A big old box of Aurora track

[cameraman]

My six year old son just inherited a rather large box of circa 1968 Aurora ThunderJet 500 slot cars. It barely works. The track is in serious need of cleaning and the cars are in dire need of lubrication and the tires are just a wee bit dried out. Looks like we're going to the hobby store tomorrow...

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii35/Cynops/cars.jpg

[Andrew Longman]

OMG that is so cool.

I hope you can still get the makings to make repairs to the cars.

FWIW I think I probably qualified for an advance degree in getting 11/10th out of those pancake motors. Melted a few in my time.:gomer:

[Methanolandbrats]

:thumbup: You must build a huge track. I see plywood in your future :D

[cameraman]

Where the holy hell am I going to fit plywood into this garageless, basementless house:eek:

Levitation must figure out levitation...

[Methanolandbrats]

Where the holy hell am I going to fit plywood into this garageless, basementless house:eek:

Levitation must figure out levitation...

Hmmm....build it on the floor, hug the walls and go under the furniture....think of it as a street circuit.

[stroker]

Where the holy hell am I going to fit plywood into this garageless, basementless house:eek:

Levitation must figure out levitation...

See if you can find a copy of "Car Model" magazine with the article on how to build a "Sano H.O. with Get Up and Go" racetrack in your coffee table. Late '60's.

Seriously, you were one lucky bastard with that find. I wish I still had my track. I've got my cars...

I just found out there's a raceway about an hour south of here and I'm getting a serious Jones to go rent some track time... My dream as a grade school kid was to own a model car raceway. At this point I've pissed away whatever chance I had at a career and I'm beginning to think that I won't make any money but I'll fulfill a dream. Maybe even be happy.

[datachicane]

I started down the same road a couple of months back with my 11 yr old daughter- dug out my early '70s vintage Aurora AFX track and cars, bought a bunch of reproduction T-Jets for the rougher kids to play with. I was surprised how many repro parts, NOS bodies, etc., were around for this stuff- even found a replacement grille for one of my 2.5 Challenge TA BRE Datsun 510s.

Now we've got a 4-lane Suzuka taking up half the living room... :cool:

[Andrew Longman]

See if you can find a copy of "Car Model" magazine with the article on how to build a "Sano H.O. with Get Up and Go" racetrack in your coffee table. Late '60's.Dang, I read a lot of Car Model as a kid.:D

Was that the article that told you how to create elevation change and scenery? Much like a fine model railroad? It was VERY cool. Reminds me of a mini Laguna Seca. I drooled on that.

I built a layout in my bedroom when I was about nine. Burned a hole in the brand new wall to wall carpet with a soldering iron. To this day I deny to my Mom that I had anything to do with it.:gomer:

[Andrew Longman]

Don't ask where I found this, but cool Car Model article...

(Split in two parts ...)

Part One:
------------------------------------------------

Soooooo-krus...

The Sound of Teenage Money

By Leon Mandel

Somehow it always seems you have to go downstairs to get there - although that is not strictly the fact; and once inside you are barraged by a peculiar adolescent cacophony, the whhhrrrrr of high-revving electric motors. Your senses are assaulted by a wall of opaque and noxious gasses - a combination of ozone, cigarette smoke and intestinal effluvia - an atmosphere which would have put WWI trenches to shame.

Often there is quite literally no place to stand. At very least it is time-travel to another generation, and for an adult there is just the hint of the irrational and arbitrary menace of a teenage mob - cocky on its own turf, predictable only in its determination to be unpredictable. It is only later, the unease of introduction and tribal initiation over, that it comes through clearly that here are to be found some exceptionally bright and pleasant youths. At first they would die rather than give you that impression.

But if you want to meet the pros, that is the initiation you must go through, and to do it you go downstairs. If you want to meet the full-time factory drivers, the 16-17-18-19-20-year olds who travel the circuit with as much disdain for the world as A.J. Foyt, that is where you go. And they are there. Howie Ursaner, at 19 the coolest pro of them all, the Ice Man, on full-time salary to Cobra. Dyna-Rewind's Jerry Brady, innocent blue eyes, Huckleberry Finn with a controller, winner of 11 straight money races. Mini-Rubin the court jester; Chris Vitucci, at 26 giving it a desperate last chance; Bob Emott, Captain Nice; Peter von Ahrens, the perfect villain and working hard at the role, and the legendary John Cukras (Soo-krus) team captain for Mura out of San Francisco and rumored to benefit from an income of $50,000 a year. They are there. And so you go downstairs, wondering about reality and the cultural aberration which has taken 1/24th scale model cars and put them into a 1/24th scale world, and will your son say to you when he is 12: "It's been nice, but I just signed a $10,000 contract with the factory and my plane leaves for Mexico City in an hour. See you around?"

That's what's happened to slot car racing while you've had your head turned in the other direction; and you don't know whether to laugh at the insecurity and the pimples or remark on the very real microcosm of the Can-Am. The touring pros are what's happened. And suddenly that movie about the teen- aged President isn't such a joke anymore because how many people do you know who are making $50,000 a year?

In the beginning, it was like the Hula- Hoop. A fad. A mildly diverting exercise. And then there was a period of incubation and then a real boom: a Davy Crockett cap boom; a boom for the sake of a boom and every airline pilot with time on his hands, every sales manager, every lawyer and every abortionist got in on it.

Slot cars, like professional football teams, seemed to need stadia beyond the split-level pine-finished recreation room of central Kansas; they needed 300-foot commercial tracks, convoluted, twisting, the incarnation of a tiny Nuremburgring for tiny cars. Racing for the masses: the under 16 masses - although, of course the fathers could go along and maybe encourage their sons a little. A little like stage mothers maybe, or the mother of that Olympic skater, the famous one, you remember her name-from the time she (they) was 10, or eight. It was manifest destiny, the boom in commercial -slot car tracks. You had to call to make a reservation for a half- hour on a track in Brooklyn.

There was a time there when - at least according to legend - the tracks were making $2,000 a day. And sell, sell, sell; any kind of micro equipment made. The king of the salesmen was Oscar Kovaleski, hill-climb driver, almost perpetual SCCA finalist in the American Road Race of Champions (Oscar rented his cars for that one), Club Governor, firmly settled in the Himalayan heights of amateur sports car racing policy-and perpetrator of an enormous catalogue of model cars and model-car parts. Including a dynamometer for slot cars.

Still, Kovaleski and partner Bob McLeod, who also published Model Car Magazine, were a sober influence on the south sea bubble of the fad in miniatures. They wrote rules for races, promoted them, and tried to stabilize the industry. Which, of course, they couldn't do. No more than the man who wanted to abolish bronzed baby shoes hanging from car mirrors. No more than the zealots who decided, single-handed, to put an end to the opium trade.

Inevitably, the slot car boom collapsed. Parlors across the country closed doors like Boston gentility in the face of Irish applicants. The airline pilots went back to selling insurance, or sitting poolside with girls a third their age in those Get-Together, sleek apartment buildings; the doctors and the lawyers and the abortionists, red-eyed, their savings gone, reverted to their legitimate trades. Sad men, who thought they knew all about the post-war baby boom now reached adolescence-and who found out they didn't know at all. Some of the storefronts were converted into campaign headquarters - when there were campaigns to headquarter. Some sat quiet, unoccupied, with no future; the paint chipping, the brave signs ("Checkered Flag Raceway") fading into a miasma of dirt and memories and the disillusionment of their owners.

That's the way it always is, and that's the way it was with the great slot car boom. The days of the 6-hour enduros with 1/32 scale cars with lights on board ("After three hours we turn off the lights, and you'd better be able to see where you're going"), of the quick kit cars (the Cox Chaparral, the Porsche 906s) were over. The stale stink of 13-year-old sweat went with the American mags and the '55 Chevy’s back to the drive-ins or the beaches. It was over. It had ended as suddenly as it began. Except not quite. The tough ones stayed on, the bright ones continued.

Luis Del Rosario sought out an industrial designer from northern New Jersey, quit his job as national sales manager for a trucking outfit and put together Elmsford Raceway. A quiet, tasteful emporium in Westchester County, N.Y., beneath a bowling alley (you still had to go down). And PTA mothers, Junior League mothers, terribly busy artist-type mothers were just delighted to have a clean, decent place to leave the 10-year old they don't know how to cope with anyway.

What they didn't know then, and don't know now, is that the survivors have become hardcore revolutionaries - survivors generally do. Kit cars, $6.95 put-it-together-yourself, have almost disappeared and in their place are the components for the scratch-built racers. Brass platform chassis, Elfin or Lotus 40 bodies, Mura and Cobra motors and cars. Into the world of the slot car racer has come the specialist manufacturer, and with him an emphasis on races and competition - no longer an afternoon of idle wwhhrring around a track-and with them, there come the pros.

The Cobra race at Elmsford was going to draw 150 entries, and ended up with about 70. Still enough to spend all day qualifying, running endless consolation races, the struggle to move up from each to the main and a chance at the pros from California, and Texas and Atlanta-and maybe, just maybe, a factory ride.

Sub teens up to the line under the stern gaze of the Race Director for a hot lap; first make the cut, then try for a sit-out so you only have to run the main. Next week it's Nutley, N.J. and the ARCO (Champion) Race and the track's better there for the pros - smoother and quicker. You don't launch on the straight and demolish your car. Next week they'll go to the Holiday Inn in East Orange, on Wednesday maybe, and build new cars and go down to Nutley Raceway for time on the American Blue track.

At Elmsford, it's all complaints. They talk about the track and the race and Elmsford but they barely mention Jerry Brady, who started here and is straight and that's what they're really sore about. Bob Emott breaks in a Consi - he launches, his car flying into a wall and out for the night. Dave Grant from Costa Mesa has bad luck. So does Phil Rubin, a teammate of John Cukras on the Mura team. So in the main it's Cukras and Brady and scholarly Wayne Williams and the Ice Man and track owner Del Rosario. Del Rosario coughs, he breaks his racer. Before the start, Jerry Brady trims his body - illegal (and he knows it) and so he's penalized a lap; but he figures nobody's going to see, he's got his back turned to the Race Director and anyway everybody's busy gooping the track with whatever magic clixer they've concluded will make the 400 mph-scale cars stick best - STP mostly (is Granatelli everywhere?). The start is delayed because – quietly - the Race Director is told Cukras is sick to his stomach. Brady's win streak is snapped - by Wayne Williams and by one lap.

(...to be continued...)

[Andrew Longman]

Part Two:
------------------------------------------

It is 1:00 a.m. and black and cold outside, but its Saturday night and tomorrow is the U.S. GP and so everyone is on his way to The Glen. Real Racers, 1/24th to 1/1. There is a one-way current of understanding - and envy. And there is time enough for East Orange a week away.

Nutley was a very serious business. Nutley Model Car Raceway and Family Hobby Center advertised "Sano Plastic Kites" and "Sano Powered Boats" but drew twice the number of entries as Elmsford. Nutley was a whiff of the old parlour, owned and operated by Mike Tango whose parents dispensed meatball sandwiches (two meatballs per sandwich) to the hungry racers during qualifying. "Geeks" said von Ahrens, the disdainful villain. And everyone waited for the longest Saturday in the world until the Geeks either qualified, made the cut, or loaded it on the trailer -vividly ornamented and decaled wooden boxes - and went home.

Bob Kean was there, the Keith Duckworth of slot car racing, who works for IBM during the day and tends to his profitable custom motor rewinding at night. "We get, oh, 173,000 rpm free-loaded on the tach out of these motors, maybe 70,000 rpm under load, he says. But there's no quality control, they don't live."

Dutton Racing Team, the shirts say on the back: Monaco Raceways, Nutley Raceways, Closter Place Sports Center. And the place is teaming, milling with constantly circulating teenagers with the intense purpose of being there, and once there, not sure of where to be.

As at Elmsford, the word is out: "Cukras is coming." No communications network is so deadly efficient as the teenage grapevine. They somehow seem to know. Magic. And swinging downstairs from the great parking lot in the back he comes -- the toughest pro in the country, long hair in three-quarter length curls. Sunglasses, with replica daisies on their frames, a menthol cigarette dangling from the middle of his mouth. Soo-krus is here, and the sea of pimples parts for him.

It does not part for a chunky man in a tan windbreaker which says "Indianapolis Pacesetter" on it. Bill Holland, Indy winner in 1949, has carefully parted his whitening hair in the middle and is immersed in the sea, selling Champion chassis and motors and parts in his job as Eastern Sales Representative and Warehouse manager. As the day wears upon him, he will change to a sports jacket and find total anonymity to the relief of those who know what he was and what he did in 28 years of racing.

The noise in the room intensifies as the Geeks qualify, and there is a wretched odor of boy and meatballs and smoke; it is hard to breathe and even harder to see. The pros who qualified first are out back, in the parking lot, lounging against cars and expressing ineffable contempt for those inside. At lunch they are saying things like, "It is a professional sport. If you have a contract with a manufacturer, you can make about ten grand, I know that for a fact" (von Ahrens). And (in a bright and refreshing moment of self-deprecation and amusement with his own activity), "I am the old pro. I am the Don Garlits of slot car racing" (Howie Ursaner). And (sadly), "It's going to take a lot of time. . . I don't know of any full-time driver who is really making a living at it, but there are a lot of drivers who do compete for money and who travel a lot and race from coast to coast." "Sometimes they don't make all their expenses, but I can remember doing that in automobile racing, too." (Bill Holland.)

It is even more painful to hear him say the drivers have to have the same skills as those at the Speedway. Wayne Williams thinks of himself as Jo Bonnier but he would like to identify with the driver ". . . who makes the most money." Jerry Brady talks about the bonus system he gets from Dyna Rewind: $25 for making the main; $ 100 for winning plus the purse; his salary of $75 a week. Like most, Brady is a student . . . except he isn't in school just now. Jerry Brady would like to be Graham Hill.

Cukras would like to be Cukras. Mike Morrissey, Cukras' own Boswell and Editor of Model Car Journal, ran a 36-point banner in July: "Cukras Wins The Big One ... this was the race we had all been wishing for since the early days of slot racing ... never before had any race anywhere had such a collection of racing talent ... and it was the incredible John Cukras who pulled it off . . . it unquestionably placed him at the top as the number one driver in the entire world." Model Car Journal is now Model Racing Journal, and reorganized - but still with the enthusiastic Morrissey in the slot. Cukras, a Californian, started as a kid helping out at the Lions Drag Strip.

"Yeah, I get the write-ups," he answers when you ask him if he's the highest paid pro in slot racing. Cukras is a kind of partner in Ron Mura's motor building company in San Leandro, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco. At 20, he gets a piece of the action. And there's a lot of action. "Ron makes about 700 motors a day," says Cukras who's the Director of the company's Racing Division - Mura has a better sense of destiny than Champion which only allows Holland to be a sales and warehouse manager. "I go around to promote enthusiasm and to show people how fast the products will run. And what equipment to use with them to get the best performance," Cukras stops and lights a cigarette - in the middle of his mouth - "and leave the rest go." He travels "about three weeks out of the month".

"It grows you up fast," he says of the sociological phenomenon of the 17-year-old professional. Next year, when he turns 21, he can envision himself with a Can- Am ride if somebody offers it. What's so strange? He knows all about the pressure. And he's a professional. Besides which, he's a Californian. And to a Californian, anything is possible.

It figures that The Villain will win. Or at least Cukras. But at the end of a day which doesn't end, its octogenarian Chris Vitucci the 26-year-old phenomenon, the old bull not yet ready to play dead for the fierce young lion who wins it all. The rest shrug and get ready for Los Angeles next weekend, and then Mexico City.

Howie Ursaner and Wayne Williams don't think they'll go. It comes as a happy -if tentative-affirmation that these two of the brightest, most pleasant and skillful of the pros are beginning to choose to rejoin society. Maybe von Ahrens won't go either' They are all relaxing in the parking lot, von Ahrens a splendid study in green- patched trousers, green velour shirt, green teeth. Everyone is casually watching the evening jets from the coast holding in their lazing patterns over Nutley, through the soft evening, and the descending darkness. The Ice Man is holding court: "It used to be," he says, "I couldn't wait to get on a plane. When I was a kid, I loved the feel of that giant machine. When this all started."

You look at the flash of the red identification lights above, sliding down into Newark, LaGuardia, and Kennedy. "Now I can't wait to get off one." And then you remind yourself - Ursaner is 19 years old.

(End of article).

[Elmo T]

Sweet! :thumbup:

I remember my set and my kits to make all the modifications. I also remember when they came out with sets without the slots. The controller had a little wheel to allow for lane changes. It was like magic. :gomer:

The original set is long gone.

There is a farmer's market type place not too far off that has two huge tracks. (Quakertown Market for Mr. Longman if he gets over that way - be warned QMart makes Walmart look like Bloomingdale's.) They sell the cars and parts too. Amazing to see the some of the folks show up with large tackleboxes LOADED with cars and gear.

[Andrew Longman]

I know the Q market. I like the Rice's farm market over in Lehaska too. I don't need to shower after visiting though. ;)

Venture up a little further to Easton, off PA33, to Trains and Lanes. A stone's throw from Nazareth Speedway.

The place is dirty and completely disorganized.

The staff is severely socially challenged (I think they started coming in middle school and haven't left to join the outside world except to buy junk food and porn. Everything else they want is there).

The general public hates the place and are frightened by the people there.

So I take my kids there.

And they have EVERYTHING. One of the last in a dying breed of hobby shops (though I like your hobby shop in Doylestown, just not quite as hardcore and no tracks)

THREE slot tracks are awesome, not HO though, 1/32+

Several outside RC tracks.

rXpF4hHZE1c

[Elmo T]

Venture up a little further to Easton, off PA33, to Trains and Lanes. A stone's throw from Nazareth Speedway.


I know exactly where you mean - passed it headed to the races. :(

I always wanted to stop - may have to make a trip up there.

Herb's in Doylestown is great - nice stop with the kids: crafts and dollhouses plus trains and cars. :thumbup:

[dando]

crafts and dollhouses plus trains and cars.

:saywhat: :gomer:

-Kevin

[Ziggy]

If you can stand a few lag bolts in your ceiling, you can always suspend a layout that way. You just lower it when your ready to race.

works well

[Elmo T]

:saywhat: :gomer:

-Kevin

Hey - I've got one of each! Trying finding someplace else where one kid isn't moping around. :laugh:

[racer2c]

Ugh...this thread breaks my heart. When I was a youngster, the highlight of my visits to my grandparents (yes, aside from seeing them) was to take the long walk down into their unfinished basement (the stairs seemed to go on forever) and over to the converted ping pong table. On top of that table was a miniature le mans/suzuka combo with a few 180 verts thrown in, a paddock of 100+ cars ranging from oddities like a split window Beetle, to traditional le mans racers (my favorite car was the blue/orange Gulf 917, a few years prior to me seeing the real car!). There were spare engines and tires galore (of different 'compounds').
The track had built in lap counters and an optional 'fuel' system with pit stops to re-fuel.
I barely came up for air. Hundreds turned into thousands of laps to fine tune the exact throttle position needed for each corner, then once perfected...I'd throw a different engine/tire combo in to see if I could pick up some speed/grip and start the laps all over again.
The track was left over from my uncle who left it as is when he left for college ('73). Word got to back to him about my admiration for the set and one Thanksgiving visit he surprised me by telling me I could have it all. A few years back in my room at home and all I had left were a few body shells.:cry:

I also had an early slotless set. A simple oval and you could make the cars change lanes by simply quickly letting off the accelerator trigger. Worked surprisingly well and we had some epic races on that track but the cars sucked compared to the classic Aurora's. If I recall, one car was a Trans Am and the other car was a Z-28. probably a Tyco set.