RC Mits Video: Gary O'Connor's Insane Speed Run at the velodrome

Gary O's "Problem Child II"

This is what Gary says about his car:

About 3/4 of the way through building Problem Child it became obvious that it wasn't the most efficient way to build a speed car. It quickly became very large, very heavy and despite my attempts at simplicity, very complicated.

I hadn't even finished PC before PCII was coagulating in my mind. It seems that a twin engine car would accelerate more quickly, would be lighter, smaller and would likely be faster at top end.

I went through a half dozen designs, each having some design flaw that I just didn't like. I wanted to keep 4wd since it seems for more stable than rwd and puts the power down better than fwd.

Then. a couple days ago, after completing my mail-order correspondence classes and graduating Magna cum 'Loudy' from the Nick Mazlowski School of Backwards R/C Cars, the solution came to me....spin PC around and run it in reverse! Seriously! That Nick's a genious!

Spinning the engines around allows the exhaust to exit towards the rear of the car, narrowing the body and allowing it to taper at the rear. Using the two rear engines (now front) will give stability at speed and allow the use of Mac's pipes inside the body.

The steering will be at the front (sorry Nick, I'm not that crazy!) and the rear diff will be mounted ala Associated 10L. A second drive shaft will allow the rear diff to go up and down.

The cool thing is, I'll be able to use almost all of the drive train technology I developed with PC along with many pick up points.

Well, I have no CAD skills (skipped that class at the Nick Mazlowski School of Backwards R/C Cars) but I can solder a wicked brazing rod or two and that's what I've done to get an idea of how things will come together....

Here is PC and PCII. Note the noses and tails are reversed

Video: Gary O's 4 engine car 91.46 mph

Video: 4 engine "Problem Child"

Gary said this about the run:

I have removed two of the engines because I blew up the high gear for the rear engines last night. Just shake down runs only hitting 70-75 mph.

Video: "Problem Child Jr" 78 mph run

More info here

Gary says this about the project:

Just so I would have a car to run competitively at our club speed runs I changed my NTC3 oval car into a speed run car. It runs a .12 Sirio engine with taller gears and at out first meet it ran 59 mph using production pinion gears.

I swapped in a couple custom gears for second, and running the old second gear as first. The first gear was okay but second was too high so I'll drop it down but that'll mean fitting a couple custom gears again.

I'm really going to push the aero envelope and make it as clean as I can with a stock car body. My plan is to swap over to a larger engine (a .28 or maybe one of my Piccos) later and see what I can do with that.

Video: Gary O's 4 engine "Problem Child" starting up

Gary has some trouble getting all the engines warmed up, but once they all get going, this thing screams.

Gary O's 4 engine "Problem Child"

Gary had this to say about his car:

I have been working on a four engine car for about 9 months now, initially bent on blowing Ziggy's record out of the water and bring it back to the USA. Unfortunately, he's such a nice guy that I'll feel bad when I do eventually set a new one, but only for a minute or two.

The car is based on a couple Associated NTC3's. Some early photos show the NTC3 parts that are pretty much hidden in the finished car...

It's powered by four .21 Picco P9 engines which have proven to be very problematic, living up to it's name....

Read more about Gary's car here

Gary O'Conner's 4 engine monster

4 Engine monster from Gary O.