RC10Talk - The Net's Largest Vintage R/C Community

I know when I tell you guys that you may or may not be able to grab the scope of my "situation", that it's hard to understand. I'm addicted to little cars. they are my whole life, all I've done, essentially my whole life. Still love it.

I know when some of you ask, and I'm happy to look, that it seems pitiful that I can't find something or am not sure where it is. It's because there is a lot of it. I tell everybody, "you'll know when I die... you're gonna see some CRAZY ebay auctions as my family starts cleaning buildings. Truly, and some of you will understand this, I don't want to leave this problem for my family. I need to aggressively start organizing, but it seems utterly hopeless to me. I'm trying, and have made some progress, but it's tough.

I've moved about 1/2 of it into the building where our track is and covered the track with little piles while I organize things. It's a good start. I'm starting to hang a few things over there and get motivated. But it's 100's of thousands of items. the type of problem where even if I sold 500 things a week at auction, it would take 7-10 years. and that's if it sold. Then you got to clean it, take pics, write the auction. I dunno, maybe 10-20 years. 500 is a LOT of auctions to write a week. and I don't really dare put them on our site. I probably could with the new stuff. But some of the bag headers are ratty, and it still needs to be organized.

Here are some pics. I would say this is a solid 4-5% glimpse at what I'm up against. In the case of the A&L, I think I've seen another box or two of it out there. Those tires, might be 15,000-25,000 pair all total, there are a LOT of those boxes. Most of those tires we accumulated when I bought R&R distributing (Quincy, Illinois) from Roy Weast back in 1991 or so. We moved a lot of them on ebay (1995-1997 or so, when ebay was new) was selling 25 pair for $50 just to get through some of them. Made a decent dent.

I dunno, I suspect the reason I'm posting this is to help motivate myself to organize and categorize it. Enjoy this first look.

Here's what I'd call a 1/4 of whats on the floor right now (and 4% of the total) while I work through this area.


Put up some pegboard and started to organize Raceprep/AYK.


there are cases of things around, everywhere.

Some others, there are HUNDREDS of boxes of tires. the majority schumacher, maybe 5 or 10,000 raceprep. some Yok, some associated, etc. But none of like edinger tires, so I don't get flooded with dudes asking.


I got this wild idea that the bags were getting all ratty, so I was going to re-bag them... This is as far as I got, few of them out of the bags.

4-5% Seriuosly...

wish i live there, i could help you out during weekends.... that would have been a blast....

slow_jun wrote:4-5% Seriuosly...

wish i live there, i could help you out during weekends.... that would have been a blast....

I think that's pretty accurate.

Here's some more fun stuff, I think about 250 cars in this shot. I lost track at 1200. Just this shot, 7 shelves, 50 feet long (350 linear feet on this wall). There's a lot of shelving off to the left in the pic you can't see. This is one spot out of 8. Pan cars are my favorites. 235mm being my absolute favorite, followed by 1/12th scale.

I'm not much into bodys. I like to be able to hand a person a car, and let them feel it, and experience it. See the engineering and be a part of it. On a shelf, behind glass, isn't my style. be a part of the past, inspire somebody, let them see what we used to do.













tons of boxes like this. Donor or project cars. Waiting for the right part or time.

.
Now, be careful what you wish for.

I'd hoped to spend my years building and restoring little cars. Of the group, I'd say maybe 150-200 or so or truly "done and restored". What I've indirectly done, is accumulate such an enormous amount of them, I now manage boxes of cars and move them around. I don't get to work on them as much as I'd like. I spend most of my time sorting. And you hardcore restoration guys will know what I'm talking about. Even screws have changed in appearance. A 4-40 cap head screw today does not look exactly like the ones we used to use. and things like connectors need a certain amount of age on them to look accurate, and nothing kills the look of a restoration like the wrong pinion. Just the shine or the coatings. HUGE differences. We didn't used to spend a lot of time wiring things. Done was done. You can ruin a restoration by wiring it well. I dunno, that won't make a lot of sense to some people, but the point is, if you're restoring something to a high level, you can't overlook things like the accuracy of the screws. This means (in my case) I have to organize everything, one screw at a time. Millions of parts.

You're getting a pretty small glimpse here. But it's a Glimpse into me, and my passion for RC.

I don't know that it's a hoard as much as a personal collection that's gotten out of control.

Bob-Stormer wrote:.
Now, be careful what you wish for.


I don't know that it's a hoard as much as a personal collection that's gotten out of control.

A round of sympathy for our poor friend Bob...


<clap clap clap clap>




It's awesome, Bob!!! we're pleased to have you around

Paul

<where's your forsale thread again ??? >

You gotta admit, it would be a helluva for sale thread!!!!!

I'd like to thin the heard, but if I'm honest with myself, it'll probably never happen. I picked up 2 more this week.

usually if you see a for sale thread from me It's just some stuff that I want off my desk at the shop... ...lulz... Plus, I like to come on here and hang out with my vintage addicted peeps. I lurk a lot, I'm not the only guy around this forum that "might" have a problem. ~~~

Some of you guys are doing AMAZING things. I'm quite jealous of a lot of stuff I see here.

If you had to pick a favorite car from your collection, which one would you pick?

and the guy still has his "looking for CarA, B, C" in his sig

you need help, Bob!!!

Waaaa... now im embarass... its places like that i want to spend time with.... surely a time killer..

I think you need to use the Panoramic view on your Cam next time you snap a pic, like the 360* view.

bow.... were not worthly.....



but i saw this...

I'm gonna move this out of the gallery and I guess into the chit chat. For one its not pics of complete cars only , and I know guys will not be able to keep from commenting on the thread. I don't feel like deleting posts all day long.

scr8p wrote:I'm gonna move this out of the gallery and I guess into the chit chat. For one its not pics of complete cars only , and I know guys will not be able to keep from commenting on the thread. I don't feel like deleting posts all day long.

I didn't even think about that rule... sorry for starting it... emotions took over

Dirtdiver wrote:If you had to pick a favorite car from your collection, which one would you pick?

Like a favorite song or child? Hard to pick. Although my neighbors kids... There's a few I can't wait to see leave for college.

Now were talking, I'm gonna get to reminisce!!!!

Irrational emotional favorites, MRP GP-10 and Agitator. I think it's because I drove for Bob Welch and MRP at the time, and I had one of the first ones. Diff was terrible on that car (wasn't even that great a car looking back it was kind of a piece of crap, really) But it was the first of it's kind when we were all racing foam tires on old RC10's and grasshoppers, scorpions in parking lots. Agitator because I was driving for Twister at the time with Soderquist. I met Lucas Garneau (great dude) at one of the Cleveland races where we all ran the agitator 1/12th car that year with Lucas' help. I think that was the year Luis Leblanc won. Twister had me and Soderquist roomed up doing team motors for the guys, I think it was the first time I bumped into Jeric, he was a twister guy back then. 87-88?

Offroad, gotta be the RC10, just so MANY mutant variations of it. Was a fun car. followed by the chain drive yokomo and the PB mustang. Chain drive optima gets an emotional soft spot.

1/12th, Seems I'm always happy to have a Delta in my hand. I spent a lot of time on the phone with Ken back in the day, and he was such a nice guy, I think those memories go with the car for me. Favorite obscure car, the k12 made by Stan Witteman and Mitch. I think it's because Stan was one of the first guys I knew to pick and choose chassis bits from different brands and make some VERY cool cars that nobody had seen before. We were just playing with 1/12th scale until we met the Minot guys. They were so fast. Mitch is still fast. I've slowed a bit, but I can still put in a good lap now and then.

Single favorite car, based on obscurity, the Leonard Woods nitro car that TRC marketed through Horizon at the time. nobody made anything like it at the time or since. It was LW letting his mind wander, and doing a bunch of engineering things that (arguably) didn't transfer well over to small cars. Was a great car (so I'm told, I never drove one) as long as you never hit or touched anything. I bet there weren't 100-200 of them total. It was expensive, and really, either ahead of it's time, or behind it. But it is an engineering wonder. I love to hand it to people so they can be a part of it.

Mutant favorites: The 235mm Stormer SR5. in 1990 before CAD, I hand drew and developed that car. tested and raced it, it was beautiful. We had just bought Stevens and sons (axles, hubs, pod bits, few of you guys will remember that) and Sent a few cars around the country. Stevens and sons eventually became Barracuda we sold that line through GP and Horizon. Remember, no email or web then. No flaws in the pre-production cars. I kitted 24 of them for the first run, we sold 12 via interest created in a flyer we mailed out. We waited to see what happened sold 12 over the next few days. I hand built all 12 as we didn't have instructions yet and I was thinking of doing the "corally thing" with assembled cars to control quality. That next Monday morning. All 12 guys were ecstatic, kicked ass, etc. They all called up looking for small advice on how to tweak the car and get the last little bit out of it over the next few days. ALL of them called on our toll free number back when it was like 60-90 cents a minute or more. I spent about $2500 in phone calls over the next few days and pulled the car from sale while I tried to sort what to do about it. THAT problem, hadn't occurred to me. The what if we have to spend $200 per car on toll free support phone calls. never sold another one. Lot easier now with forums (guys sharing setup tips online) and email, etc. Back then, you called the company, and because we were a mail order company we had a toll free number. There's 12 of SR5 out there somewhere. I have 2 I raced and whats left from the other 10 cars we sold parts off to keep guys going. I'll start a thread about the car some time. I don't think I've ever posted pictures of it. If anybody has one, I'd love to hear about it. It was just before we started computerized invoices and related record keeping. No idea where they went. Sr5 stood for the "5th" car I designed. the first three were 1/12th cars based on Delta and then agitator parts. "4" (1/12) was pretty bitchen. or maybe it was "6" that was so different, crap... I don't remember. Sold a few of them as conversions for 12l's.

A member here has a woods car that he has vowed I have find on one day....such a neat bit of over engineering!

Oh, and that 6 gear Jammer with the Pinned diff, Litesink and blue wheel dots was mine ...next to the JRX-2 Jammer and the #7 body