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RiggenHO Tune Up Tips
Tuning tips for RiggenHO cars
By Joe Corea, New Jersey Nostalgia Hobby
06/01/2005, updated 06/11/05

One of the reasons for the success of HO scale racing in the 1960’s was the ‘tuneability’ of the cars. If you took your t-jet and tightened, polished, cut and put on silicones you could get it to run differently than it did before you worked on it. Not all of us were great mechanics, and sometimes the car ran worse after we worked on it. How many of us spent hours ‘tuning’ and ‘tweaking’ our cars before the big race, hoping we had found the right combination to improve performance?

When we first decided to re-introduce these cars (partly due to the success of the nostalgia based Johnny Lightning T-jets), we thought these cars would appeal to collectors because of the unique body styles and 1970’s vintage heritage. We wanted to provide cars that were built as close to stock Riggen’s from the 70’s as possible. Back then, the car needed some tuning to run just right and once tuned, they were awesome.

Our biggest surprise is that people really want to run these cars. Our chassis is being run hard, and owners are hopping them up just like in the 70’s! Now that we have 100+ cars out there we are getting some very useful feedback. Two problems have been revealed:

1 / The gear mesh isn’t great and this is exacerbated by the grippier tires. The car, if not finely tuned can sputter and lurch as the tires slip causing a gear mesh miss. (We have been told) that the Riggen gear ran a little rough in the day but this was a less pressing problem than the noise from the shaker and from getting the tires to bite right. Now that the silicon tires give good grip, the gear mesh problem shows up.

2/ The set screw rears are not standing up to the grippier silicone and faster speeds. Once they are stripped, the only repair is to glue them (loctite or black max) and unfortunately this is a non reversible process…

The feedback we have received makes us realize there are two distinct markets for our cars; the collector and the racer. By following some of the tune up tips below you should be able to make your RiggenHO model race car a competitive racer.

Your new RiggenHO car is made and assembled in the USA. All parts were made to be faithful reproductions of the cars of the Riggen cars made in the 1970’s. The motor is a new old stock (NOS) Mabuchi HT50, which is the type used in the original cars. Slot car technology has advanced considerably in the past 30 years and you should not expect your RiggenHO car to run like a contemporary slot car. You should, however, expect your car to be the same kind of “barrel down the straights, slide through the turns” fun they were in the 70’s. This sheet will offer some tested ‘tune up tips’ that should add to your enjoyment of this All American product.

If after running your car and trying these tune up tips you have suggestions or additional tuning tips you would like to share, please forward them to us at njhobby@aol.com or ron@riggenho.com

Pinion and Crown gears: Most contemporary gears will fit on the Riggen Chassis, such as Super Tough gears from Wizzard or the Poly gears from BSRT. Our own research has found that either Stock Tomy Super G+ gears (25 tooth crown and 7 tooth pinion) or Aurora G+ gears (20 tooth crown and 8 tooth pinion fit well and provide an extremely smooth mesh. Best of all a set of either crown and pinion gears is only a $1.50! Another very successful (but extreme!) mod has been the use of Wizzard sintered bronze 20 tooth gears with a Pro Predator 8 tooth pinion. This is a fairly expensive solution but the results are super smooth! You can experiment with many different brands and ratios to fit your driving style and your race track!

Front wheel and axle: The front RiggenHO wheels are placed on the vehicle with an arbor press. They can be removed with a wheel puller. Brass weighted independent front wheel sets from various vendors including JW’s, Rick Terry and others look and work great. They are easily installed without tools and offer various wheel heights and weight to tune your car to your track. Recommended are JW F03 series independent front ends available at $6.00 in weights from 2.5 to 4 grams.

Rear wheel and axle: Most of the original 70’s Riggens came with a solid rear axle and pressed on Aluminum rims. Later in the vintage production cycle, set screw type wheels were used. Some of our new RiggenHO cars use vintage set screw wheels. Both types have their problems. The press on type require an arbor press or hand held wheel press and if they are not put on straight they can not be corrected. The set screws require a practiced hand as they can easily strip rendering the wheel useless. If you do not plan to tweak your wheels, we recommend the tiniest dab of Loctite or BlackMax to secure your wheels. Remember, this is a non-reversible hop up (remember trimming your T-Jet wheel wells?) We have found the screw on type.080 threaded axle with jam nuts (similar to the vintage AJ’s wheels) to be the easiest to install and the easiest to change wheel combinations. At present JW offers these in .188, .225, .250, .275 and even .375 double flanged thread on aluminum rims for $2.95 a pair and threaded axle for $2.50 each. Of course vintage AJ’s will work also. The advantage is the ease with which they can be installed and the variety of wheel and tire sizes available for your car.

Rear tires: the tires which come on your new RiggenHO are of the newest type space age “No- Tear” silicone. They measure .436 on the wheels that come with the car. This height is suitable for new Tomy AFX track and a few other types. However if you find your car rubs the rails you should increase you tire height to provide a better ride. This can be accomplished by increasing the size of the wheel or by simply adding masking tape to the hub to increase its diameter. The No-Tear tires supplied with your car will stretch easily to .500 or more if desired.

Keeping your tires clean is important to their adhesive properties. The sticky silicone material of the tire has a tendency to pick up dust and dirt from your track. If you want more slide, leave your tires dirty. If you want more stick, run your tires over the sticky side of masking tape to pull off the dust and dirt.

Future Products: Back in the 1970’s Riggen offered a 4 car slot car set. Two cars were 1/32 scale and two cars (in the same exact style as the 1/32 scale cars) were HO scale. This set came with 1/32 track.To allow the HO cars to run on the 1/32 track, they were equipped with braided pick ups. We plan to offer these braided pick ups in the near future.

The original HT-50 engine was no stranger to torque or speed. If however you want more performance from your Riggen HO, green wire versions of the HT-50 will be available in the not too distant future.

One final note: Since we realize there are two different potential buyers for these cars, the collector (our original target customer) and the racer (our newly identified customer), we are planning to offer two different chassis in the future: one for the collector and one for the racer.

The “collector” line will now be called our #1000 series and will remain as true to the stock Riggen from the 70’s as possible. We will use stock Riggen reproduction parts mimicking the technology from the 70’sincluding Riggen aluminum wheels in front and rear. Gear sets will be contemporary but repro stock Riggen style crown gears will be included for "historical accuracy"! The body styles will include the most interesting bodies we have the molds for including some of the Hot Rod styles. These will run but they wont be T-Jet killers!!!

The “racer” line will be our #2000 series and will address all the problems revealed by hard running of our original RiggenHO chassis. Custom spec’d screw on aluminum wheels will replace the set screws. Silicone tires will be spec’d to match the new wheels. Gears will be updated to premium racer tested sets. Body styles will be race car oriented. The racer line will be augmented with a series of hop up parts to help you achieve maximum performance from your car. Hop Ups will include silicon sponges, racer style independent front wheels, braided pick up shoes, re-wound can motors, brass crown and pinion gears, and unique racer style bodies.

Both series will run! Bodies will be interchangeable! New packaging for our cars will include the latest information and feedback to help you optimize your tuning and chassis. Our website will also be updated to include a tips section where you can learn about and share your RiggenHo improvements.

We are also very interested in re-invigorating the racer market and will be sponsoring races around the country which feature a “brass war” theme including RiggenHO, Dynabrutes, Cobramites, TycoPro’s and Super2’s. Please contact us for information about a “Club Racer” kit.

The first sponsored race will be on June 25, 2005 at NJ Nostalgia Hobby. Click for details! There will be a Riggen HO race at 1 PM on that day and a Brass Wars race (Riggen HO, Tyco Pro, Cobramite and Dynabrute) following. For more information on the race please contact me at njhobby@aol.com