Topic: Nostlagia.......Rookie Northwest Style.
My good friend Dave Smith came by the shop along with Brian Tooley this last week. I always enjoy a visit from these guys. Brian for his enthusiasm as a somewhat new enthusiast, and Dave because I have known him through my entire slot car racing experience. I met Dave in the early 1980's or maybe late 1970's. I don't really remember exactly. What I do know is as far as slot car racing he has always been part of my experience! We started out racing HO cars in the Portland area and all up and down the Willamette Valley. Then we found out about the PASER club in the early '80s and started racing at Lee Dundas' barn in Willsonville. We raced 1/32 Parma Womp Womps and scratch built 1/24 cars with 36D motors and model car bodies. In those early days the chassis were very basic brass scratch built, with an inline motor configuration flat chassis. There were no hinges or moving parts to the chassis. They were basic and pretty simple to build. That in no way distracted from the fun!
Everytime I get together with Dave we can't help but reflect on the "old days". Simpler times for sure, but just as much racing fun from my memories. Today I got an urge. Back then when we were racing the hard body 1/24 inline cars, the club for a short time also raced some 1/24 anglewinder chassis with 36D motors and clear bodies. They were way superior to the inline hardbody cars we were racing. At this point in time I left the slot car racing hobby for a period of time. When I returned the club was still racing hardbody cars with inline chassis, but they were now powered with much faster super 16D motors and inline chassis that featured hinges and separate moving parts. I was now way behind the curve. I had never really gotten up to speed on the first generation of hard body chassis design!
Building the new generation of chassis for racing with PASER was very difficult for me, and it still is! This and my recent reminiscing and discussions with Dave got me to thinking. How did the chassis designs jump from flat pan style to the hinged style with all the movement? What steps did I miss in between? Today I decided to explore, using my own strange reconstructive path.
In those early PASER days of the inline scratchbuilt chassis I believe it was easier to build up the motor boxes in an inline configuration. You could also keep the the wider tires inside of the 1/24 model car body with an inline configuration. There were sidewinder chassis from the '60s with 36D motors, and then there were anglewinder chassis with 16D motors. Two piece stamped chassis that worked great! But my question is; was there any experimentation with angle or side winder chassis for the 16D with just a flat pan design? Well, being a slot car adict that has plenty of used "Flexi" type chassis and parts, I though I might experiment a little.
