Building The Brass Rod Anglewinder
by Doug Azary
Dec 11, 2002
1968 was the year that pretty well nailed the coffin shut for pro inline drive slot racing cars. Up until then, all the "hot thumbs" of the day, Mike Morrissey, the Steubes, John Cukras, Sandy Gross, Mike Anderson, and more, had relied on multi-rail brass rod, brass tube or piano wire chassis with a motor that was mounted 90 degrees in relation to the rear axle, commonly referred to an inline.
Then along came Gene Husting with a car that he built, and its motor sat in the chassis "cock-eyed" at about a 20 degree angle, and he BLEW the competition away. This news ROCKED the entire slot racing industry! The rest is history. After all the pros started building what is now called an angle winder design chassis, it became big news when someone won a race with an inline!
The reason that the motor is at an angle is to allow the use of smaller rear axle gears and tires, thus lowering the center of gravity compared to a true sidewinder car. A majority of the cars made today, and certainly all those that are built for major competition, are basic angle winders that have been updated and perfected over the last 30+ years of racing.
This chassis pretty well represents what a pro might have raced in 1968, except that brass strips from 1/4" to 1" wide, which became more widely used in chassis construction in the last days of the inline, carried over into the new angle winders, and thus the number of rods decreased.
