Grot chassis ??

Hi Guys
i,ve done a file check on the old grey matter over the weekend and have come up with few manufacturers of slot racing chassis .I will say straight away that this is not an all embracing list as i, am sure there are some i,ve forgotten or have never heard of(like grot) but hopefully it will generate some debate
THe trend of commercially available chassis didin,t really become an issue until the late 60s and the adventof can motors
previous to that other than the major manufacturers (revell,monogram cox russkitetc )most of the suppliers provided kits of parts you could build yourself
The manufactures in the list were only ever cottage industries and all their wares were hand built
The first I remember was a guys called BOB REED from portsmouth who sold jail door type chassis mainly inlines
More succesful was john veaseys Glenn components .John was a very innovative slot racer and was responsible for getting us to develop 13uo powered slot cars ,for a period of time in 1967/68 johns RTR cars were the ones to have and in 1968 rick coleman won a coouple of national championships using these cars
Another gent who built chassis for sale was Phil tunbridge who based his slot car activities round nordic and his chassis were chrome plated which often led to failure of ther soldered joints ,
The first of the really big hitters was stuart wyatts "TEAm Bog ".Stuart was an eccentric genius who had several money making projects of which Bog was one
based at Sarratt stuart knocked out 100s if not thousands of chassis over a period of 3/4 years especially in the Formula 32 class.Stuart ran a works team in which doug paxman was the lead driver until he retired and myself and dick smith took over the driver duties .They were quite successful and won several open meets
Later in the 70s two manufacturers based around the haydon club took up the reins
Ian jensens "OLD PECULIAR" was one
Ian was an UBER succesful slot racer and builder and left work to set up this business ,the chassis were all numbered and had engraved on them a spider dangling from a web ,.Again these were top products and allowed drivers that didn,thave the building skills to win races
The second was HB products who basically were slot car vendors that sold a variety of hardware including chassis
Why HB ,well HB were the initials of the 2 partners tony Hough and ross Brawn who some of you may have heard of as a result of his design prowess in full size racers
The other big producer in the 70s was Mike goddards MG products .Mike was based in daventry and provided a variety of engineering services for slot racers ,ie comm trues etc ,His chassis designs were usually 2.1/2 rail piano wire angle winders again a successful chassis which won big meets
in the late 70s Phil Firth of leeds started selling his chassi designs which had enabled him to win a couple of national championships
Bigger still was Dave harveys 1-0-1 products .Based in north kent, daves team including his cousin mike harvey and tony mills built hundreds of extremely fast chassis .Dave won nine national championships in the 80s using this kit ,and made a comeback recently winning another this year

We now come to the era of wire drawn and lazer cut schassis which are currently the way to go ,but I think that needs to be the subject of another thread

hope that will generate a bit of comment

Cheers tony

Hi John
Yes ,i,ve heard of him and seem to remember that he built a few chassi for model cars magazine for articles that were published
Not aware of the quality of his work
Anyway here are a few others that sliiped under the radar ,I noticed that Eltham models provided a variety of 1/32 chassis as a result of an advert ina 1969 model cars magazine
again i dont remember them but anything form eltham m,odels in those days would have dialled into the large quantityof expertise in south london ,ian and ray skilling ,rog willimott etc

Now an extremely rare one team DB that twinkled for a short period during the late 60s ,based in newcastle, the cars were built and marketed by Rob Bland,Mike carr and my old mate gerry fitzsimmons based mainly on designs by the anglo American Phil enos . didn,t stay manufactured for long

Cheers tony

I had a chat with John Goldsmith at the week end, he used to run the Heron club at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk He owned a Grot chassis or two way back when, and this is what he told me.

Grot chassis were built by Andy Murrow and Carl Nichols, they were both members of the Heron club, as far as John can remember they were both at school when they built the chassis. Larry Ward was also a Heron club member at the time. Apparently the C in the serial number means Carl built that particular one. John confirms the Reginald Perrin TV series was where they got the Grot name from.

John also mentioned a couple of other local builders.
Chuck Palmer was also a member of Heron. Chuck was an American serviceman stationed at a nearby US Airforce base. He built other chassis for sale as well as the F32s.
Nigel Harvey built chassis under the Streakers name. The Streakers' logo was a running "matchstick man", that'll be found engraved on the chassis.