What do you consider to be 'vintage' ???

[Hcp22]

I have to say that your recommendations for classes appeals to me Lars.

If this vintage racing trend grows you have to draw the line some ware. But the biggest “problem” as I see it is the technical inspection. To find a person/person’s that know what and when cars/parts where realest and available it’s almost impossible. One why is to demand documentation on each car and each hop-up through manuals, catalogs and adds. You can call this a type of homologation on the car and hop-ups. How do you judge hand made parts?

I think it’s almost impossible to run 100% fair races, so we have to settle for just having fun with our vintage cars.

[urban hype]

I am going to chime in here. What I would consider vintage is a product that has been out of production for 20 or more years. In most cases the general life cycle of a RC car platform is around 2 years before there is major revision to create a new platform. So 20 years I would consider a fair amount of time for the parts/kits supply to dry up via main stream channels. Thus making it a vintage item.

[marlo]

Like in comic books they now have new definitions for vintages, where they did not 20-30 years ago. In say 25 years time if they still are making rc10( B25's ) . The classic category will need to be changed to platinum , vintage to gold retro to silver, bronze, copper, tin, etc.

[Orlinon]

For vintage racing I think the only way you could make classes remotely fair is to draw up a list by model sorted approximately by age, but also moderated by the capability of the model itself. Lots of the 90's Tamiya stuff would get eaten alive by an early RC10 for example. If someone turned up with an obscure model not on the list, there would have to be a descision made by the organisers which class to put it in. I would also allow re-releases of the models to run with their vintage couterparts, so long as batteries, motors etc were equivalent.

[Y'ernat Al]

...

I think it’s almost impossible to run 100% fair races, so we have to settle for just having fun with our vintage cars.

Right on Lars.

Just out of curiosity, I did a quick google search to see how the 1:1 clubs handle it:

http://www.vintageracerules.com/forums/

Looks like it'll take about 500 threads and 3000 posts to get there

[Hcp22]

Yes you are right and they probably have an expert for every class scrutinizing every bolt in the car.

[madweazl]

Impossible to define in regard to the hobby since it has no relation what so ever. I use 20 years as my personal cutoff.

[GoMachV]

The easiest way to define "vintage" is by value. If it cost more bow than it says on the sticker, it's vintage

[stickboy007]

I think the issue with using the 20 year definition is that eventually you'll have cars like the B4.2 considered "vintage," and they can run in the same class as a gold pan. You really kind of have to do it by era, which is brand specific and dependent on when paradigm shifts in design took place. So for example, pre-B2 RC10s could be considered vintage, but going further, pre-Stealth gearbox RC10s could be considered classic. On the Yokomo side, anything up to the '95 Pavidis could be considered vintage, since most everything after that was a significant redesign, and pre-YZ10 could be considered classic (i.e., 834B). It's a little tricker on the Losi side, since the XX series spanned the mid-to-late '90's when carbon composites were really starting to become popular. I think the VONATs cutoff for pre-XX CR is reasonable for "vintage," and in Losi's case, I don't think you can define a classic class, since the JRX series was their first serious, and quite competitive, attempt at a chassis.

The list goes on...

[integra22t]

i could go for first gen of a chassy line say 94-98 for the rc10

[clm]

Hmm, I personally think on some of the more longer running models it might be more difficult to lay down the law without actually someone starting a list and breaking down the cars by that car manufacturers point they were in while making them. Perhaps using things like transmission upgrades to split the classes for example. A XX may be 'vintage' eventually but it's not in the same class as a 6 gear or lrm car for example. Associated cars could be classed with both the older cars when equipped with a 6 gear or the newer vintage cars like a XX when equipped with a stealth. Want to run the Jrx cars in the newer class? Well there is the retro tranny to move them up.

In other words I think vintage/age group classes should be set more on technological advancements in the vehicle then in specifically what year it was produced.

Maybe also in addition to tranny styles you could add into the mix things like suspension arm design? Long arms / rigid fiber filled arms vs. old style nylon shorter arms. I don't really think hard coated shocks would be much of a difference over older anodized shocks if built the same. Tire size could also be part of it as it was another part that sort of evolved back then, 2 inch or smaller for retro buggy and any size for evo(lution) classes.

But going back to the topic at hand, I think more in terms of technology when I am thinking vintage, I think the next era would be evolution. I think the break is when the hobby started evolving their initial design into more of the racing mindset 'stiffer suspension(that is incidentally not quite as resilient :p)' 'longer arms with lower bodies' 'cookie cutter three gear racing transmissions' 'hard coated teflon this and that'. I think the stealth team cars and 10t as well as the Pro SE and LXT were at the bleeding edge of the evolution amd the xx/xxt and the b2/t2 are also at this point 'evo' cars. Cars in the era of b3/t3 and xxx/xxxt would just be outdated at this point.

Chris

[clm]

Just to add before people start griping at me... cars like the RC10/Jrx series are the bleeding edge of the Vintage era and cross over into the evolution era to become the outclassed models in much the same way that the competitive cars before those 'bleeding edge' cars became outclassed when they came on the scene. It's not so much a separation by date as it is also by popular design of the day.

You could easily hop classes in a boundary car, for example an RC10. 2 sets of suspension arms, a set of class specific tires, and 2 transmissions, Run it in the evo class then swap on your 6 gear and some flexible nylon arms, swap to smaller tires and wheels, and run the same car in vintage... or just keep the flexible arms on it all the time and swap just transmissions and tires.

Chris

[stickboy007]

I would agree with that, and that's more or less what I was getting at, in not so many words.

The only issue with this approach is that, although it would be the most accurate, how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? One could get to a point where we separate classes by what kinds of screws were used, and so a line has to be drawn somewhere as to what parts of the chassis we use as metrics for technology advancement. To a first order, you have gearbox, suspension, chassis, and wheels, but generally speaking, all of these things tended to evolve together.

So in order to avoid too much granularity, it is proabably better to look at wholistic changes. I think this is sort of what the VONATs rules are doing, where it's basically anything on or before 1994 with a few exceptions for "vintage", as it was around that time where you started to see some big changes in chassis design. The "classic" definition is along the same lines, where you had older gearbox designs, tires/wheels, etc. What also separates classic from vintage is materials, which IMO is the biggest driver here. "Vintage" chassis are where you started to see use of carbon fiber and graphite, at least in plate form, for the chassis and shock towers, whereas classic chassis tended to use more fiberglass, plastic, and metal.

So what was the next big thing after graphite? It was molded composites, which really kicked in in the mid-to-late 1990's. You can call that "semi-vintage" or whatever. Then what was the next big thing in r/c after that? It was brushless and lipo, somewhere in the early 2000's, and that motivated a re-design to account for higher power motors and lighter weight batteries. You can call that "modern" era (at least for now until the next big thing comes along).

The way I see it, each era in r/c was defined substantially by advancements in materials processing, which often happened in parallel with other advancements such as drivetrain and suspension design (often driven...ahem...by materials advancements).

So maybe instead of labeling them as classic, vintage, etc., we can label them by the paradigm shifts that took place - metal/plastic age, graphite age, composite age, brushless/lipo age, etc. Just a thought...

[R/Cat]

I have to say that your recommendations for classes appeals to me Lars.

If this vintage racing trend grows you have to draw the line some ware. But the biggest “problem” as I see it is the technical inspection. To find a person/person’s that know what and when cars/parts where realest and available it’s almost impossible. One why is to demand documentation on each car and each hop-up through manuals, catalogs and adds. You can call this a type of homologation on the car and hop-ups. How do you judge hand made parts?

I think it’s almost impossible to run 100% fair races, so we have to settle for just having fun with our vintage cars.

Very good point. Demanding "proof" via documentation is a decent idea but would probably require extensive tech knowledge, inspection and possible breakdown to visualize internal parts which could get time-consuming and counter-productive to the whole point of a vintage race. I think the easiest and most fair thing to do is to minimize to the greatest extent possible the opportunity to cheat by eliminating the variables that have to be accounted for.

That means for all modified classes only allowing bone-stock cars (as they came out of the box) of the same era with the exception of easily-identifiable, universally-available, common vintage/modern-day modifications like ESC's, brushless motors, ball bearings and lipo packs of comparable performance parameters. Obscure 20+ year-old hop-ups or home-made parts that one guy happens to have on his car would not be allowed, for example. Very simple.

I'd apply the same rules to a classic class but I'd tighten it up even more and only allow bone-stock "plastic fantastic" cars (so no stock Gold pan RC10's/JRX2's running against Hornets :-/), 540 silver cans, vintage MSC's and NiMH/Nicad batteries with maybe the exception of ball bearings instead of plastic/bronze bushings for the sake of run-time. No lipo, no ESCs, no brushless, no modern rims/tires - nothing. You want vintage classic, that's vintage classic as it was meant to be, IMHO, since that's what the vast majority of us were running in the 80's. You could have a separate stock race-chassis class with similar rules for the RC10s, JRX2s, Ultimas, etc if there were enough to enter.

As I've said before, I understand the point of a vintage race is to have fun but when you're asking people to support an event by taking time out of their busy schedules, pay for travel (some guys came from Europe for the Vonats!!), lodging and potentially hundreds of dollars to enter several different classes, every effort should be made to adhere to a strict set of simple rules that gives everybody a fair chance and makes it worth their while.

Unfortunately, it sounds like at some of the events the rules are loosely/selectively/randomly enforced and people know that so they bring stuff that really shouldn't be allowed because rumor mill tells them they'll probably be allowed to run it anyway in the good spirit of having fun. Imagine if NASCAR did that? lol

[kink]

The golden era decade of rc was mid 80s to mid 90s.