Duane Kennard's Collection:
John Skeels Twist-O-Flex Chassis
Duane Kennard sends these images of a chassis in his collection. I'll let him relate the story...
Duane writes:
"
I thought maybe it was time to fix and clean up some old chassis I had laying around. I started with this
John Skeels' TWIST-O-FLEX chassis, which I remember him running around early '77. It's the first chassis
I ever saw with a pivot in the middle. It's purpose was to make the chassis more 'bitey' in the no glue
conditions that we ran at my home track, Monaco Raceway (then in Buena Park). Later, Dan Cooney and others
built similar designs.
Aside from the pivot, the chassis is pretty much the conventional ISO common to SoCal at the time.
Though I was 16 or 17 when this was built, I do remember seeing Mr. Skeels fairly often. He was a well known
SoCal racer, and always built top notch equipment. I also remember him being a very nice guy;
not many pros would let a kid stare at their cars for as long as I did!
I got out of slot racing around the end of '78, and came across this chassis several years later. In about '83,
when visiting Monaco Raceway (in it's second location), I was chatting with owner Frank Corea, and spotted a box
full of older chassis. He put the box on the counter, and offered me anything I wanted in it for free! (Remember,
these were by then all old, obsolete BRASS chassis.) Most everything in the box was broken and bent, but I recognized
many of these chassis as ones I'd seen years earlier, having studied many of them for some time! I ended up taking
half a dozen of the nicer chassis home with me to clean up and repair, which another 20 years later,
I'm getting around to doing."