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CAn someone, not limited to Kent, tell us more about the color dots , not the Reedy square label, on the early Reedy modifieds (igarishi close canned or Yokomo can)? There were red dot, yellow dot, green dot.... Are they the production lot number or the winding?

In addition, did you pro factory drivers already have tiny com cutting (or in fact lathe cutting) practice at the time?

Thanks for the french article PRP!

Here's one from "Radicon" magazine in Japan.

Reedy's dots indicated the wind. There was a yellow dot that might have been 23T, a green dot was 21T I think, and red dot was 19T? Later, as the batteries got better, there were hotter winds that got gold and silver dots. Reedy would also put marks on the dots of team motors if it was a special wind, like a triple, quad, single etc.

I don't remember anyone using a comm cutter back then. We used to clean them with fiberglass sticks or erasers. Chris Doseck and Tate McDaniel of CAM motors were the first that I know of to cut their comms at the track every run. That was at the IFMAR Worlds in Singapore in 1990.

polarbear wrote:CAn someone, not limited to Kent, tell us more about the color dots , not the Reedy square label, on the early Reedy modifieds (igarishi close canned or Yokomo can)? There were red dot, yellow dot, green dot.... Are they the production lot number or the winding?

In addition, did you pro factory drivers already have tiny com cutting (or in fact lathe cutting) practice at the time?

Digging through my cabinet... found a framed photo of one of my favorite paint jobs.

Here's a black & white photo of my 1980 Monterey Invitational TOJ body. I believe this was one of my first yellow/green/blue bodies, like what you see in my avatar. The back of the photo says 2nd Stock, 1st Modified, 3rd Concours. I made most of the decals myself using Letraset letters. "The Factory" was our NorCal race shop with Al Chuck, Butch Berney and Robert Fujioka.
And a 1/8th scale ELFIN body with the same paint job, probably the body I ran at the 1980 McCoy race in Pomona.

kent, i'd like to know your thoughts on this bud bartos parma 1/12th scale from 1984. please read his description about the pinion gear........

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-1-12-world-champ-Parma-Euro-panther-Buds-BRP_W0QQitemZ370294464628QQcmdZViewItemQQptZRadio_Control_Vehicles?hash=item5637452074

was there anything against this type of modification stated in the rule book in 1984? would it be constituted it as cheating, or looked at as a........ damn, why didn't i think of that type of thing? we're having a discussion on this car in another thread, and i'd figured you'd be the best one to ask.

Yep, that's true about the pinion. I was TQ in stock and ran the same Danish coin on my pinions for that race. I think Bud saw me running them and did the same. My idea for doing that was an evolution of the superlight pinion gears that had just been released. I noticed that in stock the lightweight pinions made the car feel slow, and the heavier steel pinions gave me a lot more punch and faster lap times. Thinking "more is better" I used a reamer to enlarge the hole in the coin and glued it to the pinion. And it worked on those motors. I think it had something to do with the armatures being very lightly packed. That was just about the end of Stock class racing for the pros, so I didn't use the heavy pinions much after that, but I still have them in my pit box

Kent-
Do you have any other vintage speed secrets in your pit box that you would be willing to share?

Thank-you

Dirtdiver

Kent or any WC 1982 /1984 participants,
Were the stock motors in WC1982 and 1984 being hang out by the orgainisers?
As far as I know, the 1982's was the yokomo open brushes endbell type; however, from Bud's 1984 car, it seems to be a closed canned Igarishi.
In addition, the Igarishi stock should have the pinion pressed in and not by set screw, so it was unlikely to take the pinion gear in and out quickly? Which case was it?
Wasn't the stock motor needed to be dissembled after the race for inspection? What was the rules then?

Dirtdiver wrote:Kent-
Do you have any other vintage speed secrets in your pit box that you would be willing to share?

Thank-you

Dirtdiver

Tires, motors, batteries, ESCs, graphite weave, dynos, brushes, springs, matching... you name it, fiddling around with that kind of stuff was a fun part of racing for me. I tried pretty hard to find legal advantages.

Over the years I learned a bunch of things, but a lot of them are only applicable to a specific motor or specific track conditions. For example, the heavy pinions didn't give any advantage on the modifieds.

It would be tough to remember all of the "secrets" and list them out, but I'll be happy to tell you what I know if you ask a question.

polarbear wrote:Kent or any WC 1982 /1984 participants,
Were the stock motors in WC1982 and 1984 being hang out by the orgainisers?
As far as I know, the 1982's was the yokomo open brushes endbell type; however, from Bud's 1984 car, it seems to be a closed canned Igarishi.
In addition, the Igarishi stock should have the pinion pressed in and not by set screw, so it was unlikely to take the pinion gear in and out quickly? Which case was it?
Wasn't the stock motor needed to be dissembled after the race for inspection? What was the rules then?

The stock motors were hand-outs in '82 and '84. In '82 they were the new Yokomo/Mabuchi motors, I think that was the first race that anybody used them at in the US. In '84 the motors were back to the old Igarashi style, I'm not sure why they did that.

We used setscrew pinions way back, you just had to file or dremel a flat spot on the shaft yourself.

I'm pretty sure all of the stock motors were torn down after the race to check to make sure they were legal. They even unwound them to check the windings. But we usually got a few motors for each racer, so the spares are probably what you see in a vintage car like mine or Bud's.

Back then Stock racing was just as prestigous as Modified because all of the top guys ran both classes. And the speeds weren't much different. In '82 there was less than a lap difference between my winning time in stock versus the winning time in mod.

Being one who always fiddled around with different layups of Carbon, which suited you to what type of track?

Charlie don't surf wrote:Being one who always fiddled around with different layups of Carbon, which suited you to what type of track?

I can't remember the weave angles anymore. The thing that worked pretty consistently was to run as soft of a chassis as you can get away with. Almost every time I went super stiff on a pan car it worked horribly. I remember one Whippoorwhill oval race where I found some killer dry weave graphite that was ultra stiff. I cut the chassis myself, thought I would be dialed for the race, but I was in agony until I switched back to a softer chassis.

For the 1988 Worlds I used a very flexy graphite chassis on my 12L, I think they were actually some chassis plates that were going to be thrown away because they were too soft. For the 1982 Worlds my car worked better with no front posts between the chassis and radio tray.

I know it goes against logic, but in the real world it always seemed like I was faster with a soft chassis.

Were the pro drivers using the BEC for the radio on the chassis or only the diodes, or some small circuit?

For the wiper arm cars I think we ran one diode. Once ESCs came out (1984?) we didn't have to do that. For 4 cell racing we ran receiver packs for a while.

Kent-
What year did you first start experimenting with carbon fiber layups for the chassis and did this development lead to any carbon fiber/kevlar or carbon fiber/spectra chassis layups?

Thank-you

dirtdiver