Pelican Park Collection
of Eugene, Oregon
Bios for each of the imaged slot cars are much the same. Most of the bodies are hard plastic, taken from Monogram and AMT kits. To get the authentic look for each car after market decals are obtained from other sources. All of the bodies are mounted on custom, scratch built brass chassis, conforming to Pelican Parks body/chassis rule, the attached picture being a good example of a typical chassis layout.
To get a bit of a flavor for the how's and whys our set up, the following may help the reader to better grasp what we do, and, by the way, explain why Pelican Park has been so successful as a club for 20 years now:
We start from the philosophical position that our classes are designed to encourage scratch building. Therefore, "what matters" on the track i.e. what we are competing to determine.. is who can build the fastest chassis. Motor performance is not the issue. By requiring stock bottom-line 16D motors, we are trying to take motors... and their costs... out of the equation. Theoretically, everyone races with relatively equal cheap horsepower. The rules are very "limited" with respect to motors.
On the other hand... in the area we wish to compete, chassis design, the rules are very "unlimited". Aside from minimal rules about ground clearance and wheel diameters, PPS chassis rules are wide open. The body must cover the chassis, wheels/tires and the configuration must be inline... that's it. That applies to all our classes. Anything that a competitor can dream up to make a slot car go fast is allowed.
Both the "limited" motor rule and the "unlimited" chassis rules have the added benefit of being easy to understand and consequently.. easy to police. It is a simple, yet sophisticated, approach to slot racing rules.
Most of the bodies are put together not with model glue, super glue or epoxy (not strong enough and too brittle) We use Devcon’s Plastic Welder, an adhesive used by 1:1 body shops to bind plastic and similar made body parts to metal and steel. It’s the strongest stuff around, and actually chemically binds with the plastic. In all of our years of racing, and we race every week, and there are 400+ cars made so, we don’t have bodies breaking. Incredible stuff!.
Many of the bodies are mounted with 4-40 screws and nuts, as the one photo of a Hot Rod shows. I drill two holes in the chassis pan, counter sinking the flat 4-40 screw. The screw threads to a 4-40 nut that is glued to the body by way of a piece of plastic butt joined and glued horizontally to the inside body wall, at a 90 degree angle, which then lies atop the chassis pan. This method couldn't work without Plastic Welder.
Thanks to Todd Messinger for sending in all these great photos. You can check out the complete story of their racing on his web site.