Three cheers for Riko, but I'd suggest that anyone finding a Riko chassied car not take the body as necessarily original. As one or two people have said, the cars could be fragile in competition.
Anyway, good to see interest in the old Riko kits. I suspect that, in the late 1960s and the early 70s, many slot-car enthusiasts in the UK progressed beyond Scalextric, MRRC, Airfix and VIP through the Competition kits. They were simple and wouldn't have deserved their name for very long, but they were cheap, costing just £1.07 in an early 70s pricelist I have, and people were still buying them then. I've seen a comment in one SlotForum thread where someone recalled enthusiastically saving his pocket money as a teenager to buy them.
I was well beyond my teens by then, but they were a great way to assemble a stable of racing sports and GT cars. I built about 10.
One attraction was that the parts were interchangeable with other kits and parts on the market from the US and Japan, unlike most of the proprietary British products. They could be modified easily too for can-end drive motors such as 16Ds and 13UOs by making up one new mounting bracket, though I forget exactly how I drilled the large hole.
From memory, they came in a blister pack with the body as the plastic blister. I may be wrong (again) but the contrate may have been a pressed steel one. My surviving cars all have a variety of brass and plastic contrates, so I'm not sure.
The thin chassis metal was probably rather hard on the guide stems. Again, mine have a variety. It shouldn't be hard to find a replacement.
My early 70s kits came with the MkII Rikochet, but presumably the earlier kits had the MkI and it was a good motor at the price.
There were no wheel inserts nor, I think, driver-cockpit panels, but they were easy enough to add and there was no drudgery in getting a good paint finish on the clear vac bodies, unlike today's favoured hard shells.
One oddity in the instructions was that the first recommended way of fitting bodies to chassis was to leave clear plastic between the wheel centres, bend it inwards and bolt it to the chassis. I did a few that way, but it involved extra bolts with locknuts or soldering in captive nuts, and it could be difficult to get the body to sit precisely on the chassis. Also not conducive to quick repairs inside. However, the chassis did have flanges for screw mounting on wooden blocks, and of course for side mounting one could bolt on metal brackets or solder on brass tubes with captive nuts. All a good learning process.
I don't know the source of the standard bodies. I bought others (Betta, SP, etc) and switched around a lot, and I'm sure others did likewise, so shells found on Riko chassis may not be originals. The pics below are therefore not necessarily of Riko shells, but they show the sort of thing that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of guys would have been doing with their one-pound kits 40 or so years ago.
I did have one of the Super Series with the more sophisticated chassis - droparm and sidepans - and 16D motor. I used it in one of my best creations, a Betta Alfa T33/3, but alas it has disappeared. The split front axle had a brass sleeve connecting the halfshafts in the centre, and I still have a couple unused in accessory packs.
There were also more advanced chassis and a vast array of components.
Someone above was interested in the "Precision" kits, especially the H16 BRM. I don't know them, but I'd guess they too were vac bodied. Anyone know?
Anyway, my thanks to Riko, Racewell Accessories and Richard Kohnstam in Hemel Hempstead.
The cars below are mostly as they were in the early 1980s, pulled out of storage last year, so I make no claim to them being perfect specimens. Others on Riko Competition chassis are or have been a Ford Mk IV, a Salzburg 917K, a McLaren GT coupe and a Mirage Cosworth, though perhaps not all originally.
Rob J
