Demon motor thread - no others please

[dinglem]

No, the small sticker one is a trimmed down part of one of the bodyshell decals they also sold.

I have one on my Demon 2DH speedo also.

[V12]

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.

[V12]

Again the armature for this Power King is gone ...
Just an empty can now.

Maybe the armature went off but I don´t remember. At least I kept the can.

[dinglem]

I have been researching these myself and have found some dating info.

The first time modifieds were noted in the Demon mag ads was March 1984, with a short write-up also being included in the section detailing new products. Demon Yokomo modified motors were discussed.

I also discussed the Demon-Reedy collaboration with Jamie Booth who was sponsored by Demon in those early off-road days, and he also confirmed that the modified Demon motors he was supplied with were Mike Reedy-built motors. He said he was 100% certain of that. He also told me that the link between the two extended back prior to this and in fact stemmed from 1/12th.

I have also found somebody with three other examples of this type of modified motor - all of which have the white timing mark stickers and no DEMON stamping around the bearing. One of the three also has slot brush conversion. Super cool to see.

[V12]

My friend and me knew Jamie very well.
I´m not sure but think he was sponsored by Mike Reedy directly, but got the motors through Nick. I have to check with my friend, he knows everything about Nick and Demon. He spend two or three weeks at the Adams family at some point ...

My Green A also got the white timing mark sticker, seen at picture 2. But the Demon sticker hides half of the white sticker.

The white timing sticker was typical for the Reedy Yokomo motors.
I don´t think Nick was fiddling with the slot brush conversion.
But I got the message from Chris Arnold he made a slot brush conversion at some point and added this to motors of other guys too.
This was during the time we discussed a lot about the Euro Panther project, where Chris told me a lot of other things too.
https://classicrc.wordpress.com/1-12/parma/parma-euro-panther-chris-arnold-special/

I don´t remember which were the winds or Dot colors for the Reedy 1/12 scale motors. RRC will show them at race reports.
If I knew where my RRC magazines are...

I found a few other Demon motors at my boxes. But have to check which versions they are. One of them is a Eliminator.

[dinglem]

Jamie said 'I think my early Demon modifieds were Reedy until I got sponsored directly by Mike... in fact they 100% were.'

I know Mike Reedy was supplying his hand-wound modified Reedy motors to other houses... I have here in front of me a Bolink Igarashi which has a large blue 'R' logo on the label and then says in smaller letters 'Reedyfied for Bolink Mike Reedy'... It took me a while but i have dug out an advert detailing these motors for on and off-road in Igarashi and Yokomo formats which is dated September 1983. I guess this was the same set-up but probably pre-dates the Demon collaboration. I opened the Igarashi and it also has the Reedy wraps. He did the same for the blue label Schumacher-Reedy motors a few years later.

I look forward to seeing your other Demon motors. I am actually quite surprised more people haven't posted some pictures up.

[V12]

Had a look to my two other Demon motors but no photos.
One motor is Yokomo based as well and the sticker looks exactly like the Green A Reedy. But there is not the small white timing sticker.
So the question is, is it a real Reedy motor or not. I don´t want to disassemble at the moment.
But the armature looks like a Double to me.

The other motor is Sagami based and the sticker says Eliminator Special Wind. I think there were two different versions.

I just did talk with my friend this afternoon.
He confirmed the Yokomo motoes with the Demon letters at the endbell were late versions.
He had some as well.
And the most early Demon motors had been around 1983. Not exactly sure but around this time.
Before that the Demon team used MRP motors.

[dinglem]

I have quite a few Demon adverts stored on disc here. The 1982 ones do not list any motors, only speed controllers and the like.

By early 84 water dipped motors are advertised, then by April the Yokomo modifieds appear in the listing.

ELIMINATOR.... i have two ads where they are mentioned, the first being Dec 87 which states it as a variation of the Power King.

By 1990 there were three modified offerings with different magnet specs.

[dinglem]

Here is an earlier 27T standard motor from around early '87. At this time they had 20deg advance as standard (later upping to 30degrees and gold endbell jewellery).

I also have my original standard of the same spec which I ran in my Meteor and later in my Trinity LWB Optima Mid. Well used but at the time was more than competitive. One of my most cherished motors in fact

[V12]

Thanks for the ads.
It seems my Eliminator is quite old.
The sticker for that motor still come with the old 01 phone number.
I don´t know when the phone number changed, but this could tell the time frame and real wind.

[dinglem]

The March '87 advert I have introduces the 'NEW POWER KING' and that ad still shows the old North Harrow address and number (and also mentions Mike Reedy modifieds), whereas by Dec '87 the phone number and address have changed and the Eliminator gets a mention, so somewhere through 87 represents the change. I guess your Eliminator came just before the move, in early '87?

[V12]

The Eliminator thing is a bit confusing.
I understand the Dec 87 ad says Single 16T. So there was just one version of the Eliminator at that time. So maybe my Eliminator should be a Single 16T as well, correct? If there was not any change before.

Seeing the 1990 ad it seems to me there was no certain Eliminator. You had to choose if you want regular, strong or extra strong magnets and could combine with any available armature.

[dinglem]

Yes, a single 16T sounds the most plausible. Are you able to check? Some pictures of it would be great too of course!

[V12]

The can is exactly the same as with my Power King.
The sticker says Eliminator instead of Modified but is the same otherways. Remember it is early version and doesn´t say Power King.
I don´t want to disassemble at the moment. But looking into the frontplate the wire seems like a single wind regarding thickness.
Also there is not much copper regarding the windings. My Green A armature does have a lot more copper.

[dinglem]

Have you some across any with a twin ballrace mounted at the endbell end? I only have one example, but i do know that is something Nick experimented with. Not sure of the benefits over the added weight!