19 replies to this topic

[elvis44102]

i raced from late 60's to 1975..i remember  distinctly heavy cars and fairly large pieces of 1/32" thick lead and of course lots of glue..the last time i raced was at Camens home track ...i raced one of Jans pre-built chassis either the pacesetter or 888 always get them mixed up..this was not the fastest est car in the race by any means but im remembering it had a full brass center section and Montague supplied motor this car was HEAVY...i am pretty sure slotcar racing had (advanced?!) to full side air damns at this time....

 

Jan had showed me the car he won either USA or World championship with @(1983) while it was lighter in weight it was still basically heavy

 

now this is from 1975 to 1983 8 years! my question is what took so long for someone to experiment with just a perimeter frame and air

 

affects/effects?  was it the persistent glue? the also bad track power or was it just the overall failing interest and numbers of "pro" level racers

 

just currious?!?

[MSwiss]

Jan wasn't active racing in 1983.
 
I saw him at a big race in the area, in 1982, and he was just gluing for Joel, who had just come out of "retirement".
 
Best guess, the car he showed you, was his 1978 Nats winner.
 
One of my friends made up the below chart for USRA GP7 Pro, which shows Jan's last win, as 78.
 
While it doesn't show World Championships, Paul Pfeiffer won the bi-yearly event, in 80, 82, & 84, so if Jan won one, it was before 78, as the PDF below, doesn't show him in the 78 race.
 
In a nutshell, the cars got lighter as the tracks got better/smoother.
 
We were racing on more Hasse King tracks, vs. American Reds and Blues.
 
I'll post in more detail, including pics of the original perimeter cars, both medium and lightweight, later.

 

 goteborg780702.pdf   2.14MB   98 downloads

[Jens Scale Racing]

Hello Mike,

 

your friend can complete 1995 Lugnut, where I participated:

 

Gramann, Ciccarello, MSP, Dieter Jens, Watson, Pfeiffer, Morella and Landry.

 

http://www.jens-slot...1995/index.html

[elvis44102]

i lost touch with Jan for a couple years till about 1980 when we got back together with his R/C rental car business..he had me go with him and travel the car show circuit for

 

about three years...we went everywhere east of the Mississippi from Thursday till Sunday nite (good memory's)..i remember he had a spring-steel car completely built by

 

paul (pfiffer)...(spelling?!?) i know i took it as a challenge to cut that spring-steel center section just to prove to myself i could still build a car (copy a car lol)...i was

 

surprised

 

he still raced as well...but since he was also having me make tires for him on off weeks i just figured he had to sort of advertise and im kinda thinking it was maybe a

 

European race Jan got back in touch with me when Lou Reed died about five years ago and we email once and awhile..lol

 

i have since i posted this gone thru the forum and searched "first wing cars" and gotten some information..but my main interest in posting was because i am at a loss to try

 

and figure out why it took so long to realize that getting rid of all the mass and its inertia did more than little tiny fulcrum and trick sliding puzzle weights and springs...

 

and yes i was one of those that had to bend exact 90 degree angles and maybe .002 tolerance was acceptable but certainly no more , hours and hours of fiddling...

 

a progression of perimeter frames would be nice to see....

[elvis44102]

just an after thought and since there is no editing feature...for all the hours spent building the doorstop late 70's chassis ..i probably could have taken a coat hanger and

 

soldered a nose piece and a rear axle tube/motor mount and gone a second a lap faster lol  but then it would not have had all those critical little 1/16th shaker qualities

[MSwiss]

When Jan and I used to go Europe, to race in the J.P. Van Rossem circus, he would tell me stories about the RC car rental deal.

I would quiz him about battery packs and the logistics of running them, and was it possible to hold any kind of resemblance of a race, for novices.

His answer was "They just liked to crash 'em". Lol.

Anyway, making an "air car", back in the day, and getting it to make laps for 40 minutes, across all 8 lanes, was not that easy of a process.

While the Hasse Nilison and Steve Ogilvie tracks were much smoother, they still had tricky spots, and you were dealing with a mindset with quite a few racers, where each turn was glued the same way, regardless of radius.

When I get a chance, I'll post pics of perimeter cars, #002 and #004.

#001, 002, 004, & 005 were built by me.

002 and 004 were built about a year apart, and look quite different.

001 and 002 were not built as lightweight cars.

Just normal cars, with the main rails on the outside.

004 was my first attempt at an "air" perimeter car.

The realization had set in, with both Stuart Koford and myself, that we needed to go much lighter, after fellow Chicago area racer, Csaba S., won the '84 Nat's, in Clovis, Ca., on a fast 220 foot Engleman, using a lightweight conventional chassis.

004 was 90% completed, waiting for me to pick up a jig to finish up the back end, when 003 was built by (my future boss), Stu.

It was only constructed, when I would not let Stu strip 001, or 002, and use their center section.

Stu hit the track with 003, and it immediately set a G7 qualifying World Record......for about 2 minutes, when Csaba beat it by over a .1, with his latest, highly refined, lightweight conventional car.

Stu's car, with the pin tubes soldered directly to the chassis rails, with virtually no body movement, was very touchy in the race, and it was dismissed by Csaba, as a 1 lap wonder.

My car, which hit the track a few weeks later, fared much better, as I came up with a totally different body mounting system, that was lightweight, but replicated normal body movement.

It was a great race car, and showed that lightweight perimeter style cars were viable as race cars, not just qualifiers.

Other racers were getting impressed, but still were not absolutely convinced they were going to obsolete conventional cars.

More details later, with the pics.

[elvis44102]

Jans father was a tool and die man and helped considerably with all his stuff,,, We had several six foot long sections of straight metal "L" shaped lengths of metal all with two

 

holes on each end that were bolted together to make a "barrier" area..those would fit on the sides of the van....We had a large coffin shaped wood box that held six big car

 

batteries with chargers constantly charging...ten cars charging/ten cars running 5mins of charge one man collect money the other repair occasional damaged cars..

 

there are plenty of stories plenty..Jan seemed to never tire of showing the pictures from Europe, especially the marijuana dispensary next door to the police station..

[MSwiss]

On our trips to Europe, in '86 and '87, terrorism had just hit Europe.

Along with soldiers walking the airport terminals, with Uzi's slung over their shoulders, we endured some incredibly tight security, when leaving.

They had 2 portable small rooms/enclosures, constructed, at each gate where security personnel, of the same gender, would pat you down, way, way more then thouroughly.

As Jan and I got to the front of the men's line, Jan pointed to the woman's line, and the female security agent, and calmly asked "Is there any chance, she can pat me down?"

The result was dirty looks from the security personal, and a faint chuckle from me.

What was surprising, when I retold the story to a couple old time, local racers, who raced against Jan, and housed him when he raced in the area, in the late 60's and early 70's, they said he was very introverted.

Here is a smattering of the first perimeter cars,
that shows the progression of weight.

I'll add some more detailed text, later.




A pic of me, bouyed by the success of finishing 2nd to Jon Laster, in the Warm-up race, working on #005, in the pits, at the '84 World's, in Elmsford.

I've had this pic, taken by Gary Puetz, 10+ years, but last night was the first time I noticed P.A. Watson's hand gesture.

He must be explaining about putting wheel rims into tire donuts. Lol

[zipper]

We were so late - the first perimeters here were built late 1985 and the first ones were twisted from wire. We had no real King tracks at that time. Well, my first one was a tripod - I won the first race with light cars probably as my Camen was the sole motor to last the whole race (6 x5 mins on a 190 ft track with a veeery long straight+banking+straight combo).

[MSwiss]

Looking over the '85 Nats Main, I'm 99% sure it was 100% perimeter car.

Tom Hansen had success with the tripod design, setting a few World Records.

The guy who probably had the most success with the tripod, albeit in G27, was Paul Stafford, from Detroit.

For about a year, he was the guy to beat in G27.

His design might of actually been a bipod.

[NY Nick]

Mike how did you cut the Circle's on 1986? 

Thanks for posting the pictures.

[elvis44102]

after some more searching i found the exact chassis i copied..the chassis tonyp says he built for 84 Nats he says he copied a paul pfieffer chassis for another racer

 

cause he begged him to lol!  (many copies existed)...

 

Jan was introverted but would spontaneously do stupid or outrageous things lol...we had the same girlfriend (not a the same time of course)..in the 70's i hung out with the

 

musicians in Cleveland and somehow got involved with the girlfriend of lead singer from Cleveland band "the dead boys" ...somehow Jan got involved as well....

 

funny thing is she has contacted me on FBook and asked about him?!?...Jan was a very interesting person never a dull moment...we used to play glenn miller on the juke

 

box  just to see the reaction.....

 

anyway looks like the mid-eighties was change time for the perimeter

[tazman]

Very interesting and entertaining read!

[MSwiss]

Mike how did you cut the Circle's on 1986? 
Thanks for posting the pictures.

It was 32 years ago, but if I had to guess, I first drew them out with a Pilot pen (Sharpie), using my (now) 50 year old circle template.

 

I got as close as I could to the drawn circles, using Dremel 409 discs, and then finished it with a Dremel 9901 tungsten carbide cutter.
 
The thing I remember most about cutting them, was at some point I said to myself I would quit measuring the rail width, and just keep going at it, until it visually, looked OK.
 
The mystery on this car is why is it so intact.
 
It ran great. I qualified 2nd, for the 2nd year in a row, cruised through my Semi, and finished 5th in a real star-studded Main.
 
It was a podium car, but without hitting anything, I broke a rim in 2 pieces (ironically, a Limpach)
 
Anyway, I would normally run a good car until it was too bent to win, and strip off the parts that were time consuming to cut or bend.
 
This chassis is flat, straight, and most important, didn't parallelogram, which the circle design was intended to combat.
 
Maybe one day, I'll put a motor in it and see how it runs.
 
PS-looking at the racers in that main, from post #2, it's sad to see 4 of them died way before their time (all before 60?)

[Dave Crevie]

I know I asked a while back, Mike, but I would still like to see your old chassis. Plus hear the stories. very impressive.

[MSwiss]

The interesting ones are hanging to the left of the cash register, on a pegboard hook.

All you have to do is ask.

[NY Nick]

Thanks Mike

[Highnoon]

i just started back slot racing and all of the slot car stuff i had was in my little Hoffman box. I always traveled light as I would usually only have 1 running car and a few motors at a time. Once i built a new chassis i sold the old but in this case I kept them all. I startend in 1974, quit sometime after the 1974 Nats but before 1975. I got back into it 1982 with the help of Jim Bandes. As best we figure the car in 1982 picture was used to win the Ohio Orange track champ 1982 race at BTR Raceway. Its his mondial stamped center section, heat treated. Not sure if I built the rest or he did. Then I started racing gp27 in Tristate.
The 1983 car was a handcut center section I made. The 1984-85 and 85-86 are probably someones center sections that I assembled but i might have cut the 84-85 one.

My plans are to rebuild the 1982 car, 85-86 car and build a replica of my 74 Pacesetter Nats car. Someday!

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[Highnoon]

More also the motors I used during the 3-4 years of racing. Including new koford mid 80s gp27 new

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[Phil Donaldson]

Hey Gary,

 

It's been a while my friend,I believe this is a flyer for the race you mentioned.It's post marked 1982.

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