My first skatecar
Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2004 4:15 pm
Hey Slappy,
Sorry for not answering your question sooner. In the 70's skatecars were run on straight courses. Signal Hill was one car at a time, at Akron were ran head to head just like we run slalom now. At the Akron race I refused to race Ty Page because his car was all over the place. They let us take seperate timed runs. Sure enough Ty swerved right across my lane, he would surely have taken me out. Those Freeformer cars were a joke, they ran stock skateboard trucks, tightned down to the max. I felt sorry for those guys and gals that drove them.
I have ran the Vetter Streamliner through some fairly tight turns. It had a Stroker in front and a custom axle in back that only traveled up and down, no lateral movement.
Stan will be posting a clip of the Akron race on www.bahneskateboards.com in the next couple of days.
The Vetter Streamliner was actually my second skatecar. The first was a plywood and aluminum press plate creation that I built along with my friend Cliff Marshall for a soap box derby type race in Morro Bay. The chassis was 3/4" plywood, bulkheads were 1\2" ply and the skin was aluminum press plate that Cliff and I had plenty of as both of us worked for the local newspaper. The car was a head first model. The whole nosepiece unbolted to allow me to slide in. For brakes we hooked up a couple of side pull bicycle brakes on the 3" tall urethane elevator glide wheels that Roller Sports had sent me a couple of years before. The brakes were activated by squeezing handles mounted to a couple of vertical posts that I held onto. For the rear truck we used a Ram truck with axle extenders, we also fabricated turn limiters, so the truck would not have to much movement. We ran a stock Stroker in front.
The car actually performed quite well, easily winning the race. When I look back I sometimes wonder what the heck I was thinking, if I had crashed, the aluminum press plate would have ripped me to shreds. Not too mention what would have happened if I had encounterd a curb. Ahhh..the bravado/ignorance of youth.
The cost was about $100 for this skatecar. Guess what we spent on the Vetter Streamliner.
I'll post some pics of my first skatecar soon.
The car was sat for years in an empty lot behind Gary Fluitt's house in Los Osos.
Sorry for not answering your question sooner. In the 70's skatecars were run on straight courses. Signal Hill was one car at a time, at Akron were ran head to head just like we run slalom now. At the Akron race I refused to race Ty Page because his car was all over the place. They let us take seperate timed runs. Sure enough Ty swerved right across my lane, he would surely have taken me out. Those Freeformer cars were a joke, they ran stock skateboard trucks, tightned down to the max. I felt sorry for those guys and gals that drove them.
I have ran the Vetter Streamliner through some fairly tight turns. It had a Stroker in front and a custom axle in back that only traveled up and down, no lateral movement.
Stan will be posting a clip of the Akron race on www.bahneskateboards.com in the next couple of days.
The Vetter Streamliner was actually my second skatecar. The first was a plywood and aluminum press plate creation that I built along with my friend Cliff Marshall for a soap box derby type race in Morro Bay. The chassis was 3/4" plywood, bulkheads were 1\2" ply and the skin was aluminum press plate that Cliff and I had plenty of as both of us worked for the local newspaper. The car was a head first model. The whole nosepiece unbolted to allow me to slide in. For brakes we hooked up a couple of side pull bicycle brakes on the 3" tall urethane elevator glide wheels that Roller Sports had sent me a couple of years before. The brakes were activated by squeezing handles mounted to a couple of vertical posts that I held onto. For the rear truck we used a Ram truck with axle extenders, we also fabricated turn limiters, so the truck would not have to much movement. We ran a stock Stroker in front.
The car actually performed quite well, easily winning the race. When I look back I sometimes wonder what the heck I was thinking, if I had crashed, the aluminum press plate would have ripped me to shreds. Not too mention what would have happened if I had encounterd a curb. Ahhh..the bravado/ignorance of youth.
The cost was about $100 for this skatecar. Guess what we spent on the Vetter Streamliner.
I'll post some pics of my first skatecar soon.
The car was sat for years in an empty lot behind Gary Fluitt's house in Los Osos.