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Okay, this is it - the tell-all R/C Memoirs of Frank McKinney!
I'm sure people have been waiting for decades for this scintillating looking into the behind-the-scenes world of radio control racing...
Okay I'll admit that maybe not everyone has been waiting for this, but it's fun to sit back and reminisce a bit about things.
If you're here because you know me through R/C cars, you'll probably know that I used to work for HPI Racing, one of the top brands in the world for R/C cars. Unfortunately, if you came here for the inside dirt on the company, you'll have to ask someone else, because I won't be giving it out. Like any other company there are ups and downs, good co-workers and bad co-workers, so in that respect there is little to tell. Suffice it to say that it's generally a great company to work for.
So - why listen to these little tales of my racing days? Well, because I have pitted with or near some of the biggest names in modern R/C racing over the past several years and have seen my fair share of shenanigans and taken part on some of the pranks! I never personally hung out with the big names like Baker, Kinwald and others, but I still have my stories to share. :D I'm sure there are plenty of wild stories you can get from magazine editors and pro racers, but they're not going to be putting it on a website, now, are they?
As I write out more of these I'll try to put them in chronological order, just for my own sake.
First, some introductions to the major players. I'll introduce the bit players as they come along in the stories.
Me, Frank - I moved from Texas to California in September 1997 to work for HPI as their webmaster. I'd run a personal website since June 1997 concentrating on HPI electric cars and was one of the few touring car racers in San Antonio until spring of that year. I was a fair to average racer and basically was in it to have fun, apart from the occasional serious streak.
Tony - Tony is one of the guys I started hanging with when the Pro 2 was really popular. His buddies (Dave M, Dave A, and Mike) also ran the cars but Tony was the best. After Thad started running the Pro 2 he joined the crew as well.
Thad - When I first saw him, Thad was one of those kids I'd see at SoCal RC who would show up with a friend and do pretty good. After he got rid of the Yokomo and got a Pro 2 again he got pretty damn fast and started pitting with me and Tony and the rest. Later on he got a job with HPI and is now an R&D test driver and still is pretty damn fast. He's one of those guys that if all he did was race every day, could easily be in any A-main around the country. Thad and I ended up pitting across from each other many a time at SoCal. We always had people coming by out pit to chat and see what new stuff we had on our cars, that we joked about having a morning radio show where we would have celebrities come on and we'd mess round with them.
Erik - Erik came to HPI from Indiana, where he graduated from Purdue with a degree in Industrial Design. He was a decent racer at his home track and raced with Thad and I several times. He doesn't tend to do well with the comebacks and put-downs, though. He'll be in a couple of the stories.
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Lend a future World Champ a part
Best pit spot in the world - this one, combined with the next two, are some of my favorite rc stories to tell
Motor spray is not good for the skin
The Radio Toss - not completed
TG Colors - not completed
TP Colors and "the team" - not completed
Dumped! - not completed
"My son's a faggot!" - not completed
Are they working on a buggy? - this one briefly illustrates how the rc rumor mill can go round and round...in circles
I know someone that works at HPI... - not completed
Matt Francis is one hell of a cool guy
Burnt Peanut - not completed
The big Rally turn-out and the birth of the TC3 Rally
The Demolition Derby - not completed
Getting home from Bakersfield - not completed
Leaving at midnight - not completed
Haircut for Jurgen - not completed
Ice Capades - not completed
Drunks are funny, drunk Japanese are REALLY funny - not completed
LB - not completed
The Insert Tip - a good one, I like it
Two rooms for the price of one
Three seconds equals first place
The fiasco that was the 2001 ROAR Electric Nationals - if you heard about what happened at this race and want to know the truth, read this one :) long but good :)
DJ BK - not completed
Nightmare Challenge - not completed
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Every year, up until 2000 or 2001, the NORRCA Electric Nationals were held in Las Vegas. Most people went to the race just to party in Vegas and didn't care how they did in the actual race. One of our race buddies makes a good living and plays the blackjack tables every time he goes to Vegas. It's to the point that you could give him a $20 and if he had a good night he'd give you $100 back. If he didn't do so well, he'd give you the $20.
One night he had a really good night, so he offered to pay our way to the Olympic Gardens, one of the big strip clubs in Vegas. It's at the end of the street and we took a taxi and walked in. It's $15 a person to walk in the door, never mind the dances or drinks, so our buddy was being really generous! Well most of the group sat down at a table and started getting entertained. I leaned against a wall and bemoaned the fact that I had no money. Coming to the dance clubs wasn't part of my budget. :)
Later on we see our high-rolling buddy walk to the back of the club to the curtained-off area. This the area where you leave your credit card at the desk and they just reel off the charges, okay? After everyone had had their fun we were all ready to go back and get some sleep, but we couldn't find our buddy! We stood around for about 45 minutes before one of us boldly went to the curtained rooms, found our buddy and had a chat. We were told that he would find his own way back and to not wait up.
I was asleep in the hotel room but woke up around 4 to hear high roller wander in and explain what had happened to the other guys - after dancing in his lap for an eternity and letting our buddy put his hands wherever he wanted, he made the mistake of asking "so what next" or something like that. The girl got all flustered and stopped dancing and called over the managers. When our buddy said he just wanted to leave, they couldn't find his credit card and it took him forever to get out of there. I think that was the night he lost his cell phone in a taxi, I'm not sure, but he did lose his phone one time.
The first or second time I went to Vegas to race at Western RC, the story went around the pits that Barry Baker (then sponsored by Yokomo and Maxtec) had been dropped by his sponsor Joe, the owner of Maxtec, just the night before the main events. He had to use borrowed batteries and motors in his car for the last qualifier and the mains. I've never confirmed this with Barry (I'm sure it's not a fun memory for him) but after that he wasn't seen running Maxtec.
One of my racing buddies was telling us about the various ranches that dot the desert around Las Vegas, that are basically legal brothels. In Las Vegas, prostitution is illegal, but outside Clark County (which contains Las Vegas), it's legal pretty much everywhere else across the state of Nevada. So if you want to go to a brothel you need to take a drive.
Anyway, this buddy was telling us he'd heard about the Chicken Ranch and asked one of the taxi drivers about it. He said it was about a 15-minute drive to the ranch and all the cabbies knew where it was.
Later on, while the rest of us were preparing our cars for the next day of racing, our pal decided to take a little drive to the Chicken Ranch. He said he was going to go with a famous rc racer *who I have mentioned on this very page*. Much later that night, our buddy showed up again in the hotel room and shared a couple of details with us about his little tryst.
Another time in Vegas, at the old Western RC track, I was pitting behind Brian Kinwald with Thad, way off to the side. This guy who not many people knew was pitting next to Kinwald but running a different touring car, which meant they weren't talking much. The guy came over to me and asked if I had a part for his Kawada car. This was the SV-10, a car that wasn't very popular and I think people in the US bought it just because it was different and Japanese. Anyway, I gave him a hinge pin that I had from my Pro 2 spares and he went on to win the Sportsman class! That guy was Greg Degani, now he's sponsored by Kyosho and won the 1/8 scale off-road IFMAR Worlds for them.
Coming back from Vegas on a Sunday afternoon can be a total nightmare. Everyone is trying to make it back to Southern California on the 15 in time for dinner and the 2-lane highway is just packed. I tried to pass a car in the slow lane but was blocked by this guy in a Lexus with 3 other passengers. I think this was when I was in the CoStanza, a car I just didn't take care of at all. Anyway, I don't know if you remember the Seinfeld where he said giving someone "the toe" would mean so much more than giving the finger, because you really have to work at it, but I started taking off my shoe and my sock to give this guy the toe.
Thad starts freaking out and says what the hell are you doing? I'm like, I'm going to give this asshole the TOE! In 70 mph traffic on a crowded 2-lane highway... Eventually I relented but the guy got plenty of evil looks from me.
At another Western RC race, Thad and I were pitted by ourselves and we got to the track pretty late to get a spot at the tables. We had to set up my canopy and our tables behind the driver stand, which at first kinda sucked because we wouldn't be able to see any of the racing action from our seats. After a while, though, we realized that everyone who had to wait to get on the driver stand would be just a few feet from us and we could BS with them the whole time. Also, the Pro-Line guys were pitted in their delivery van to our right, while all the sponsored guys were pitted to our left - all weekend long they would be walking back and forth in front of us. So we'd just call someone over and they'd stand and chat with us for a couple of minutes then go get their tires and go back to their pit. That was the first race weekend for the Associated TC3, too - we could hear the "snap!" of the arms from a hundred feet away as they tried to cut the corners too tight.
At the same race Thad and I pitted behind the driver stand at Western RC, at one point I was trying to get the stupid red straw in the spray tip of my motor spray can. I didn't realize I was spraying Thad until he told me to stop! While I was trying to put in the straw I was pushing on the tip, and the spray was going right in Thad's face. Sorry about that!
Even years later, we would have motor spray fights in the pits because we usually sat across from each other. After just a couple of minutes we would have to declare a truce and even after that we would make sure not to point our cans at each other when we were finished with them.
One my most humbling moments. At the same race where Thad and I pitted behind the driver stand at Western RC, I was in a rush to make my main. I'm pretty sure I was in the lowest main, but I forget. I'd loosened the upper deck of my Pro 2 to take out any tweak, I had a snazzy body and I was ready to go.
Marshalling my race on the front straight was Masami Hirosaka, the winningest driver in all of RC history. The guy has been winning WORLD championships since 1997 and can drive a stick radio with his FEET, so he's really really good. Yokomo would fly him out to the NORRCA Nats to just waste money and because he usually had a really good chance to win. Also marshalling on the front straight was Dan Tanis, owner of Ripon RC Speedway, where the Reedy Touring Car Race of Champions had been held the past couple of years. I had utmost respect for this guy, too, because he knew how to handle a big race event. The guy used radios to communicate with his timing and scoring team, he had food, restrooms, all kinds of great stuff. Just a class act every time we went up there.
Anyway, we get on the starting line and I realized I hadn't tightened my upper deck screws down. I yell at Bill Martinez to grab a screwdriver and tight down my screws. He does that and I've still got time, no sweat.
The tone goes off the start the race and i shoot off the line, heading for the first turn! Well, my tires decided that since they weren't glued onto the rims they would roll past my car and bounce over the PVC pipes that made up the track barriers. I watched my car grind to a halt, Dan picked up my car and Masami picked up my tires and inserts and give them to Dan.
Now, according to Thad, I put the tires and inserts back on the wheels before setting my car down on my pit table and walking away. I remember Thad saying "what happened" because something ALWAYS happened to my car, and when he couldn't find anything outwardly wrong with my car (like crash damage) he spotted the damaged edges on the wheels and lifted up a non-glued tire from the wheel. Then I got the Thad Look of "I don't want to laugh so I'll look like I'm eating a salty lemon".
I don't speak of this moment very often. It's mildly embarassing.
Our bro Dave Murphy had a room reserved and paid for on one of our trips to Vegas, but he decided he didn't need it so he let me and Thad stay in the room. Sweet! Our own room and no waiting 45 minutes for Parker to finish in the shower. So we're sleeping.
I don't even know what time it was but on the other side of the wall, behind our heads, we could hear some loud banging and a woman yelling. Not bad yelling, but yelling like she was gettin' the lovin' very hard and very fast. The rooms in the Silverton at that time had these tall wrought iron headboards (iron boards? whatever) and could easily bang against the wall in moments of, er...ecstasy.
So I sat up. I asked Thad if he was awake. He said he was. We turned on the light and just sat there listening to the screams this woman was putting out. Thad put his ear to the wall and I went to the bathroom to get a glass. If you put the open end to the wall it helps magnify the sound. So I listened with the glass and Thad and I just looked at each other, laughing. It was pretty funny!
So that's it, really. We didn't get a knock on the door asking if we wanted
to join in or anything, and we never saw the people in that room.
I mentioned Tamiya racer David Jun before. Most people probably don't know he used to be into R/C helicopters. Well a friend of mine that used to work at HPI also was into heli's and we went to a field near his house so he could fly his. He did mostly training runs and a couple of loops and stuff like that, then David Jun pulls up. We all knew each other but were surprised to see him pull a heli out of his car's trunk. So after chatting for a few David starts up his heli and he's just pulling off these crazy maneuvers, like circling the heli around him while it's pitched forward, all kinds of things.
A few minutes later David's high up in the air when we hear the engine cut out. David (the guy I was with) and I look up and Jun is about 200 feet over this cliff, and below his heli is a bunch of houses! If that thing crashes in a house, his heli is wasted and he'll have a pissed-off house owner chasing him down. David starts to autorotate the heli (which involves setting the pitch of the blades so they provide lift even when there's no power) towards him but it's dropping too fast because he was close to stall speed, but my friend David plays the hero and grabs the landing gear of the heli just as it's hitting a small tree! No damage done to anything but a close call just the same.
Every other time I saw David Jun after that I'd ask him if he'd flown any more heli's and he would say "no, that time you saw me fly was the last time"
Thad and I were at Hot Rod Hobbies running buggies just for the fun of it. I had a B3 that used to belong to Thad, that he had built for our friend Dave Murray. When Dave didn't want it any more he gave it to Thad, who sold it to me. Anyway, my buggy had a couple of HPI decals on it and Thad's did too. Of course the next weekend the speculation at the tracks was that we were working on developing a buggy for HPI! haha what a laugh!
Thad was always annoyed at how I drove (my full-size car) and the state of my car. For a while I was constantly going forward when I meant to go in reverse, that sort of thing. We were leaving Hot Rod one time and I had my hat on my automatic gearshift and purposely put the shifter in drive instead of reverse. I turned around all dramatic, like we were going to go backwards and we started going forward. Thad yells at me "take your stupid hat off the knob!" and grabs the hat and throws it in my lap. haha that was funny. And it was totally intentional, Thad!
One day at Hot Rod Hobbies in Saugus, CA, I was sitting next to Gil Losi, Jr., who was sitting next to Matt Francis. Matt's won a world title or two and is generally considered a really nice guy. I never knew HOW nice until this kid walked up and asked Matt a question about his XX4 setup and Matt told him about some part from another Losi kit that's reversed and installed upside down or something, then he says, "Here, I've got a part in my box, I'll show you how to do it" and he walks off with the kid's car and does the install for him! Amazing! What a great guy, really.
One of the guys that used to race at SoCal was a guy named Nick McMillan. He was really good, very fast and nerves of steel. He only raced at SoCal, he didn't like going to the big races. His setup info was great too, he really knew how to set up a car. When it became de rigeur for roll center to be adjusted (you know how every RC car nowadays has adjustable roll center? It wasn't like that in '99), Nick could actually explain it to you. Whether you understood it was up to you!
One time, Nick was explaining slip angle to me. It has something to do with the direction the tire is pointed and the actual direction it's going. After my head exploded and I didn't understand a word, I called Nick over to the pit table to explain slip angle to Thad. Nick came right over and started telling Thad all about slip angle, even though he hadn't asked anything about it. When Nick was done, I told him to tell Thad how roll centers worked. I think he was able to finish the explanation without getting interrupted by Thad, but I did get a few mean looks.
Nick was a fan of doing stuff like putting cigarette lighter flints in his chassis to get sparks to come up, and he could fiddle around with electronics pretty easily. One time he convinced me to put this "power capacitor" or whatever on my motor. Even though Tony and Nick were grinning the whole time, I soldered it on just to see what it would do. About a minute into my next race the thing exploded and left bits of paper or insulation or something all over the track. I kept driving like it didn't bother me a bit but my car was covered with the stuff. Luckily SoCal has an air hose to blow off your car.
This happened the same weekend of Peanut's dispair. Daren Westman used to run Team Orion USA. Somehow he was talked into taking it over after working for his foster father Mike Reedy for years and years. Yep, THAT Mike Reedy.
Anyway, Daren was pretty crazy, especially with his rental cars. RC racers in general are nuts with their rental cars (there are stories of the jump behind the old MnM track, and sparks flying from the bottoms of the rentalcars) but Daren was absolutely CRAZY.
Peanut was having a bad day (read above) so he told Daren "dude, I want
the van in the parking lot, full revs, waiting for me to put my shit in the
back". I was rooming with Daren as part of my deal to help him out (I didn't
sign up for the race but at the last minute told Daren I wanted to go and I'd
be pit-bitch for him during the weekend, and in return I could sleep on
the couch in his room) and Thad was driving for Team Orion at the time so we
were hitching rides with Daren and Travis back and forth to the hotel.
So on the way into the parking lot Daren's pulling up the van and Peanutjust reaches over and puts the transmission in Park while the van's still moving. Some extremely loud clicks come from the tranny box and eventually the thing rolls to a halt. Everyone in the parking lot is looking over while we're just laughing. Thad and I are just shocked and can't believe they're doing this to the van.
On the way out, fully loaded up, Daren's taking the corners like he's in an F1 car and Peanut's trying to get some music on the radio. By the time we reach the highway Peanut's slapping the face of the radio and eventuallystarts putting french fries in the cassette player! Like, ketchup-coveredfrench fries! Just stuffing them in.
We're in the middle lane (3 lanes per side of the highway) and only need to be on the highway for a couple of miles so the exit is coming up quick. We get passed by the Yokomo van, which is driven by Chris Tosolini. Well this is too much for Daren, so he starts maneuvering (read: hauling ass, while swerving to and fro) through traffic but before he can actually catch up Travis reaches over again and slams the transmission into Park, WHILE WE'RE DOING SIXTY MILES AN HOUR. Luckily Ford engineers have planned for situations like this and the van doesn't lock up its wheels and cause a massive pile-up in rush-hour traffic, but it does make a lot of very fast clicking and Daren has to yank several times on the shifter knob to get it back into Drive.
By this time the Yokomo van had exited, so Daren yanks the wheel and we zoom
up the exit ramp. We're right behind the Yokomo van and the guys in there are
looking behind and seeing how Daren is going to try to pass on a
one-lane exit ramp, going uphill. Daren knows he can't actually pull of a pass
without damaging both vans, but he drives onto the gravel anyway at about 40mph
and runs over a "slappy stick", what we called those hollow plastic
poles that are designed to fold under a car if they are driven over.
Well - they're designed to fold under if a car goes over them slowly, I've done that myself. But at 40-50mph they don't slowly fold under, it bends to conform to the bumper and slams onto the hood, making a massive hollow metallic boom and leaving a nice expensive dent in the hood and bumper.
Later on, we found out Daren was blacklisted off the various rental car companies and wasn't able to rent any more from several companies. Whenever Thad and I were having a bad race weekend we'd refer back to the slappy stick incident and say "get car outside, open all the doors, full revs" to indicate a speedy getaway from the offending track and a quickly forgotten weekend.
Back before the RS4 Rally was commercially available, myself and a couple of guys from HPI USA made rally cars out of Sport kits. I think I used my original RS4 car, which I still had after moving to California (and still have, with the last body I raced on it - the F355).
What we did was cut the nubs on the front C-hubs that prevent the front arms
from going too low, make sure we had slipper clutches installed, use some scavenged
front buggy shocks and found some rally tires. I think most of us used the Schumacher
rally tires, which were the only soft rally tires available at the time. Tamiya
had the Rally Block tires but they were
so hard they were pretty useless on the blue-groove clay dirt that SoCal uses.
We used some old sedan bodies at first but I think the Japanese guys painted
up some blem (flawed and un-sellable) bodies left over from the production line.
So we went to SoCal a few times and word got out to the racers and I posted several times on various internet forums about the races and it just got bigger and bigger. Eventually the guys who had rally cars started bringing them every Friday to the racing, just in case there were enough guys available for a class. SoCal does this for Mini, Micro and 1/12th scale also, they just want at least 4 guys in a class to justify the extra 25minutes or so during the racing program.
Eventually we produced the RS4 Rally, which I'm proud to say I was a part of
its development. When it first came out I ran it box-stock several times, even
though tons of the Pro options would fit on it just fine. Gear diffs, not even
filled with grease, stock shocks and springs, etc. I think I may have changed
the tires because I liked the scale look of some of the tires that were available,
but basically it was stock. We had a pretty regular group of rally racers and
I tried to get them all in line with an agreed set of rules - stock motors (even
though some racing buddies like Rally Steve and DKOV in Oregon were running
mod), rally-type tires instead of cut-down buggy tires and rally or converted
sedan cars. There was one guy who
insisted on running a XX4 with sedan tires, I think eventually he stopped racing
but it was so unfair to have super-long shocks and a really wide stance.
The best part about running the rally cars is that they turn marshal themselves - if you clip a corner too tight the car will roll, but it continues rolling until it lands on its wheels again. The buggy guys hated us! It was so funny to see. Especially when Thad ran his rally car. His lap times were usually better than anyone in stock buggy, and usually on par with mod sportsman buggy! Every time he went to practice he'd come back with some story about how he was racing one of the mod buggy guys and the guy would be muttering under his breath about "damn rally cars!" It was pretty funny to hear about.
The Japanese guys would really get into their rally racing, too. A couple of the guys from work and a friend of theirs who was my (real) car mechanic did stuff like put LED lights in their cars, custom paint jobs based on full-size racers, all that kinds of stuff. Whenever I could I would put the driver figures in my car to make it look more realistic. Once, I cut up a blem pickup truck body and put the bed cover from a Nitro MT body on the back so it looked like a baja truck body. It looked AWESOME - the only problem was the only paint I had at the time was white and baby blue...not the colors you want on a baja truck! It was still cool though.
One of the things I pioneered was the Lexan skidplate. I started it but Thad
perfected it as usual - it's basically a strip of Lexan about 10cm wide that
runs from the bottom of the Lexan undertray (bolted in place behind the steering
posts) and up over the foam bumper. The foam bumper is necessary to keep the
body in one piece for longer than 10 or so runs. The front
part of the skidplate fits over the front body posts and is held in place with
body clips. This lets the car slide over large bumps very easily.
So at some point Thad started calling me the OG (Original Gangsta) of rally at SoCal, and for the big rally race we had (see below) I painted my car blue and put a big chrome "OG" on the sides of my car.
Every month or so I would put a call out on the internet and get people to tell their friends about the rally races. I'd even call up the counter at SoCal to ask them to pass the word to the off-road guys the week before.
One time, I forget why, I decided to "go big" as we say. I called up Yokomo, Tamiya, Associated, Losi (they were just releasing their Rally Weapon) and got everyone available at HPI to go down to SoCal for a Friday night race. I called up Xtreme and R/C Car and George at RC Car Action and told them we were going to have a big turnout and to bring their cameras. I called SoCal and told them we'd have the magazines there and a ton of rally racers and Slim told me he'd prepare a rally track just for us.
When we got to the track after work (I'm not sure, but I think we took a half-day off to go and play around before hand) we were just blown away. Slim had done himself proud, making a kick-ass track that had small jumps for the rally cars, plus an option line to go around a double-double section. Plus, we had like 15 people there, including guys from Yokomo, Losi and Associated!
Well, only one guy from Associated - our ex-racing partner Tony, who popped in with a modified TC3 that made it into R/C Car and eventually was the basis of the TC3 Rally and the Pro-Line rally tires. See? I have more influence in the industry than even I thought. After the photos (like 2 pages of them) made it into R/C Car they must have had so much demand from fans that they felt it was worth the cost to make the rally conversion kit.
Todd Hodge, Richard Trujillo and Josh Cyrul from Losi were there, too (Josh
ran for Losi for a few years), apparently I was able to convince them that this
would be a great time to debut the Rally Weapon. Considering it had a few extra
molded bits, new shock bodies and other things this was a moderate investment
for them and it made sense to come out for the magazine
editors.
No one from Tamiya showed up, I'm not really sure why but it would have been nice, considering they make so many WRC body shells and static model kits.
From Yokomo we had Shinnosuke Adachi, a Japanese (duh) racer who was in the States for a while until he violated his visa, but he was/is a very good racer who could give any of the top guys a run for their money. I think Barry Baker was there also to lay some smack down, and Paul D. of course. Paul's a local racer who would hang out with the T.P.R. (they calledthemselves Team Pinoy Racing, pinoy is a term used by Filipino's to allthemselves) and somehow got a job at Yokomo USA. He never told us what he did, except to say "sweep the shop", but basically he did customer service and general helping out.
And of course we had a ton of the local guys and regular rally racers there, with the promise of getting in the magazines. In total we had 23 racers, enough for 3 heats of racing and we totally killed many of the buggy classes that night in terms of numbers. And of course we dominated the track when we practiced :)
George Gonzalez from Car Action was there, Lito Reyes (an old internet buddy of mine, who I'd known since he sent me pictures of his Pro to put on my original RS4 site in mid-'97) was there for R/C Car and I forget if anyone was there for Xtreme RC. George was racing (an RS4 Rally) but Lito was justtaking pictures.
I think I finished somewhere in the B, it doesn't matter because it was just for fun. I think Thad finished 3rd or 4th, with Adachi taking the win.
The funny parts were unfortunately at the expense of the Losi guys. Their wheels came off in a few of the races, and at one point we had a group picture taken and someone said "hey, let's throw our cars in the air" (something the buggy guys would never ever do) and the only car to break was Josh's Rally Weapon, which Lito promptly ran up and took a picture of.
We were told Josh was told after that event that he wasn't supposed to go to fun events like the rally racing again. Which kind of sucked - you're in RC to have fun in the first place, right?
The only time I saw a speedo catch on fire was Jimmy Jacobson's Novak Cyclone. I don't know what happened to it but I think it stopped on the track and it wasn't unplugged and when someone was holding it showing the car to someone else some sparks started up and there was smoke and everything. After the initial mayhem you could see Jimmy's body was all melted and his car was screwed up.
When you're sitting there staring at your racing partner for hours while waiting for the traction to come up on the track, you get bored. I found an old RAM chip from one of my defunct computers and soldered some old servo wires to it and ran them to different parts of the car. Then I zip-tied the RAM chip to the upper deck of my Pro 2 and left the car sitting on my pit table with the body off.
Becuase Thad and I are/were sponsored guys effectively, random racers would come by to chat and joke, while checking out any new bits on our cars. Naturally, a green chunk of fiberglass with microchips and wires is bound to draw attention. I simply told anyone who asked it was a Biphase Switching board, or "BS" board for short. I gave various descriptions of what it did, from absorbing radio interference so my car ran smoother to blasting out radio interference to other cars on the track. ;)
One of the counter workers at SoCal was/is this guy named Mas. I have no idea what it's short for (if it's a nickname) or what it's supposed to mean. SoCal has a PA system so the racers can hear the races going on, and the counter guys constantly have to do announcements during practice to get frequency clips back to the clip rack. When Mas does the announcing, his voice sounds so...dreary, like a beaten-down elementary school teacher: "Racers, can you bring back the clips when you are finished, we're missing a lot of clips..." It's like he's pleading with the people listening. No one lifts their head to listen but when Mas gets on the mic neither Thad or I can stand it.
We would pretend we were yelling right at Mas and say to each other, "Shut UP, Mas! We can't stand your voice!" Then the other one would say, "I can see you yelling at me, I'm looking right in your eyes..." It was only funny to us at the time, because Mas sounds so wimpy on the mic and absolutely no one listened to the constant stream of "please, racers..." announcements
One of the other counter workers at SoCal is a guy named Slim. He's not called that because he's skinny - he's a hefty guy. Goatee, big gut, big arms, wears a lot of T-shirts with cut-off arms...that type of guy. He's been at SoCal for years and does a lot of the night shifts since the owners don't go in every night any more. He also does a lot of the day shifts, including opening up the track on Saturdays. Many was the time that Thad and I would get to the track at 10 AM to set up our pit areas, and the track would still be locked up. We'd see Slim drive up in his beat-to-hell truck and we'd give him some flak for being late. It never really mattered but it was fun to do that anyway.
Somewhere along the line it came out that Slim spent a lot of time in Tijuana. Not living there, but driving down on a weekend night, living it up and driving back the next morning. Now for those of you that don't know, Tijuana is an hour's drive from Orange County and is just over the border of Mexico, across from San Diego. For every American city on the Mexican border, there's a Mexican border town just across the way. Cheap beer, cheap hotels, nasty parties, the works. Tijuana was widely known to be a hangout for teenage kids who would get on stages in some bars to strip. It was a local phenomenon for a while, these high school girls getting on stage all drunk. Then the media got bored of it and stopped reporting about it.
Anyway, with the talk of travels to Tijuana, getting to SoCal late and looking massively hungover at times, I started referring to Slim as "SoCal Day, Tijuana Nights". Eventually he told me that he didn't go down to Tijuana so much any more. It was still funny to picture Slim in some raunchy Mexican bar with a donkey show on stage and a bottle of cheap tequila on his table. :)
Okay, this is pretty mean, I'll admit, but at the time I didn't care. I still don't care that much but anyway I'll tell the story. I just need to write it :)
There's this guy that races at SoCal RC that is always in some sort of American Flag outfit. Either it's a Dale Earnhardt shirt with a US flag on it, or a hat, or something, he's ALWAYS wearing the red, white and blue. His car is also ALWAYS painted in the stars and stripes scheme. I took to naming him Captain America. I don't think we've ever learned his actual name, but he races at SoCal all the time. I've never been one to be overly patriotic, but the one time I gave him props was after 9/11 when everyone started putting American flags on everything they own. I told Thad, "You know, Captain America there has been representing the Stars and Stripes for a long time, way before 9/11".
One of the guys that used to race with me, Tony, Thad and the others was a guy named Mike Plant. He would have his good days and not-so-good days, but anyway his paint job was always pink and white for some reason. We used to rag on him about having pink on his car, but he never changed it. One time, Mike tossed an old racing body in the trash. Most guys at SoCal cut up their body so no one will sneak it from the trash can and use it, but even though we warned Mike about it, he didn't bother.
Well, just like we warned him, someone grabbed the body from the trash and started using it for racing at SoCal - a guy named Paco. Because the pit tables are right next to the race track, with a walkspace separating them, we could just look over and see Plant's old body going around the track. We'd look up and not see Plant on the stand. I think it was me that started yelling out "Paco Plant!" and for a while this guy ran Mike's old beat-up body. I think he ran it longer than Mike did originally!
I think it was the 2001 Reedy Race in Ripon, we were a few miles from the track in a hotel we hadn't been in before. The rooms we had were in had a door facing the outside and another one facing and interior hallway. In my room was also Thad and Erik, with Hara next to us, sharing a room with Umino, the driver that had been hired by the company at the same time as Hara. Thad and Erik thought a guy named Frank Gomez was in the room next to us so they kept shouting "RIZZO!" at the wall, but even though I told them it was Hara's room they kept going on. Rizzo was actually 2 rooms down. They never believed me until they saw Hara loading up the Hot Bodies van from the room next to ours...
Three rooms down was a couple of guys from LRP, the German HPI distributor. Andy and Reto were good drivers but kept getting hacked by the US style of driving. I think it was around 10 at night when we got a knock on our interior door and I opened the door to Reto and Andy. Reto was visibly shaken up, and told me that they'd just been robbed!
Because they'd left the outer door cracked open on that safety hinge thing on the door frame, two black guys came busting into their room with a gun, pointed it around at them and told them to get on the floor while they rummaged through their stuff. Then they were made to get in the bathroom and when they came out, Reto's laptop and passport were gone, plus a few other things. Talk about a bad trip!
I think it was the 2001 ROAR Nationals for electric touring car that was going to be held at Speedworld Raceway in Northern California. A month before that race, Speedworld held another big race that was considered a warm-up for the Nats. HPI's top driver Hara was there, along with Tamiya's top racer at the time, David Jun. Hara had been there a week already, just running and running and running, so he had put in some serious track time. After Hara totally smoked all comers at the warm-up race, David came up and asked Hara straight out what inserts he was running.
Now, David's a nice guy but I don't think he should have been that naive. Hara all this time had been running HPI green inserts (a medium density foam) or these Echo brand inserts that you could only get in Japan. Hara told David "Blue HPI", which are the hardest 24mm inserts HPI makes!
I don't know how much David tested those inserts for the Nats that year, but hopefully he didn't waste too much time on them. :)
As a follow-up to this story, when we did go to the ROAR Nats that year, I knew racers would be coming up to me and Thad asking what inserts we were running, because they knew we'd have the info from Hara. In anticipation of this, I used a silver paint marker on the inside of my inserts so I could show them I had this funky silver inserts. :) haha!
Another time Thad and I went up to Roseville, I think this may have been the same trip when Hara gave out his insert "secret". Thad and I were sharing a room and cutting up and goofing on each other. The room had one queen-size bed and a sofa bed. The hotel we were staying in must have had their toilets set up to discharge like a cup of water when they flushed, because I must have stopped up the toilet two times in one night. I had to call the maintenance guy to come and unstop it with a plunger. I think it was the next day when I stopped it up completely and the toilet kept running. There's nothing like the terror of seeing all your crap floating around and the water's coming up to the brim, then spilling over!
I had to tell Thad, "hey man, the toilet's overflowing!" He didn't believe me until he got up and saw the massive dark stain on the carpet in front of the bathroom. So I had to call the front desk again. The guy came out, again, and when he entered the room, I was like, "uh, watch it there, that's pee water". Thad would repeat that one back to me at random times, just to remind me of the incident.
Well we went to the front desk and I BS'd our way into another room. Luckily they had empty rooms and we got a room right across the hall. Thad refused to have the sofa bed since it was me that stopped up the toilet, so I was stuck on the sofa bed in this room. We were watching TV while the maintenance guy was cleaning the carpets and everything, and after he was done I went to check if the old room key would work. It did! There was a blower in the room to help the carpet dry faster. I told Thad I would sleep in the old room just to get my own bed, so I left my car stuff in Thad's room and sleep just fine in the old room. It smelled like cleanser and carpet foam so it was just fine!
At one of the championship races held at Speedworld, one of our racing buddies Jay got in the A Main, which was kinda normal for him. He's a really good racer and a laid back kind of guy. He looks like Charlie Brown because he cuts his hair really short but we don't hold that against him. So he's in the A Main and basically he comes in second place in all three races. The first place guy in the first race didn't finish higher than third, the same with the winner of the second race and the winner of the third race. So at the end of 3 races, Jay's the one with the most points and wins the championship! We were joking that he won, without even winning!
One of Jay's pit buddies is a guy named Don. Don V. He has a big goatee and wears his hair in a long ponytail, and always, ALWAYS wears a hat. One time he took off his hat and I was like who is that guy! He laughed and put his hat back on and I told Thad about Scary Hairy over in Jay's pit. So Thad had to see what Don looked like without his hat. Pretty scary stuff! So that's what we called him after that, Scary Hairy.
This is admittedly probably the most controversial story here. Very few people know about this, and I'm sure they haven't told. And NO ONE knows the whole story, apart from me and my partner. bwahahaha!
Anyone who was at this race, or knew anyone that went, knows what I'm talking about. This is a bit of a long one with several smaller stories included, so get settled in.
Before the race even started, Thad and I were planning something "big". Not like walking in with guns and trenchcoats, just a big prank that we would pull on someone at the race. These types of races are usually 3 or 4 day affairs, with practice the first couple of days and racing on Saturday and Sunday. We were thinking of just nasty-smelling things. Thad's idea was fish emulsion, which sounds terrible. I told him about how you can replicate the smell of a human corpse (let a head of cabbage and some milk sit for a week).
Finally, I told Thad about catfish bait and how terribly smelly it is. Thad had recently seen the Jackass show where one of the guys gets covered with skunk urine and tries to get rides from college kids. So he had his thing and I had mine.
We went to a sporting goods store near the hotel to look for this stuff. Luckily for us and unluckily for everyone else at the track we found BOTH catfish bait AND female deer scent. The deer scent was sealed in a blister pack but I was able to take the lid off the catfish bait and let Thad have a whiff. Even with the inner seal, the smell was POTENT. Thad bought his $11 deer scent and I bought my $4 tub of raunchy catfish bait. As I'm paying for my tub I hear a "WHOOOO!" from outside and I knew that Thad had opened the scent bottle and taken a smell. I did, too, when I went outside, and oh my gawd it was powerful. How hunters can put that on themselves I will never know. Originally, we'd wanted to get skunk urin because that's what was used in the Jackass bit, but we couldn't find any online. But here's a site that has it: http://www.inheatscents.net/skunk.html
http://www.fishusa.com/HTML/Catfish_Charlie%27s_Catfish_Dough_Bait.asp
http://www.gamecalls.net/huntingproducts/deerlures.html
On the way into the hotel Thad decides to leave a wad of the catfish bait in the hotel elevator. He bravely (because it reeks!) dug his fingers into the tub and smeared the bait (we were calling our ingredients DP and CB by this time) across the top of the elevator wall, leaving chunks of CB just reeking up the elevator.
So we sneak to our room, giggling like schoolkids. We realize David Jun and Fred Medel from Tamiya are across the hall from us and they have their door open! We could hear their TV and both of them talking, but Thad decides to play the Lone Wolf and takes his spray bottle of deer scent to the open door. Unluckily for them, the bathroom sink and counter were within easy striking distance and Thad liberally sprayed down the counter and everything on it, plus the door edge and the carpet in front of the door. I watched all this from the door of our room and let him back in so the odeur could waft in and assault David and Fred.
A couple of minutes later we could hear Fred and David at the door of their room discussing the revolting urine scent that had entered their room. Since Thad and I were just a few feet away we could hear everything and it took all we had to keep from busting out laughing.
We heard Tyree Philips (then with Novak) walk by with the maintenance guy. We heard Tyree say, "Oh my gosh, that is horrible". Thad and I could barely hold our laughter in. Tyree went to the end of the hall where his room was and the poor maintenance guy went to get a carpet cleaning machine.
Thad stuck his head out and said "What's going on? Oh my gosh, what is that smell? It smells like a dog let go in here." Then he returned
Jimmy Jacobson knocked on our door, I think he'd originally wanted to go to Fred's room since he was a Tamiya racer at the time, but after he saw Thad and smelled the stench outside he came in our room. He could tell from our laughter that we were responsible in some way so we went ahead and told him it was deer scent. Yeah, he thought it was funny. Disgusting, but funny.
Anyway, Jimmy left and we did some work on our cars. The next day we stopped off at a convenience store to pick up sodas and drinks for the day. I stopped in the general foods aisle where things like ketchup and soap are kept, you know, the kinds of things you wouldn't buy at a convenience store. I spotted a tin of anchovies and grabbed two. If we couldn't have the fish emulsion, we'd have fish somehow!
So we get to the track early. REALLY early. We're the first people there. No one can enter the pit area until the owner, Billy, gets there to unlock the fence. Another car entered the parking lot, so I grabbed the two cans of anchovies, stuffed them in my pocket and walked around the corner of the fence like I was going to take a leak. I opened up an anchovy tin and smacked them against the chain link fence, so the bits of fish were flung across the asphalt where the Yokomo guys were pitting. Paul, Robert and the others weren't going to have a good day! I didn't do both tins because it was already stinking in there, and the temperature hadn't even reached 80 degrees - it was supposed to get to 95 or something!
Thad took the second tin and spread out its contents under the RV that Mark Pavidis was using as a pit area.
We got back in the van and just laughed at how bad everything would become later that day.
So we were pitting next to this father and son team from Oklahoma. Now, I've lived in Oklahoma and Texas, for about 21 years total, so I felt like I knew these down-home folks. By mid-day, everybody was commenting on how bad the Yokomo area smelled, and how someone must have pulled a prank. The kid from Oklahoma said "yeah that stinks, but you know what really smells?"
"Catfish bait?", I said, pulling out the Charlie's Blood Type A Catfish Bait from my pit bag. haha! The look on that kid's face was just priceless. Totally jaw open, eyes wide. His dad was laughing.
Later on, Thad and I went over to visit Paul D in the Yokomo area. He was the only one who was still there. We could SEE chunks of fish on the ground, rotting away in the direct sunlight. He was still there. We could see Raymond and Robert and the other Yokomo guys had found a different spot and we asked Paul if the smell bothered him. "Yeah, but it's not so bad." Oh man, what the hell would bother him?
Billy Bowerman owns Speedworld, it's a great track and he's just a big kid who enjoys a laugh. We told Billy about the anchovies and he said he was okay with it. Then he asked "what else have you got?" We were floored! We told him about the deer scent and Fred, and the catfish bait. He actually wanted to get the deer scent and spray it ON Barry Baker! We were like, dude, that's so cold! ...But if you want it you know where we're pitting :)
The big deal came later in the day, after lunch. Thad and I went to the van and unsealed the catfish bait. OH MY GOD it immediately stunk SO bad. We decided to put the CB in some of the 3 portapotties that were set up in the parking lot. While Thad went in I sort of kept a watch out from the van. When he came back I went in to check. In the far right portapotty he'd spread around the CB on the walls and even made a little log which he put on the seat, right where your upper left buttcheek would go! Nice. I decided to make it nicer. I took a wad of the CB and put it on the handle/lock of the portapotty so that you could secure the door from the inside (like people usually do automatically) but to open the door again you'd have to at least touch the CB just to get out.
In the center portapotty Thad had smeared a bit on the door, so that as you sat down or walked out you'd see a big swatch of "poo" on the door. Ingeniusly, it was at eye-level as you sat down. The far left portapotty was left clear so we could use it.
So I came back and put the jar of CB under the van behind one of the tires so it wouldn't stink up the inside and we could just watch and giggle. After a bit, one guy, poor dude, went inside the right-side potty and came RIGHT out, *sniffing his fingers*! Oh man we died, we were cracking up so much. Luckily the windows were closed so no one could hear us!
So we head back to our pit table because we had to get ready for our races.
Travis Amezcua had his pit box against the fence just a few tables down from us, and he was letting people root around in there for parts they needed, etc. I decided to take a wad of the potent CB over and pretend I was looking for some part, then I smeared the stuff against the far side of the lid of his box, so it would be hard to see initially. Luckily for Thad and I the wind was blowing towards the Losi pits, because we didn't smell a thing!
Not long after this, I heard Billy on the PA system. He sounded really mad. Like, REALLY MAD. He said something about paying for the portapotties out of his own pockent, and how could people disrepect him like this, he could play along with the fish in the pits, but someone had smeared dog crap all over them, and if he found out who did it he would use their head to clean up the toilets. I was pretty scared! The kid from Oklahoma looked right at me and said, "Was that you guys?" I said hell no, we wouldn't do anything like that! There's an ASPCA kennel next to the track, which is why he came up with dog crap.
A few minutes later Thad came over and took me to the van. He looked serious initially but he told me that Billy was just playing along, and that he'd been told everything by Thad. So we were in the clear but now it was becoming a major incident! We saw the smokers outside the portapotties and even Kinwald had to peek inside to see how nasty it was in there. He came out shaking his head. :)
So that was it for the day. I'm sure everyone was keeping their eyes and ears open so we didn't try anything else.
The next morning we were all in the pits and we saw Travis and his hotel roommate Jason pull up in their rental truck. Apparently Travis' pit box stunk up the hotel room the whole night, and the truck, and because he thought it was dog crap he didn't clean it out - who wants to touch dog crap? Later in the day, though, the sun was heating up his pit box and the smell was wafting over the Losi pits again. Eventually Matt Francis yelled at Travis: "hey Travis, move your crap-filled pit box, it stinks!" So he had to drag his crap-filled pit box way out of the way. Thad and I looked at it and you could see the rim of dried CB where I'd smeared it. A couple weeks later I asked him what he did with his box and he said he'd thrown it away and bought a new one.
Even years later he would always think I put dog crap in his pit box. I kept dropping the subtle hints but never admitted it until now.
Later in 2001 I was in France for the HPI Challenge World Finals, and one of the racers who HPI had flown over from the Seattle area had had a friend at the ROAR Nats that year. I asked him over dinner if he'd heard about the portapotties and he said "yeah, I heard about that. I thought it was really disgusting and sad." The sad part is, I was dying to tell him! Oh well.
Thad would see Fred Medel every now and then and he eventually told him that he was the one who'd sprayed the deer urine on Fred's hotel door. Fred couldn't believe that it was even possible for a person to spray deer urine on another person's door, much less his comb. "I combed my hair with that comb!" he said. Thereafter, he referred to himself as Deer Pee Victim #3.
The best part was the next year at the 2002 Reedy Race, the Tamiya USA track in Southern California was going to host the Reedy Race for the first time. Fred was organizing it, like he does all the special events for Tamiya. When Thad and I received our confirmation letters it said: "No Pranks - Pranks similar to what happened at the 2001 ROAR Electric On-Road Nationals will not be tolerated." We're international, baby!
I wasn't there for this one, but I wish I was. Kinwald races at SoCal all the time, his car is hooked up entirely for SoCal and it's to the point that he doesn't even practice all day on Saturday (races are Saturday night) and he almost always wins, no matter what. Well Barry Baker got really frustrated at this one time and according to reliable reports he shouted across the pit tables (the pits are really big!) "I give up! You don't practice all day and you kick my ass!" and yanked his pit towel from under all his tools and stuff, and of course everything comes a-tumbling down. I'm sure it made for a quiet pick-up session.
The only time I've ever seen an R/C car actually catch fire was at the HPI Challenge event we had in Englishtown, New Jersey. (Most people don't know this, but I have relatives that live in NJ and have actually shopped at the big flea market right next to where the shop used to be.) I was watching one of the A Main nitro races, and a car comes into the pits just a few feet from me. While it's being refueled the car flames out. I'm guessing the pressure drop from the fuel tank being opened didn't let any more fuel in the carb. Anyway, the fuel guy pulls out the fuel bottle, spilling a bit of fuel on the upper deck of the car. Happens all the time, right? Well, when he put the glow plug igniter on the engine, the spark from the connectors lit the fumes inside the car body, and the guy jumps back from the heat. I didn't know what was going on, even though I was watching the whole fueling process from the beginning. Methanol burns invisibly, so all the pit guy felt was intense heat. Another pit guy realizes what's going on and comes over, lifts up the side of the body and douses the inside of the car with water. Somehow that puts out the flames (I thought water just spreads fuel/oil fires, but what do I know). Pretty crazy!
This is a short one, but at SoCal once, one of the Pro Mod guys got stuck on one of the poles that's in the middle of the track. The marshals weren't able to get to his car quickly enough so he jammed on the throttle in frustration. I'm totally not kidding, but all four tires lit up with smoke (from the traction sauce and dust on the track near the poles) and it looked SO COOL. We were all shouting at him to "do it again!"
Pro racers are always getting people standing around their pits, trying to glean secrets and information. They may ask questions or they may just stand there and stare. This happens to fast guys everywhere. One Saturday Kinwald was at the track, smoking as usual, and this 9-year old kid was just standing over Kinwald's shoulder. I'd taken to calling this kids the SoCal Street Urchins, because they were like little Oliver Twists, rooting in the trash cans for old bodies, wheels, wire, whatever. So the guy across from Kinwald is giving eye motions at the kid who's just staring at Kinwald, or his car, whatever. I guess Kinwald wanted to just have some fun so he spins around in his chair and half-stands, scaring the piss out of the kid! Yeah it was funny but not the greatest thing for a top-level racer to do to a little kid.
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