dinglem wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 8:59 am
Great thread - thanks for this. Was an informative read. I was quite surprised to read the early Reedy link as I was not aware of that, but i have just had a skim through of some early Demon adverts and located some Reedy listings with the typical coloured Reedy Dot nomenclature along with some letters. My main interest in the earlier Demon adverts is to source info on the various ESC offerings so i never really paid much attention to the motors listed.
reedy comment.jpg
86 ad.jpg
I myself have quite a few Demon motors from various eras, as well as some experimental motors which came directly from Nick, and also from team Demon drivers. Nick used to send his motors to shops who issued them to their team drivers and often with re-labelling to reflect the shop or team sponsorship.
I have posted up the experimental alloy winding armature i received in another thread, and also the R&M Models Team Demon motor which was built for team Demon driver Chris Boakes and was machined to take twin bearings at the endbell end. I also have a TQ Models Demon motor - the TQ Models team drivers all being sponsored by Demon motors. Such badge-engineering was commonplace at that time.
I have a few early Yokomo-spec Demon motors, and it is noted that Nick actually began stamping D E M O N lettering around the bearing. Have your examples got this feature? I also have a couple with Yokomo-esq endbells but with Sagami lettering. I will post up a few examples below. Some of mine are from the early silver Yokomo can era, as well as some of the short-lived red base-plate Sagami format.
In the beginning there had been two lines of Demon motors.
The more expensive ones, these have been the handwound motors of Mike Reedy.
I´m just not sure when exactly this started. I mean if there had been also Demon Reedy 1/12 scale motors, before the 1985 Offroad motors.
Then there had been the less expensive Demon motors, which always have been machine wound.
Well I made my own speedos since starting into R/C cars in 1978. Because I didn´t like the mechanical speed controls.
So my interest in the Demon ESC was not that much.
At the 1986 Euros I just had finished a new lightweight FET speedo, just in time with no testing before.
I used that Demon Reedy Green A Dot motor and my new FET speedo and was very fast, but I hardly could make runtime. I always dumped in the last lap.
My friend gave me one of his Demon speedos and I could finish now, but was much slower.
I don´t want to say the Demon speedo was bad, I just played with the design all day since years and knew how to do a really good ESC. Better than the commercial ones. But more power also means less runtime.
Well much later I realized why I always dumped my Demon batteries. Nobody told me to temp charge, so in reality they never had been at 100% capacity.
The Demon Pink Dot motor I mentioned before, was an experimental motor as well, Nick´s own motor.
Unfortunately I have no idea where the armature is. I have a couple of empty cans ...
None of my Demon yokomo motors got the Demon stamp.
I think this was later.
Regarding the Power King motors.
I got one of the first samples through my friend. This was one of my best Demon motors ever.
Before I had the Mr. T motor with the red front plate, which was not good at all.
But it also was the first experience with the Sagami cans. The magnets were really bad and the frontplate sometimes came loose from the can, not at mine motor. I don´t have that Mr.T, I sold at some point but regret now.
But Nick did a great job then with searching for a better Sagami can, the result was the Power King. The can had a much thicker wall and the magnets were strong. I don´t know for newer versions, but my motor (and the motor from my friend) was a Triple 17T.
Searching through my motor collection I had a hard time finding this Power King.
Now I remembered the early Power King motors didn´t say that name at the label. I also double checked with my friend and he confirmed this.
The early label says Offroad Demon Power | Modified Special | Wind. | means cutted label at this position. There is also the old phone number 01
Modified means a hot wind, not hand wound.