Today I received a package from Ron Burnstein of Riggen HO containing two original Riggen factory repair kits, which are in and of themselves quite interesting. This contained a replacement guide flag that was on Riggen production cars by August 1971, or was at least available to the general public by that time. A bit of slot car sleuthing into one of my childhood CAR MODEL magazines provided some useful clues to the restoration. An article entitled "Mini Mods/Riggen" by Dale Flanagan was full of production nuances.  Interestingly the chassis featured in the article came with a one piece guide flag with press-fitting steel braid and two white lead wires to the motor brushes, both a thinner white than the two red lead wires originally on the car. This was the same type of flag that I received in the kit. The production car had a black plastic keeper nut and a black crown and pinion. The kit contained a white pinion gear and a white keeper nut. By this juncture the shape of the pinion had changed to a more rounded profile where the teeth contacted the crown gear, something also found on the later Gala car.

Landing two wife approved slot cars in a week, especially with all of the commotion going on in and around the Brown house is rather noteworthy. We did learn that my former Royal Ranger Josiah Crumpler earned a Bronze Star for his bravery, and that is indeed some comfort. It seems like the Army was certainly aware that he was of sterner stuff, as a four star general greeted the Crumplers at the airport in Raleigh. Somehow half of Hillsborough knew that his remains would be landing today, and they were at the airport to show support. I was also able to help sort out some problems with a friend's 1962 MGA Mark 2 Tourer, and this was an escape valve. Nice to come home to a package from Slot Car Central as well. Inside was a new old stock L&M livery Lola T260 body. Number five in the AFX Can-Am Pit Kit. A non-magnatraction chassis is in order, but that can wait of course. All that is needed is an early production Porsche 510K to land each of the initial Can-Am Aurora AFX production cars. That leaves two slots in the Pit Kit, so at least one will be a Super II clone of some sort with a Jairus Watson painted body.

It certainly pays to have friends in high places, or at least friends who can fall back on their years of slot car experience to provide some assistance. I must say that that is a fine quality of our community. I spoke with Dennis Hoskins on Sunday who in his youth in Huber Hights, Ohio was an employee of the Huber Heights Hobby Shop which had both an Aurora Tub Track as well as a King Track. The best of both worlds if you will. Of course the nature of the call involved restoring my late era Riggen chassis which has arbor pressed Dynamic hubs on all four corners. I was able to remove the original sponge tires not only successfully in that they were removed from the hub, but to do so with the tire still intact. Quite amazing considering it was a forty year old low profile sponge tire in the first place which by its very nature would be a somewhat fragile beast. The tire had been glued onto the hub with rubber cement, and by examining a thread in the vintage HO section of SLOTBLOG they still advocate rubber cement as the best glue for the job. Amazing, as I still use the Elmer's version, complete with a bottle brush just like in was in first grade in 1961.

I received my long anticipated Riggen chassis from Ron Bernstein or Bernie as his friends call him. The car has a unique provienance as it came from a former owner of Riggen before the company was purchased by Gala Plastics. Gala produced lexan bodies and later crown, pinion, and guide flag assemblies for the car. Jack Garcia molded the lexan bodies for Gala during this time. The chassis itself is a later flush motor type, as the Mabuchi HT-50 can sits flat and level to the bottom for greater stability. The axles and hubs on this particular chassis were made by Dynamic and the hubs fitted by an arbor press to the larger diameter axle. Riggen also offered replacement rear hubs and tires with a grub screw and corresponding Allen wrench, but not on this chassis. The rear slicks were black foam rubber, and will be replaced with NOS TycoPro White Boots for a snug fit to the rim. Dennis Hoskins confirmed that this was a popular replacement in the 1970's.

Not many people can say that they survived a horrific crash in a race car at speed, especially in the likes of a Porsche 917-10K Turbo Panzer, which delivers nine hundred and fifty horses in an equally terrifying fashion. Brave souls like Marke Donohue and George Follmer certainly come to mind as skilled pilots, as does their equally brave teammates. Take Follmer's co-pilot Charlie Kemp-who managed in 1973 to loop Follmer's RC Cola 917-10K in practice, making him an instant member of the Road Atlanta Flying Club. God Bless! Tonymgbbrown

I spoke with Serge over the weekend and he can confirm that I indeed have a Southern accent. From my neck of the woods this could be divided even further to say a Tidewater accent or a Duplin County accent where my father was from- which is a distinctive Scotch-Irish cross between the two. Having attended Serge's alma mater for the Southwestern archaeology portion of my training in the mid to late 1970's, I would call home in Raleigh and then eminate a Southern drawl for a week or two. At least this is what my dormmates said, and I have no reason to doubt them. My neck of the woods was and still is no slot car haven, as the accent must have scared off all of the Aurora sales force once upon a time. Just like any hobby, pockets of enthusiasts abound in say the Charlotte metro area, Winston Salem, or even Raleigh, but for the most part slot cars remain a scarce commodity.  Jim Collier from his North Hills hobby shop in Raleigh sold anything and everything related to Aurora and later TycoPro slot cars, and he had quite an inventory. There was another very nice hobby shop in Cameron Village, and I remember distinctly when they sold out all of their slot cars to focus on trains and static models.

Today has been bittersweet if you want to call freezing at a funeral and having a couple of Rubbermaid boxes at your house dusted for fingerprints bittersweet. My wife's ex mother in-law died Saturday and was laid to rest this morning in Durham. She and her husband were two of the finest folks on the planet, and she became a surrogate mother to my wife, something that is all too rare these days in terms of character. I will be forever grateful for their love and friendship. As for brushing for fingerprints-CSI let me tell you has it all wrong. The sheriff's deputies use a vile mixture of graphite powder which blackens eveything in a ten foot radius. We scrubbed the kitchen floor for a couple of hours as the stuff is quite difficult to contain. No finger prints were lifted from the boxes, and may God have mercy on the thieves who lifted some pretty valuable Sioux moccasins and quillwork from the house. These were the very things that propelled me into archaeology, and certainly were associated with some of my fondest Scouting memories. Like slot cars we cannot take them with us, so my plans are to donate some of my Sioux Reservation Period cultural items to the Earnest Thompson Seton Museum at Philmont in New Mexico under which I did my early fieldwork.

My long awaited package containing a Honker II body for Ray and another identical one for myself arrived from Jairus Watson's house in Salem, Oregon today. Unfortunately no time to further prepare it for mounting, as placing a lexan body correctly onto a chassis requires quite a bit of fettling in and of itself. Both bodies are initialed by the master at the injector pipe opening on the rear deck. Each Hilborn stack has a rounded gauze bell modelled to portray those found on the real car. The correct striping and Holman-Moody logo appears on the sides, as does the Newman Racing logo on the nose. Mario Andretti is also accurately detailed in the cockpit, and those monsterous dual exhausts are depicted on the rear end. No wonder Jarius Watson is considered one of the best lexan body painters of all-time. Certainly no disappointments here. A nice first lexan clad car for our  administrator Ray. I will carefully prepare the body for mounting, but it rests on the Cobramite clip for notification that the eagle has indeed landed at the Brown house. God Bless!

A couple of months ago I acquired a very scarce Gala Can-Am body from Jack Broadsmith in Duluth, Georgia- a deeper part of Dixie if you will. Gala picked-up Jim Kirby and his line of lexan molds and bodies in a smooth succession of buy-outs following the folding of Jim Ashbury's Lancer and his going to other slot car related pursuits. Sort of like my being a carpenter these days-you go where the work and demand is. It turns out that Both Kirby and Gala supplied bodies to Riggen in HO scale and their larger brothren, and Gala was a major supplier to Riggen until the company too became insolvent. Jack Garcia was the body molder during the Gala period of Riggen History. Ron Burnstein and his self proclaimed right-hand-man Terry Flynn have reserrected the Riggen brand in HO cars, and is doing a lion's share to bring enterest back to the Brass Wars era slot cars as they battled the Aurora Super II.

I owe Serge a tip of the 'ol controller as his idea for a break-in box clicked my idea light bulb into high wattage which as of late has been running on the dim side by my own admission. Serge's immaculately conceived break-in box for chassis tweeking and gear lapping duties demonstrates the brainpower that has earned him some geography with a fine view of the Front Range, something I too can appreciate as my mother's house in Linville has an unobstructed view of Grandfather Mountain. Definately good for relieving the stressors from today's demands. My modest proposal was to build something circa 1960's, and my solution in consultation with Ray produced a totally vintage break-in board. Ray provided a nice Aurora DC-2 transformer and a clip-on terminal for delivering juice to the track, and Bob Lucasiewitz from THE SLOT CAR SITE stepped up to the plate with a seven inch straight and a Start-Finish track which acts as a dyno for gear lapping and chassis break-in duties. The Aurora Steering Wheel Controller keeps the armature revving at a desired speed for a proper break-in- a nicely restored one I already had; and the roller on the track along with a stop gate keeps the rear wheels spinning and the chassis planted.