3573 replies to this topic

[havlicek]

Hi Kelley,

Yeas...even if you had a way to cut the tail spacer down safely, that arm won't fit from the looks of it. The arm should go in a C can if you have one around to check it with. The JK Hawk motor should be a great platform for rewinding, but with a different arm since the factory one has been balanced. The arm looks like an oddball size, kinda short like a modern FT26D arm but 16D diameter, unless the picture is misleading. You might have to make up something to fit.

-john

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

John, in the day, the limit on the Hemi was the brushes wouldn't usually survive a full 8 lane, 5 min. heats if hotter than stock. Again, in the day, a number of prior motors used the same round brushes including Bonner and Kemtrons. So, we had brushes.

Subsequently, the usual replacement is to sand down some larger brush. A 36D brush can be quartered and rolled down.

Back then, I was frustrated by the motor. It had such promise, but the brushes were a pain. The brief solution was to put the hemi magnets in a 16d OR to kludge on a simco or similar endbell on the end.

EXCEPT for the brushes, the motor makes a hot 28s possible. But only as a "frankenmotor" if you are doing serious money racing.

Just last week, I was running one of my 66 survivors, brass rod, porsche body, russkit wheels and REMEMBERED why it survived! The stock motor wasn't enough for that heavy chassis, and I knew that there would be a lot of work in the rewind.

Fate

[idare2bdul]

For the JK mini motors if you can get the blanks for group 12 arms they can have the commutator spaced to fit the JK motor. A 12 wind is pretty sporty with stock magnets. With neos or cobalts, have at it.

[Phil Irvin]

For the JK mini motors if you can get the blanks for group 12 arms they can have the commutator spaced to fit the JK motor. A 12 wind is pretty sporty with stock magnets. With neos or cobalts, have at it.

I had an old x12, 42 DEG, arm that the shaft was worn. I cut the arm spacer short enough so the bushing and the can missed the wires. I then used my comm lathe to shorten the comm so I needed one thin .007 spacer so the comm wouldn't short. I had to respace the mags twords the can bushing a bunch so the arm would float in the magnetic field. It RUNS....Like a 4002B but lots hotter... About .12 faster...But turned the dye dark red after 20 straight laps...Don't want to run a race with it....Just scare others running a 4002B

OLPHRT
PHIL I.

[idare2bdul]

"I had an old x12, 42 DEG, arm " Ran hot

I don't know what you were gearing but 7-39 to 7-42 should be in the ballpark with 72 pitch gears with an angle winder. If you are trying to run an inline Sonic makes a 46 tooth drag gear. With an 8 tooth pinion don't expect gear life to be very long but it would get you in the ball park for gearing.

[havlicek]

John, in the day, the limit on the Hemi was the brushes wouldn't usually survive a full 8 lane, 5 min. heats if hotter than stock. Again, in the day, a number of prior motors used the same round brushes including Bonner and Kemtrons. So, we had brushes.

Subsequently, the usual replacement is to sand down some larger brush. A 36D brush can be quartered and rolled down.

Hi Rocky,

Yes...I remember bing unimpressed with the motors. It probably had to do with the brushes because the motors have some serious improvements over the Mabuchis. Replacing the endbell would seem the ideal solution (and Roger from Mid America sells them just like that with a Tradeship endbell), but the material the Hemi endbell is made from (seems like it might be Bakolite or some other phenolic because drilling it is a real...er... adventure) is probably better than even the Tradeship endbell material...a shame.

Then, as good as the magnets are in the Hemi, about twice as powerful as the stock Mabuchis, there's the issue with the can. The can material seems even thinner than the Mabuchi cans, so mounting the motor can-drive is a risky proposition. Rick T has documented the installation of nuts on the inside of the can as a great way to ensure the motor stays put, and I've done and it works fine. Still, that's a PITA and a glaring deficiency since all motors need to be mounted in a car. Who knows, it could also be that the field would be even stronger with a somewhat heavier can material.

On those goofy brushes, I'm sure that even today there are options as you mentioned, but for the average enthusiast...sanding down square brushes is going to be out of the question. Besides on setups like these, the brush hardware is responsible for carrying current to the brushes, so a good fit between the brushes and the brush tubes is pretty important. Then there's the issue witrh reinstalling brushes that have been removed. You have to be careful to install the brushes with the radius aligned by eyeball since there's nothing "keying" the brushes to be in the proper orientation. I also gave the brush springs a slight stretch to make sure the brushes were in good contact with the com, but those springs would be a bear to replace as well.

-john

[Hworth08]

The "hot" setup, till the Arco magnets, was a Mabuchi can and endbell with the armature, commutator, and magnets from a Hemi kit motor.

The Mabuchi endbell would melt but the brushes were good. The Hemi can had a problem with the shaft bushing.

The hemi stack was of better quality. The comm was good, as good as any on the market. The magnets made a smooth driving motor that was safe with 29 wire and about 20 degrees.

And this "Supreme Setup" lasted about four months! The famous Arco magnets created a harsh motor that was either on or off. It took another three or four months to discover the Arcos needed lower torque 26 or 27 winds along with a heavier chassis.

When did the Tradeship endbell come on the market? I never remember anyone using one.

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

The material in the hemi endbell is a lot better from the melting standpoint than even the tradeship.

I don't off hand remember WHEN the tradeships showed up. I don't remember ever buying one with a label. But I seem to have several of them in the box of used bits. In the day, I don't remember running any motor out of the box without serious mods. And I don't have a mental image of a tradship label! Just don't know.

The hemi arm shows up in several arms, later as well. That is the better com and stack and blue wire. In my case, at the time, the "TC 32", blue endbell, for the 1/32 strombecker cars came out first. And when the classic "Pactra X88" was out, I was still buying the stromies because I wasn't running stock. Just buying parts and the TC 32 was cheaper.

Parts for Frankenmotors!

I never had a problem that I remember with the thin can, though. None of my survivors have stripped or anything like that.

Anyway, the TC32 with a blue endbell was 100t/32 wire, the stock X88 was 65/30 stock. The later issues like the Twinn K 160D were the same blue wire 65/30 winds. And as you observed, were a good choice for rewinding then.

My surviving chassis from the period usually use a stock Parma Deathstar for racing. That is, locally, a few of us old guys periodically get together and race these things. Have since Hasse built the local hillclimb back in 92. And from the beginning because of the problem of keeping the old motors in parts, we settled on the deathstar as a "work alike". And it fits the brackets!

Fate

[havlicek]

I whittling-down the pile O' motors on my bench...slowly-but-surely and just completed a couple more. Up top is a Mura-based Walnut for Ernie and it came out sweet. because these endbells have top and bottom tabs, I also fabricated a brush plate with a second top tab for one side of the motor to make running the leadwires easier. It's a #26 and is a powerful little sonofagun .

Below that is a Mabuchi FT16D for Kim Lander (#2 of 5 motors for him) that started out as a Champion 501. Unfortunately, when I warmed the can up to remove the sticker so i could fix the rust on the can, the label came off fine...but the printing on it stayed on the can It would have been nice to have saved the sticker, but it wasn't meant to be. Anyway, with the Mabuchi endbell on there, I stayed at 55T/#29 but did replace the Mabuchi magnets. I just couldn't leave them in there, even though the masking tape shims were a quaint reminder of the history and period hot-rodding The original shaft was notched deeply so I also replaced that with a nice new drill blank. Funny thing is, I have done this specific wind for a while now since Tony P asked for it for a Russkit 23 for him and they seem to run a lot better now than when I first did them.




Next up, two 26Ds for Kim and then a Champion 36D. He's going to have a nice collection of vintage horsepower to mess around with (plus the 2 hole Mura #26 single IO sent him a while back). Putting the cars together should keep him busy for quite a while!

-john

[Alchemist]

Could the photos be considered "slot car porn?!" LOL!!!!! Those motors look like they'll sizzle! Awesome John - and thank you!!

Ernie

[havlicek]

You're welcome Ernie. The two are sure different motors...the Walnut is a little screamer and the Mabuchi is very much a period rewind, fast for the time when things were changing almost daily For any other rewinders looking-in, I still am using the flue and furnace cement as a stack insulator and have had no failures at all. I've also wound the next two 26D motors for Kim (but they're not complete yet) and used it on both of those, discarding the fiber endplates. If there's a better material for home winders, and short of buying a powder coating setup and going through the hassle of properly curing the powder coat afterwards, I haven't found it.

-john

[Robert V.]

Hi John
Those motors came out great, i don't know what a walnut motor would go in but it looks very light and fast, nice paint work on the FT 16D.
Below is another fried Parma 16D i just finished, rewound 35 turns 28 Gauge clear coated and tied, at first when i spun it up on my power supply i thought i had a another short because it wouldn't go past 12 volts and pulled a full 3 amps the max of my power supply so tried my HO supply it goes to 5 amps nothing wrong with the motor it screamed all the way up to 16 volts and up to 3 amps.

[Jairus]

Could the photos be considered "slot car porn?!"

Ah... YEAH!!! Ricks Chassis, John's motors and .... well, frankly any nice pictures of custom made slots are preferable in my opinion!

[Tex]

Yup. We rank right up there with train and plane nuts.

[havlicek]

Ah... YEAH!!! Ricks Chassis, John's motors and .... well, frankly any nice pictures of custom made slots are preferable in my opinion!

...and anything by Jairus, Noose, John Dillworth, Dennis Sampson and a bunch of others!

Hi Robert,

Dang man...your winds are looking better and better, and this is over a short time too! Now we gotta figure out how to get some more people winding arms...OK...you go first! Seriously, that arm looks sweet and at 35T/#28 I bet it screams like you said. That's kind of a light wind for #28...but the proof is in the pudding. Nice job!

Back on the resto project for Kim Lander, I finished off his two 26D motors and they came out pretty spiffy. Both have Arco magnets and ball bearings on both ends (the Mabuchi ones), so I knew they had the potential to be torquey/smooth powerplants. One of the endbells had started to do the "Chernobyl" thing with the brush hood partially melted into the plastic, the other was a little tired looking but I dug around in my pile of old stuff to get enough parts to make two pretty clean endbells up. I did my "Torquemaster"^© wind on both (I actually just made that up...there's no such thing as a "Torquemaster"^© wind, but I thought it sounded cool. Well, I did wind them for torque rather than revs, so maybe now there IS a "Torquemaster"^© wind in my little world) Anyway, they both sound great and are very much in keeping with the period...except for the black goop I used to insulate the stacks (shhhhhh). It's just as much fun to do some nasty old Mabuchis like this as it is to do the hotrods and I think these will work really nicely in some period cars Kim has.



So that's four out of five for Kim. Last one up is a big old Champion 36D, those are always fun because of all that wide open real estate inside those motors

-john

[Krash]

Could the photos be considered "slot car porn?!" LOL!!!!! Those motors look like they'll sizzle! Awesome John - and thank you!!

Ernie

My wife accuses me of looking at porn also, she say's that a have a problem
Slot car porn…Motorcycle porn and Airplane Porn. Slotcar is probably the worst.


K

[Kim Lander]

John,
Those look awsome, cant wait to hear them turn, sorry I have been a little scarse lately, danged if I didnt get rid of one bought with a cold , I pick up another and have n=been hitting the sack REAL early as of late, I guess thats the price I pay for haveing a teacher for a wife, she brings all sorts of crap home and guess who gets sick.Glad to see the cold weather get the hell outa here though, maybe I can get well for good now....cya

[Robert V.]

Hi John
You finally did some rebuilds of to my favorite 26D, i have heard a lot of bad stuff about them like melting end bells and the ball bearings going bad but i still like them, i will keep rewinding if you do and maybe a few more people will join in i hope. Kim you are a lucky man all those motors are awsome can't wait to see that 36D.

[havlicek]

Hi Robert,

You know what's funny?...after all these years and building these old motors again I have a new appreciation for them all. Well maybe with the exception of the 13UO Mabuchi, although I haven't done one since...well since they were new The 26D can be built-up to go fast but I think the Champion endbell (and of course Arco magnets) is the way to go for sure. The Mabuchi ball bearings aren't exactly eother heavy duty or "precision"...but there was a time when it was cool as heck to buy a motor like this right off the wall all set up and ready to go! You see a bunch of 26Ds in thingies both full scratchbuilt and with Dynamic chassis and they definitely have a personality to them. I have a project on hold for one member who wanted to do an all-out-stoopid-fast 26D where he builds the motor and I do the arm. I'm kind of glad it has been hanging around so long because you do get better at all this stuff with practice. I think the motor can be done as long as it isn't actually raced, and it would be more of a "fun project" than anything actually "useful". Then again, all these things are fun projects...from the Russkit 23s to the two hole Muras to the modern C ande D cans and everything in between.

-john

[don.siegel]

You know what's funny?...after all these years and building these old motors again I have a new appreciation for them all. Well maybe with the exception of the 13UO Mabuchi, although I haven't done one since...well since they were new

Funny you should mention that John; just a couple days ago I was thinking about asking you if you had ever done a 13D, or wanted to... This wasn't just a theoretical question, but because I remember reading a long time ago about one of the Texas races, in which a super-lightweight 13D sidewinder did very well - but there were no photos of course!

I imagine it would need ground down Arcos, or Versitecs or something to up the magnetism, but it could be an interesting project, maybe even with the stock magnets to see what could be done (and if you're not trying to be vintage correct, there are some modern magnets that would fit).

Anyway, if you ever feel like taking a shot...

Don

[havlicek]

Hi Don,

That would be a real challenge alright, and I'd be tickled to take it on. My take would be to go with a more-period-type wind, better magnets, and try and figure out how to at least help the endbell a little...but to use the stock endbell so it retains at least the look and flavor of the period. I wouldn't see the point in going all-out and using any pieces from any era because that's easy and the motor wouldn't have any relevance. Personally, I don't think using some other magnets is at all out of the realm of what guys might have done back then to use one of those little guys as the basis for a competitive car. The stock magnets are just awful and were one of the first things to go in general when people hot-rodded Mabuchis anyway...at least when they were available. So all I need is a motor in decent shape, a return address and some time on the bench to see what happens! Just PM me

-john

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

My SECOND motor with Cobalts cut from an alternator was in a 13uo motor.

Prior do this, i had a very successful 1/32 anglewinder club racer using a 13uo.

Version one, 16d magnets fitted into the motor buy cutting the sides of the can, replacing the ball with a drilled out hole and standard size bushing, then ball bearing. 32s wind. This in 66. And for 1/32 club racing.

After melting the endbell....

I let that set until B cans in 68/9. I acquired a couple failed Bs off someone, and chucked the endbell in a drill and turned it down to sort of fit the 13uo. Even so, I just could not get the thing to work in other than a 1/32 club situation because hotter than 32s caused problems with everything. About 73, I finally had a successful pro-motor for the surviving local tracks, all short, like an American Black and Orange. This was with Cobalts and a turned down C endbell. I was running a good 26 in that one.

A few years later, The UK guys cranked off some 13uo cans that were stiff and like a C can and we were all using cobalts, and some guys even made endbell blanks. We called them "P" cans for some reason. But while they were 13uo sized, there was no longer any actual 13uo bits anywhere to be seen!

And in the mid 80s, I started playing with the SCX 13uo version. But, of course, by then, there was no real place for the motor!

Fate

[havlicek]

Hi Rocky, yes I remember you having mentioned that. This would be somewhat different because I would really want to have the end result still BE a Mabuchi 13UO if possible. I don't think replacing the mganets is necessarily a sacriledge since there were upgrade magnets back then and some people most probably did swap them out in an attempt to massage a bit more performance out of these anemic little guys. Getting the motor to run fairly quick and still be pretty much historically "OK" would make it a natural for a cool F1 chassis.

-john

[havlicek]

I finished off the last of the 5 motors for Kim, this one being a big old FT36D. Once again keeping things modest and doing more "restoring" than pushing the envelope, the motors a smooth and solid runner. I cleaned-up the endbell and reinstalled the hardware along with a fresh(er) pair of 36D springs and new brushes. I also installed a set of Arcos instead of the weak Mabuchis, cleaned it all up and repainted it and wound an arm that will be a modest improvement over stock, but that should run "strong and long". Here's the arm:


...and here it is all dressed-up for the party



Kim sure has a nice collection of vintage motors

-john

[Alchemist]

I concur that ""Kim has a nice collection of "Havlicek built" vintage motors""

Ernie