The first of about a dozen new Magna-Traction/Round 2 Outlaw Late Models has been completed. Built up on the last series champions car, the Mr. Goodwrench #3 Outlaw "Monte Carlo" tribute car received a complete rebuild in preparations for the upcoming season opener.

http://home.earthlink.net/~cmra/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/mvc-592s.jpg

The specs for the car are:

Chassis: Pre-1980 Magna-Traction (owned since March, 1980), with brush cups installed, chassis is dyed dark blue. Brass body tubes are now also installed. No left side ballast has been attacheed yet, testing will determine how much, and where.

Motor: Mean Green armature with hi-pro motorbrushes, BSRT zapped magnets, BSRT gold plated brush springs, pick up shoe springs and pick up shoes. Brass idler gear and all are lubed with 100% TFT oil only.

Wheels/Tires: Machined aluminum wheels front and back, threaded carbon steel axles front and back, front tires are Tyco 44X2, rear tires are BSRT Super Tires #391 Compound B silicones. No tire stagger as per new rules.

Body: Parma 804A Outlaw Firebird, painted with Pactra RC paints in the familiar black and silver. Decals are by Microsport.

Early test laps found the car running between 0.1 and 0.3 seconds FASTER then it's quickest laps last series, with a fast lap of 2.036 seconds that matched the current track record. Once ballast is added I expect to see at least 0.05 to 0.08 seconds improvement.

Nice.....
What kind of track do you run on?

An old Tomy track for now, with bad joints and the surface in the corners has been worn very smooth (almost no texture). A new track is being built next month as a replacement. The newest track on the circuit is 12 years old and is TOMY track and is a lot better condition than mine. It's also longer than mine. We have three 4 lane and one 6 lane ovals.

wow, wait till Neil sees a #3 car that he didn't make, lol.

ROLF!! Sounds like he can already do it better. The contingency decals are amazing, I got a magnifying glass, they're all readable. These are pressure sensetive, not waterslide so no clear coating is necessary on a lexan body. Very nice decals.

drop the rear spoiler down so its level :thumbsup:

Unfortunately that's how it's molded. Not my design. It actually hooks up pretty good like this, and if you look at some other real world Outlaw cars, this isn't too far off.

Good looker Pete! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: rr

This car has now been tagged with the nickname "Batmobile". A new track record was set last night of 2.007 seconds, still without ballast. It may be the first Magna-Traction car to break the 2 second barrier. The new silicone tires I think have a lot to do with it hooking up in the corners, tonight I'll swap them for some AJ's that are a bit stickier and see what it does.

might not wanna use the name round 2

Round 2 X-Tractions will compete head to head along side the older Aurora Magna-Tractions, so referring to the brand is appropriate. Of the 6 cars already set up for the new season two are the X-Traction cars, and they are very competitive.

One thing about the new body that you eluded to Dunk was the rear spoiler height. At hot laps last night one of the cars had the body mounted in more of a slope than the #3 car is, so that the spoiler is at a higher level and more angled. Also, the whole upper surface of the body, which is pretty flat and unobstructed, was sloped up in the back. Essentially the body worked as an extension of the spoiler by adding more down force, however slight it was. Those of us on the rules committee watch for about 15 minutes as the car posted some pretty fast laps, but never quite challenged the track record. I repositioned the body of the #3 car in the same way and immediately posted 3 consecutive laps under 2 seconds. The rules committee adjourned to the outside driveway and concluded that a spoiler height rule of 1" would be mandated. The cars body was repositioned and was running at the current new track record of a few thousandth over 2 seconds.The fast laps are struck as being illegal and we continued testing would further problems. We raced into the wee hours until the heater ran out of kerosene and the drivers ran out of beer.

I'm expecting my own new R2's after the New Year, and I have all the new parts (zapped magnets, new Mean Green, etc.) ready to go in.

Awesome pete!...thanks for the update...

Get us some track pics as well please...

Track pics!! Of course!!! I keep forgetting my digital camera when I head to the track. Our next testing session will be New Years Eve, I'll definately get some then. In the mean time I'll be posting a few pics of the cars completed so far later this weekend.

OK, here's a picture (of a picture) of the 6-lane from an event over the summer. These are the winged sprint M/T's. We will race the inside 5 lanes in an actually event, this pic was posed.

http://home.earthlink.net/~cmra/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/mvc-593s.jpg

Most of the pics of our racing is on the comp directors computer, I'll get him to e-mail me some.

Also, here's a quick selection of the new body style on the cars that have been testing.

http://home.earthlink.net/~cmra/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/mvc-597s.jpg

The King, Ken Schrader (#25) and #3 are mine, the #57 C&R and Coors car belong to my neighbor. Unfortunately after this pic was taken the Coors car was outlawed. The builder had painstakenly covered the car with a product called Bare Metal Foil, a self adhesive chrome that is used in car modeling. The reason it was outlawed was that the car flipped during hot laps and actually provided a short circuit on the track while upside down and in contact with the rails. The foil is extremely thin, it heated quickly and melted the roof and nose of the body. A painted replacement is being built this weekend, and the use of foil has been prohibited.

LOL...crash and burn...literally...

Those bodies start clear right?....maybe apply it to the inside first...

Nice pics!

Yeah they start clear, the foil acted as a heating coil, only minor melting occured. He just wanted a really chrome looking finish, and it looked spectacular...for a few minutes at least.

with that sprint car picture is that chris eash in last?

Good eye, yeah. Sammy is in there too but the guy who "owned" him retired him this last series. I still have Brent Kaeding, Wolfgang (closest car) and Kinser as my contract drivers, Stevie may get himself an outlaw late model. A few of the other "drivers" we have are PJ Jones, Mario Andretti, Bobby Rahal, and Shuman. I'll see if I can dig up the archives and scan a few of the really old pics from the '80's.

did ya hear chris is comming back?

I had read that, I heard that Ron Shuman was coming back too but I never knew he left. We don't have a WoO show out here anymore, we used to at Hanford but it's been a year or two since they did a show. When we all began racing together we sort of put all the major drivers into a hat and drew them out, then we traded with each other til we got who we wanted. Generally if you retire a driver someone else can't pick them up. I "bought" Sammy Swindell in 1990 and raced him until 2 years ago, when I sold the TMC Trucking car to a new guy. He retired him in exchange for picking up Tony Stewart. Our records keeping isn't all that great, we keep stuff about a year and then shred it, but I have a drivers list somewhere.

Pete,I enjoy reading your posts and seeing your work.Those cars are awesome.
I like that you share what you guys are doing with the MTs.
I busted some out the other day,and built a few out of stuff in my parts box.
We may just start racing them here.I stil have the post you did on the lexan bodies you did for MTs kicking around in my head.

Just a suggestion tho,maybe post this stuff in the slot car modeling forum.I almost missed this one.

Mike

Mike, just after New Years I'm planning on vacuforming some sprinters, I don't know how many I'll do but I always do about twice what I need for my series. If I can I'll see about maybe making a few available for you, my problem right now is getting the material. Since they don't require any alteration to the MT chassis (except removing those two little pegs forward of the tab) they're prefect for those that want to race their cars but not screw up a collectible body. I decided not to update the molds, and have permanently retired the midget.

Another thing I've done in the past is hand-built sports car bodies from plastic sheet. I usually work with .010 and .020, most of the cars are built up on the 440X2 chassis since that's what our traction series spec is. Over the years I've build more than 120, the last one I finished a few days ago and have yet to paint. Here's a peak:

http://home.earthlink.net/~cmra/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/mvc-599s.jpg

From the left front-The new car really don't look too much like a real car, it's vented for arm cooling, low slung and has minimal drag. This is for my open comp car. Left back, a Rothmans car from 1986, Middle, my Bud sponsored modified champion from 1988. Back right, the 100th body I ever built, sucked on the race track due to it requiring narrow rear tires. It was way too heavy too. Purple and blue car, another car that was built in 1988, I don't remember how it did but it's not too beat up. The red thing on the right is the hybred Ferrari built for the WWC champion in 1990. It was never raced but tested way under the modified track record at the time.

I also modify hard bodies to suit rules requirments, these two were built for the modified series but were outlawed by minimum weight restrictions afterward.

http://home.earthlink.net/~cmra/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/mvc-600s.jpg

The Porsche won the modified championship in 1991, the stocker raced as shown, no paint and some serious aero work done, it finished second in points in 1991 behind the Porsche. Like I said, after this the rules were changed to maintain a minimum "stock" hard body class weight.

I'll make sure future stuff makes it to the right topic. :)

Pete,that would be awesome.

You say you cant find material???? If you mean lexan,I,being a chef for the last 4000 years,have an idea you might try.
Did you ever look into candy making suppliers???? Vac formers and lexan sheets are used to make fancy molds for chocolates.Do a Google,you'll see.

And now,that being said,how about some sprint cars with creamy nougat centers???? :wave: :freak: :hat:

Mike

I'll do that, right now I'm back to drawing the cars in Polybuteryl <sp>, Good stuff, really tough and as good as Lexan, but about twice the cost. I can do 6 cars for just under $4, I'm used to doing 4 for a buck including screw ups.

Everyone, have a great New Years. See ya'll in 2007.