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Australian Superchamp Racing In 1984

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Check out the heavily modded Superchamps racing down under back in the early 1980's.

I have seen those wide front ends before (on ebay listed cars) - seems they were a competition mod back in the day!

oz1.jpg

oz2.jpg

oz3.jpg

Also note the prices above ^^^^^^!

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Check out the heavily modded Superchamps racing down under back in the early 1980's.

I have seen those wide front ends before (on ebay listed cars) - seems they were a competition mod back in the day!

http://30cms.co.uk/temp/rc/oz1.jpg

http://30cms.co.uk/temp/rc/oz2.jpg

http://30cms.co.uk/temp/rc/oz3.jpg

Also note the prices above ^^^^^^!

That´s so cool! ;) Where did you get this article? Amazing to see by the way that they were using the ball diff as a slipper clutch too back in the day! :D And that they were already using pretty advanced materials even back in 1983 (I never expected a Carbon chassis from 1983 really!)

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The article is from May 1984 Model Cars Monthly

Here are some larger pics of the cars. Quality is pretty poor - low qual black n white shots

oz4.jpg

oz5.jpg

With that parts inventory, it would be cool to build a 'champ based retro racer.

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I believe that was known as the Taipan. A fully kitted out SRB that one of the distributors were selling as a kit. Here is one form the vintage meet at Castle Hill last year. It was running a 12 turn :D

DSCF6912.jpg

DSCF6906.jpg

DSCF6911.jpg

DSCF6908.jpg

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Great find - Haven't seen a Model Cars for years

There's only about 3 articles I can remember -

one was an SRB blown apart by charging a NiCd battery inside the radio box and igniting the resultant hydrogen(?) with a spark from the MSC

Another was a piece on a homebuilt Land Rover which had a chain of SRB UJs running it's entire length instead of a drive shaft

And the last one was a Hilux with a 'cap' bed cover on it, but all blended in to make it look more like the Kyosho 4Runner shell

Got any of those kicking around?

They'd all have been from when the Ford Ranger came out, as I tried to do the cap conversion on one (failed miserably)

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That's cool.

They mention the Yokomo Turbo motor. I have one of these, I have been looking for info on it for ages. Wonder what mods the 'reworked' Jomac version has? I should dig it out and post a pic of it. I used to run it in my Frog, was quite a quick motor.

- James

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I picked up an SRB chassis a couple of years back on Aussie ebay for $150.00 before the re re's

It came with The handmade cage as shown in the pics ,Nerf bars,Wider front end,Thorp diff,Aftermarket shocks .

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_model.a...8&sid=24856

I suspected it was from a Taipan but was never entirely sure until I saw the pics on this thread now I am certain its the chassis from a Taipan .

Might be worth restoring as most of the parts are on it.

Love the look of the Taipan .

Thanks for the awesome pictures and the article it was a great read :)

PS: Infact I am going to restore it I have the lexan shell laying around somewhere as well .

BMT who owned the one raced in the vinatge meet ,I wouldn't mind getting into contact to see if I can get more detailed pictures for my rebuild please.

Thanks for the inspiration I am sure glad I did not sell it now.

Stuart.

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It's pretty amazing seeing what kind of mods people did even back then. I'm astounded to see someone running a carbon fibre chassis pan in 1984. I thought those were a 90s invention! Must have cost them a royal mint at the time.

Top stuff though :)

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It's pretty amazing seeing what kind of mods people did even back then. I'm astounded to see someone running a carbon fibre chassis pan in 1984. I thought those were a 90s invention! Must have cost them a royal mint at the time.

Top stuff though :)

My dad used to make powerboats (F1, F2 and F3) and in the 80's he was experimenting with carbon fibre / kevlar for the safety cells (the bit where the driver sits). This eventually became an industry standard, and saved many lives (deaths were common in powerboat racing in the 80's)

It was pretty expensive stuff though. But if you were in the industry then it wasn't too hard to get hold of, and was a "natural" strength step up from fibreglass.

I guess some bright spark must have got a big sheet of it and cut out some chassis'!

Back in the 90's, before my pops wound up the powerboat business I had loads of stuff made of carbon in my car - parcel shelf, centre console etc.

Making some flat plate chassis would have been very easy. The strongest stuff was this yellow kevlar we had. It was just a yellow material, but was next to impossible to cut with scissors. The carbon was pretty easy to cut. And looked prettiest!

There was also some black and white carbon like material. I forget what it was called, but that was tough too!

The safety cells were made from various layers of these different composite materials and epoxy resin, then baked in an oven.

If he still had his workshop/boat business I would have a production line going for carbon bits.

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What body is on the Taipan ?.

In the pictures BMT supplied it looks like a Lexan Rough Rider body with the back trimmed off .

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Not much Tamiya on those cars! :lol:

Procentish I say Tamiya 25% RCH 75%

Badboy

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It's pretty amazing seeing what kind of mods people did even back then. I'm astounded to see someone running a carbon fibre chassis pan in 1984. I thought those were a 90s invention! Must have cost them a royal mint at the time.

Top stuff though :lol:

I remember you could get carbon fibre which was also called a graphite chassis for a Hotshot. That was a little later around 1985. I also remember graphite tennis rackets which were very expensive in the 1980s. Ian

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What body is on the Taipan ?.

In the pictures BMT supplied it looks like a Lexan Rough Rider body with the back trimmed off .

Most probably the Bolink body. I had a Bolink "buggy" that was basically a 1/10th pan car with Digger tyres and a lexan knock off Rough Rider body. Oh, a lexan shield over the gears.

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I contacted the guy who wrote this original article I asked him what it was like back in the day ,he had completly forgotten about this article and asked for a copy as he never kept his early work .I sent him a copy of the article and he was wrapped and sent me the email below.I then got another letter from one of Tony's friends ,who said he's brother raced against Tony back in the day and won with a Taipan he still has it at home 1984-5.Very cool story.


Wow! Thanks Stuart!

I had completely forgotten about that article! That car was actually a Tamiya Superchamp! I decided not to follow the herd, and developed my own race car. The biggest two problems with Taipans etc were their weight and their cost. When the Tamiya Frog came out, a friend and I decided to take on the California crowd mostly sold by Pitstop. We made longer trailing arms from carbon fibre, using ball-raced arm pivots, softened the suspension heaps, and fitted really hot custom-wound motors, and ran in the seven cell class. The cars handled like ****, but were so much lighter than the Taipans, that they were more than competitive. So much so, that at one Nationals event, Pitstop entered Jeff Grenenger into my class to stop me, instead of the normal 6 cell class. It worked, so I only came second, but not too bad for a big event. Pitstop hated me as my solution cost under half of theirs.. I pointed out, to no avail, that selling thousands and thousands of cheaper buggies would eventually increase their business due to the vastly bigger number of buggy racers. Unfortunately I remained an enemy of Jeff's dad Jack…



I used to have columns in both Australian RC car mags,Electric Earthmoving in one, and Bullbar in the other under a nom de plume Michael Hereford. Through these columns, I reviewed stacks of cars, including more than two dozen Tamiyas. One year I had a great job of demo’ing the Tamiya offroad range outside an International Toy Fair in Sydney. The Oz importer had set up a big geodesic dome, along with about a dozen car batteries and chargers, all the range, plus a Tamiya-sponsored driver they sent over from Japan. As it turned out one of Tamiya’s buggies was awarded Toy of the Year, so I even got to drive the car for the TV cameras for the 6 o’clock news!



Tony Stott

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great stuff!

i'll keep my eyes peeled for any more articles by Tony and post them up as I find them!

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great stuff!

i'll keep my eyes peeled for any more articles by Tony and post them up as I find them!

Tony's articles are all through the older rc mags in Australia... Australian Car Modeller, Dirt and Track, etc. ... I have a bunch of them at home, including the Electric Earthmoving ones. In some of those he talks about modding 3-speeds for better use..... ahh, the good old days!

Alex

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