Hingham, MA August 13, 2016 – With the onset of the summer doldrums, only six racers made the trek to Paul Ryer’s South Shore Speedway for our quarterly Gravity Series
Practice underway at Paul Ryer's South Shore Speedway
race which was truly a shame, there’s nothing better than beating the heat by racing slot cars in a nice cool basement. The low turnout did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm for those in attendance, if fact, the low turnout maximized track time with plenty of time to share ideas and help each other improve.
First up were the Gravity cars, the class that’s really driving the renaissance of scratch-built cars. We had quite the variety of cars – two lowered AFX pans cars, one traditional AFX pan car, two mini-motored in-lines and one mini-motored sidewinder. After a couple of hours of practice we took to the track for a 3 minute round
Six entrees for the headliner class - Gravity Cars
robin event using European rotation. Peter Lentros’ purchase of the car that Doug Morris used at the Nats turned out to be a very good investment as he took down the win by sections over Rob Hayes’ Scott Terry designed and built sidewinder. Next up was Donny Hall in the other Doug Morris lowered AFX car just two laps back. These lowered AFX cars have certainly breathed new life into the AFX based gravity cars! I think it’s time to retire my AFX cars, break out the sanding blocks and start the lowering process. Once I figure it out, maybe I’ll update my building article (how quick things change, the ink is barely dry on my original article…). Rounding
Showing all the good bits...
out the finishing order was John Reimels in fourth, Paul Ryer in fifth and Matt Patrick in sixth.
I was hoping to have our first race for brass panned T-Jets at this event but lack of time got in the way of making a set of 4 IROC cars to kick start the class. Instead we ran Super Stock T-Jets utilizing the ECHORR rules. Little tweaking was required for those that raced at the Nats a few months ago; both the Nats track and Paul’s track are MaxTrax so the car set-ups were close to identical – clean the pick-ups, oil ‘em up and race. Peter showed that his top four finishing position at the Nats was no fluke by taking down his second win of the day beating John Reimels to the line by less than ½ lap. Donny Hall finished a close third with Paul, Matt and Rob battling it out for 4th with less than a lap separating the three.
The last race of the day was for real old-school brass cars utilizing Mabuchi HT-50 style motors with the track power set to 12v. Between the six racers in attendance, we had 3
Running HT-50 Motored Cars IROC Style
Riggen cars that would have been legal for this class, however we decided to run my scratch-built in-line cars IROC style instead. I’m hopeful that others will get interested in this class and build their own car, Al Thurman’s in-line kit is perfect, in fact, it was designed around the HT-50 motor in the first place so little tweaking is required to build a car for this class. But I digress… Paul Ryer took down the win by one lap over John Reimels followed by a three way battle for third – the finishing order determined by mere sections – Matt Patrick beating Rob Hayes for third by 8 sections with Peter Lentros finishing in fifth another 8 sections back. Donny Hall finished in sixth.
I’d like to thank Paul for hosting the race and I’d also like to thank those in attendance for braving the heat and making the trip to Hingham. Judging by the comments and the smiles on their faces, I’d say everyone had a very good time.
Our next Gravity Car race will be at Rob Hayes’ Catfish International Speedway on
November 5th - Rob Hayes' Catfish International Speedway - Be There...
Saturday, November 5th. I had the occasion to run some Gravity Cars on his track a few weeks ago – let’s just say we’re going to have fun. It should be another interesting battle between the AFX based cars and the mini-motored cars – Catfish has lots of long fast sections with enough technical sections to make the track very interesting. I think the mini-motored cars will have the advantage but I’m building up a lowered AFX car to cover my bets! I’m hopeful that I’ll have a set of brass panned T-Jets that we can run for the second race with the third race being for HT-50 motored cars – either BYOC or IROC depending on who and what shows up.
I hope to see you in November,
John Reimels
New England Brass Car Enthusiast