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[MSwiss]

Some people really seem to enjoy reading my stories from the past, and I obviously enjoy reminiscing and telling them.
 
Sometimes I like repeating them and other times I wish they were chronicled somewhere.
 
With turning 70 last year, and facing the reality I'll be passing sometime in the next 30 minutes to 30 years, I decided it's time to do it. It'll give me something to do other than playing word games, while lying in bed, trying to fall asleep.
 
As Facebook has proven to be a poor outlet to host something you want to go back to regularly, I'll only be
posting here, notifying people on the Facebook Wing Slot Cars page when I've made new entries.
 
The main focus will be '80s and '90s tech and track innovations, but I'll add some (hopefully) funny stories.
 
Being in Chicago, one of the hotbeds of wing racing, the site of J. P. Van Rossem's invasion of America, and of course, my 19 years as GM at Koford Engineering, along with being blessed with exceptional long term memory, I feel I am well equipped to give an accurate as possible recounting of those great years, with exciting advances in technology and terrific turnouts at races (i.e. 98 G27 entries at the '95 Lugnut Nats).
 
For those who think this will be a thinly-disguised Koford promo or cheerleading session, it won't be. I haven't been GM at Koford for almost 22 years and my reputation, good or bad, has been been based on my brutal honesty.
 
This specific thread will stay locked in the interest of continuity, but others will be able to post in a parallel thread, recounting their personal stories of the era, and dispute any facts I may have incorrect in their estimation. Inappropriate posts will be deleted.
 
Last thing, while this is billed as '80s and '90s history, I'm going to lead off with a recounting of my original stint 
in slot racing as a kid, from approximately 1965 to 1972, as I feel really compelled to give kudos to Charlie Vrba,
my local raceway owner, someone I consider my mentor and a great human being.

[MSwiss]

I'll probably will be posting mostly late at night, but with the nice weather and only 1 party today, I'm going to start today. 

 

For those hoping this will be a cliff notes type of thread, this is probably not for you.

Think of this as a radio station you can elect to listen to ....or not.

 

The posts will always be changing as I'll be submitting, and then going back to add more .

 

The reason is I can't leave an open post on my phone as it's easy for me to accidentally lose the whole non submitted post. Unlike FB , where you can back button out an unsent post and go back to it anytime.

 

Get used to seeing  the phrase "more text to follow".

[MSwiss]

My slot car career started at about 6 or 7.. 

My brother, 5 years older, and I got an Aurora HO Model Motoring vibrator set for Christmas.

It was 1961 or 62. While we had fun with it, was less than great.

 

By around 64, we moved up to a Thunderjet 500 set.

We were older, the DC pancake motor cars ran much better, and we grasped the concept of modifying them.

We would install the bigger rear wheels , carving out the wheel wells with a kitchen knife, and then try to determi e if the the truck tires or slicks performed better. We also would tape the track joiners on the back deck of cars like the Ford GT, in an attempt to get more traction.

 

My mother had bought the racesets from Linka's. Linka's was a unique store. It was a mini-department store, selling toys, hobbies, sporting goods, stationery and school supplies. Even legal fireworks near the 4th with the owner Milt Linka, being a high school classmate of my mother's.

 

Linka's hobby competitor was 3 blocks down the street. It was B & C Hobby Shop, owned by a machinist. 

I wandered into B & C one day in 64 or 65 and lo and behold, they had a small Strombecker 1/32 track set up on one of their glass showcases. I was intrigued by the bigger size of the cars.

Shortly after that, they put in, or made an 8 lane track. The footprint was somewhat squarish, possibly being an American Black. 

[MSwiss]

B & C quickly became the place to hang out.

The problem was back then there was no such things as rental cars.

You had to buy your own to participate.

 

My brother being a successful paperboy, bought a 1/24 Cox Chapparal 2D.

The best I could do was a 1/32 Monogram Ferrari 250LM, purchased from Linka's.

I was doing pretty well assembling it and then attaching the lead wire to the screw in braid 

totally flumuxed me.

 

I was kept cutting and restripping the lead wire until it was too short to reach the guide.

I was shattered. I was convinced that the motor was now unusable and I would have to buy another.

But sometime shortly after, my brother got me a job delivering newspapers after school.

I put the non running Ferrari aside, and within a few weeks, I was "behind the wheel" of a RTR Cox 

La Cucaracha, bought from B & C. I even had the extra $2.50 for requiste AJ's silicone tires and the 5/40 threaded axle,

as the Cuc came with sponge tires and the goofy Cox taper-loc axle, and the owner forbid 

any type of tire goop.

 

One weeknight at the raceway, the adult racers suggested there be a kids race.

B & C didn't have a lap counter,  but the adults volunteered to hand count the laps.

It was 10 or 15 laps, crash and burn. I had a well performing, low CG car and I decided my strategy was going to be, I wasn't going to fall off, even if it meant finishing mid pack or lower. It worked, and I won relatively easily. 

I was on my way to a 1/24 slot racing career. Lol

 

Next up; Charlie Vrba, raceway owner.

[MSwiss]

The owners of B & C Hobby were Blanche and  Charlie Vrba, an older couple .

Along with a couple of adult kids, they also had Mary, who was much younger,

an unexpected "caboose" , who had Downs Syndrome. 

 

The worse day of Charlie's life was when us kids figured out where he lived.

During Christmas vacation, when we were out of school, or on Saturday's, when Charlie wasn't 

open on time, we would give him 15-30, maybe less in the winter when it was cold, and then 

one of would get talked into walking the block and a half to his house, to roust him out of bed.

I had the honor at least once of having Charlie answer his door in his pajamas, and grumble he would be 

there in 20 minutes to open up.

 

Charlie with his suspenders and usually chomping on a cigar,  could best be described as a curmudgeon with heart of gold. He was usually grumpy, but among his good deeds, Charlie with his large van, would provide taxi service for 2 or 3 of Mary's classmates at her special needs school, including driving through the rough west side, to pick up and drop off a few of the kids.

 

Charlie was a retired machinist, and he literally could do anything. He fixed bikes during warm weather months.

At his second and last location, which was 2 connected storefronts, he had a machine shop in a back room. With the help of his son-in-law, Bill, he built an impressive 8 lane track in the non-hobby shop half of the store.

It was "Kingish" with a big bank to the right, at the end of a long straightaway.

 

As an easily impressed 12 year old, I would watch Charlie repair mostly lead wires, with 

his trusty Weller instant heat, soldering gun.

I would marvel at Charlie not measuring small things.

"Charlie, aren't you going to check it to make sure".

"Swiss, I worked at Crane Company for 40 years. I have 

micrometer eyes." Lol

 

Next up, the cars and racers.

Edit- scratch that, next up, Saturday's at the raceway.

[MSwiss]

At some point while I was still in grammar school (67?) , Charlie acquired an American Hillclimb from Turek, a raceway 6 or 7 miles southwest of B & C. We now had 2 tracks to race on. While the other track was certainly nice, the Hillclimb with it's unique shape and crossovers became the favorite. It also had braid, where as the homemade track had copper tape.

 

Now with 2 tracks, Saturday afternoons there became absolutely chaotic. Track time was a somewhat fair, quarter for 15 minutes. Mrs. Vrba usually handling selling track time and "making reservations", while Charlie waited on customers and performed repairs. Two hour waits to get on the track were common, especially on the front Hillclimb. While the impromptu "line 'em up" races starting on the top straightaway were entertaining to watch, the carnage was too much for a "serious" racer like myself. Lol

 

My late mornings and afternoons there were spent mostly running for food for the older guys, filling the pop machine, maybe sweeping up a bit, but mostly being another sets of eyes for Charlie and reporting on any hijinks

in the side room with the other track.

 

Those Buzco(?) perforated brass strips, bolted to the post mount holes on a Cox magnesium chassis, allowed for some crazy cars to make it to the track. One person attached a red polypropylene, just debuted, 3rd generation 68 Corvette toy body to his Cox chassis. It was probably 1/18th scale. The wheel wells weren't close to matching but it was so wide, it didn't really matter.

 

"Charlie, there's a guy on the back track with a car that's 3 lanes wide".

 

"Swiss, tell him he owes me 2 more quarters". Lol

 

Next up, the cars and racers(this time for sure)

[MSwiss]

Despite my good luck with the La Cucaracha, it seemed like whenever I had 10-15 dollars in my pocket, I would buy and try a new car.

I bought the Classic Stinger, and while the flip up spoiler worked well, it seem like it wasn't really helping lap times.

I then gave the Cox Gurney NASCAR a spin. I had high hopes of building it up real nice with the red roof, but  I assembled 

the chassis and  using the cover of the side room track, I broke B & C rule #3, the car must have a body.

I made a quick determination that that car wasn't going to change my life, and I quickly sold it.

 

While slot racing back then was certainly a fad, B & C had a smattering of regulars besides myself.

 

Some of the memorable ones were a couple of Black racers, Charlie Guy and Stevie. In addition to offering insight into the Friday night street races on nearby Ogden Avenue, they were very entertaining comedians. Charlie was a big fan of Bill Cosby, and would impersonate him, parroting Cosby's popular stand-up routine. They also naturally interacted like Martin and Lewis, almost as if they rehearsed before coming to the raceway.

 

On the racing end, Charlie also gave me my first glance of sometimes "less is more", with his econo $6.95 blue Classic Toronado, being a car to beat, despite the lack of a drop arm.

 

More to follow.

[MSwiss]

Another local racer/comedian was Mike Trusnick. He was 3 or 4 years older than me ,

with a bit of a leather jacket/tough guy persona. While I don't think he had a car yet,

he did have a 26 inch bike that he cut the frame and moved the top of the head tube

back to rake the fork and give it a chopper vibe beyond just high handle bars and a banana seat.

 

While Charlie Guy was the raceway Bill Cosby, Mike was more of a Don Rickles type.

He wasn't afraid to tease/insult people if he knew them a bit.

Mike seemed to have pretty deep pockets and would pay or treat me to get food for him.

While he would feast on a jumbo shrimp dinner from the local fish house, Troha's,  I was quite happy 

with a big bag of French fries and a shrimp sauce, my payment for going.

 

Running errands for Mike made me semi-exempt from his teasing.

Others weren't so lucky.

"Bruce, you don’t need to worry about getting drafted. They're not taking

you until the Viet Cong land at (nearby) Oak Street Beach." Lol

 

While Mike was probably a bit of an inspiration in my future career as a teenage wise ass,

of more value on the slot racing end was the Delak brothers, Ed and Ken. They were

a couple of greaser types in their very late teens, early 20's. Being older, they certainly  had a car

and would travel to other raceways like Tom Thumb in Oak Park.

 

Tom Thumb, not affiliated with Tom Thumb in Evanston, wasn't really far 

away,  maybe 4 miles, but I hadn't yet mastered the suburban transit system, and 

it was the first of the nearby raceways to close up, so I never got the chance to check

It out. Many years later, I did hear an interesting story from one of my customers, the late

Doug Strom. He mentioned he worked there as a teenager, and that one of the conditions of

employment was passing a polygraph test, to assure the owners he wouldn't be giving out

free track time to his friends.

 

The Delak's were real racers, campaigning a car in the hobby division at one

the local oval tracks, Raceway Park in South Suburban Blue Island.

Between understanding about aerodynamics, the benefits of low CG, and having fabrication

skills, they were the guys to beat.

 

And the car to beat was Ken Delak's sinister looking, red with a black roof, stock car.

The cool part was that it was all their own creation and looked nothing like you would see in

a Car Model race report.

 

The body was severely lowered and the front end was heated and remolded into a smooth angled,

shovel shape. The most striking part of the car was the huge flat spoiler, attached to the back bumper.

It was as tall or maybe a bit taller than a current wing car spoiler and to keep it from folding back,

it had ornate bracing, made from  .025" or .032" piano wire, that ran into, and somehow was affixed to the trunk.

 

The Delak's were pretty friendly guys and Ken gave me at least one good look at the car

and provided the chassis and parts info. It had a Champion 517 motor, made from a kit,

with arm wound by him.

It had a simple plate chassis,  but it was cut from a K & S copper sheet, instead of brass.

It was visually fast, but without a real track timer, it was also confirmed by our only

recognized "official" method of proof, a lap timed by Charlie with his trusty stop watch.

That car was the inspiration for me to branch out and run something other than an RTR.

 

Next up....Scratchbuilding, B & C Hobby style, and meeting future long time friends.