[Bill from NH]

Russ, thanks for the link. I hadn't previously seen the VMRA  FB page. I used to enjoy your VMRA race reports & photos posted on OWH.