Kelly Morman's blog

Dr. KELLYSTEINS Latest Resurection

Kelly Morman — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:14:25 +0000

I finally got a day off and have been able to stay in town for a few days (thanks to the weather)so this is what I have been working on. This little project has been going on for over a month now. I have been sending "Boss" sneak previews and asking for his input. I set out to make a late model dirt car however I'm not so sure it doesn't look more like a Daytona Prototype. Now I would like to show the first one to the group and see what you guys think. For some of you that may not know, (I noticed a couple of names I have not seen before on the site) I am on a mission to salvage damaged, and/or left for dead slot cars, and have started my own organization: "PETS" People for the ethical treatment of Slotcars. Anyway, as you can probably tell the main part of this little darlin is a Shadow body topped of with .... well, I'm not going to give away all my secrets but it is all vintage AFX parts. I hope everyone is doing well and staying warm. Look forward to hearing from you. Yall take care! K

My newest favorite car and Thanks again Ray!

Kelly Morman — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:23:57 +0000

About a week before Christmas I was looking through Bud's listings on the bay when I saw this body for sale, being the Camaro fan I am I had to have one. Even though I had just purchased several other bodies from him minutes before and felt like I had spent enough money for one day,(is there really a limit?) I decided I would purchase only one of these figuring there would be plenty more if I liked it. When it arrived I put it on one of my souped up TJet chassis and although I liked it I decided it would look even better if I lowered it to look more realistic. After about an hour of trimming and test fitting with the dremel tool (I also had to trim the top of the chassis a bit) I had it like I wanted it. This has quickly become my newest favorite TJet. Lowering it not only (in my opinion) made it look better, but it also made it handle better ie: lower center of gravity. Now, all that being said, I decided I would order a couple more and guess what? Bud's was out of them with no forseen possibilties of getting more. Seems Auto World discontinued them. After exhausting all of my places to look I turned to the "Boss" and as usual he came through. Ray hooked me up with Bad L's Hobby, they had new ones in the package for what I considered a reasonable price, the rest is history and now I am in search of my next newest favorite car. Thanks again Ray. Ya'll have a good day! K

Worktables, everybody has to have one, I'll show you mine if you show me yours!

Kelly Morman — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 04:37:30 +0000

I don't know about the rest of you guys but I really appreciate a neat, clean, and well organized place to work. I am a carpenter by trade (when I'm not fighting fires) and have been very blessed over the years by being able to have a shop that I could only dream of in my younger days. I also have become somewhat of a neat freak grasping tightly onto the concept that everything has it's place and when not being used it should be there. Some of my employees over the years called me the anal carpenter. I have in the last few months been able to regain custody of the basement as the kids finally vacated the premises, and I have slowly been trying to get things more organized. Although I'm not quite there yet I thought it might make for an interesting topic to show and see some of your setups. After all this is where we slip into seclusion far away from the day to day chaos and don our white lab coats to become our own version of Dr. Frankenjet. So I have attached a few pics of my laboratory and would certainly enjoy seeing some of yours. The little red desk in the pics was something I built 10 years ago for the kids to use a desktop computer on and now it is enjoying a second life. Thank goodness for laptops! K

Another Tip or, How to NOT Paint your PINHEAD

Kelly Morman — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:16:01 +0000

Here is a little trick I discovered that will definately save some time and foul verbage. While pondering the process of transforming some Shadow bodies into custom outlaws, I was dreading the painstaking step of taping off the little pin headed driver as I have done in the past. I got to wondering if there might be an easier/faster way to keep the little guy (who sits on the wrong side of the car) from getting covered up with Krylon. It occured to me that if I had a semi rigid material that would take form to cover the cockpit area it might indeed provide positive results. I considered a small piece of metallic tubing, or a straw etc. I was rumaging through a coffee can of plastic what nots that you know; "I don't want to throw that away it might come in handy sometime" when I found the item in the picture. I wish I could tell you what it is or was, but, truth be known, I have no idea. Anyway, it seemed to work just fine. It would keep its somewhat elongated form long enough to get a coat of paint on. I would quickly remove it after each coat and wipe it off so as to prevent it's size from growing from the layers of paint. It was not completely perfect in size but I found it easier to remove a little excess paint than trying to tape the pinhead.Hopefully this will aid someone else in the future. Maybe I can get the NOPAINT Peace Prize. Ya'll think about it! K

You Asked For It, and a Sneek Peek

Kelly Morman — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:52:15 +0000

Ok Tony, you asked for a couple more pics of the Shadow Modifed. Well, here they are. I also uploaded a sneek peek at the next one out of the stable.

Shadow of a Shadow

Kelly Morman — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:57:37 +0000

I mentioned in my last blog that I was working on another project that started with another old body. Tony mentioned in his comment about my last one that maybe I should utilize a Shadow body because they are so readily available. Well either he has ESP, or maybe the old saying "great minds think alike" could come into to play here. Either way what your looking at is the first out of the stable "Shadow Modified" I thought it turned out pretty well so I have 2 more in the paint drying stages as these words are being pecked on the key board. The one pictured is on the Bay with several watchers. I hope this group will be share with me their honest opinion about it. If your interested in making one let me know I can let you in on a few little things that can save a little frustration and breakage. K

My Latest Rescue

Kelly Morman — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:51:46 +0000

The other day I was rummaging through a stash of old bodies trying to decide what was worth keeping and what might could be discarded when I ran across this old Porsche body. As you can tell by the "Before" pic this car would not quiet qualify as "Minty" As I recall a few (emphasis on few) years back I was wanting an open wheel AFX. At the time, prior to the G-Plus release, there just wasn't much out there. So, as many of us did during that time, I boldly took on the task to transform this little jewel into something else, more than likely with only a dull pocket knife. Again, as you can see the results were, well, it is what it is. Ok, back to the present. I was holding this little gem in my hand wondering what, or why would I want to keep it, when I happen to look over and see an old AFX Bronco sitting there that appeared to be saying look at me! look at me! I picked up the Bronco and held it behind the Porsche in a way that the wing appeared to be sitting on the Porsche, and there it was.... the reason to rescue another surely doomed slot car. The next step was to try and clean up the previous avulsions (wounds), followed by some glue, a little paint, and some colorful decals. I'll let you guys be the judge on this but it has quickly become one of my favorite runners and has led me to try this concept out on some other not so damaged bodies (thats another story for another time)As some of you know I am on a quest to never throw away a slot car body if there is any hope for it at all. We have all heard of PETA, maybe I'll start "PETS" People for the Ethical Treatment of Slot Cars. Happy Thanksgiving guys and please remember our troops! K.

Second Life for a couple ole Vettes

Kelly Morman — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:50:32 +0000

Well it's been a while since I contributed anything to the site. I have been taking advantage of the cooler fall weather here in west Texas and spending a lot of time outdoors. I have over the last few months managed to squeeze in a little slot car time and these are the latest in my never ending quest to never discard a vintage slot car. Both of these have been with me since childhood, the 63 was roughly modified to allow for larger wheels and tires as we used to do. I decided to smooth those rough cuts up by making the openings larger and then decided to lower the body to make it look the way it does now. It is sitting on a vintage solid rivet chassis, with matched and zapped magnets, a mean green, silver v groove brushes, silver pickup shoes with wires soldered to the brush tabs. Needless to say this is a pretty quick little Tjet and with the lowered body it handles quiet well. Please note the custom front bumper, yes it is a model motoring track connector pin. Thanks to Ray I hope to soon have a full blown Frakenjet chassis underneath this baby.

The A Production Vette was originally black and yellow, I had (in my younger days) painted over the yellow with gold metalflake paint. I attempted to remove the gold paint using the Westley's white wall cleaner. It did remove the gold paint but it also removed the black paint. I ended up with a blayellow (that's a mixture of black and yellow) car. Since it was also missing the front half of the glass I realized it was not going to be an original show car so I decided to give it a little white and red also. It rides on a magna-traction chassis with matched magnets, a mean green and as you can see vintage Super II aluminum wheels. I am thinking of adding a few other cosmetic enhancements such as vintage numbers and decals to finish them off. While these don't even begin to compete with some of the custom cars I have seen a few pics of on this site they will continue to live on and hopefully make a lot more laps before they end up on ebay in "a lot of runners/parts" listing. Ya'll take care, I've got to get ready for hunting season!

FAST TRACKERS: Are They As Good As They Claim? I Was Quite Taken

Kelly Morman — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:44:10 +0000

The ad reads "Fast Trackers were rated first in speed and cornering when tested against ALL popular national slot car brands".

I recently bought the car in the picture (and yes I am man enough to admit that I like Jeff Gordon. I am also 6'3" and 235lbs if any of you want to make fun of it). The picture shows the car in a severe slide on the high banks of my track because this is where it spent most of it's time when tested. I will say the car accelerates as fast if not faster than any slot car I have ever run, I think this is largely due to the big rear gear. That, the looks, and detail of the body are about the only good things I have to say about it. I alsolike the fact that someone out there is making slot cars that are keeping up with the times as far as what it actually being raced today. One of the most frustrating things about the car is it does not coast at all. It seems to be either all on or all off. I tried to put approximately 50-75 laps on with it (my track is 3/4 mile to scale) and got tired of running back and forth from end to end when it spun out on the curves. I think the combination between the torque and virtually no coasting made this one of the most difficult cars to run I have ever experienced. In comparison, I have several of the Tomy AFX cars which I would say are as close as I know of to compare. The Tomys will not keep up on initial take off but will catch up with it. The Tomys without a doubt STICK to the track better and coast multi times better. I know that slot cars of the same brand differ from one to another, and testing only one of a brand may not be an adequate comparison but, I will anxiously await a more positive test result from a member of this group before I purchase another one. To sum it all up, I was quite taken by the looks of the car and the information in the ad, and I guess that also is the way I feel now. Like I was quite taken.

Car of the Day for August 1st, 2009:Nu-Rora 69 Z/28 Camaro and a little Z/28 history

Kelly Morman — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Nu-Rora 69 Z/28 Camaro Rally Sport

This is without a doubt my favorite slot car due mostly to the fact I had a real one in high school. The car is mounted on a tjet chassis and while it is a good runner this one spends most of it's time on display or carefully being driven only on special occassions. The car in my opinion, is a great replication of a great car. Wheels and tires by Road Race Replicas which by the way is also owned by Phil Pignon, owner of Nu-Rora.

69 Z/28

Originally produced in 1967, the Z/28 was invented by a fellow named Vince Piggens. Mr. Piggens was the Assistant Staff Engineer in charge of Chevrolet’s Product Promotion. Product Promotion, (according to my resources) was Chevrolet’s “un-racing” group. “un-racing” because the company philosophy of not supporting automobile racing, which was enacted in 1957 and was still in effect in 1975 which is the date of publication most of this info comes from. But, that didn’t mean that Product Promotion could not design, develop, and put hardware into the parts system such as aluminum cylinder heads, forged cranks, and solid lifter cam shafts. Now as I understand it, the story goes something like this; in the summer of 1966. A.C. Mair, then Chief Engineer of Chevrolet, was presenting a special “show ‘n tell” to Pete Estes the General Manager (No. 1 man) of Chevrolet, at the General Motors Proving Grounds. Piggens found out about it and was there with a high compression 283 Camaro with four speed transmission, special performance suspension, front disc brakes, some interior cosmetics, and a host of other details to distinguish it from the standard Camaro. So Vince (Piggens) got his chance when someone suggested he should give Estes a ride to lunch. Seems Ole ‘Vince banged off a couple of full throttle shifts and Estes remarked the car had some pep! Then Vince explained it could all be a lot better if they could snatch the forged crank out of a 327 and drop it in the 283 block, and Zap! They’d have a 302-inch engine for production. He went on to explain the crank would fall in with no modifications and that the new SCCA Trans-Am rules allowed for five liters of displacement or 305 inches. Estes said “Let’s do it” and the Z/28 not to mention the 302 V8 was born. This all sounds very simple, but the truth was, most engineers at the time would have given their pocket calculator for a chance to show their idea to the general manager, but that usually didn’t happen. So contrary to what many believe, the Z/28’s inception was not from the mind of Zora Arkus Duntov or Roger Penske, and in fact neither had a thing to do with it. Not taking away from their other many achievements. Another misconception among many is that the car was produced as a street legal drag car. Although many (and I do mean many) of these have spent and still do a large part of their life on the drag strips, the car was designed for the purpose of providing a lot of good equipment for SCCA use so that a Camaro could (and did) win a Trans-Am Championship. (That’s another story to be told later)) It should also be mentioned here that Dave Strickler did manage to win the 68 World Finals of Drag Racing with a Jenkins prepped Z/28. At one point, the Z/28 was in the same class with a 428 cubic inch Mustang, which only had to carry 140 pounds more than the Z/28 with an edge of 126 cubic inches.

The original 302 engines in the Z/28’s came with a 11:1 compression ratio, as the production moved into the 70’s the emission restrictions went up and the compression ratios came down to the point that the engineers decided to discontinue production after 1974, because they did not want to produce a high-17-second quarter-mile production Z/28 as it would not be a “meaningful automobile”.

The Z/28 was recreated later in the 70/s but not as we knew it in the early years. There is no doubt that this was, and still is, one of the most popular automobiles ever produced, and are still in high demand today.

Number of Z/28’s produced by year

1967 – 602,

1968 – 7,199

1969 – 20,302

1970 – 8,733

1971 – 4862

1972 – 2,575

1973 – 11,573

1974 – 13,802

New Life For A Runner: Don't We All Deserve A Second Chance?

Kelly Morman — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:05:51 +0000

I was sorting through a box of bodies the other day that all had issues of some kind and thinking I would just bunch them together and post them on ebay and hopefully get enough out of them to maybe buy a set of tires or something. When I came accross this old charger with a crack in the hood, broken wing, missing door post etc. I couldn't make myself part with it yet I didn't want to just put it back in the box and have it sit around until I decide to clean out again since doing so would have been moot as I was after all cleaning out unused/unwanted items that just take up space. I decided to see if I could give the old girl a second go round. I did a little sanding and painting, and found my old box of decals (couldn't believe they would even come off the sheets)and after about 3 hours this is what I came up with. I decided she looked so good I cleaned up an old Magna Traction chassis, tested some magnets, new brushes, a mean green, and topped her (or should I say bottomed her) off with a set of vintage AFX aluminum wheels and new tires. After a few laps around the high banks I think she is going to be one of my favorite runners. She aint perfect, but she sure is fun and doesn't look half bad either. So next time your thinking of getting rid of one of those broken down old girls, take a minute to envision what if. K.

Lifetime of collecting finally came together something like this:

Kelly Morman — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:12:07 +0000

ago and once again got busy and pretty much just closed the door on the basement and forgot about it until one day I googled HO Scale Slot Cars. Wow! I had no idea what was going on out there

Through that search I met Ray and rediscovered slot cars all over again. Since then I have gone back and cleaned, and organized and reworked a lot on my layout including the addition of 14- 15" Model Motoring straight tracks that I found on ebay and I never knew they made. As you can probably tell from the pics my 4 lane is a mixture of MM and AFX track using adapter track near the middle of the straightaways on both sides. I did this because I had always wanted the high banked turns like you see on the real tracks. The road course in the center is strictly original Model Motoring track. Each lane (6 Total) has it's own 20V transformer and as you can see the steering wheel type controllers. I never used anything but those so who knows, if I ever recover from the shock of rediscovering all this I might try something different. I tried to design it to have the best of both worlds; A fast oval with long straights and a road course for more challenging driving all the while trying to make it look as realistic as possible. I really like the way the road course meets the oval to look like pit road at turn 4 and just short of turn 1. The layout also inludes a train mainly because I found the STP racing truck/trailer combos on the flat cars years ago and thought they would be a nice additon to a layout. I don't know if you can tell by the pics, but the train actually goes under the table and makes it's curves out of site before comming up again on each side. Yes that took some doing! But I like it and if it gets in the way I just send it down the track.

Anyway, i hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I have, and am enjoying getting back into this and rediscovering all the neat things that are available nowadays. The oval is fast, and the high banked turns really allow you to air them out without slowing down much. But I still think the most fun is running the old TJets on the road course just like the good ole days. I look forward to hearing your comments.

Lifetime of collecting finally came together something like this:

Kelly Morman — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:07:32 +0000

As I mentioned in my intro I have been collecting Aurora slot cars, track and accessories since the mid 60's. After moving all this stuff several times and thinking I would never have the time or the place to properly use it (ok,ok, PLAY with it!) and just almost selling it all to Ray (he talked me out of selling) I would like to share with you folks on this site what my setup looks like and a few of my favorite cars. I started building the semi-permanent layout about 4 years ago and once again got busy and pretty much just closed the door on the basement and forgot about it until one day I googled HO Scale Slot Cars. Wow! I had no idea what was going on out there Through that search I met Ray and rediscovered slot cars all over again. Since then I have gone back and cleaned, and organized and reworked a lot on my layout including the addition of 14- 15" Model Motoring straight tracks that I found on ebay and I never knew they made. As you can probably tell from the pics my 4 lane is a mixture of MM and AFX track using adapter track near the middle of the straightaways on both sides. I did this because I had always wanted the high banked turns like you see on the real tracks. The road course in the center is strictly original Model Motoring track. Each lane (6 Total) has it's own 20V transformer and as you can see the steering wheel type controllers. I never used anything but those so who knows, if I ever recover from the shock of rediscovering all this I might try something different. I tried to design it to have the best of both worlds; A fast oval with long straights and a road course for more challenging driving all the while trying to make it look as realistic as possible. I really like the way the road course meets the oval to look like pit road at turn 4 and just short of turn 1. The layout also inludes a train mainly because I found the STP racing truck/trailer combos on the flat cars years ago and thought they would be a nice additon to a layout. I don't know if you can tell by the pics, but the train actually goes under the table and makes it's curves out of site before comming up again on each side. Yes that took some doing! But I like it and if it gets in the way I just send it down the track. Anyway, i hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I have, and am enjoying getting back into this and rediscovering all the neat things that are available nowadays. The oval is fast, and the high banked turns really allow you to air them out without slowing down much. But I still think the most fun is running the old TJets on the road course just like the good ole days. I look forward to hearing your comments.