| 9/15/2022 |
The racing season is finally kicking off. We just received a great 'Pit Pic' from our friend Charles Yates of his dialed Rev 8.5. Charles races at Soda City Raceway in Columbia South Carolina. Have a super day and stay safe.-Bruce  |
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| 2/10/2022 |
Well...the past couple of years have not been great for RC Racing...or much of anything that involves groups of friends. LOL. Hopefully, that is all behind us now. The Snowbird Nationals went off on the 1st through the 6th of this month, and although not quite up to full participation, it was certainly a really big step in the correct direction. Let's hope everyone can get back to a normal life... of racing. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 12/20/2021 |
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| 5/16/2021 |
We received a couple of cool pics from one of our French customers Christian Duverny. Christian runs a RoadKill 10 on what looks to be a beautiful asphalt race track. Christian actually uses the Carpet version of the RoadKill 10 on his asphalt track. We have a few customers that do that. They find the narrower chassis really gets rid of any chassis drag in the corners. However, most of those drivers are running Shorty 7.4 packs, so they still have plenty of room on the chassis for everything. Christian actually runs a full size 7.4, and has off-set his pack to one side just a little to make room for all of his electronics. Pretty cool idea, and well executed. I'm sure he is on a large track and he needs all those electrons. Great pictures. Thanks Christian. We love getting pics of what and where you guys are racing. Just send us some info along with a decent photo to bruce@teamspeedmerchant.com and we will be happy to get you up on the News feed. Take care.-Bruce
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| 3/14/2021 |
Congratulations to the self proclaimed "Sexiest man in RC" Steve Boice! Steve Top Qualified and Won the new Rubber Tire GT12 Class at the R.O.A.R. Nationals held at Coastal RC Speedway in Chesapeake, VA. He ran one of his original Rev 8.5's before we even changed to the new Aluminum short tubes. Pretty cool. The race just finished this afternoon and Steve sent me a couple of pictures from the road. I'll get a full race report up with his car set-up and more pics later this week. Take care.-Bruce
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| 1/16/2021 |
Welcome to 2021! Congrats to our friend Andy Zakis. Andy races at the famous MMR Raceway in beautiful Minnesota. MMR recently re-opened to the public after closing for most of the last calendar year due to Covid. MMR kicked off the new year by offering up a 12th Scale Pro-Lite class featuring the new Rubber 12th scale tires made by https://sjttires.com/ . The class looks to be a big hit, and the 12th scale rubber tires should be coming to your local track soon. Make sure and ask your track owner to get them in the shop. The save a lot of time and money for the average racer. Congrats again Andy! I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year! It will be great to get back to racing. Take care.-Bruce   |
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| 12/23/2020 |
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| 10/10/2020 |
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| 10/01/2020 |
So..... that summer was much too short. Here we are, Fall again. This year's racing season is bound to look a lot different than last. Hopefully, your local track can be up and running and everyone can follow protocols so your track can stay up and running. If you haven't checked them out yet, long time friend Scott Jakes has been working very hard on a viable rubber tire for 12th scale racing. He and his crew have done a lot of testing over the past year, and he finally has a very cool and very good product going out the door. I highly recommended asking your local track to give them a try. It will save racers a lot of money and time, and in my opinion it will make racing much better than what we have at the moment. Scott's website for the tires is HERE.. I know right now his 1st batch is already sold out, but more are on the way. Shoot him an e-mail and get your local track on board. You won't be sorry. Have a Spooky Halloween. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 03/15/2020 |
The one good thing about the Corona Virus is that you get to catch up on stuff.... like this website. LOL. I hope everyone out there had a safe and wonderful Winter. We got a couple of nice pics from our friend Matt Bayless. Matt set a new record at his home track with his Rev 8.5 a few weeks back. We love getting pics of what and where you guys are racing. Just send us some info along with a decent photo to bruce@teamspeedmerchant.com and we will be happy to get you up on the News feed. Have a super day and stay safe.-Bruce
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| 12/24/20189 |
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| 07/11/2019 |
We just got a great pic of Chris and his SpeedMerchant World GT that he uses for oval racing at Southern Indiana RC Speedway in Clarksville, Indiana. You can check out their track here ... http://www.southernindianarcspeedway.com/ It looks like a really nice facility. Congrats on your win Chris! We love getting pics of what and where you guys are racing. Just send us some info along with a decent photo to bruce@teamspeedmerchant.com and we will be happy to get you up on the News feed. Have a super day.-Bruce  |
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| 06/30/2019 |
Congratulations to the self proclaimed 'Sexiest Man in RC', Steve Boice for a super weekend at 386 Raceway's Annual Bash at the Beach. Steve TQ'd and Won both 12th Scale 17.5 and World GTR, as well as taking a 3rd in the A-Main in 13.5 12th scale. Great job Steve!!! I hope everyone is having an awesome Summer. Take care.-Bruce  |
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| 12/23/2018 |
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| 11/19/2018 |
Hi Guys, A HUGE congratulations goes out to our long time friend & driver Larry 'Team Tamale' Bradshaw for absolutely dominating the World GT-R class at this year's International Indoor Championships in Las Vegas. The SpeedMerchant World GT5-R prototype TQ'd and Won last year's IIC with Johnny Carey driving, while Larry nabbed 3rd in the A-Main with his. This year, Larry drove the production model for the Win! Larry is SpeedMerchant's de facto World GT-Rubber expert, he does more testing & racing than anyone else on the team with the GT-Rubber tire cars, and it shows. Larry's World GT5-R was completely dialed the moment he put it down in Las Vegas. He dominated the GT-Rubber class with incredible consistency from Q1 through the Triple A-Mains. He TQ'd every round of qualifying, going quicker each run. He then went on to win the 1st and 2nd A-Mains...both quicker than the run before. That is really, really hard to do with how close the competition generally is in Spec base classes. I went back and looked at his Vegas runs... Qualifier #1 19 Laps @ 5:13 Qualifier #2 19 Laps @ 5:11 Qualifier #3 19 Laps @ 5:10 Qualifier #4 19 Laps @ 5:10 A-Main #1 19 Laps @ 5:10 A-Main #2 19 Laps @ 5:08 Just insane consistency over the course of 3-days. Also, Larry was the only World GT-R driver to crack the 19-lap barrier (which he did every run), and also the only World GT-R driver to break into the 15 second lap range. A superb job by a great guy who puts the hours of practice in, that it takes to get to the top of the podium. I think we're going to have to move him up to 12th Modified. Great Job Larry! We're proud of you. The SpeedMerchant World GT5-R kit can be found HERE.
Have a great week. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 10/14/2018 |
Hi Guys, Big congratulations to Andrew Mowery for taking the win at the 1st Annual New York Grand Prix! The race featured the new Can-Am hand out motors and fixed gear ratios to help even the playing field for all of the racers. It was a big success. The motors were incredibly close to each other, and it was car and driver that separated you from your competitors. Qualifying was crazy close with just a handful of seconds covering the entire A-Main field. It was a Triple A-Main format with Andrew taking the wins in A-1 and A-2 allowing him to sit out and spectate A-3. Andrew runs his Rev 8.5 in the in-line configuration, and proved to not only be quick, but to really have more corner efficiency than the other cars in the A-Main. His 8.5I's lap times fell-off less than any of his competitors during an 8-minute heat, allowing him to consistently pull away from the field in the final minutes of each race. Great job Andrew!
Have a great week. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 09/28/2018 |
Hi Guys, I hope everyone had a great summer. We are gearing up for the new racing season, and hope you are too. The SpeedMerchant crew will be out of the office from Friday, September 28th through Monday, October 8th. All orders received during that time period will start to ship on Tuesday October 9th. Unfortunately, we will miss 360 Raceways 1st Annual New York Gran Prix. It looks to be a killer event with drivers from around the globe coming in to compete. You can follow the race at 360's Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/360v2/ and all the racing will be covered by LiveRC for live race day viewing http://360v2.liverc.com/ Good luck to all of the competitors. Have a great week. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 06/25/2018 |
Hope everyone is having a great summer so far. Congratulations to Steve Boice for Top Qualifying and Winning 386 Raceway's 2018 Bash at the Beach. This was Steve's first run with his new production World GT5-R and he said his car was amazing all weekend long. The new car has a lot more steering while not sacrificing any stability. Steve's World GT5-R was a full 2 tenths quicker on fast lap than his nearest competitor! Great job Steve....even if you are a complete goofball. Take care.-Bruce
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| 04/26/2018 |
Click the box cover to go to the kit page. Take care.-Bruce  |
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| 04/26/2018 |
Click the pics for large format. Have a great day.-Bruce
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| 04/24/2018 |
Kits will be available online to order in a day or two. Take care.-Bruce  |
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| 04/21/2018 |
Hi Guys, I hope everyone is doing well. Up here in the North East, Winter is still hanging on well into Spring. We have a bunch of race reports to catch up on from the last couple of months. The team had a great season! I'll start back in February and bring us right up to last weekend. In February, the super cool MMR Raceway held the MMR Challenge. In 17.5 Andrew Mowery took the TQ and Win, while in 13.5 Andrew took the TQ and Win again with Scott Jakes brining home 2nd with his Rev 8.5. The MMR track has lots of SpeedMerchants running around it, and they were nice enough to grab a picture of some of them that attended the race. Great job guys!
Every March it's time for the ROAR Carpet Nationals, this time down at Eric Anderson's track in TN. Awesome facility ran by a great guy. Team driver Andrew Mowery had a terrific weekend throwing his Rev 8.5's Inline cars solidly in both the 17.5 A-Main as well as the 13.5 A-Main.
Next up in March was the very well attended 2018 Canadian On-Road Carpet Nationals. This year's race had almost 500 entries!!! I was planning on going to this race for months, but we had a snow storm roll through on the day of my departure, and all the flights out of Logan airport were cancelled. The earliest I could get out was on Friday morning, and that just seemed like a waste of time and effort at that point. Very disappointing. Luckily the two people I was traveling with..... Scott Jakes and John 'Team Scream' Cravotta got out the day before and were able to attend. I'm really looking forward to going next season. The race looks great. We've been running variants of our new World GT5-R all season long, with a TQ & Win at Vegas for the one prototype, and then a few in the A-Main at the Birds with another podium finish, but this race was going to have all the guys running the exact same production version of the new car. To be able to dial in a set-up of a new car with a few team guys, on a really high bite track would have been invaluable. Not so, said Mother Nature. LOL. As usual, the guys still did great without me. Johnny Carey who has been on a tear all season long kept it up at the Canadian Nats. He Top Qualified and won Pro 10 class, leading a sweep of the podium positions for SpeedMerchant RoadKill 10's. Joining Johnny on the podium was Ken Miller in 2nd and John Carey in 3rd. Great job guys! In the World GTR class we had 4 of the new GT5-R's entered, and all 4 made the A-Main. All four guys did great with Johnny really laying it down. Johnny qualified 2nd for the A-Main after only finishing 2 of the qualifiers because of his new tires coming unglued. Still he qualified in the number 2 position just six 100th's of a second off of TQ. In the first of the Triple A-Mains, Johnny and his new World GT5-R scorched the field, driving away to an easy 5 second victory and turning an 18.73 second fast lap for the event in World GT-R class! As a matter of fact, Johnny had fast lap in all 3 of the A-Mains. In the 2nd and 3rd A-Mains Johnny had another tire come un-glued and then some traffic/body tuck in the 3rd that kept him off of the top of the podium. Still, we couldn't be happier with the results. The new 5-R is a lot quicker than the 4-R it's replacing, and that was the goal. Johnny said he could turn under every other car in the field without even the hint of traction rolling. Four cars entered in a big field, all four in the A! Congrats to Johnny, Scott Jakes, John 'Team Scream' Cravota and John Carey for your A-Main runs! I wish I had some more pictures to post, but the race was so big, that a lot of the guys (including Scott and John C.) actually had to bail before the 3rd A-Main so they could make it to the airport on time.
The first week in April we go overseas for the 2018 European Championships. Our 'French Assassin' Arnaud Lemperiere hit the ground running with fast and consistent runs all through practice. Talking to Arnaud, he said he was a little down on horsepower, and the motor he had ordered and intended to run (the favorite at the race) never made it to him before he had to leave for the event. Still you could hardly tell. Against 93 of the quickest European drivers, Arnaud finished 5th in the A-Main! He said his Rev 8.5 was 'perfect', and just got better as the weekend went along. Great job Arnaud! Congratulations!
Just two weeks ago, the USVTA Scale Nationals were held at the beautiful Windy City RC track in Chicago. This is a rubber tire event that didn't feature a World GT-R class, so what was SpeedMerchant driver Andrew Mowery running??? Well, for at least a few seasons, the guys have been quietly nudging me to make a Formula One car. I've honesty not been a big fan of the class, and that's primarily what has held me back from doing one. Also, when we go to these 'big' races, there is already a million classes for the guys to run. Sooner or later, you have to get out of the building and have some fun, enjoy the weather, get a meal... something besides sitting in your pits staring at your car. LOL. That being said, the F1 cars have improved a ton in the past two seasons. They look better, handle better and the racing seems to be a lot more competitive than it was just a short while ago. Coincidently, our good friend Larry 'Team Tamale' Bradshaw had been working on throwing an F1 front suspension of his own design onto the chassis of our new World GT5-R. Larry is one of the quickest World GT-R drivers in the country (3rd in the A-Main at Vegas last season), and he wanted to replicate the feel of his SpeedMerchant World GT-R car in the form factor of an F1. So...long story short. I cut some custom parts for Larry to test, he got the car built and on the track for one night of trimming & testing, and we bundled it up and overnighted it to Andrew so he could take it to The USVTA Champs for some serious testing. How did it go??? TQ and Win at its first event!!! Also, a ton of real black carpet data to work with. Andrew worked with the car all weekend long, and he said it just kept getting better and better. To the point where he said it was very easy to drive and really came out of the corners well. Great job as always Andrew! So...I got the car back at the shop, cut some new parts, got her rebuilt, and she's off to Florida to compete at the R.O.A.R. Asphalt Nationals next weekend with Steve Boice taking over the piloting skills. Getting asphalt testing in right after getting high traction Black carpet testing done, at two National level events in just a couple of weeks time, is just too cool from a design stand point. After the race, I'll have Steve send back the car, and we'll make a few final decisions and get some real prototypes cut for the team guys for weekly testing. Should be fun. It's always cool making something that works well that doesn't look like everything else on the market.
Wow....we're almost caught up. Just last week the Minnesota State Champ Series was held at MMR Raceway. SpeedMerchant cars took three of the titles with Andrew 'Always Racing' Mowery taking the wins in both 17.5 and 13.5 12th scale. While Andy Zakis brought home the 21.5 Spec Championship with his SpeedMerchant. Awesome job Guys!!!
That's it!!! Crap... that was a lot of race reports. Congratulations again to all the guys that put so much effort into this hobby. It's always fun to see it pay off in the pictures above. Let's hope for Spring to roll in here a little quicker over the next few weeks. We could all use (at least up here) some sun on our faces & some lines in the water. Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 03/01/2018 |
Hi Guys, I now have full upper arm suspension reactive kits tailored to high traction Black Carpet for our New School suspension available in the shop. The kits come with the new 3D printed suspension blocks that the team guys have been testing for the past season with excellent results. As well as working great, we haven't had a single broken block thus far. The blocks come printed in white, but with a minute or two and a Black Sharpie, they look like they were molded in black nylon. The revised suspension geometry shines on the high traction Black carpet found throughout the U.S. The kits come with everything you need to replace the upper arms on your regular New School Suspension. This way, you have both complete set-ups, and you can swap out your stock solid upper arms to your new reactive upper arms in no time at all. Take off the top King Pin e-clip, remove the two 4-40 screws holding the Blocks on and you're done. Too easy. The new blocks and arms work really, really well on our 12th scales and the World GT-Rubber cars. The overall feel is a little less touchy, easier to drive on center, less tippy, and more steering in the middle/out of a turn. The team guys still prefer to run the stock New School suspension on their RoadKills, because of its more aggressive nature and the way it attacks a corner. The standard New School is also a little better on the less tacky grey Ozite we used to race on. Just an awesome tuning feature to have in your pit box. To be able to change the entire feel of your car with just a few minutes work is pretty cool. If you don't need all the extra stuff and you just would like to order the Blocks, you can always visit our Shapeways store HERE. You want to order the *New* 5 degree blocks...both left and right. If ordering just the blocks from Shapeways, you will also have to ream the upper hinge pin holes with a 2mm drill bit. You want the hinge pins to press in fairly tight...don't over ream. The new kits are part #7051. Have fun!-Bruce
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| 02/24/2018 |
Hi Guys, I've got a couple of new Back Plate/30mm Fan Mounts available for our cars. We've been testing them since Vegas this season, and Johnny Carey just had one on his RoadKill at the Birds, it worked really well. The RoadKills with a single Bottom Plate Fan mounted at the end of the motor were coming off the track around 150 degrees. Johnny's car was consistently around 125 degrees with the same motor/gearing and the new Back Plate Fan mount. I made the back plates for both the RoadKills as well as our Rev8.5's and World GT's. The single cell cars probably don't/won't need a rear fan too much, but if you're into over gearing, or you run during the hot summer months, it might not be a bad option. The pictures below are of the Rev 8, 8.5, WGT4, WGT4-R & WGT5-R Back Plates #1821. The new RoadKill 10 Back Plate is part #1889. The Back Plates come tapped 4-40 and include two 4-40 x 1/2" Cap Head Screws for mounting your standard 30mm cooling fan. (30mm Fan NOT included) Have a great week.-Bruce
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| 02/23/2018 |
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| 02/10/2018 |
 Hi Guys, We're back from the Birds! Another great week of racing put on by Mike Boylan and his awesome race crew in sunny Florida. Congratulations to Johnny Carey for Top Qualifying and winning Pro 10 this year. This was Johnny's first race with his new RoadKill Carpet, and he was dialed right from the get go. Top qualifying over the likes of Ray Darroch, Arnaud Lemperiere and Andrew Mowery as well as a bevy of fast guys is really something to be proud of. This year's Pro 10 class at the Birds ran a 17.5 motor (like Vegas earlier this season), and it made for some great racing. The switch from 13.5 motors last year, to this year's 17.5's has taken about a half second out of the cars fast lap, but most importantly, it has slowed the corner speed down to a more manageble tempo. The cars are still super fast, but even easier to drive with the 17.5's. Much like the IIC in Vegas earlier this season, the new Pro 10's ran half a second slower than the Mod 12th scale cars. Our friend Donny Lia's Roche 12th scale clocked in a 7.8 second fast lap in the A-Main, Johnny's RoadKill laid down an 8.3. Exactly one half second behind, but still waaaay quicker than any other class at the race. For reference, Destiny's Yugo Nagashima threw down a 9.3 fast lap on the way to winning the A-Main in Sedan Modified. A full second off of Johnny's quick lap. The rest of the SpeedMerchant team had a great week also. Sharing the podium with Johnny in the Pro 10 A-Main was our very own 'French Assasin' Arnaud Lemperiere in 2nd and long time friend Ray Darroch taking 3rd. In all, there were 6 RoadKills in the A-Main. You can check out the Pro 10 A-Main on YouTube by clicking HERE. It's a great race with Johnny taking the hole shot and Arnaud making a late race charge. Pretty cool, because you have two driver's running the same chassis with very similar set-ups, but pretty different driving styles. Johnny is very much an old school 12th stock racer who really emphasizes linear footage in his driving style. While Arnaud runs mostly 12th Modified and 10.5 over in France, so he in turn has a much more flowing and open line. In the ever competitive 17.5 12th scale class, the 'French Assasin' came through again with an awesome A-Main run taking 4th overall, just 3 one hundredths of a second behind Team Associated's Joe Trandell in 3rd. The really cool thing about Arnaud's performance in 12th scale....it was the FIRST time he had ever run with a 17.5 motor in his 12th scale! His pace picked up all week long as he figured out the nuances of squeezing the last drop of speed out of a 17.5 car. Another great race to watch on YouTube right HERE. Arnaud, in the bright orange Rev 8.5, Joe Trandell (Associated), Jeff Dayger (CRC), and Mike Hanulec (Roche) have a wicked battle for that 4th position for the first half of the race. From about the 5 minute mark to the 7:45 mark Arnaud absolutely works Jeff Dayger over without Dayger flinching a bit. Arnaud ends up making a crazy clean pass with 15 seconds to go for 4th place and then set his sights on Joe for 3rd, but ran out of time. Great job Arnaud! In the World GT-R Rubber tire class, we had 3 cars entered with all 3 making the A-Main. Our Pro 10 Winner, Johnny Carey took a podium spot with a 3rd place finish. Johnny TQ'd and Won World GT-R class earlier this season at the Las Vegas Indoor Champs. Long time SpeedMerchant driver Scott Jakes brought home 6th and Team Scream's very own John Cravotta ended up in 9th after his sensor wire got pulled out in a skirmish at the beginning of the race. Great job guys! We've started testing some new parts and suspension geometry this season on our World GT-R cars. Originally, when the class 1st started a few years ago, we just took our dominating World GT4 Foam car, made a couple of small changes, and made that our World GT-R Rubber car. The car has worked very well and has numerous regional and National level titles. Unfortunately, the World GT-R class as a whole is run in several pockets across the U.S. and Canada, but except for our GT-R guru Larry Bradshaw, none of my team guys have a track that race WGT-R as a weekly class. So, for us our only real 'testing' with these cars comes at big events like Vegas, Cleveland or the Birds. With Larry's input and Johnny's Vegas TQ & Win as well as this podium at the Birds we have a much better handle on what these cars need to be truly quick around a carpet track. You can look for our new World GT5-R to released in just a couple of weeks. Spoiler...it's sweeeet. Another great Snowbirds in the books. I went back and looked, SpeedMerchant has been to every Birds since 2003! 15 years of Sunny Florida and great racing. From someone coming from cold and icey New England every February....Thanks Mike. Couple of pictures from the race below... Have a great week.-Bruce
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| 01/29/2018 |
Hi Guys, We're off to the Snowbirds. We'll be out of the office from the Jan 29th - Feb 5th. All orders placed during the week will be processed starting the 6th and shipped out immediately. You can follow the race at www.http://snowbirdnationals.com/ and also watch the race on Live RC as well as Facebook. I think this is our 14th or 15th year sponsoring the event, and Mike Boylan and his crew always do an awesome job. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 1/23/2018 |
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| 12/23/2017 |
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| 12/03/2017 |
Hi Guys, I have the RoadKill Carpet Kits up in the shop. Click HERE to go to the order page.  Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 12/02/2017 |
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| 11/19/2017 |
Hi Guys, I Hope everyone is having a good November. It's feeling a lot like winter in the North East. I uploaded the majority of the new Rev 8.5 and RoadKill 10 Carpet individual parts. They can be found on HERE. Some of the pictures will take a few hours to propagate on the servers, but I checked all the links and everything seems to be working fine. Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 11/11/2017 |
Congratulation to our French ace pilot Arnaud Lemperiere for placing 4th at this year's Masters of Foam held in the Netherlands. Arnaud started out strong with a TQ run in the 1st qualifier over the likes of Team Associated's Mark Styles and Roche's Ollie Payne. Unfortunately, as traction came up Arnaud waited too little long to change his tires preference and ended up qualifying 3rd in the A-Main. Still a great performance! Congrats Arnaud...Great Job!!!  |
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| 11/10/2017 |
 Hi Guys, First off. Happy Veteran's Day! A big thank you to all of the military men and women, past and present for giving my children a safe and happy place to grow up. The Rev 8.5 is on-line for order. Part #1803. Order Page is HERE. I will also have the rest of the new parts on-line tonight. Furthermore, we'll be offering a complete Tweak/Top Plate/Damper Tube/Battery Holder Conversion available for you guys that want to update your Rev.8's, so you don't have to buy a whole new kit. Finally, we'll also have our new Reactive Front End Conversion for our New School Suspension available soon. These are the same parts that we debuted at Vegas and Steve Boice had on his Halloween Classic Winner last month. As always, thank you, and have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 11/09/2017 |
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| 11/06/2017 |
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| 11/05/2017 |
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| 11/02/2017 |
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| 10/29/2017 |
Hi Guys, Big Congratulations to Steven Boice for taking the win at this year's Halloween Classic in lovely Ohio. Steve started the season off very well putting all 3 of his cars in the A-Mains in Las Vegas last month including an awesome 3rd on the grid with his new Rev 8.5 in the very competitive 17.5 class. Steve certainly showed that his race pace from Vegas was no fluke. He started fast and ran up at the front all weekend long in the ultra competitive 17.5 class at the Classic. This year's 17.5 class was closer than ever due to the return of "hand-out" motors for the 17.5 12th scale class. Team Scream supplied the motors, and they were virtually identical to each other. To win the race you were going to have to out drive and have a better/more efficient car than the person standing next to you on the driver's stand. This was proven by the fact that everyone in the top 15 positions ran within a 10th of a second of each other on "fast lap". That hasn't happened at a big race in a looong time. Almost always, the top 2 or 3 cars are a couple of 10ths quicker than the rest of the A-Main field. Not so at the Classic. The handout motors really evened the playing field. After Saturday's 3 qualifiers, Steve was 3rd on the A-Main grid. The top 3 cars were actually separated by only two 10ths of a second! Steve would have Sunday morning's last chance qualifier to try to grab TQ. As it turns out, Steve would win the Sunday morning A heat, but because the track had dried out a little over night, his pace was just off of a new TQ. Still, he was super happy with his car, it was finishing better than the guys he was racing against and he had basically just won the same race with the same people that he would run with later in the day. The A-Main was actually pretty uneventful for Steve. At the tone 1st-4th took off in line and formed a train. It was a little hectic from 5th back, but the front four guys got away clean. Right before the 2 minute mark, 2nd place Mike Hanulec, tapped a board and Steve grabbed that position. He quickly closed in on the leader, and tucked in behind waiting for an opening to pass. Steve followed Wayne Gerber for the next several minutes applying pressure and hoping for a mistake to capitalize on. That came right around the 6 minute mark when Wayne just tapped a corner and went a little wide. Steve pounced on his opportunity and grabbed the lead. Steve described the last 2 minutes as "smooth sailing". His 8.5 was finishing races really well since the beginning of the weekend, and in the A-Main it was even better. He was able to run a fairly open line and stay in front of the pack for the rest of the A-Main, taking the win. Very rarely (especially in Stock/17.5 Class), can you run any pace except 110%. If you aren't pushing, you're not on pace. For Steve to actually lay off the pace a little after taking the lead is a testament to the new 8.5's efficiency. Great job Steve! Some pictures below and the new parts should be on-line in a day or two. Take care.-Bruce
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| 10/17/2017 |
Hi Guys, Back from another great week at the International Indoor Championships held at the Westgate Resort in Las Vegas. Scotty Ernst and his crew did an awesome job as always, putting on the premier Carpet On-Road race of the season! First off, congratulations to Johnny Carey and Donnie Lia for both Top Qualifying and Winning World GT-R and the Pro-10 classes respectively. Johnny actually borrowed his Dad's SpeedMerchant World GT-R just a few days before the race. His Dad was signed up for the Vegas race, but had to cancel last second, so Johnny decided to run the class in his place. Turned out to be a great decision. Johnny set the pace early in practice with only Larry Bradshaw (Team Tamale) able to put up a fight. Larry just TQ'd and Won the Full Throttle Champs 2-day race a couple of weeks before Vegas. In qualifying, Johnny was unstoppable. He TQ'd every round of qualifying, and took the A-Main win, wire to wire. Larry ended up taking 3rd in the A-Main with his World GT4-R. Long time racer Pete Dardarian threw his SpeedMerchant GT4-R in the A-Main also, but had some bad luck and broke in the main. Great job guys! You can watch the World GT-R A-Main on You Tube by clicking HERE.
In Pro-10 class this year, it was decided to move down to 17.5 motors from the 13.5 motors they ran last season. Although the 13.5 cars handled great, the speed of them on an indoor carpet track, especially the brutal corner speed, made them quite a handful in traffic. As a matter of fact, last year's 13.5 Pro-10's were either tied or faster than the 12th Modified cars at all the big races last season. The goal this year was to take about half a second out of the class, and make the cars easier to drive for the average racer. That ended up being exactly what we did, with Donnie Lia turning a fast lap of 12.8 in the Pro-10 A-Main, while Team Associated's 12th Modified TQ and Winner Kevin Hebert turned a 12.3 fast lap in his A-Main. Although we slowed them down, they certainly aren't slow by any means. Just for a comparison, Yokomo's Ronald Volker's fast lap while winning the Modified sedan race was a 14.0.....1.2 seconds slower than Donnie's RoadKill 10. The only other class that is even in the same zip code as a Pro-10 is the 13.5 12th scale class, and they are still a second a drift behind a Pro-10 around the track. A Super Stock (13.5) Sedan is over 2 seconds a lap slower, 17.5 Stock Sedan....3 seconds and an F1 car is coming up on 4 seconds slower than a Pro-10 car on a single lap. The neat thing about the Pro-10 cars, is they are waaaaay easier to drive than cars going much, much slower than them. I would say, the only cars in the building even remotely as easy and forgiving to drive as a Pro-10 are the World GT-R Rubber cars, and they are running almost 5 seconds a lap slower. The SpeedMerchant crew laid it down in qualifying, with Donnie Lia taking the top spot with a 23 lap run. The only other 23 lap runs of the week were by SpeedMerchant's Steven Boice(2nd) and Andrew Mowrey(3rd)! CRC's Brian Wynn and Mario Ficco qualified 4th and 5th with their new Pro-10 test cars, and the rest of the A-Main was filled with five more SpeedMerchant RoadKills and a Roche Rapid P10W. In the main, Donnie took the hole shot with Steve close in tow, Andrew just a little behind those two. At the minute mark, Andrew had gapped Brian in 4th and was starting to reel in Steve when he touched a wall and blew out his spur gear. Bad luck for Andrew after qualifying 3rd. After that, Donnie and Steve pulled away from the field with Donnie moving into a comfortable lead by the half way mark. Scott Jakes also had a great race moving up to 4th spot finishing just a second behind CRC's Brian Wynn in 3rd. TQ, 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th and 9th...another year of domination! You can check out the awesome Pro-10 A-Main on You Tube by clicking HERE.
In the hyper competitive 12th scale 17.5 class SpeedMerchant's Steven Boice threw his new Rev 8.5 3rd on the A-Main grid, just hundredths of a second behind XRays Craig'X-Man'Xavier. Andrew Mowrey put his Rev 8.5i (Inline only variant) 7th on the A-Main grid less than 2 seconds behind Steve. As a matter of fact, 2nd through 10th in the A-Main was covered by under 3 seconds. Crazy close qualifying. Big congratulations goes out to Steve. He's truly one of the good guys in the hobby. He's been racing forever, but has more than a full-time job, two beautiful daughters and a loving wife that take up 99.9% of his time. He doesn't have a local track to practice at, and for the most part just does a few big races a year with less than a handful of practice days thrown in. To put a car he just built a couple of weeks ago, 3rd in the 12th 17.5 A Main at Vegas is really quite remarkable. Obviously, I'm pretty sure his performance was due directly to his new Rev 8.5, but he probably drove alright too. LOL. Another big congrats goes out to Andrew Mowery. Andrew runs MMR Raceway in Minnesota, and works incredibly hard to give his locals an awesome facility. Andrew made all 3 of his A-Mains entered at Vegas, and the really cool thing is Andrew probably runs the only in-line 12th scale at these national level black carpet races. A few years ago, when the industry switched from Grey Ozite carpet to the new Black high traction carpet, pretty much everyone in 12th scale went to battery transverse cars. They were a little easier to drive with less static weight on the front tires, and just generally easier to set up and run quick on the new carpet. Not Andrew. LOL. He's stuck it out, always preferring the extra high speed steering and ultra-quick transition speed of an in-line car over the transverse. To satiate Andrew's hunger for an in-line car I drew up an in line only variant of our new Rev 8.5. The 8.5i has a narrower chassis with swept in side links. Not only does it work great, it is super sexy looking. Besides the in-line only chassis, it has the exact same parts and suspension geometry as the regular 8.5. By the way, the new Rev 8.5 can actually be run as an inline as well as transverse battery car, it's just that Andrew is such a huge pain in the a$$ we made him his own version to shut him up. LOL.  Andrew Mowrey, Donnie Lia and Steve Boice's RoadKill 10's ready to go! All the new cars and parts will be available to purchase on line very soon. We just got in our new Damper Tubes, and they look (and work) great. All the guys at Vegas switched over to the prototypes at the beginning of the week. I'll have new Tweak Braces and Top Plates available for all of our current (Rev.8, World GT4, World GT4-R & RoadKill 10) cars to switch over to the new style damper tubes. The new Rev 8.5 and RoadKill 10 Carpet, and the 8.5i variant Chassis/Bottom Plate along with all the other new parts and hardware should be on-line this week. I might not have pictures or renders done quite yet, but the parts will be there to order. You can keep your eyes on this News section for all the updates. Pictures from Vegas below. I hope everyone had a great Summer. Have a safe and happy Fall. Take care.-Bruce
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| 9/6/2017 |
Hi Guys, I hope everyone had a great summer. Time flies!!! I apologize for not keeping up with my News section updates. Just busy with family stuff. 10 year old twins, boating, fishing, swimming, karate, cheering, etc. etc. etc. A lot of you know the drill. LOL. We had a super year, and are getting all geared up for the upcoming carpet season. We just talked to Scotty Ernst and confirmed our Sponsorship for this year's International Indoor Championships in Las Vegas. We've sponsored the Las Vegas Indoor Champs every year since its inception, and as always, you can find us at the 1st table when you walk into the track. Come and visit October 1st-7th at the Westgate Resort. We have a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipeline for the 2017-2018 indoor season. We will be releasing the New Rev 8.5 & our RoadKill 10 Carpet version in the next couple of weeks. The 8.5 is the culmination of testing over the past two seasons. We set our goal on making the new car easier and smoother to drive on the high bight Black carpet, while still possessing all the traits that made it so good on the gray/European carpets. On the RoadKill we've really focused on making it a Carpet killer. The original RoadKill 10 was designed to work on everything from huge high speed asphalt tracks as well as indoor carpet tracks during the winter season. Obviously the car worked great with Chris Tossolini absolutely dominating lasts year's Pro 10 class at the major races. As a matter of fact, Chris's RoadKill was a full 10th of a second quicker on fast lap than the fastest 12th scale Modified drivers at every single national level race. Changes for this season include taking some weight out of the chassis, narrowing her up for less carpet rub, some small changes on suspension geometry garnered from the team's testing, and the new bumper is designed specifically for the ProtoForm Swift 235 body. It lets the front of the body sit right on the bumper which makes mounting the body super easy, as well as increasing durability and high speed steering. Along with our Swift Side Dams smr8000 & smr8002, the Swift Body is amazing on carpet. We will still sell the original RoadKill chassis with updated bottom plate (for a fan), for all of you asphalt drivers out there. We just got in our new Front Titanium Axles. They will be included on all of our kits in the future. The Aluminum Steering Blocks will now come left had tapped so the new axles can screw in and out for easy replacement. Although, in the past 3 years of testing I've seen exactly one bent Titanium axle, and that was on Josh Cyrul's Rev.8 Modified car on Asphalt, clipping and exposed 2" x 4" on the back straight. We've never (knock on wood) bent one on carpet. The New axles use are the same part number as the old ones smr1289, and the steering blocks have been updated too...5025 Black. The other big change on the cars will be our new Damper Tubes. Waaaay back when I drew up the original CarpetKnife (didn't have a name back then...just "Bruce's car"), I had a single Bolink Damper Tube taking care of side to side dampening. The damper tubes were readily available direct from Bolink, and they were by far, the best and most consistent tubes on the market. When I drew my first update to my car....the CarpetKnife Rev.2, I switched to dual Damper Tubes for better and again, more consistent dampening. In testing, I never liked the available Aluminum tubes. You could build 10 of them and half would just feel too different in dampening compared to each other. The tolerances of extruded aluminum tubing and plastic rods just weren't up to par. Unfortunately, shortly after I released the Rev.3 (now split from CRC), Bolink was going through some changes, and couldn't keep up with our damper tube orders. In turn, I found a machinist that could not only replicate the Bolink tubs, but actually make them even better. I changed the internal ribbing profile a little, and had the new Tubes made out of the highest quality black Delrin, with both pieces (male and female) being turned on a Swiss Screw Machine for super tight tolerances. For years and years, I've had my same machinist cutting SpeedMerchant's damper tubes...always high quality and consistency, batch to batch. Well, my machinist retired this winter, so it's time for a re-design. Over the past several years, there are now several companies making really nice aluminum damper tubes. We tested some at the end of last year, and they were indistinguishable from our own on the track. So we have new tubes...a little shorter, black anodized aluminum, and I switched them up to 4-40 ball ends. They look cool and work great. I'll have pictures & part #'s up of the new cars and parts very shortly. I don't think I'm going to do a pre-order, but if you would like a Rev 8.5 or a RoadKill 10 Carpet for Vegas, you can e-mail me and I'll get one out the door to you... toot sweet. bruce@teamspeedmerchant.com Take care.-Bruce |
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| 10/15/2016 |
 Hi Guys, Vegas was awesome! Our guys did great, with 12th and 10th cars in all the A-Mains. I'll have the race report up by the beginning of next week. Pro 10 was crazy cool. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 09/24/2016 |
 Congratulations to Ken Moss for winning the 2016 R.O.A.R. On-Road Paved Nationals! Ken and Steve Boice finished 1st and 2nd in the Triple A-Main format with Steve taking TQ for the class also. Ken was flawless in the A-Mains taking the wins in the 1st and 2nd A-Mains letting him sit out the 3rd with a perfect score. Ken and Steve both ran their stock World GT4's with standard New School front suspensions. The same cars they run during carpet season. Great job Guys! TQ, 1st and 2nd...Can't do much better than that!
Take care.-Bruce |
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| 09/10/2016 |
Hi Guys,
I hope everyone is enjoying the summer. It will be ending all too soon. Kids are back in school and the nights are starting to get a little cooler. I just received a batch of McFactory Rev.8 Aluminum Chassis, and the Aluminum RoadKill 10 chassis are on their way. I will put both up for sale today. The Rev.8 chassis will ship at the beginning of the week, the RoadKills should ship the following week. Unfortunately, both sets of chassis are probably going to sell out fairly quickly. If you want one, I would recommend jumping on it while it's still there. I already have more on order, but with how busy McFactory is, and the indoor carpet season under way, we might not see any more until after the Vegas race. Too save customers money (and generally just not be wasteful), I'm also going to offer the Rev.8 and the RoadKill 10 full kits without the carbon fiber Chassis & Bottom Plates. This will include everything in a full kit except the Carbon Fiber Chassis and Bottom Plate. Every nut, bolt, bearing, suspension part...everything. This will allow you to build an Aluminum 8 Pro or RoadKill right from the start and not have to eat the cost of the Carbon Chassis and Bottom Plate. Click on the Part #'s to go to the new stuff... Have a great week. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 08/25/2016 |
 Hi Guys, Hope everyone had a great summer. It certainly went too quick. I made a cool new RoadKill 10 conversion for our World GT4 and World GT4-R cars for the upcoming season. A lot of people would like to get into the new 235mm/Pro 10 class, and this should help get you up and running, quick and easy. The conversions widen up the front and rear suspension of our GT cars to 235mm class size, but most importantly, we were able to get the new dimensions the EXACT same as our current A$$ kicking RoadKill 10 car. We've found for indoor racing that we are using the same electronics lay out with our RoadKills as we did with our race winning World GT4 line of cars. Battery fowrad, ESC in back, etc. So, converting a World GT4 or 4-R to a RoadKill is a no-brainer. The conversions include a couple of 3mm front suspension adapters the widen and lengthen the chassis, and a Top, Bottom and Back Plate to house a Pro 10/235mm size rear axle. Besides that, we include a couple of taller battery stand-offs to clear the 7.4 size LiPo's, and a small 1/4 inch rear shock mount riser to keep the shock geometry the same as a RoadKill 10. That's it....super easy. The pics below are of Team Driver Scott Jakes personal car that I used as a Guinea pig. The entire conversion maybe took a half hour. Piece o' cake. Throw a 235mm body on it, and you'll never tell the difference between a RoadKill 10 and these conversions. The World GT4 Conversion is Part #1925, available HERE, and the World GT4-R conversion is #1930, available HERE. Have a great week-Bruce
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| 06/25/2016 |
Hi Guys,
The McFactory Aluminum Chassis arrived Saturday, and they look waaay cool. All pre-orders will ship out Monday. Thanks for being patient. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 06/20/2016 |
Hi Guys,
Just a quick update on the McFactory Aluminum Chassis Pre-Order. I talked to Mike (McFactory Motorsports) on Friday and he assured me the chassis would ship to me this week. The anodizing turn around took much longer than expected on his end. He originally had said we would receive them the 1st week in June. As soon as I get them, they will go out the same day to everyone that did the pre-order. Enjoy your summer! Take care.-Bruce |
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| 05/15/2016 |
 If you had the chance to attend a 'big' race last season, you probably got to run on the newer style black carpet. The new stuff has more initial traction than the grey Ozite we've been running on for years, and has much less of a fuzzing problem. On our line of pan cars, our 1/10th cars were virtually un-affected by the change from Ozite to the new stuff. Josh TQ'd and Won the Snowbirds this season with Steve Boice in tow for 2nd, with the exact same set-up they've used on their World GT4's for the past couple of seasons. In fact, we had 5 out of 10 cars in the World GT A-Main at the Birds and they all ran our standard set-up. The carpet does seem to necessitate a much larger set-up change in 12th scale cars, due to the smaller tire/rim combo wanting to 'dig' into the new black rug. We've had great success over the past few seasons running our Rev.7 & 8's with the off-set in-line battery placement. Especially as traction at big races went up, the in-line cars just gained corner speed while still being balanced and easy to drive. While cars with a transverse 'battery back' placement tended to get touchy and harder to drive consistently with the increased traction. Part of the reason our cars have always worked so well with the in-line lay out is because our New School front suspension has a lot more 'cut' than a standard Associated R5 (type) front suspension. With the new style carpet, one of the largest issues on set-up is just trying to make the cars easy to drive and less touchy while maintaining good corner speed. The general trend over this past season has been to de-tune or deaden your front suspension by running very little caster, almost zero camber and really increasing the amount of super glue on the side wall of the front tires. We've found that configuring cars in the transverse/battery back lay out also helps keep static weight off of the front end, and in turn helps the cars not dig into the carpet. Another more recent development has been the availability of aluminum chassis for the current crop of 12th scale cars. These chassis have a little more weight to them which lowers the cars center of gravity, and also a slightly different flex characteristic than the quasi-isotropic carbon fiber used for our chassis. Our friend Donny Lia won this year's ROAR Mod National with an aluminum chassis on his Roche 12th scale. Since then, several national level racers have tried aluminum chassis on their 12th's. The general consensus is the aluminum chassis just make the cars easier to drive and less touchy on the new carpet while maintaining corner speed. We've been working with Mike at McFactory Motorsports on our Rev.8 Aluminum Chassis. If we were going to offer an aluminum chassis, we wanted to make sure it was the very best available and designed to our exact specs for fit and finish. I'm happy to say that the prototype chassis Mike sent us is outstanding. All of our parts fit on perfectly. We've known Mike for a few years now, and the stuff coming out of his shop is second to none. He does much more than just aluminum chassis, including awesome personalized carbon fiber pit boards and lots of set-up tools for the competitive RC racer. Be sure to check out McFactory's Facebook page @ https://www.facebook.com/mcfactorymotorsports/ The picture above is of the finalized prototype chassis and bottom plate in natural aluminum. The production pieces will be anodized satin black and will also come with carbon fiber battery locators and hardware that mount to the chassis. The first batch of chassis are available for pre-order now and will ship the 1st week in June. The Rev.8 Black Anodized Aluminum Chassis and Bottom Plate is part #1811. Click HERE or the picture above to go to the order page. Have a great week. Take care.-Bruce  |
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| 05/10/2016 |
 Sam Nelson (2nd), Scott Jakes (1st), Bill Crotty (3rd) Just getting our race report up from the Region One Carpet Champs last month. Congratulations to SpeedMerchant driver Scott Jakes for taking the win. Fellow Rev.8 driver John 'Team Scream' Cravotta actually TQ'd the class but had a body rub problem in the main that kept him out of contention. Scott had a great battle with Team Associated's Sam Nelson, with Scott making a last lap pass for the win. Bill Crotty brought home 3rd with his Rev.8. Great job guys! Take care.-Bruce |
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| 04/2/2016 |
Hi Guys,
We're proud to be importing the Team SAXO 235mm LMP1 body. This body drops right on to our RoadKill 10 chassis (or any other 235mm Pro-10 size car) and has a more up to date look compared to a lot of the 235mm bodies on the market today. It just doesn't look good either. In testing so far, it's the quickest one we can find. Bodies are in stock and ready to ship. We're even taking a hit on shipping just to get these cool bodies out to the neglected 235mm community. If you haven't seen a 235 car running on 2-cells rip up a carpet track, you're in for a treat. Super fast while being really easy to drive. The 235mm platform is just so forgiving, it makes driving one a ton of fun. Bodies are available HERE, or just click on the pictures below.
Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 03/22/2016 |
Hi Guys,
I've got a couple of race updates for you. Congratulations to Steven Boice for Top Qualifying and Winning the World GT Spec 17.5 class at the Region 4 Paved Champs. The race was held at the beautiful Valkaria RC track in Palmbay, Florida. This is the same track that will be hosting the 2016 R.O.A.R. On-Road Asphalt Nationals this summer. Steve ran his SpeedMerchant World GT-4. The same car he finished 2nd with just a month ago at the Snowbirds. He said he changed his set-up very little from carpet. Running right behind Steve was Kenn Moss. Kenn bought a World GT-4 for the carpet season, made just a few small changes, and brought home 2nd at the Paved Regionals. Great job Guys!
Next, I have a couple of pictures sent to us by Troy Fisher. Troy bought a World GT4-R the week they went up on the site for sale, and he's been running at the top ever since. Troy sent in two great pictures. First, was from a warm up race for the Minnesota State Champs held in Billings, Montana. Troy and his cool Caddy equipped World GT4-R took 1st is a field of 19 other GTR's. The second picture is from the Minnesota State Champs just a week later. Troy had an awesome weekend and took a 3rd in the heavily contested A-Main. Andrew Jorant, a racer from our friends at MMR raceway in Minneapolis took the TQ and Victory with his recently purchased SpeedMerchant World GT4-R! TQ, 1st and 3rd at the State Championships.... Not a bad weekend guys. Congratulations!
Just a reminder. We love getting pictures of your cars and accomplishments. Send them to bruce@teamspeedmerchant.com, with a little description, and I'll try to get them up on the site. Thanks. Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 02/25/2016 |
 Hi Guys, We're back from the Snowbirds. Congratulations to Josh Cyrul for TQ'ing and Winning the World GT class at this years race. Josh was joined by fellow team members Steve Boice 2nd, Chuck Lonergan 5th, John"Team Scream"Crovotta 9th and Bill Crotty in 10th. 5 out of 10 cars in the World GT A-Main were SpeedMerchant WGT-4's! Josh also took 4th in Modified 12th, and in an amazing feat of "sleep deprivation" Josh actually won the very coveted 1/10th Open Pro Modified OVAL class! Sleeping 3-4 hours a day for most of a week and capping it off with a couple of A-Main wins in two vastly different classes. Job well done. Congrats! In the new World GT-R Rubber tire class we had a great week. Steve Boice battled for TQ through the heats and the eventual A-Main qualifying was ridiculously close. All 10 A-Main cars qualified with 25 laps, separated by just 8 seconds 1st-10th!!! We still have a bit to learn about the rubber tire preparation. Getting them consistent heat to heat will take some experience, but overall we were really happy with the results. SpeedMerchant World GT4-R's took 5 out of 10 of the A-Main positions in their first production outing. Congrats to Steve Boice, Scott Jakes, Andrew Mowery, Bill Crotty and Chuck Lonergan for their A-Main runs. It's pretty easy to go a little "stir crazy" at the Birds. If you're not careful, you can spend 16+ hours trackside in a 24 hour period. Since the pits are open 24/7, and your cars(s) are sitting right in front of you, you tend to just keep wrenching and tinkering... losing all track of time. One of the fun things we've done for the past few years is run the Figure 8 Crash-Up Derby Race on Saturday night. Steve Boice had asked me to make him a Figure 8 car a a few years ago, and he's run it every year since. He's never won the race, but each year he's been in the lead with just minutes to go, before having some sort of electrical/mechanical failure. These cars take a horrific BEATING. This year long time friend and SpeedMerchant driva Scott Jakes asked me to make cars for himself and his daughter Cassie to race the Figure 8. The car I had drawn up for Steve a few seasons ago was based off of my old SpeedSpec beginner's car. For Scott's cars I decided to switch to a chassis using mostly our World GT4 layout..... just a hell of a lot more beefier. Scott and Cassie got one night's practice at our local track to dial them in before the Birds. Scott and Cassie were joined by friend Clinton Morton, who built his own figure 8 car based of a SpeedMerchant World GT3 he scored used just a few days earlier. Clint did a super job of bullet-proofing his car and topped it off with a cool old school Taxi body. So, there would be four SpeedMerchant chassis trying to battle through the 32 car mayhem. During the week, Steve and Scott were bench racing/bull $#!tting about who was going to beat who in the Figure 8 race on Saturday night. That culminated in a bet that the looser of the two would have to wear a dress for the Mains the next morning. The race was funny as usual. Many, many broken cars and total confusion. Scott and Steve led the field from the start, but Steve's car wasn't counting as far as I could tell. It was really almost impossible to hear what the announcer was saying over the constant sound of destruction. As the race went on Scott and Steve were clearly the class of the field, but Steve ran into some trouble very late in the race and lost a few laps to Scott. Scott's car that we had just built the week before was just mowing down the competition, leaving a path of broken contenders in his wake. At the end, it was Scott taking 1st overall. It took him just over 17 minutes to reach 125 laps. Clinton with his 2nd hand GT3 Taxi came home in 2nd with 111 laps, and Cassie in her very first ever RC Car Race, finished 5th!!! Cassie beat 27 other drivers in her 1st race. Pretty darn cool. As for Steven Boice.... in reality he finished 2nd, but his car only counted a handful of laps. In the back of his mind, he knew what that meant... I'll let the pictures tell the story. Props to Steve for not backing out of a bet. You can check out the Figure 8 Race on YouTube right HERE
Have a great week. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 01/24/2016 |
Hi Guys,
I hope everyone is doing well. We will be out of the office for the 22nd Annual Snowbird Nationals held down in Orlando, Florida from January 26th - February 10th. All orders placed in that time will be sent out starting the 11th in the order they were received. You can follow the race at http://www.snowbirdnationals.com. Stay warm. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 01/4/2016 |
 Winner of the World GT4-R give-a-way at the MMR Challenge held this past weekend. Have fun Evan! |
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| 12/24/2015 |
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| 12/12/2015 |
Hi Guys, I hope everyone is doing well and had a great Turkey Day. On to the rest of the Holidays! Just wanted to do a quick update on the racing scene as well as introduce our new World GT4-R Rubber Tire Kit! Racing has been super. Josh Cyrul pulled out his pan car stuff from its' summer long hibernation and ended up TQ'ing and Winning the World GT class at this year's Halloween Classic in Ohio. Josh and the crew swept the World GT class with Josh(TQ & 1st), Scott Jakes(2nd), Chuck Lonergan(3rd) & Bill Crotty(4th). The top 4 cars out of a 10 car A-Main!!! Next up was the Cleveland Indoor Champs. This year would feature the new Fast Track 2 carpet by CRC. The new carpet threw a lot of drivers off of their game as it is very different from the current stuff. It seems to like a much harder and maybe even a little taller tire than the Ozite we've used for years and years. Most of our guys didn't have the proper tires of even proper size tires to start the week, but everyone adapted pretty well. Josh probbaly had the hardest time. He had only brought his pre-cut Ulti tires from last season, and was really out of luck with last year's compounds. He'll certainly have some new stuff for the Birds this year. In 1/12th 17.5 Stock, Chuck Lonergan had a good weekend. He switched to a set of the Spec 12th scale tires after struggling in practice and the beginning of qualifying. He ended putting his car 3rd on the grid for the A-Main. He said he wished he switched a little sooner so he could have worked on his set-up a little more to accommodate the new carpet feel. In World GT, the guys just crushed it. Steve Boice held TQ 3 out of 4 rounds and ended up just getting edged out by Max Kuenning in the last qual. The rest of the A-Main was packed with SpeedMerchant World GT's!!! We had Steve(2nd), Canadian fast guy Martin Lecuyer(4th), Chuck Lonergan(5th), Scott Jake(6th), Bill Crotty(7th), John'Team Scream'Cravotta(8th) and Andrew Nicholes(9th)!!! 7 out of the 10 car A-Main at the Indoor Champs were SpeedMerchant World GT4's! This year's Indoor Champs would feature a brand new off shoot class called World GT-R....R standing for rubber tire. CRC has desingend a rim that will fit the current style F1 rubber tires on standard 10th scale pan car front and rear alxes. This should hopefully make the transition from rubber tire sedan or even off-road a little easier into pan car racing. The class is considered a spec class, with the spec tire/rim combo and a 17.5 stock motor. Pretty slow and easy to drive. Here at SpeedMerchant we only heard about the new class a few weeks before the race. Steve Boice was nice enough to send me a set of the tires so I could get them mounted up and take some measurements. Right away, it was obvious we were going to have to do a little re-design on our award winning World GT4 Chassis to optimize it for the new Rubber Tire/Rim combo. The new rim/tires have a slightly different off-set than the BSR Spec rim/tire combo we have been running for several years. Obviously, they are much taller, as well as producing a greater adhesion differential from front to rear. In other words...they make the car 'push' in comparison to the spec foams. I was able to get a few of the GT4-R prototypes drawn up and cut in time for the race. Steve, Scott Jakes and Bill Crotty would debut them in Cleveland. The guys all did great with Steve taking TQ in the 2nd round later getting bumped down to 2nd overall, and all 3 prototype World GT4-R's solidly in the A-Main. The class had a superb turn-out with A, B, C & D Mains in its' 1st 'Big Race' outing. It looks like it will be a hit, with many people commenting on how easy the cars were to drive. So.... after taking all the info from our testing, we're introducing the 1st dedicated World GT-R Kit on the market. We took everything that made our World GT4 the quickest... (2014 Cleveland Champ, 2015 Snowbirds Champ, 2014 & 2015 Halloween Classic Champ, 2014 R.O.A.R. National Champ and 2014 Las Vegas International Indoor Champ), and added some extra tuning options to help you get a little better balance and corner speed out of the spec rubber tires. Because the height of the rubber tires we even include black anodized military spec aluminum spacers for under the front of our New School Suspension putting your front ride height at just over 5mm. The spacers also insure that the suspension stays perfectly flat for precise adjustments and can also take a hit without moving. The Chassis allows you to run a transverse or in-line battery and we also changed up the wheelbase and width for maximum rubber tire performance. So, if your home track is relatively low grip or small with lots of 180's and tight turns, you can run your battery all the way back in transverse position for tons of off-power steering. Going to the Birds in a few weeks? Put the battery in-line and just copy one of our championship World GT4 set-ups and you'll be dialed in for a high speed weekend. The World GT4-R is Part #1900. Click HERE to go to the web store page. A couple of World GT4-R Renders below. Have a nice weekend. Take care.-Bruce    |
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| 10/15/2015 |
Hi Guys,
Now that we're almost all caught up on the back ordered Aluminum Steering Knuckle orders (Kits, etc), I'm putting New School Complete Front Suspensions back up for sale. Click HERE to go directly to the New School page. Have a nice weekend. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 10/07/2015 |
Hi Guys,
Well.... that took a while. Unfortunately, my order for Aluminum Steering Blocks appears to be lost for good. It's been 3 weeks and there is no further information from USPS or Customs. I immediately re-ordered when the package was lost, and according to the tracking number, the new order should be here Monday. So, all those orders on the shop floor waiting for Aluminum Steering Blocks will start to ship Tuesday morning. Thank you for being patient. I've never had that happen before. Lets hope it was a onetime deal. I'll get the Steering Blocks back up in the on-line store once I get caught up next week. Have a great day. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 9/02/2015 |
Hi Guys,
I have a tracking # on my Aluminum Steering Block order, so I'm going to put them back on line for sale...(and New Schools). They are supposed to be here either Friday or Monday. Orders will ship right after I get them packaged. Have a great day. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 8/23/2015 |
Hi Guys,
Well, a lot of you were waiting for those new parts to go on-line. Thank you. Unfortunately, we blew through all of the Aluminum Knuckles I had in stock. A lot of customeres ordered Complete New Schools but also ordered a spare set of Knuckles and Front Axles. I honestly thought I had enough in stock to make it well into the Fall. Sorry. They were already on order, so it should only be a short outage, but until then, I have to take down the Knuckles and New Schools. I'm going to leave Full Kits up just so people can order and at least be in line for when the knuckles come in. That way I can get the kits ready for shipment and when the Knuckles come in, I can just throw them in the box and ship. I always get behind at the beginning of the season trying to keep up with kit orders. Best to get in-line if you want one. Hope your enjoying your summer. It's ending all too soon. Have a great day. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 7/26/2015 |
Hi Guys,
Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the summer weather. I finally got in a large shipment of molds. I did a quick update on the store. If you go to the bottom of the Parts page HERE, all the new stuff is there. I'm in the process of updating the entire store and just separating all the parts by Car Type to make it a lot easier to navigate. Should be done soon. Have a great day. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 4/4/2015 |
 Hi Guys, Hope everyone is having a nice weekend. In the 50's here and the snow is melting. I have some pictures and results from the 2015 R.O.A.R. Carpet Nationals held at Horsham Raceway in Horsham, Pennsylvania. Even though the turnout was a little light, a lot of the heavy hitters still showed up, and Al Sodano and the Horsham crew ran a great event as always. In 17.5 12th Scale class, Andrew Mowery had a great weekend. Andrew fresh from his A-Main run at the Snowbirds last month, kept the momentum going by qualifying 2nd in the A-Main behind Xray's Craig Xavier. Andrew's Rev.8 ran fast all weekend long, and he was really the only stock guy at the track who could challenge Craig for TQ. In Q3, Andrew turned a 9.42 second fast lap of the event for 17.5, ending up about 1 second off of TQ! Joining Andrew in the 17.5 A was long time SpeedMerchant Driva Scott Jakes. In World GT Scott Jakes, Andrew Nicholas and Team Scream's John Cravotta all battled for TQ in class. In the end, the top 5 positions were within 1.5 seconds of each other! They ended up finishing 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the World GT A-Main. Great weekend of racing guys. Congratulations!  Take care.-Bruce |
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| 3/20/2015 |
Hi Guys,
Hope everyone is doing well. Spring is FINALLY here! I'm going to pass along some feedback I've got from racers over the past season. The New School Front Suspension is very, very stiff. That's one of the reasons the cars feel so 'direct' or 'connected' to your transmitter. The one downfall of the new front end is that some customers have been bending the stock front axles and 3mm x 19mm upper turnbuckles. It doesn't seem to be too much of an issue with tracks that use the square vinyl rain gutter barriers, but the tracks with wood barriers seem to be an problem. If you've had repeated bent front axles or upper turnbuckles, I would recommend checking out some titanium replacements from Lunsford. Lunsford has been the industry standard for titanium forever, and their stuff is top notch. A lot of the cheaper stuff you can buy online isn't any better (and sometimes worse) than just the standard treated steel stock pieces. The replacement turnbuckles are part#1005 3mm x 18mm Punisher Series, and the Front Axles are part#8043 Associated Style Front Axles. The axles are a reverse thread and work well with just a drop of oil on the threads before screwing them in to the aluminum blocks. Lunsford's webpage is ... www.lunsfordracing.com Have a great day. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 2/23/2015 |
Hi Guys,
I hope everyone is doing well. The weather here has just been ridiculous. My local area has had over 111" inches of snow so far this season, with almost all of it coming in the last 4-weeks. I'm running about a week behind on orders right now. I always get behind after I go to the Birds, but throw in the insane weather and then the kid's school vacation last week, and it's been an uphill battle just to keep up. But... Kids are back to school, everything is plowed, snow blown and shoveled out (for the 100th time), and things are back to normal, so we should make a lot of head way this week. Hopefully, we can go a week without a blizzard. I've got a couple of things for you guys... First, I'm going to put up some Optional New School Front Suspension Arms for you to try. They are a little softer (more flex) than the stock ones, and I have plenty in stock. In testing, they seem to make the cars a little easier to drive in high bite conditions. Stuff like this is always kind of a personal feel. The only way to know if you like them or not, is try them and keep them in your box as a tuning aid. As soon as I get my next order of molds in, all the rest of the New School parts (and links, pivots, etc.) will be on-line. At the moment, every last mold is going into kits as fast as I can get them out the door. The New School Optional Lower Arms are part #7030S. Click HERE to go to the on-line store page. Next, I have my new parts listing done. I'm trying to make it easier on you guys and myself to navigate the on-line shop. I went thru my catalog and got rid of a lot of older stuff, re-named and re-numbered some parts, and put all the new part numbers up in a more logical order. I should have this transferred over to the on-line store section in a couple of weeks. All of the older parts will still be available; I will just move them to another section/category for ease. To get a jump on the new part #'s, click the PDF logo below.  Have a great day. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 2/9/2015 |
Hi Guys,
Another race report for you. This time from the Left Coast. Congratulations to Dave Berger for Top Qualifying and Winning the R.O.A.R. Region 12 Carpet On-Road Championships in the 12th 13.5 class. Dave has been setting them up and knocking them down with his Rev.8 for a couple of seasons at Chino California's TQ Raceway. He's done a ton of great testing for us, and all that practice has certainly paid off. Great picture of the winners and video of the A-Main below. Have a great day. Take care.-Bruce  |
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| 2/8/2015 |
 Well, we had a great week down at the Snowbirds. As I stated below, we had a little weather trouble getting down there...and back, but it was a blast while we were there. The entire team did great, and we met lots of happy SpeedMerchant customers. 12th 17.5 Stock In 12th 17.5 Stock, Josh Cyrul ended up taking TQ honors with a blistering 54/8:03. Josh was joined in the A-Main by Chuck Lonergan, Stephen Boice and Andrew Mowery. An excellent result with four Rev.8's out of ten cars in the very competitive 17.5 A-Main! Big props to Andrew Mowery. Andrew owns and operates http://molzermoweryracing.com/ a nice indoor carpet track & shop in Minnesota with a really good following of very competitive racers. Just a week before leaving for the Birds, Andrew bought a used Rev.8 from a customer to see how it compared to his current ride. He ended up TQ'ing that very weekend with his new car, and made the decision to run the Rev.8 at the Birds. Andrew was quick all week and qualified near the top of the B-Main. At the Birds, they have a 'B-Main Bump-Up' race on Saturday, with the winner slotting in to the 10th position in the A-Main on Sunday. Andrew took the B-Main win and was in the show for Sunday! The Main was super tight. Josh took advantage of his TQ and led the 1st lap. 17.5 is just so close that any mistake can cost several positions. Luckily, Josh and his Trinity D4 powered Rev.8 had a flawless run. Taking the A-Main win, wire to wire. Tucking in behind Josh was Chuck Lonegran in 4th, Andrew Mowery in 7th and Stephen Boice in 8th. Super job Guys! World GT 13.5 Next up was World GT. We sponsored this class again this year and were very happy to see Josh TQ with his Protoform Gianna GT clad World GT4. Josh was joined in the World GT A-Main by team mates Chuck Lonergan and Stephen Boice. Josh TQ'd the class with the only 35 lap run of the weekend (35/5:09), and then backed up that TQ with an even quicker 35/5:07 in the A-Main! Taking another wire to wire win with a victory lap thrown in for good measure. 12th Modified Immediately following the World GT A-Main was the 1/12th Modified A-Main. Josh was quick all week long with his Rev.8 and had set fast lap of the entire week with an insane 7.3 second lap time in Q2. He ended up qualifying 3rd for the A behind Xray's Alexander Hagberg and Team Associated's Kevin Hebert. In the main, Alex got a good holeshot with Kevin and Josh in tow. After a couple of laps Kevin tapped a board and Josh shot up to second, about a straight behind the leader. For the next few minutes Alex and Josh worked their way through the field with the gap staying around 1.5 seconds. We knew Josh's Rev.8 had been getting quicker in the 2nd half of his races, so we were pretty comfortable that he would be able to make a charge to the front by the end of the race. Right around the 4-minute mark Josh's car really started to come alive, and he was taking a 10th of Alex's lead every lap. At the 2:30 to go mark, Josh's Rev.8 had closed in on Alex and they were just a couple of feet apart. Josh hounded Alex for the next minute, looking inside and outside on virtually every corner. To his credit, Alex held his line and was incredibly calm under extreme pressure from Josh. Coming off of the straight, Josh had to check up for Alex, and ended up catching a board...... just like that, the gap was all the way back to 1.5 seconds. With only 1:30 to go, could Josh close that gap again??? You bet! In the next 60 seconds, Josh reeled off fast lap after fast lap of the main closing back in on Alex, culminating with a 7.4 second FAST LAP OF THE RACE ON LAP 59!!! Josh actually turned fast lap of the entire race 3 laps from the finish. Crazy! At the 15 seconds to go mark, Josh had erased the entire 1.5 second lead Alex had, and was all over him looking for a passing lane again! For the next 2 laps, Josh was able to get along side Alex but not make a clean pass, with the buzzer sounding and the announcer saying 'race to the line', things were about to get serious. With only two corners and a chicane left in the race, Josh looked inside and then slingshotted to the outside briefly getting in front of Alex. This gave Josh the inside for the last corner going into the chicane. They entered the chicane side by side and both of them pretty much tried to straight line it. They tangled with Josh's car hitting the chicane and flying several feet up into the air and onto the back straight pointed the wrong way. Wow!!! What a finish, and what an awesome race. The crowd was cheering and Alex and Josh had just put on an amazing display of driving these tiny rocket ships. Was able to grab a video from the Live RC feed. Low quality, but better than nothing. Enjoy. 12th 13.5 Super Stock After catching his breath from the outstanding 12th Modified A-Main, Josh was up in the 12th 13.5 Super Stock A-Main final. Josh had TQ'd this class also with the only 58-lap run of the weekend, and was confident in his Trinity horsepower to keep him out in front. At the sound of the tone, Josh took the holeshot and never really looked back. He ran clean and his Rev.8 was smooth and efficient through the corners. Another horn to buzzer win to cap off an awesome week of racing! 17.5 Spec GT There was one new class this year at the Birds called Spec 17.5 GT. It features the World GT cars with a 17.5 motor, fixed/limited gear ratios and a body list that is meant to replicate real full scale racing a little more than the current bodies being used in World GT 13.5. The other nice thing about the class is that it was only run on Saturday and Sunday, so it gave locals the chance to race at the Birds without taking time off from their day jobs. We had three of our guys sign up for the class, and they all ended up doing very well. Qualifying was very close, and the 17.5 motors are very, very controllable in the World GT chassis. This made for some very clean racing. Going into the main, we had Stephen Boice in 3rd, Scott Jakes in 4th and Bill Crotty 8th. Not too bad considering none of these guys turned a practice lap for this class until Saturday morning. In the A-Main, Steve, Scott and 2nd place Brian Wynn got tangled on lap two with Scott getting out in 2nd overall. Steve had to come through the field if he wanted a podium finish. The race was pretty uneventful after that. Scott stayed strong in second place, and Steve worked his way through the field setting fast lap of the race while doing it, finishing 3rd overall for a nice comeback. Great results for our 1st time in the class. Another superb Snowbirds, Mike and crew continue to put on a huge event and make it look easy every year. We will be there for #15! Pictures below of Josh's A-Main rides. Take care.-Bruce As always, thank you to all the manufacturers that help keep Josh and the SpeedMerchant team at the front of the pack...
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| 2/6/2015 |
Hi Guys,
We're back from sunny Florida to the frozen tundra that has become the Northeast. Our travel plans for the race were pretty well squashed by a couple of big snow storms to hit on our travel dates. On the way down to Florida, we ended up staying an extra day up here due to 36" inches of snow in a 27-hour period. In the end, just to get down to the race, I had to drive 90 miles South to Providence, RI to get a flight out. After the struggle getting down there, getting home was even worse. We received another 2' feet of snow on Monday, and had 3 flights cancelled before getting out of Orlando on Monday night. When I finally touched down in Rhode Island, I ended up with about a 3.5 hour drive North in a blizzard to get home. LOL. I'm glad that's all in the rear view mirror. Over 5 feet of snow in under a week, and now they are saying we can expect up to 2 more feet starting tomorrow night. 7-feet in 2 weeks....Crazy! The snow was over the door handle of the shop when I dug out the other day! I'll have the race report up in a day or two. The team did great!!! Josh was a machine as usual, and we had lots of cars in all of the A-Mains. Take care.-Bruce  Bottom Row Left to Right... Teru (Xenon), Andrew Mowery, Stephen Boice, Bill Crotty |
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| 1/23/2015 |
Hi Guys,
I hope everyone is having a great New Year so far. We're off to the Snowbird Nationals down in sunny Orlando, Florida. We'll be out of the office from Sunday, Jan. 25th thru Monday, Feb. 2nd. All orders placed from the 23rd-2nd will be processed and shipped the week of the 2nd. We are Sponsoring the World GT class again this year, and I'm sure the race will be awesome as always. Here's a link to the website ... http://www.snowbirdnationals.com/ and you will be able to follow the races on Live RC also. Have a great day. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 12/24/2014 |
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| 11/27/2014 |
Josh decided to pull off the iron man by running all four pan car classes. How did he do??? Check out the trophy table, movies and results below. FOUR TQ's and FOUR Wins..... Outstanding Josh!  Josh Cyrul & Jim Dieter stand behind a lot of hard work!
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| 11/15/2014 |
Chuck who just purchased a Rev.8 Pro on-line for this year's carpet season showed up at the Gate and proceeded to lay it down. Against the very quickest 12th scale drivers in the heartland of pan car racing, Chuck was at or near the top of 12th 17.5 qualifying all weekend long. On Sunday, Chuck drove a near perfect race, making his move to the front position about half way through the race, and then slowly pulling away for the A-Main Win. Chuck's 56/8:05 run was the quickest 17.5 run of the week! Josh ended up going to the race after taking his kids Trick or Treating on Friday night. So he missed all of Friday's practice. Never the less, Josh was quickly setting the pace. After dominating World GT Expert Modified at Vegas, Josh entered World GT 13.5 Spec at the Halloween race. He picked up right where he left off by TQ'ing every round of World GT qualifying. On Sunday, he started from the pole position and just drove away into the sunset. Josh's World GT4 fast lap was again a full 4-TENTHS quicker than the 2nd place car of CRC's Brian Wynn. Now, to be 4-tenths quicker in Modified at Vegas was pretty cool, but to be 4-tenths quicker in 13.5 Spec class....that's ridiculous. Usually the entire 10-car A-Main field is covered by 4-6 tenths...1st to 2nd....just unreal. Great job Josh! In 12th scale Modified, Josh had some great battles with Team Associated's Kevin Hebert. They ended up qualifying just .084 THOUSANDTHS apart! That's some close qualifying. Super job by both drivers. In the A-Main, it was much of the same, each driver just reeling off fast lap after fast lap just feet apart. Around the 3 minute mark, Kevin ticked a corner and Josh's Rev.8 Pro shot by for the lead. For the next 5-minutes both drivers ran almost flawless at a blistering pace. As the race wore on, Josh was able to just barely gap Kevin by a corner or two and went on to take the A-Main by just 8-Tenths of a second. Josh described the main as some of the most fun he's had racing in years, super clean and super fast with Kevin. Pictures of the A-Main Winners and Chuck's 17.5 car below. Take care.-Bruce
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| 11/01/2014 |
 Hi Guys, I hope everyone had a safe and Happy Halloween! Congratulations to Josh Cyrul for Top Qualifying and Winning both World GT Expert Modified and 12th Scale 13.5 at this year's 10th Anniversary International Indoor Championships! Josh, his World GT4 and Rev.8 were pretty much untouchable all week long. He TQ'd every round of qualifying in both classes and won both A-Mains wire to wire. In 12th scale, Josh piloted his Rev.8 to TQ with the only 45 lap run in the class, taking fast lap by a tenth. He then backed that TQ up by doing the only 45 lapper in the Main, for the flawless win. In Expert World GT Mod, Josh's World GT4 was just scary fast. In fact, his World GT lap times would have easily put him in the top half of the 12th scale Modified A-Main! In the A-Main Josh lapped everyone up to 2nd place, and his fast lap of 9.6 seconds was FOUR TENTHS quicker the 2nd place Hupo Honigl's 10.0. Josh went on to do the only 31 lap run of the week in that class also. Pictures of Josh's winning cars below as well as links to the A-Main Videos courtesy of Live RC. As always, thank you to all of the sponsors that support Josh and SpeedMerchant... Take care.-Bruce
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| 10/22/2014 |
Hi Guys,
Back in the shop from Vegas & getting orders out the door. The IIC 10th Anniversary race went great. HUGE turn out and great racing. The team did very well, and it was really nice meeting a lot of SpeedMerchant customers, and helping to get them dialed in. Josh had a super week with TQ and Wins in 12th 13.5 and World GT Expert and ended up qualifying 2nd in 12th Mod! I'll have a full race report up with pictures, videos and car set-ups in a day or two. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 10/01/2014 |
Hi Guys,
Happy October! That certainly seemed like a short summer. We're off to the On-Road World Championships this weekend. The race will be held on carpet in Tampa for the 12th scale portion and then over to Orlando for the 1/10 sedan champs on asphalt. From Florida, we're traveling directly to Las Vegas for the 10th Anniversary of the International Indoor Championships. I'll be out of the shop from this Saturday, October 4th, all the way through Tuesday, October 20th. I'm almost completely caught up on back orders, and starting to trudge through Hobby Shop and Distributer orders. A month ago, it seemed like I might never catch up. LOL. Thank you for the support. I know there are a lot of really happy customers out there which is great. All orders placed from October 2nd - 20th will be processed, pulled and shipped starting the 21st, in the order they were received. Have a great couple of weeks. We will work our hardest and try our best to bring home some trophies. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 09/19/2014 |
Hi Guys,
I hope you had a nice week. Up in the North East, the mornings are starting to feel a little too Fall like already. I'm finally getting ahead on orders. By the middle of next week, I should be caught up on the website PayPal orders placed (unless they were just placed in these last few days), and I should be able to start in on Hobby Shop and Distributer orders. Those guys have been waiting a loooong time. I'm going to put up TEN more RoadKill 10's for sale. I'm only doing ten again just because that's all I honestly think I can get out the door (along with doing all the other orders) before the end of the month. They will go out in about 2 weeks/end of September. They are now being offered as a Full Kit with IRS 235mm Pro Axles. Click the box cover to go to the sales page.  I will be out of the office from October 4th through October 20th. The SpeedMerchant crew will be attending the 12th Scale World Championships held down in Florida, and then heading directly to Las Vegas for the 10th Anniversary International Indoor Championships. As always, thank you for the support. Have a great weekend.-Bruce |
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| 08/28/2014 |
Hi Guys,
I hope everyone had a nice week. Lots of kids off to school this week. My two started 1st Grade on Wednesday. We got a lot of orders out the door, and I'll keep working through the Labor Day Weekend to try to catch up. The orders have been plentiful to say the least. I also got a tracking # on the 235mm axle sets. They should be at the shop on Tuesday. So I would look for RoadKill 10 Full Kits to go up for sale the middle of next week. The instructions for the New School Front Suspension are done. Click the thumbnail for the PDF. 
Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 08/19/2014 |
Hi Guys,
Finished the new box art for the season. Have a great day.-Bruce
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| 08/15/2014 |
Hi Guys, I hope you all had a nice week. We got a ton of kits out the door this week, and I'll get a ton more out next. Thank you for the orders and thank you for being patient. It will be worth the wait. Just wanted to post a link to this year's International Indoor Championships held in Las Vegas. This is going to be the 10th-year anniversary of the race, and if you ever thought about checking out a 'big race', I highly recommend this one. SpeedMerchant has sponsored this race each and every year, and it just keeps getting better and better. This year should be exceptional for a couple of reasons. First, it's the 10th Anniversary, and if I know Scottty Ernst, he'll have something special in store for the people that can attend. Second, the I.F.M.A.R. On-Road World Championships are being held the week before in Florida by Full Throttle Raceway. Word is, that all the top drivers in the World, are packing up their cars, tools and suitcases and flying directly from Florida to Las Vegas. That would make the IIC Race unbelievably, incredibly, outstandingly, competitive. World Class might be an understatement. It will be truly a race for the ages. Click the IIC Logo to visit their website. Sign up and race, or just bring yourself, your friends or your family and make it a really cool vacation. It's very, very seldom that any of us will ever see this many World Class Drivers at the same venue. Have a great weekend.-Bruce  |
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| 08/13/2014 |
I hope you're having a great week. Well, to put it bluntly, I'm getting crushed with e-mails asking when Rev.8 Pros and the new World GT4's will be available for purchase. Trust me, I feel your pain. Everyone just wants a car for the upcoming season. I've been there. At the moment, I'm still running about 2 weeks behind on orders placed, but all the new Aluminum parts are finally in, as well as all the molds for the New School Front Suspensions, Logo Side Links and Pivot Sockets. So....to quell the onslaught of e-mails and enquiries, I'm going to put the new cars up for sale. This way, you guys are guaranteed to get a car for the start of the carpet season, and it will also free up some of the time that I'm spending answering e-mails everyday and let me get more product out the door. Again, I'm still about 2 weeks behind. So an order placed now for a kit is going to ship at the end of this month....you'll be race ready for September.
Have a great weekend.-Bruce |
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| 08/04/2014 |
I hope everyone had a great weekend. SpeedMerchant drivers' Josh Cyrul & Steven Boice had a tremendous weekend, sweeping the pan car classes at this year's R.O.A.R. Asphalt Nationals held down at a very hot & steamy Full Throttle Raceway in Kissimmee Florida. Josh & Steve were debuting the first production Rev.8 Pros and World GT4's, and the Asphalt Nats seemed like a nice place to start. Josh just received his cars the week before the race, and Steve's car was sent directly to the track where he finished building it during Thursday's practice. With track surface temperatures of 160+ degrees, and temperatures under the pitting tent reaching a staggering 115 degrees, it would be a long hot weekend. Even with the extreme heat, Josh & Steve's cars handled great, and they immediately set the pace for the rest of the field during practice. After Friday's qualifying was over, both drivers held TQ in their classes by taking every round of qualifying. Josh in 12th Scale Modified and World GT, Steve in 12th scale 13.5. Saturday was more of the same. Under the blazing sun Josh and Steve again were at the top of the charts all day long. When qualifying was over they had both secured TQ in their classes with time to spare. Sunday would feature R.O.A.R.'s Triple A-Main format. With the driver's best two finishes counting towards their overall A-Main result. Luckily, they would each only have to run the first 2 of the 3 A-Mains. They both comfortably started from their TQ positions and drove away from the fields onto victories in each of their individual classes. After the 2nd A-Mains were finished, they were already R.O.A.R. National Champions. Congratulations Guys, and thank you for the hard work! As always, thank you to all of the sponsors that support Josh, Steve and SpeedMerchant... Have a great week.-Bruce
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| 08/03/2014 |
Well, the weekend went great for Josh Cyrul & Steve Boice. On Saturday, Josh ended up TQ'ing both 12th Modified and World GT, while Steve took TQ in the 12th 13.5 Class at the 2014 R.O.A.R. Asphalt On-Road Nationals! The A-Mains on Sunday couldn't have gone better with both Josh and Steve taking their 1st two A-Mains on the way to their 2014 R.O.A.R. National Titles. 3 National titles in one day. Not too bad! Josh and Steve were both running bone stock production cars, steel screws and all. Josh ran a Rev.8 Pro and new World GT4 that he just received last week, while Steve drove a Rev.8 Pro that I actually shipped direct to the track for him on Thursday! I'll have a race report up in a day or two. Who knows, maybe by this time next year, we can have a 235mm class back at the Aspahalt Nationals. The speed would be insane. Have a great weekend.-Bruce P.S. = RoadKill 10's start to ship this week. |
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| 08/01/2014 |
Hi Guys, I hope everyone had a nice week. I received an update from the guys racing down in hot, steamy, 100+ degree Florida at the R.O.A.R. Asphalt On-Road Nationals. After two rounds of qualifying Josh Cyrul & Steve Boice are having a perfect race so far. They both have TQ'd every time they've been on the track. Josh is Top Qualifier in 12th Modified & World GT, while Steve is TQ in the 12th 13.5 class. Josh and Steve have a few of the first production Rev.8's and World GT4's to go out the door, and are debuting them at this race. Asphalt definitely isn't our forte', but Josh & Steve seem to be taking care of business nevertheless. Great job guys! I'll have more results and pictures up in the next few days, and you can always follow the racing at www.liverc.com. Have a great weekend.-Bruce |
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| 07/26/2014 |
Hi Guys, I hope everyone is having a great weekend so far. Good News!!! A large batch of New School Front Suspensions, SpeedMerchant Logo Side Links and new Pivot Sockets are on their way!!! As soon as I recieve a ship notification, look for the Rev.8 Pro, RoadKill 10 and... the new World GT4 to be online and ready to order for the upcoming season. Take care.-Bruce
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| 07/21/2014 |
Hi Guys, I hope everyone had a nice weekend. I was in Boston for a wedding, and I was surprised to come home Sunday night and still see a couple of RoadKill 10's available when I got home. Those went this afternoon, and the RoadKill 10 allotment of ten cars is now.......Sold Out. Sorry there were only ten. Not to worry, a new batch of molds should not be too far away. To those of you that bought a kit....Congratulations! You are the proud owner of a really cool, state of the art, 235mm land missile. Give me 2 weeks...possibly less, and they will be out the door. Thank you for the support. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 07/18/2014 |
Hope everyone is having a great week. I'm going to do a small pre-order run of RoadKill 10's for you guys. I don't have instructions done, box art, etc., but I'm pretty sure most of you don't care at all from the e-mails I've been getting. LOL. I was waiting for a knock on the shop door by a few of you.  Sorry for taking a little longer to get these up for sale, but I did a tiny re-design on the rear pod width, and I wanted to get the new stuff cut before I actually gave it the thumbs up. I just narrowed the rear about 6mm. We had done our testing with JACO rims/tires and they are a little narrower than the BSR off-set that is very popular right now. With some of the bodies out there, the rear tires would've rubbed, or you would've had to trim the rim a little which can be a pain in the a$$. No biggie, just put me behind a few days. I'm only going to do 10 of these at 1st. I'm very low on New Schools...to the point I will be using ones reserved for the Team guys to get these kits out the door. I would also really like to get the Box art done as well as all the other stuff that goes along with releasing a new car. This batch also will NOT come with a rear axle (obviously the price will reflect that). Dave Irrgang of IRS fame, and hands down the very best designer/manufacturer of axles/diff sets for pan cars since the beginning of time... has retired. Congratulations Dave and thank you for the many, many quality products over the years. Luckily, Dave's awesome axles and diffs are going to be continued to be manufactured by the very capable hands of Barry down at R.C. Hobbies/Hyperdrive/MSA. I'll have a batch of the 235mm axle sets coming in, just not in time for this RK10 pre-order. I know several of you already have 235mm axles, if not a quick look brought up Mudslide Motorsports with the IRS2135...which the exact same 235mm axle set we use on our cars. If you want to splurge, it looks like they have Black anodized ones in stock also.  The Kit will come with everything you see in the pictures, except the rear axle set. It will include the braces/mounts for the Brick packs as well as standard 7.4 Stick packs. It will come with a really hard to get New School front suspension, the new molded side links and the new low CG rear pod set. The kits should go out the end of July - 1st week in August. Possibly sooner if I get caught up on all the Asphalt Nats and Pre-World Champs testing stuff. The new SpeedMerchant RoadKill 10 is part #1875. I'm only selling 10 to start. As soon as more New School suspension molds are in, they will be readily available for the upcoming season. Thank you for being patient, and thank you for the support. I can't wait to see vid's of these things ripping around tracks. Click HERE to order yours now. Thank you and have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 06/28/2014 |
Hi Guys, We've got a few updates for you. The Aluminum Front Suspension Mounts just came in, so we will start to get all those New School pre-orders out to everyone this upcoming week. We are again, SOLD OUT of New Schools. More are on their way. We just got in our .018 and .022 Front Suspension Springs. The .018's are what Josh was running on his Rev.8 at the Denver race a couple of months ago. This gives us .017, .018, .019, .020, .021, .022, & .023 Front Suspension Springs for unparalleled tuning options. They are available in the Accessories section HERE. All the customers that ordered the New Schools over the past couple of weeks will receive the .18's and .022's in their kits also as a little bonus for pre-ordering. So each kit ordered will have all of our front springs included. Finally, we've been working on a new 235mm RoadKill car for the past year. We showed an early version at the Las Vegas IIC Meet & Greet last season. The chassis has gone through some design changes and is ready to hit the streets. The car incorporates everything we've learned with the Rev.8 over the past year as well as allowing the use of every 7.4 battery type available. We tried really hard to make the car user friendly. Having to buy new style batteries to run a car is an expensive proposition. Our test car runs the Brick style pack in the forward position with an ESC centrally mounted behind the battery. Wiring is super clean. The car is crazy fast, and produces a ton of rear traction. I can't wait to get it out to you guys with the huge smooth high traction tracks! Josh Cryrul will have his RoadKill 10 at the R.O.A.R. Pavement On-Road Nationals down in Florida next month. Hopefully, he will be able to get some runs on the track in between practice and qualifying. The car should be up on the site for purchase in a couple of weeks. I might do a pre-order on it just because I really don't have a great sense of how large the demand will be for a 235mm car. It seems like the European market is doing pretty well and growing....maybe we can kick start it back up here in the U.S.??? Here's some renders to 'whet your whistles'. Have a great day.-Bruce
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| 06/10/2014 |
Hi Guys, I hope everyone is enjoying their summer. I have another batch of New Schools coming in shortly. I also have the new production Black Laser Inscribed Front Suspension Mounts on their way. We are getting around 40 sets of plastic from Xenon. We're going to put them on-line as a pre-order for all of you that missed out on the 1st batch, or if you just want one for another car or spare. They should ship in about 3-weeks. The 1st batch of 35 New Schools sold out in less than 12 hours. Doing a pre-order seems like the fairest way to let everyone get a shot at one, and I want to make sure existing customers get them before they start going out to shops. They will come with the New Black Anodized Steering Blocks as well as the New Black Suspension Mounts, so they should look pretty trick. The New School will also come witha complete set of SpeedMerchant front Springs (.17, .19, .20, .21 & .23). The New School Front Suspension for standard 8-32 front holes is part #7020. Click HERE to go to the on-line shop. Have a great day.-Bruce  |
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| 04/21/2014 |
 Hi Guys, I hope everyone had a nice Holiday weekend. We spent last weekend in warm & sunny and then very snowy & icy Denver Colorado, attending the Mile High Indoor Champs put on by 5280 Raceway. This would be Josh Cyrul's 1st race running SpeedMerchant cars, and it went very well. We arrived Thursday to beautiful Denver weather. The track is only about 1/2 hour from the airport, and is located in a strip mall with many stores and restaurants all around. We spent most of Thursday finishing up the cars and starting to get some tires trued for practice. The 5280 crew have a really great thing going. Nice track and a top notch bunch of guys to help run it. It's been a long time since I've been at a "big" race that had virtually zero drama. Just a lot of really talented racers having fun. On Friday morning we ran the Mod car a couple of times to shake it down and make sure the electronics and everything else were working properly. After that we spent almost the entire day running pack after pack in the 13.5 car and dialing in our set-up. While I worked on the cars, Josh trued tires, practiced, trued tires, practiced, rinse & repeat. For the most part, he was at the truer from 9:30am thru 2:30pm. By the end of the weekend, I think we had used them all! By Friday evening, we had just an awesome set-up on the 13.5 car. Very aggressive getting into a turn, really smooth in transition with crazy good corner speed through and out, yet still easy for Josh to drive. We took that set-up, copied it over to the Mod car, and went out. The Modified car was dialed. Everything from the 13.5 car translated perfectly to the Mod car. We stayed late for practice and made sure all the cars were ready to go for 3 qualifiers on Saturday. Saturday morning... we knew it would be a busy day. Not only was Josh driving three 12th scale classes, he was also piloting his WorldGT car and factory Awesomatix sedan. 5 classes...15 qualifiers in one day! Saturday's qualifiers went pretty much perfect. Josh TQ'd EVERY round of EVERY 12th scale class... 17.5, 13.5 and Modified. He was getting very accustomed to his Rev.8 and because he wasn't busy wrenching on stuff, I think it really let him focus on his driving. Every time he hit the track, his comfort level and driving line got better and better. TQ for 12th Modified came in the 3rd round with the only 59-lap run posted all week, and Josh also set fast lap of the week with a 7.9 second lap in round two! After qualifying was over on Saturday, we decided to stay at the track and keep working on getting quicker. The work paid off with a blistering 12th Mod practice run.... (in practice traffic), at the end of the day. We were pretty confident it would have been a 60-lapper in qualifying trim! Sunday Morning arrived, and we still had a 4th round of qualifying to go, followed by the mains. Josh was TQ in 4 classes with only Sedan Modified eluding him so far. He had shown the pace for TQ in the 3rd round, but wasn't able to put a full 5-minute run together. Well, that changed in round 4. Josh put in a masterful TQ run. His Trinity powered Awesomatix was silky smooth, carried terrific corner speed and was 'warp drive' fast on the back straight. Whenever you have Paul Lemieux in your rear view mirror after qualifying, you know you did something right. Josh again carried TQ in 17.5 12th, 13.5 12th and his WorldGT car. Going into our final 12th Modified run, we were really looking at bumping up our 59-lap TQ run from the day before. Unfortunately, on lap 2 (I think), with Josh's Rev.8 at full song, another car hit the very end of the back striaght, Josh just a split second behind tried to avoid the incident and ended up tagging the inside corner at the end of the straight. Not good. Josh's car flipped and went backwards into the outside retaining wall... really hard and really fast. No 60-lap run for us today. Even though it was a brutal crash, the destruction was pretty minimal. Broken left rear rim, shattered left rear axle bearing, and an overly compressed center shock. That's it. No broken links, all of the carbon fiber checked out straight as a board, and the front suspension was fine. As a Mfg., that actually made me pretty happy. If a side link was ever going to break, it would have been in that accident. Even though he had a lot of clear real estate in front of him, Kevin Hebert couldn't match Josh's 59-lapper from the previous day and our Modified 12th TQ was safe. 5 Classes, 5 TQ's. Pretty amazing. The three 12th scale TQ's with Rev.8's he had never driven until two days before. The A-mains all went great, with barely a hiccup. 12th 17.5, 12th 13.5 and WorldGT were all wire to wire wins. Josh's sedan run was nearly flawless. Paul made a charge at Josh at the beginning of the race, but as the tires came in Josh drove away to a comfortable lead. The only issue we had at all was in the 12th Modified A-Main. The car had a bad crash in the 4th qualifier that morning, and because of time constraints, there was no practice after the qualifiers and before the Mains. So, we were going into the A-Main with a car that we weren't 100% sure about. It tweaked flat, everything was free and smooth, but you just never know until it hits the track. As it turned out, the chassis was fine, but the shock must have taken a little internal damage. In hand, after the crash it felt fine, but on the car, it didn't want to rebound like pre-accident. Although the car was still good, it was dragging quite a bit on the carpet. That lead to a little push that Josh had to adapt to. Kevin grabbed the lead from Josh after a tap, but Josh was able to reel him in, pass him and drive away after that, for another A-Main victory! Taking the A-Main of 12th Modified against arguably the best American 12th driver for the past few years with a car that was only running at about 90% capability was a nice way to cap off the weekend. 5 TQ's and 5 A-Main victories, ridiculous. Big thanks and lots of respect go out to Josh Cryrul. I've known Josh since the early 90's, but this was the first time we've really worked together. He was nothing but hard working and very professional. We both have years and years of set-up, testing and designing information floating in our heads. Some of it coinciding quite nicely and some of it on very opposite ends of the spectrum. To take that knowledge, mash it up, and come out of it with a happy racer and a happy designer in just a few short days speaks volumes. Josh and I are very much looking forward to the upcoming season. As always, thank you to all of the sponsors that support Josh and SpeedMerchant... Finally, thank you one more time to the 5280 crew. Great track, great people. We'll be back. Enjoy your Spring.-Bruce
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| 04/18/2014 |
 SpeedMerchant would like to welcome Multi-National Champion Josh Cyrul on to the racing team. Josh has been a perennial figure a top 12th scale podiums for years, and we are very much looking forward to keeping that tradition going. Josh started his tenure with SpeedMerchant by TQ'ing and Winning all of the 12th scale classes at this year's Mile High Indoor Champs in Colorado with his new Rev.8! We will have a full race report with pictures and Josh's set-up on-line in a few days. Welcome aboard Josh! |
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| 03/07/2014 |
Congratulations to SpeedMerchant Driver Steve"Rocket"Rossi for taking a 5th with his Rev.8 at this year's ROAR Carpet Nats. Steve decided to drive to the race very last second. Unfortunately, due to scheduling, this year's ROAR Nats was placed a few weeks earlier than usual. With so many teams/drivers that go to the Snowbirds each year, having another "Big" race only a few weeks later made it really tough to attend. The race was held at the superb HobbyPlex Raceway & Shop in Omaha Nebraska. We had a fun time there at the 2008 ROAR Nats, I'm sure they did a great job with the race. Congrats to all the winners. See you at the next one! Have a great day.-Bruce
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| 02/28/2014 |
Hi Guys, We have the Rev.8 Instructions up in PDF form for download. Bottom of the Support page HERE. Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 02/20/2014 |
Hi Guys, Well, that was quick. We're Sold Out on the 1st batch of New Schools. Thank you to everyone that ordered. They'll be going out the door in the next couple of days. We should have production ones available in a few weeks as well as all the individual parts for order. Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 02/19/2014 |
*** New School Available - Limited 1st Run *** First off, thank you for being very patient with this project. Originally, I thought these things would be packaged and for sale in October. Getting the molds done took a lot longer than I thought it would, but I sincerely didn't want to compromise on the quality. So, even though I could've gotten them finished quite a bit quicker, the quality just wouldn't match up to the stuff Xenon is doing for us. If you've ever seen any of their gears or go-fast goodies, you know what I'm talking about. To get this 1st batch of New Schools out to you guys, I had Larry at Team Tamale make the front bulkheads out of his "un-obtanium" material. The final production stuff will be regular aluminum. The kits will also come with our Aluminum Front Steering Blocks, as well as a complete set of our proprietary Front Suspension Springs (.17, .19, .20, .21 & .23) I don't have a final tally just yet, but I think we can only make about 30-35 of them. I'm packaging them tomorrow morning. So, this 1st batch will probably go very quickly. We should have plenty of molds back in stock in a couple of weeks, and hopefully, we'll be getting the production bulkheads and steering knuckles in shortly after that. The New School Front Suspension for standard 8-32 front holes is part #7020. Click HERE to go to the on-line shop. The website will be updated with all of the new Rev.8 & New School part #'s and pictures very soon. We have a couple of other cool products coming down the runway also. Stay tuned. Take care.-Bruce
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| 02/17/2014 |
Hi Guys,
Machined Old School Arms and CF links are back in stock. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 02/14/2014 |
We had a great Snowbirds. Mike and his crew did a superb job as always running the race, and I can't remember a race with so much talent in one building. Every class was stacked! We came back to a lot of orders, and a ton of snow. We actually had 3 snowstorms in just this past week. Kids love it....people that have to work....not so much. The team did super, and we got a lot of testing done of our new molded parts. We had 3 cars in the 12th 17.5 A-Main (Craig, Robbie & Steve), as well as the same 3 drivers in the World GT A-main. Robbie also thru his Rev.8 in the 13.5 A-Main also. Great job guys!  The big news at the race was our friend and Japanese Distributer, Teru (Xenon Racing) brought our 1st batch of molded parts with him to the race. The molds came out awesome and a big batch of them are on the way. There's a reason we wanted to have the molds done in Japan by Xenon, and when you see the quality, you'll know why. We put New School Fronts on the team guy's cars as well as our super cool new molded side links.  We should be all caught up on orders at the beginning of this week (after another few hours of digging ourselves out), and after that, I'm going to try to get at least a batch of the New Schools out to you guys who have been so patient. Just watch the News section for an update when they will go on sale. I think I can only do about 30-40 of them right now, so they will probably go very quick. Have a great weekend. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 01/25/2014 |
The SpeedMerchant crew is off to sunny Florida for the Snowbird Nationals. SpeedMerchant is once again sponsoring the World GT class at the race. You can follow the racing on-line by visiting the Snowbirds web page... http://www.snowbirdnationals.com/ Links to live web cams, results, etc. can all be found there. All orders placed from Saturday, Jan 25th - Tuesday Feb 4th will be processed and shipped starting the 5th. Have a great week and as always thank you for your support. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 01/23/2014 |
 Our friend Yuuichi Tomita from Japan sent in a great picture of his Rev 8. Check it out HERE. The picture remided me that I haven't updated the RIDES page in a million years. Send in your pics, we want to see what your running. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 12/12/2013 |
 Available Now... |
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| 12/06/2013 |
 While most of us were filling up on Turkey & Mashed Potatoes, Steve Boice was busy laying it down at the 2013 Cleveland Indoor Championships. The Indoor Champs is the Granddaddy of all the indoor carpet races in the World. This was the 34th Annual Indoor Champs!!! Practice went well for Steve, and he was confident going into the 1st round of qualifying. That confidence paid off with a great run resulting in the 1st round TQ! Unfortunately, there wasn't a re-shuffle after the 1st round of qualifying, and in the 2nd round Steve had some trouble in traffic. Even though the traction was coming up and the track was getting quicker, Steve's 1st round TQ time kept him in the A-Main. Saturday morning the heats were re-shuffled, and Steve was looking forward to getting in a clean 6-minutes for his 3rd round run. Unfortunately, Steve's receiver wasn't on the same page as Steve. LOL. Steve's 3rd qualifier was a nightmare of glitching. No fun. The electronics had worked fine that morning in practice; the glitch came out of nowhere. So....going into the 4th and final round, Steve swapped out his receiver for a new one and crossed his fingers. At the sound of the horn Steve started off a little cautiously to make sure the new receiver had fixed his glitching problem. After a couple of laps, everything seemed fine, and it was off to the races. Steve worked his way up to the front on the clock and was battling for TQ when he got into some traffic, and that knocked him to the back of the pack. He was able to make it back up to 4th overall, but he wasn't able to better his TQ run from the 1st run. Sunday morning... Steve was able to get in a nice practice run with his World GT3, and he felt good going into the A-Main. His qualifying time from heat 1 had kept him in the A, although he would have to start from the 6th position, he knew he had a 1st place car. Everyone else in the A-Main had set there fast times from either the 3rd or 4th qualifier on Saturday.....none from the 2nd round on Friday. Steve sat with his TQ run all the way back from the 1st round, Friday morning. At the start of the Main, Steve got lucky when a couple of cars in front of him tangled, bumping him up to 4th. A couple of corners later, a nice pass, and he was up to 3rd! So.... at the end of lap two, he was already up to 3rd place and Steve's words, his World GT3 felt "Awesome". It only took him a couple of more laps and Steve made a beautiful inside pass coming on the straight, ripping the stickers off his competitor to move into 2nd place. We weren't even one minute into the race, and Steve was already running down the leader for the Indoor Champs win! Steve spent the next couple minutes in "hunter-killer" mode reeling in the 1st place car lap by lap. With a minute and a half left, Steve had closed the gap to a couple of feet, and the leader started to feel the pressure. After just a few corners of Steve's World GT3 in his mirrors, the leader ticked a corner, opening the door, and Steve shot by for 1st place. There was just over a minute left in the race, and Steve was firmly in control. The 2nd place car made a run at Steve, but ended up taking himself out of contention. After that, Steve put it on "cruise control" and finished with a straight-a-way lead over 2nd place! Congratulations Steve! Great Job!
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| 10/20/2013 |
 Congratulations to SpeedMerchant driver Craig Xavier for Top Qualifying and Winning the 2013 Las Vegas International Indoor Championships! Craig just switched to SpeedMerchant cars for the 2013-2014 season a week before the Las Vegas Champs. Keeping with the "Ring Girl" theme of the race, Craig came out swinging, taking TQ in World GT and TQ in 17.5 12th scale with his new Rev.8 when the 1st day of qualifying was in the books. Craig went on to win the World GT A-Main wire to wire while lapping the field all the way up to 3rd place. Craig was joined in the A-Main by team mate Dave Berger who finished 6th with his Protoform Gianna GT clad SpeedMerchant World GT 3hree. Although a loose screw in the A-Main derailed his chances at a win, Craig and fellow team mates Dave Berger and Steve "Rocket" Rossi placed their new Rev.8's solidly in the 12th Scale 17.5 A-Main. A great debut for our newest chassis. Another outstanding race put on by Scotty Ernst and his crew. Can't wait for the IIC's 10th anniversary next year! Happy Halloween. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 10/04/2013 |
Hi Guys,
We're off to Las Vegas for the International Indoor Champs. All orders placed while we're gone will be processed and shipped when we get back. We'll be out of the office from the 5th to the 15th. We were able to get all the 8 Conversions out the door. Enjoy! I'm sure we'll come back to many more orders. I can't wait to hear how you guys are doing with your new cars! We're still shooting for a mid-October release of the Full Kit, and hopefully all the cool new molded stuff will be done by then too. I talked to the mold company yesterday, and they are almost done and ready to start pulling. To 'wet your whistle', here's a couple of HQ renders for you guys of the final Rev.8 with all of the molded goodies and the New School Front Suspension. Also....if you are at Vegas, visit us at the Meet & Greet on Tuesday night. You can check out the final version 8 with all the cool 3D proto parts on it (looks just like the renders), as well as a couple more surprises. Have a great week, and thank you for the support. Take care.-Bruce
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| 09/27/2013 |
Hi Guys,
The Rev.8 Conversions are available. They will start shipping bright and early Monday morning. All conversions are listed towards the bottom of our 'Car Parts' Page HERE. Or, just click on the picture below to go directly to its' on-line store page. Have a great weekend.-Bruce
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| 09/21/2013 |
 Hi Guys, I hope everyone is doing well, and had a great summer. It's time to go carpet racing! We're going to start to take orders on Rev.8 Conversions in the next day or two. I really want the guys attending Vegas to have the opportunity to run the new car, as well as all of you that have e-mailed me about your on-road season starting "very soon". I'm really proud of the new 8. A ton of testing and tons of redesigns have gone into this platform. We had 3 different versions going all the way back at the Snowbirds last year, and probably a dozen or more versions since then. With each chassis I honed in on what I wanted the new car to be able to do. Flat out, the new 8 produces more traction, and can be driven much, much more aggressively than any car we've produced before, as well as everything we've tested against. Back to back to back to back. The corner speed and the amount of extra time you can spend squeezing the throttle is really remarkable. Corners that you rolled into before, you'll charge into now. It actually takes a little while to get used to. Places on your track where you were out of the throttle with your old car, you're now strapped. It's pretty cool. Another nice thing about the new 8, is that you can run it any way and any configuration you want. The battery can be mounted in-line or transverse. The car comes with 2 different shock mounts. Both mounts can be used with either the in-line (left or right side) or transverse battery configuration. This allows you to mount just about any speed control, receiver, booster, receiver pack and even fan on the on-road market with relative ease. Talking about the battery configuration, with the 8 there is actually enough adjustment built into the chassis that we can achieve the same front to rear weight bias with the battery in-line or transverse. The only thing you change is where the weight is on the chassis, not how much is on each tire. This allows you to change the rotation and feel of the car without changing the for/aft balance. The synergy of the new long links, shock position, weight distribution and rear suspension geometry has absolutely produced my best creation yet. I hope you enjoy it. I'm offering several different versions of the Rev.8 conversion for you guys. Obviously, there will be a 'stock' Rev.7 to Rev.8 conversion, but there are lots of you out there that bought the completely bad ass Team Tamale adjustable rear pod sets for your 7. We're not going to leave you out in the cold. We have a conversion that comes with a bottom plate that allows you to keep your Tamale Pod and re-use your current back plate. I know some of you out there prefer the feel of the new style R5 suspension, so for the 1st time ever I'm making our cars available with the front holes drilled for the 3mm Team Associated R5 suspension, as well as the super trick Xenon front end, and all the others that have the same 3mm mounting holes. A lot of you are patiently waiting for our New School Front Suspension (we are too). We will have 8-32 'Old School' and 3mm R5 bulkheads available for the 'New School' so either of the Rev.8 front hole chassis configurations will work when it's available. If you're still rocking out with a Rev.5 or Rev.6, you're in luck. Just grab a new 3mm off set hub (part # 1796) for your rear axle from the on-line store, and you'll be ready to roll. Full Rev.8 Kits will be available after we get back from Vegas. We still have to finish up box art and instructions. Besides the Full Rev.8 kits and the New School Front Suspension, we have a lot of other cool stuff coming down the line. I'll have pictures up soon. Well, that's about it. I'll have the News section and the On-Line Store updated in a day or two so you can order conversions, and they will start to ship by mid-week. Below are some pictures of the available conversion types, as well as some quick renders so you can see battery lay-outs and what a finished conversion looks like. As always, thank you for the support, and Have Fun! Take care.-Bruce
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| 09/10/2013 |
 Soon... |
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| 4/18/2013 |
The 2012/13 WCICS series will go down in the history book as the most successful year in the series long history. With attendance up a whopping 30% with well over 1000 total entries over the 6 race series coving Western Canada. The racing and competition was fierce in every class at every leg of the series. In The 12th Scale Super Stock (10.5 Boosted) It was Korgae Scales and his Reedy/LRP powered Speedmerchant REV 7 that stood on top of the podium claiming the overall championship in the pinnacle 12th scale class of the series. This will be Korgae's 2nd championship with Speedmerchant, running a SpeedMerchant X-Ray 12 conversion last year to capture the Stock class championship before making the switch From Xray to Speedmerchant for this season. In the WGT category of the series it was once again Korgae Scales taking advantage of the award winning Speedmerchant World-GT3 allowing him to capture the WGT Series Championship for 2013 with races in hand. Korgae secured enough points in the first four races to secure the Championship with a dominating performance of TQ's and Wins, allowing him to sit out the last two events and watch the battle for 2nd. Great Job Korgae!!! Class Equipment: 1/12th Scale 10.5 Boosted SpeedMerchant Rev 7 JACO Tires Reedy 10.5 Reedy 65C Battery LRP Speed Control Airtronics M12 Radio Protoform AMR 12 Body 1/10th Scale 200mm World GT SpeedMerchant World GT3 JACO Tires (WGT Spec) Reedy 13.5 Reedy 65C Battery LRP Speed Control Airtronics M12 Radio Protoform Sofia Body
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| 2/27/2013 |
  Hi Guys, Here's our new Associated TC6 Front and Rear Lowered Shock Towers. These towers are designed to fit the new style TC6 or 6.1 with the Vertical Ball Stud Bearing Caps/Bulkheads. Both towers have had the shock mounting positions lowered by 2mm. On the Front Tower (Part# 6040) we removed the Inner most and outer most stock position mounting holes. The Rear Tower (Part# 6041) has had the 2 outer most holes removed, but we have added 2 new Inner holes for mounting your shocks. The Rear Tower also has lowered the Rear Body Mount position by exactly 1 body clip hole, but the post is in the same location as the stock tower for a painless change over. The Towers were lowered as much as possible while still being able to use the stock Associated springs. They give your sedan a lower CG, and by utilizing the new mounting positions on the Rear Tower, your TC6 will gain a ton of rotation. They are machined out of 2.5mm quasi-isotropic carbon fiber for superior rigidity and durability. They are up on-line today for sale to the public, so they will be legal for the upcoming R.O.A.R. Carpet Nationals in all sedan classes. The Front Tower is Part# 6040 and is available HERE. The Rear Tower is Part # 6041 and is available HERE. Good luck & have fun! - Bruce |
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| 2/11/2013 |
 We just got a great race report in from our friend Dave Berger on the left coast. Dave's been tearing it up lately, and that continued with his domination of the Region 12 champs with his SpeedMerchant World GT3! Dave TQ'd the class, and came within 1 second of lapping the entire field in the Championship A-Main! Really sharp looking 90's Alfa paint scheme too.  Great job Driva. Congratulations! Take care.-Bruce Remember, we love to get your race reports. Send your picture and race report to bruce@teamspeedmerchant.com, and I'll get it up on the site. |
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| 2/7/2013 |
Due to work commitments, Donny wasn't able to fly down to the race until Wednesday evening, missing all of the organized road course practice. Using the race qualifiers for gathering your set-up information is never ideal, but sometimes it's your only option. Donny's Rev.7 was quickly on pace and his SpeedMerchant "New School" front suspension was carving up the track. After some small tweaks early Sunday morning, we knew we had the car to beat in the A-main later that day. The race went well and Donny's Rev.7 assumed the lead over Corally's Ray Darroch and CRC's Andrew Knapp around the 3-minute mark. After that, Donny put it on cruise control, fending off one attack by Jason Schreffler and bringing home the win with a comfortable 2-second lead.  In 1/12th 17.5 class Steven Boice drove his Rev.7 up to a 2nd place finish in the A-main. Steve runs a box stock Rev.7 Sport, and only races 12th scale twice a year, so to finish at the top of one of the most highly contested classes at the Birds is really quite remarkable. Steve and Team Associated's Joe Trandell had a great battle for the top spot that lasted most of the A-main. Both drivers held 1st place at some point during the race, and in the end it was Joe taking the win by a scant 3-tenths of a second. Steve also joined Donny in both the World GT & 12th 13.5 Pro Stock A-mains. A big thanks to our sponsors: JACO Racing, Protoform Bodies, Team Trinity, Xenon Racing, EA Motorsports, Horizon Hobbies, Team Tamale & TQ Wire. See you at the R.O.A.R. Nationals in March. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 1/28/2013 |
We're off to sunny Florida for the 2013 Snowbird Nationals put on by Mike Boylan and his crew. Like last year, SpeedMerchant is the class sponsor for World GT. We will be out of the office from Tuesday the 29th thru Monday the 4th. All orders placed while we're gone will ship out shortly after we get back. Have a great week. Take care.-Bruce  |
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| 12/19/2012 |
Hi Guys, SpeedMerchant would like to introduce our 1/18th Scale Pan Car Racing body, the OR-18. This is the same body that SpeedMerchant drivers used to SWEEP the 2011 & 2012 Mini Carpet On-Road Nationals held at R/C Madness in Enfield, CT. This project was designed from the beginning to bring all of our years of winning 12th scale racing knowledge to the 18th scale pan car class. The body features everything that is at the cutting edge of 12th scale body design, just slightly shrunk down, to take your 18th scale to the podium. The Aero characteristics include a dorsal fin for better straight line tracking, more rear down force to help calm down the insanely overpowered 18th scale brushless cars, as well as more side force and side bite to help produce much higher corner speeds. It's truly an unfair advantage that you can put on your car for the next big race. The SpeedMerchant OR-18 is available HERE. Good luck and have fun! Happy Holidays.-Bruce
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| 12/5/2012 |
Hi Guys, I have a super limited edition deal for you Asc R5 owners out there. Larry at Team Tamale did a special order of 4 BLUE Adjustable Pod sets for the Asc. 5 series 12th scales. Unfortunately, the original customer pulled a disappearing act. So he sent them to me. I'm going to sell the 4 of them for our standard price of $85.00 ea. So no extra charge for blue. There are only 4, and after this, I very much doubt Larry is going to be making any more special request items. They will fit the R5.1, R5.1 Lipo, and the new R5.2. If you want a set, it will be 1st come 1st serve. Send me an e-mail at sales@teamspeedmerchant.com, and the first 4 customers I get an e-mail from get the pods. After I'm contacted, I will send you a PayPal with the charge.
Take care.-Bruce |
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| 12/5/2012 |
We finally got our front axles back in stock after several weeks. Unfortuanatly, we had a bad batch that wasn't up to SpeedMerchant specifications...and they had to go back to the machinist. The new batch is perfect and we should have plenty for a couple of seasons on quantity. So, if you've been waiting to order our new machined steering blocks, you are good to go. Here's the links to the shop. #1289 - Front Axles #5025Blu - Blue Steering Blocks #5025Blk - Black Steering Blocks Take care.-Bruce |
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| 12/4/2012 |
A couple of belated race reports. 1st Dave Berger took down the TQ Raceway Summer series with his World GT3. Nice way to end the summer after placing 4th at Vegas too!  Next our long time friend Fernando took the GORC 13.5 Title with his Rev.7 Sport. With over 80 entries Fernando laid it down with the TQ and Win.  Great job guys! If you're a racer, we would love to get a race report and picture of how you did with your SpeedMerchant ride. Send your picture and race report to bruce@teamspeedmerchant.com, and I'll get it up on the site. Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 10/9/2012 |
We just got back from the IIC race in Vegas. As always, it was a great time with Scotty and his crew doing a superb job of running the race. Congrats to all the winners in the various classes. The SpeedMerchant team did great. Mike Dumas and Donny Lia battled for the win in Expert World GT all week long. Mike held TQ in 3 out of 4 rounds, and was just edged out by perennial A-Mainer Josh Cyrul in the last qualifier. In 12th scale, Donny Lia TQ'd 13.5 Expert with the ONLY 51 lap run of the week. Unfortunately, Donny had a body tuck in the main while holding a commanding lead that cost him the win. Mike Dumas ended up bringing home 3rd overall and Pete Robinson stuck his Rev.7 in the Expert A Main also. In World GT 13.5 California fast guy Dave Berger brought home a well deserved 4th and our very own Joel Vautour took 7th in the A after building his car at the track. Great job guys! What's New??? We've been working on a new front suspension over the summer and got to debut it on a few select team cars at the race. The "New School" front suspension was on Mike's 12th cars and his World GT, and it was also on Donny's Rev.7 that took TQ in 13.5, and Pete Robinson's 13.5 car as well. We are ecstatic with the performance of the New School so far. You can do testing at home, but nothing can compare to a high traction National Level race. To be able to do comprehensive testing from Old School, Asc R5 and New School...back to back to back was just invaluable. To have the New School TQ 13.5 Expert 12th scale in its' first outing was just the cherry on the top. We still have some small changes to make, but you can look forward to the New School to be available before the Snowbirds. It will fit ALL the current 12th scale chassis on the market......and make you faster. We've got to get back to catching up on orders placed while we were gone. Have a great week. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 9/25/2012 |
The SpeedMerchant crew will be out of the office attending the IIC race. We will be gone from September 27th thru October 9th. All orders placed during that time will be shipped as soon as we get home. You can check out the IIC website here... http://www.intchamps.com/ Take care.-Bruce |
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| 8/2/2012 |
Got a race report from our friend Kazuki Endo from Japan. He won a large World GT meeting with his just built WGT 3hree. Best thing in the picture though.... Besides the obviously super nice trophy girl..... The absolutely pimp Gold & Black sponser shirt. Hope everyone is having a great Summer. Vegas is right around the corner. Take care.-Bruce
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| 06/29/2012 |
Unlike standard adapters that use a round or cone nut to center the rim and tighten the rim to the truer....which usually results in distorting the plastic. The Tamale adapters fit into the on-road rim's mounting holes, pressing the back of the rim directly onto the flat of the arbor. You then use the separate 6mm nut to tighten the adapter to the truer's arbor. The result.......a much, much truer tire. Team SpeedMerchant used the prototypes of these for the 2nd half of last season, and they are really good. They make a HUGE difference on the track. More so than we thought they would. Big "Thumbs Up"...go get yourself some for the coming year. They are available direct from... Team Tamale You can also "click" the pictures below to go to the Team Tamale on-line shop. Hope you're having a great summer! Take care.-Bruce
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| 5/30/2012 |
Hope everyone had a safe and happy Memorial Day Weekend. We just got in our new Aluminum Steering Blocks...again anodized in Blue and Black. These blocks are the same geometry that we have offered on our machined Delrin blocks for years and our team guys have used aluminum ones done by Team Tamale to win several National level events. Our blocks are slightly lower in height than most out there, and let you adjust your axle position for ride height as well as letting you play with your front roll center. The new blocks also have the 4-40 Ball Stud moved away from the king pin and closer to the centerline of the chassis. This gives the car some different Ackerman options, as well as giving the servo more leverage on the front wheels during hard cornering. Another feature of our blocks is that we have our front axles trail slightly more than most others out there. This really helps take away that "touchy on center" feeling, as well as making the cars track straighter and it even helps to avert the dreaded traction roll. The new blocks come with 4-40 set screws that let you tighten the block to your king pin for added security. They will fit pretty much every 12th & 10th pan car out there with a standard 1/8th inch King Pin. They are designed to use our #1289 Machined Front Axles w/Hardware, and with a couple of packs of our #2091 1/8th Inch Front Shims, you're in business. Happy testing.-Bruce
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| 4/20/2012 |
They're finally back in stock. Thank you for being patient. I had them done in Blue & Black on this batch, and they came out great. Part #'s are SMR5015Blu & SMR5015Blk. Click the pics below to go to the shop. Have a great day.-Bruce
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| 4/14/2012 |
Here are our new Front Springs. There are a lot of front suspension springs on the market, but we've always preferred the feel and got our best results from the standard Associated spring. For years the staples in racing have been the .018, .020 & .022 variety. In hand and on the track, these springs have always felt/worked the best. About the only issue everyone has with Associated springs is that they "collapse" way too easily. So, we met with our "Spring Guy" who has done a tremendous job for us over the years starting with our line of Progressive Tweak Springs and then more recently our Linear Tweak Springs which have been adopted by tons or racers all over the World, and used to win every major race in the past 2 seasons since their introduction. Our biggest goal was to get that "dampened" feel that only the Asc. springs seem to have....but we didn't want the "hit one board and collapse a spring" syndrome either. We also wanted a slightly longer spring so the "sweet spot" in the springs' range was larger. Going .020" longer gave the best results. What we came up with was a front spring that is "pre-worked" by the manufacturer. Through a special process, the spring material is manufactured in a way that it is less susceptible to collapsing while at the same time having a dampened feel that is awesome in hand and works even better on the track. When SpeedMerchant Team driver Pete Robinson put a set of the new .019's on his Rev.7 at this year's Nats, the first words out of his mouth were...."These things are like R/C Porn". LOL. Donny Lia ended up TQ'ing & Wining the Nats World GT Class with them on his car & Dumas took 3rd with his World GT. In 12th Mod, Dumas ended up 2nd over all while putting in the quickest 8-minute run of the week taking the win in the 3rd A-Main. Donny ran the new .020's on his WGT & .019's on his 12th, while Dumas had new .019's on both 12th & WGT cars. By the end of the week, several "Team" guys throughout the building had switched to them..... we got nothing but "Thumbs Up" from those drivers. The new springs are part #'s.... #7001 = .017" SpeedMerchant Front Suspension Springs #7003 = .019" SpeedMerchant Front Suspension Springs #7004 = .020" SpeedMerchant Front Suspension Springs #7005 = .021" SpeedMerchant Front Suspension Springs #7001 = .023" SpeedMerchant Front Suspension Springs As always...thank you for your support, & have a great Summer.-Bruce
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| 4/13/2012 |
The new .024 Linear Tweak Springs are now available. They are part#5069. I also updated the Linear Tweak Spring Conversions (part#5065) so they include the full range of springs .018 thru .024. The stiffer Linear Tweak spring was used by Paul L. to win the 2012 Birds in 12th Mod. It's a set-up that we haven't run for quite a while, but Paulie certainly proved that it is a very viable solution, even with the lighter LiPo cars. Back in the "round cell" days, I would often set the cars up with our firmer .023 Progressive Tweak Springs hovering about 1mm above the link ends. This set-up made the cars very smooth & easy to drive "on center", but when the car got into a corner, the chassis would lay over, hit the very firm .023 tweak spring, and presto....instant steering. The set-up was exactly what we had on Mike Dumas's cars used to win the 2007, 2008 & 2009 ROAR Carpet Nationals. When we started testing our Linear Tweak Springs, as well as moving the springs in-board, we got away from the "hovering" method. I think Paulie proved it's something we should at least re-visit in testing. Maybe you should too. Good luck.-Bruce
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| 4/12/2012 |
Just put up the World GT3 Front Bumper. Pete Robinson did a ton of great testing over the Winter, and we came up with this design. Besides doing its' obvious job of protecting the front of your chassis, the bumper also gives the car a little more high speed steering especially at the end of the straights. Pete used one of the 1st production ones to TQ the Snowbirds, and Donny Lia TQ'd and Won the ROAR Nats with one too. It's part#1774, click the Pic below to go to the store. Thanks.-Bruce
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| 4/12/2012 |
I've got the new Optional Top Plates/Shock Mounts up in the on-line store. Part #1772 is the set for the Rev.7, and part#1773 is for the World GT3. We've been testing these for a while now, and they are a great tuning aid. Donny Lia just TQ'd and Won the ROAR Nats with the Long/Middle set-up on his World GT3. Mike Dumas ran Short (stock Top Plate)/Middle on his 12th Mod car taking 2nd overall and putting in the fastest 8-minute run of the week in the final A-Main at the Nats also. Click the Pics to go to the store. Take care.-Bruce
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| 4/01/2012 |
Well....I got a lot of new stuff up on the site. The largest update I did was to the Race Report section. I started to work on this Winter's season, but it was really nagging me that I never had gone back and updated my pre-2005 race reports. In 2005 I updated the whole website, and I never transfered my Old Race Reports from 1997-2004. Pre 2005 I just had a little 'News Ticker' at the bottom of the front page that would have Race Results, New Products, etc. Very few pictures because they really slowed down how quickly a page would load back then. Remember....the Internet was a very ugly and slow creature in 1997. LOL. So, I just spent my entire Saturday, Saturday night and now into Sunday mornig updating race reports from 1999-2004. I tried to find the corresponding pics for the reports. I did pretty well, butI still have 3 old hard drives to go thru when I get a chance. One of them definitely has those first few years with Blackstock's Modified win over Josh at Josh's home track, and the run Dumas went on with his Rev.2. I think Mike actually lapped the field in 12th Stock Class at every major event for an entire season. Lots of cool memories. Check out the Old Race Reports HERE. Take care.-Bruce PS = I promise to get to this Winter's reports today. |
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| 3/31/2012 |
Hope everyone is having a nice weekend. I'm getting some web things updated today. I should finally get my race reports done from the Birds and the Nats. I'm just waiting on some pics to come from Donny of his Top Qualifying and Winning World GT3 from the Nats. I already have some good pics of Mike's Rev.7 he ran in Modified. After going thru the results, it turns out that Mike's 3rd A-Main run was the fastest run of the week at the Nats! Old Skool Front Suspension laying it down in Mod! I also have lots of new parts that have to be uploaded. Both Donny and Mike ran our new optional Top Plate/Shock Mount-Battery Brace combos on their cars at the Nats. We also Introduced our new line of Front Suspension Springs. They came out really well....they were on both Donny and Mike's cars as well as several other drivers in the building. Just like our Tweak springs, we spent a lot of time getting the best quality and best "feeling" springs for your car. Pretty cool to debut a new Spring line a the Nats and have them go on to TQ & Win World GT, and take a 2nd overall in 12th Mod with the fastest run of the week! I updated the Parts/Price PDF. You can see a lot of the new parts that are here now, and ones coming down the line in the next few weeks. Here's a LINK to the PDF. Also, we are Sold Out of Tamale Pods for both SpeedMerchat and CRC. Larry at Team Tamale is working on more for us. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 3/22/2012 |
Hope everyone is doing well. We're back from the Nats in Texas. Great race, very well run at an awesome facility. Congrats to Donny Lia for TQ'ing and winning World GT, giving SpeedMerchant its' 26th National Title. Also, a big congrats goes out to Mike Dumas for taking 2nd overall in 12th scale Modified with 3rd, 2nd and 1st place finishes in the A-Mains. I'm going to try to get the full race report up this weekend, but we still have lots of orders to catch up with. We did get our Bearing Carriers for the Tamale Pod Sets down at Texas, and those orders have started to ship the past 2 days. We should have all the back orders done by Saturday. Thank you for being patient. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 3/15/2012 |
Hope everyone is doing well. We'll be out of the office from Thursday March 15th thru Monday the 19th. All the orders placed in that time frame will go out as soon as we get back. Also, some of you are still waiting on orders that included Team Tamale Rear Pod Sets. We apologize for the snafu, but we ran out of the Rear Bearing Carriers for them, and getting them done took a lot longer than originally projected. I talked to Larry(Team Tamale) yesterday, and he is going to hand deliver the Bearing Carriers to me down in Texas at the Nats. As soon as we get back in the door, we will be sealing up your orders (there's a big pile of orders just waiting for the Bearing Carriers on the ship table), and getting them right out the door. I sent out e-mails to customers that orders were on hold, but I think I missed a couple of you, or maybe some of you have different PayPal e-mails and personal e-mails. Either way, your orders will be out the door next week, and the pod sets are definitely worth the wait. Thank you for being patient. Take care.-Bruce P.S.=Believe it or not, I haven't forgot about the Bird's Race Report. That's just how busy we've been since we got back. I will get that and our Nats Report up when we get home. |
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| 2/10/2012 |
We're back from the Birds. We had a great week culminating in 2 TQ's and a Win. Pete Robinson drove his Rev.7 to an impressive TQ in 17.5 12th class, throwing down some lap times that were untouchable by the competition all week long. He went on to a wire to wire win in the A-Main, again laying down the quickest laps on the computer. In Open World GT, Pete had a top 3 car all week long, and put in a masterful drive in the last qualifier to grab the TQ over a completely stacked field. I'll have pictures, set-ups and a full race report done this weekend. We're also getting all those orders placed over the past week out the door ASAP. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 1/28/2012 |
We're off to the Snowbirds in Sunny Florida. We'll be out of the office from Jan 29th thru Feb 6th. All orders placed when we're gone will be processed starting on the 8th, and shipped shortly afterwards. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 1/13/2012 |
We have JACO 12th scale rims/tires back in stock at a great price. We also got in the new White Rim WGT Spec rims/tires...also at a great price. Looks like the JACO 1/12th molds have been refreshed, and the new plastic is a very bright white. Check out the JACO page HERE. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 1/4/2012 |
Larry {Team Tamale} sent us pod sets right before the Holidays, but I'm just updating the website now, so.... all Tamale Pod Sets are back in stock! Check them out HERE. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 11/4/2011 |
Well...that was quick. You guys destroyed my stock on Tamale Pods sets in just under a week. Nice Job! Don't fret...we have Larry tied up to his CNC until he gets us more. The out look right now is about a week and a half...maybe two. The Tamale Pod page located HERE will be updated as soon as they are back in stock, as well as the News section. We still have a few left for the new Rev.7's, but we started with a much larger pile of those. We have some new Part #'s for you: We are about 95% caught up on orders that built up over the last week because of the snow storm/power outage. Altogether, we lost power from Saturday afternoon until Thursday evening at the shop. Obviously, you can't run a CNC without power, so we still have a lot of cutting to get done over the weekend. I think we sold out of all the Rev.7's I had in stock in 2 days. That's pretty awesome. You guys are going to love your new rides! Thank you for your support. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 11/01/2011 |
Thanks for being patient. We've had so many projects going at the same time that we can barely get all this stuff up on-line for you. We were also waiting on a batch of shocks to get back from the anodizer. They shipped and are already in the kits. We're going to offer the Rev.7's and World GT3's in Sport, Formula and Custom. The Sport cars will come with our 'New' Machined Old School front suspension. The Formula kits will come with our full on race Formula 3 front suspensions, the ultimate in adjustability for various track conditions. The Custom designation is a new one for us. In an effort to get you guys into kits at a lower initial cost, we've decided to offer 7's without Rear Axles/Hubs, Center Shocks & Front Suspensions. This will allow you to convert many of the current 12th scales available over to a SpeedMerchant Rev.7 for a lot less out of pocket money. The Custom kits will accept any of the 12th scale front suspensions that use the standard Associated bolt pattern, and any 12th axle that features the narrow right side differential hub. Even if you have an older axle with the slightly wider hub, you can buy the new narrow hub from us. It's Part #1796, available HERE. Most of the current 12th shocks are fairly universal, and will fit with just trimmed 4-40 ball cups. Tons of HQ pictures and information about the new and innovative Rev.7 avaiable HERE. Click the box art to go to the corresponding on-line store page.
Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 10/28/2011 |
Working with our friends at Team Tamale, we are proud to introduce our new line of Adjustable Axle Ride Height Pods. They feature a new ride height adjustment system incorporating a set of independent bearing carriers. These bearing carriers have small precision machined serrations in the face of them that mate to matching serrations on the back side of each rear pod plate. These serrations are .5mm apart allowing for quick and easy ride height adjustment. Simply loosen the four screws at the back of the pod, move the bearing carriers to the new position using the engraved lines to match each side and then retighten in the new position. No need to disassemble the rear axle or hunt down the correct ride height adjusters ever again! The design of the pods also allow us to use larger 1/4 x 1/2 x 3/16 inch bearings which roll more freely, are more durable and last much longer than the old small flanged bearings we have used for all these years. The pod sets are available for the SpeedMerchant, Team Associated, CRC, XRAY (new & old), and we have Serpent, CFEX and TOP models coming soon. The new rear pods use a different bottom plate and back plate, but use the stock top plate for each manufacturer's car. As always, the aluminum Team Tamale uses is the best aircraft grade 7075 or 7050 aluminum available, for unparalleled strength and durability. Each Set comes with:
All of the different pod sets are available for purchase by clicking HERE. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 10/19/2011 |
We shipped out the new Rev.7 just days before the race, so Takahiro (RC Champ House) and Watanabe had very little prep time to get his car together and race ready. Turns out, they did a great job. Watanabe TQ'd EVERY round of Qualifying, and Won the 1st & 2nd A-Mains allowing him to sit out the 3rd.
Naoki ran a pretty standard set-up on his Rev.7, including the new machined Old School front suspension. The only "optional" parts on the car are the Carbon Fiber Side Links, Aluminum Front Braces, and our ultra cool Team Tamale Rear Pod Set. A HUGE congratulations goes out to Takahiro & Watanabe! Great job guys! Below is the finishing order of the race. 17.5 Overall Results - JMRCA Japanese 1/12th scale Nationals 1. Naoki Watanabe - TQ / SpeedMerchant 2. Kazuma Murai / Corally 3. Gou Matsumoto / Associated 4. Kouji Iizuka / Yokomo 5. Kouji Yokoyama / Kawada 6. Yuichi Iida / Yokomo 7. Hideyuki Matsushima / Associated 8. Atsushi Takeshita / 9. Kazunori Watanabe / Yokomo 10.Kunihiro Fujii / Corally Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 10/15/2011 |
We had a great trip. The race was awesome and run very well as always. There are some really nice pictures taken by Joel from RC Car Action up on-line of our stuff. Here's the link... http://www.rccaraction.com/blog/2011/10/07/cfx-rc-paintworks-parmapse-7th-annual-iic/ We are swamped with orders from when we were away. We're about 70% caught up right now. Everything else will ship by Friday of this week. We also got word that our back ordered shock shipment is finally on its' way. So we can get the 7's and WGT3's up online. Also, look for HPI F10 and Tamiya F104 conversions to be boxed and ready to ship within a month. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 10/1/2011 |
All orders placed during that time will ship starting October 10th. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 09/21/2011 |
Here's a cool conversion for the R5.1 LiPo chassis that lets you run SpeedMerchant Damper Tubes as well as our very popular Linear Springs. The kit includes: A quick and easy change that will make your R5.1 LiPo easier to drive, quicker in the corners, and more consistent lap to lap. Part #6030 and available now. Have a great day.-Bruce
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| 09/7/2011 |
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| 08/22/2011 |
Well...Here's another one for you. We got so many e-mails, PM's and flat out personal requests to "please make an in-line conversion for my Gen-XL", that we finally broke down and did one. Much like our X-Ray 12th conversion, this kit allows you to mount the battery in-line on the left or right side, or across the back like normal, but with more for/aft adjustability than stock. When drawing up the conversion, it quickly became apparent that the cleanest, easiest and strongest design would be to box in the rear pod with a new Top Plate, and give the car a full length Tweak Brace. This allows the battery to sit further back in the chassis and stiffens the rear end of the car. By adding a matching motor/pod plate on the left side (CRC#3340), we really strengthened the rear pod area which increases durability as well as helping your rear axle stay perfectly aligned after a misadventure with an immovable object. We also added mounting holes so you can adjust shock length for finer on track tuning. The kit comes with almost everything you need to convert your CRC Gen-XL. *** You also need one CRC# 3340 - Low Profile Motor Pod - Gen-X to complete the kit. *** The Conversion kit's is part #6020, and is available HERE. Have a great week.-Bruce
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| 08/05/2011 |
Here's our new conversion kit for the X-Ray 10th scale World GT car. I had drawn up the 10th scale car at the same time as the 12th scale conversion, I just wasn't sure if there would be a large enough demand for a 10th version to cut a full batch. Well, that was answered pretty quickly by a lot of e-mails and PM's asking if & when we were doing a WGT Conversion Kit. The 10th conversion features most everything found on our 12th version. The kit includes two Tweak/Body Mount Braces. The one shown on the car is the wide version designed exclusively for the Protoform Sophia body. The Sophia is really the de facto WGT racing body, and the wide body mount really helps you mount one perfectly. The 2nd Tweak/Body Mount Brace (pictured laying next to the car) has in-board body mounts (like the stock X-Ray piece), that lets you mount virtually any 200mm body on the car. We stayed with the center mount battery (we use the stock X-Ray Shock Mount/Battery Brace), and the wheelbase was proper also. The kit comes with our Linear Spring kit mounted in-board and our proprietary Damper Tubes. Much like the 12th Conversion, the WGT version is easier to drive and carries more corner speed than stock. The kit comes with everything you need to convert your X-Ray 10 over... The Conversion kit's is part #6010, and is available HERE. Have a great weekend.-Bruce
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| 08/03/2011 |
Really nice track, run by really nice people, and a bunch of great locals. It was a lot of fun meeting many old friends that I hadn't seen it quite a long time. Congratulations to Mike Haynes for taking 2nd overall in 12th scale with his Rev.6. Mike and his 6 were pretty dialed all weekend long culminating with a TQ run in the last round of qualifying. Mike went on to take two 2nds and a 1st in the Triple A-Main format. We would also like to send out a congratulations to Billy Spence. Billy bought a SpeedMerchant X-Ray conversion just a week before the race. Billy doesn't even have a local 12th scale track to run at anymore, so he was trimming his car out at the Nats. Unfortunately, due to the rain, he got very little practice with his new ride. That didn't stop him from qualifying 5th for the A-Main right behind Joel Johnson. Billy went on to finish 4th overall, and had just an incredible battle with Joel in the 3rd A-Main. Billy and Joel ran within 10 feet of each other for about 7 minutes. Awesome racing and tons of fun to watch. Not too bad for just a handful of packs thru his new conversion. Finally, a big thumbs up goes out to Joel "Lady's Man" Vatour. Joel helps out at SpeedMerchant as well as being a very talented up and coming racer in his own right. Joel had never run on asphalt before, and like everyone else, got very little practice due to the weather (and the fact that we didn't get to the race until Friday morning). Joel took his Rev.6 (with his set-up from Friday night carpet racing), threw it down and was dialed. He never turned a screw on the car all weekend, and the only set-up change he made from carpet club racing was tire selection. Joel went on to finish 6th in the A-Main in his 1st asphalt race ever. Great job guys! Take care.-Bruce
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| 07/15/2011 |
Click the picture for a larger view. Have a great weekend.-Bruce
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| 07/12/2011 |
We're releasing our conversion kit for the X-Ray 12th scale car. It will be on-line tonight. This is the same kit that a lot of the Team X-Ray drivers were using at this year's Nationals. We took all the information gathered at the Nats and weekly testing since, and have come up with a really nice conversion for you X-Ray pilots. What's changed... The kit comes with everything you need to convert your X-Ray 12 over... The conversion is much easier to drive, has more corner speed, and a ton more rear traction. We made sure that there is plenty of room for electronics with the in-line option too. You can obviously fit a Tekin RS/Pro, but we also made sure an LRP drops right in without overhanging the chassis. We'll have some better high resolution pictures up by the weekend with assembled kits, but we wanted to make sure and get this on-line for anyone that wanted to use them at the asphalt Nats at the end of the month. The Conversion's Part# is SMR6000, available HERE. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 03/21/2011 |
We'll be out of the office from March 21st - 29th. All on-line orders placed within that time will be sent out starting Wednesday the 30th. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 03/06/2011 |
We're selling them at a very discounted rate to help you guys get your cars on the track. Fronts will sell for $9.95 and Rears for $10.95.... instead of the $16.00 and $18.00 dollar retail price. We'll be carrying Black and Lilac Fronts and Orange and Pink Rears. Generally, our team guys run Black/Orange for 17.5 class, Lilac/Orange or Lilac/Pink for 13.5 & Lilac/Pink or Magenta/Pink in Modified. The Tires page can be found HERE. The individual Tire part #'s are... #jaco2738 1/12th Lilac Fronts #jaco2742 1/12th Black Fronts #jaco2832 1/12th Orange Rears #jaco2930 1/12th Pink Rears We'll do our best to keep these in stock, but our 1st large order is almost 1/2 sold, and I never even got them up in the shop until today! Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 02/25/2011 |
By far, the most requested are the #1785 Carbon Fiber Side Link Conversions. They come with a 4 new machined pivot sockets, 2 carbon fiber side links, and the new adjustable carbon fiber pivot plate. We've been testing these for about 6 months, and haven't a failure yet....and trust me, some of the guys have really been testing them. LOL.  We also put up the #1651 Complete Formula 2 Front suspensions for all SpeedMerchant 12th scale chassis,  and the new 1/10th 200mm World GT2 Formula #1715 and Sport #1720 Competition kits. 
Hopefully, this weekend, I'll get the rest of all of the new parts on-line for you guys. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 02/10/2011 |
 The race was great. Big turn out, very competitive, and expertly run by Mike Boylan and his staff. Team SpeedMerchant had an excellent week, capped off by a win in 12th Scale by Mike Dumas and his Rev.6. We'll have a full race report with how the whole team did, pictures, info, and set-ups from the team up this weekend. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 01/23/2011 |
We'll be out of the office from Jan 23rd - 31st. All on-line orders placed within that time will be sent out starting Wednesday the 2nd. You can follow the race line on-line at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/snowbirds Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 01/15/2011 |
 SpeedMerchant is now an official distributor for JACO racing . We will be stocking their 12th and 10th foams. 12th foams will sell for only $9.95 for Fronts & 10.95for Rears and will be available as soon as we're back from the Snowbirds. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 09/17/2010 |
Scotty Ernst and the IIC crew did a wonderful job as usual and put on the premier RC event in the Wotld....Again! Team SpeedMerchant had a great race with several cars making the Top Ten A-Mains. A big congratulations goes out to Donny Lia for taking the 13.5 12th scale A-Main Win!!! Donny's Rev.6 even set fast lap of the event with a 9.345 second lap!!! Well done Donny!!! We'll have a full race report and high-res pictures and set-up details of Donny's Rev.6 up by the end of this week. We're processing all the orders that came in while we were gone, and everything will start shipping this Monday. Have a great weekend.-Bruce |
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| 09/03/2010 |
We'll be out of the office from Sept. 4th - 14th. All on-line orders placed within that time will be sent out starting Monday the 20th. You can follow the race line on-line at www.LiveRC.com. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 08/27/2010 |
Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 08/01/2010 |
The Formula Rev.6 is part#1700. Check it out HERE. The Rev.6 Sport kit features all the new 6 chassis parts and rear suspension with Linear springs, but features the 'Old Skool' front supension. The #1705 Sport kits can be viewed HERE. Orders will be processed 1st come, 1st served, and we will start shipping mid-week. The rest of the new parts....springs, carbon fiber parts, Rev.5/5L to 6 conversions, etc. will all be available by the end of the week. We just have to take pictures of everything for the on-line shop. Thank you for your support. Have a great week.-Bruce PS = How about a big shout-out to "WG".... Ralph Burch for winning the 200mm Gas Worlds in Texas. 43 years young and making it look easy. Great job Ralph...congrats to you and your team! |
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| 07/28/2010 |
*** On sale Sunday, August 1st ***  |
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| 06/24/2010 |
 You can follow the action here... www.dmc-online.com/wm (offical site of the wc) www.mac-burgdorf.de www.myrcm.ch (timekeeping-system) www.rcracing.tv (livereport online screen) www.redrc.net and the RC-Tech Thread HERE |
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| 05/12/2010 |
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| 04/27/2010 |
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| 04/22/2010 |
I'll have the website updated with more pictures, a feature list, and part #'s this weekend. Happy Racing! - SpeedMerchant |
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| 04/19/2010 |
for his 4th place finish at the 2010 Asian Cup On-Road Championships!  Kazuki Endo & Asia Cup Sponsor Teru from Xenon Racing Our exclusive Japanese Importer, RC House Champ (http://www.rc-house-champ.com/) debuted the new Rev.6 to the World with a great performance under very tough circumstances. We'll have a full race report from Japan with pictures of the new Rev.6 on the site shortly. The Rev.6 has been thru extensive testing for several months culminating in Donny Lia's TQ at the 2010 SnowBird Nationals over a star-studded International field! Pictures, prices and part #'s for the Rev.6, the new World GT2, the final version of our new 235mm 7.4 chassis as well as a couple of surprises will all be updated very soon! Have a great week & Happy Racing! - SpeedMerchant |
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| 01/22/2010 |
Hi Guys,
We're jumping into the 18th scale pan car market with both feet. After a couple of months of design and testing, we're very proud to release the MiniMerchant. The first batch of kits available to the public will be 'Team' kits that come fully assembled by SpeedMerchant and feature Titanium Tie Rods, Blue Aluminum hardware, and Machined Alloy Bulkheads and Steering Spindles. To finish the Team kit, you will need a Scalpel axle/differential, ride height and rear bearings. Obviously, a body, tires... and electronics to make it move. The MiniMerchant uses 1/8 x 5/16th front wheel bearings (included). You must ream your Scalpel front wheel to 5/16ths to use them on the car.
Over the next couple of months we will be releasing sport kits as well as conversion kits for the 18th scale Scalpel that uses the Scalpel's entire front suspension. Due to time constraints, the initial release of Team kits will be somewhat limited. As of Monday the 2nd, we are out of stock of the new MiniMerchant. More will be available after the 18th Scale On-Road Nationals held this week at RC Madness in Enfield, CT. Hope to see you there! Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 07/28/2009 |
Hi Guys,
We're doing a small running change to our 1289 Front Axles. We've been using a reverse thread, screw in type for about a year, but we've been having problems with customers threading them into the steering blocks a little crooked which was resulting in the axles being a degree or so off from 90 to the King Pins. It wasn't a huge problem, but after replacing several sets of steering blocks, I thought it should be addressed. So we had some new ones made that press into the steering block, but instead of an e-clip holding the axle in place, there is still a 4-40 nut securing the axle. We also had the axles case hardened and then the bearing surface precision ground for the utmost accuracy. The axles will be included in all of our kits going forward. Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 07/22/2009 |
Congratulations to RC House Champ and drivers Hiroyuki Matsumoto (5th Place) & Naoki Watanabe (9th Place) for their outstanding performance at the All Japan Championships held at Yatabe Arena last weekend. RC House Champ just started as our sole Japanese Distributor in the Spring. They have made tremendous progress in a very short time. Putting two Rev.5's in the A-Main is a great accomplishment. Congratulations RC House Champ, Matsumoto & Watanabe for a job very well done! We will have some pictures from the race and the drivers up soon. |
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| 05/23/2009 |
The guys at PetitRC.com did a really nice editable Set-Up Sheet for the Rev.5.
Click HERE to check it out. |
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| 05/17/2009 |
I finally got around to updating our "Cars" section from the main menu.
It's still got a ways to go, but most of the stuff has been updated.
Click HERE to see the SpeedMerchant line of cars. |
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| 05/17/2009 |
 The PDF Instruction manual for the Formula Rev.5 Lipo kit is posted under the "support" tag off of the main menu. Click HERE ....they're at the bottom of the page. |
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| 05/15/2009 |
The new, super cool, way ahead of the game, Rev.5 Lipo is now available in the on-line store.
Click HERE to be faster than everyone else. |
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| 05/11/2009 |
Hi Guys,
The Rev5Lipo 1st production run is done. Kits will be on the website in a day or two. We've been doing a ton of Single Cell Lipo testing, and we think everyone is really going to enjoy it. The cars are easier to drive, more nimble, and less work. By taking the weight out of the cars, there is less tire & mechanical wear also. The new kits come with black anodized, laser inscribed aluminum bulkheads, and the new black Teflon coated HPS micro shock. After a lot of testing, we feel it's the best shock on the market right now. Click on the pic for a larger view.
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| 03/28/2009 |
I finally got around to posting all of the recent race reports from this season with pictures and set-ups of the winning cars.
You can check them out HERE |
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| 03/27/2009 |
SpeedMerchant is very happy to annouce that RC Champ House in Tokyo will be our exclusive distributor in Japan.
Click HERE to visit their website. |
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| 03/25/2009 |
We have our race report from this year's ROAR On-Road Carpet Nationals up. Mike Dumas and his Formula Rev.5 bring home #25 for SpeedMerchant!
Click HERE to see it. |
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| 3/18/2009 |
Hi Everyone, Hope you all had a great Winter.
We had a excellent winter racing season with Donny Lia taking 2 more huge wins at The Cleveland Indoor Champs & The Snowbird Nationals. Two more races......2 more TQ's and Wins! It's been a loooong time since one driver/car combo dominated a racing season like Donny has. Great job Donny. Donny is excited to move up to Modified for next season, and we're sure he'll pick up right where he left off in Stock. We've been doing a lot of testing with the 3.7 volt Lipo's available from SMC. So far they are working better than we could have hoped for. Some of the electronic manufacturers are already updating their speed controls to work better with the lower voltage, and Novak has a small Booster that lets the single cell Lipo work with all of the currents ESC's on the market. The nice off shoot of the Lipo technology (beyond just the ease of use of the battery), is the reduced weight has made the cars much easier to tune for your average racer, as well as tire and mechanical wear is way down. The 3.7 Lipos have such a flat power curve that a lot of people are putting their "fast" laps in towards the end of an 8-minute heat....something that virtually never happened with our current cells. We're on our way out the door to go to the ROAR Carpet Nationals in Cleveland. It's become pretty obvious that this race will probably be the swan song of "round cells". So....since we're always a couple of steps ahead of the competition, we figured well give you a little glimpse of our new SpeedMerchant line of Lipo friendly chassis. We'll be offering our current Formula Rev5, our 200mm World GT 3.7 and a 7.4 WGT chassis as well. We'll also have a 7.4 235mm car for those crazy Europeans, or anyone who wants to go really fast across a parking lot. LOL. The Rev5 and World GT cars will also be available as "conversions" if you already have a current car. All of them will be available as Full Kits, and we should have part #'s and pricing in April. Click HERE to go check out some pictures of the cars, and we'll have more information for you after the Nats. I've gotta go pack my suitcase. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 11/4/2008 |
We finally got our Aluminum Pod sets done for the Rev.5 & World GT cars. They are part #1465 and available in the on-line shop.
These are the same pod plates that were on Donny Lia's winning 2008 Vegas Rev.5. They are machined out of the highest quality 7075 aluminum, and we had them anodized Black for the cool factor. They feature a small relief cut on the left side plate that allows a little more room for the sensor wires on some of the various Brushless motors. Click HERE to see them. |
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| 10/12/2008 |
Wow...what a busy Summer. Hope everyone had a great one.
We finally got our race report up from this years International In-door Champs. For the 3rd year in a row, SpeedMerchant takes a 12th scale class. This year it was Donny Lia and his Formula Rev.5 taking the win! Chick HERE for the race report and pictures of Donny's car. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 03/22/2008 |
Both the Formula Pro-10 and the SpeedSpec II are available in the on-line shop.
The Formula Pro-10 is part #1505 and The SpeedSpec II is part #1510. Both will ship this week. Happy Easter.-Bruce |
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| 03/21/2008 |
Hi Guys, Well, Spring is finally here. For those of you in the warmer climates, that probably doesn't mean as much to the people that have been locked inside their houses since December. LOL. Personally, I can't wait to go outside and get some fresh air and sun every day. We have our race report from the 2008 R.O.A.R. On-Road Carpet Nationals up. You can see it HERE. We had a great week, with Mike Dumas piloting his Trinity powered Rev.5 to another Modified National Title. That's back to back Modified titles for Mike, and number 24 for SpeedMerchant! It was really cool meeting a ton of SpeedMerchant customers at the Nats, and making some new ones while we we're there. We've done a lot of testing over the past month with our new Formula Pro-10 200mm car. It has gone really well. The car handles excellent, is easy to drive and set-up. For local/Regional racing, I really think 4-cells with a 10.5 or a 13.5 would make for a very enjoyable class. In case you haven't seen it go, we posted some clips on YouTube. If you go HERE you can see clips of some of the testing Both the Formula Pro-10 and SpeedSpec II will be available in the on-line store this weekend. I tried to get them up there before we left for the Nationals, but just ran out of time. Thank you for being patient. Have a great Spring…get out and enjoy the weather! - Bruce |
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| 03/11/2008 |
We're off to the R.O.A.R. Carpet Nationals. You can get info on the race at http://www.2008roarnats.com/
I put up some pictures of a couple of the 200mm bodies we've been using. Check them out HERE. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 03/02/2008 |
Here's some direct links to the new Rev.5 parts so you don't have to search the shop.
Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 02/29/2008 |
Leap Day...cool.
All the Rev.5's new parts are available in the on-line store, and under the "Support" tag on the main menu, you can find the new Rev.5 instructions in PDF format. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 02/14/2008 |
Hi all,
I hope everyone had a safe and happy Holiday season! We've been crazy busy for months now, but it's a nice problem to have. We're about 60% moved into our new building, but we'll have to wait for a few dry and sunny Spring days before we get any of the machinery over to the new place. As of this week, we're finally caught up on Rev.5 production. I still have to get all the separate part #'s up on-line so our customers can purchase spares, and we should finally start production on Formula Front Ends for all the other Mfg's cars. We've had the prototype parts done for months; we just have never caught up on Rev.5 orders to even think about cutting accessories for other vehicles. On that note, we've hired a machinist to help us keep up with production. He's got 25+ years of experience to help us grow and expand our machining capabilities. He's been working out great, and has already shown me a few neat tricks with machine set-up that I never knew…..he also works about 10 times quicker than I do. We've been to the Cleveland Indoor Champs, and just recently got back from the Snowbird Nationals in Florida. Click HERE for a quick re-cap of those races, with some pictures and set-ups of the cars. In modified after struggling at Vegas, we've made some really good progress with our brushless program. Trinity has re-hired Jim Dieter to head their race team/motor program, and he's been an absolute pleasure to work with. We still had some electrical hiccups at Cleveland, but those were pretty much just ESC set-up problems, and at the Snowbirds we had ZERO failures all week long, and were always one of the quickest cars on the track. Mike's Rev.5 never had less the 50 seconds of run-time left in his Trinity cells after a full 8-minute run….which is amazing if you saw how insanely fast these 1/12th cars are going now. In other news, several manufacturers have been working on reviving the pan-sedan/200mm pan car class as an alternative to full-blown 4wd sedans. I'd like to thank Jason at BMI for getting the ball rolling again. It's very obvious that the sedan class is seeing it's numbers drop across the board. Unfortunately, they've just become too complicated, too expensive, and with today's electronics, too fast for the large majority RC drivers. We've offered our SpeedSpec Pan Sedan as a beginner car since the mid 1990's. Back when I first designed the car it was really supposed to be a good quality, easy to drive, inexpensive way to get into a pan car. At the time, I was really thinking of a way to get off-road guys into carpet racing. Even back then, jumping right into a 12th scale car was a daunting task for a beginner or intermediate racer. Compared to off-road cars of the time, 12th scale cars looked like rodents on crack. On top of that, you had to drive them for a full 8-minutes. Invariably, you would get the off-road brain fade happening right around the 4:30 mark….LOL. So, it seemed like making a larger, easier to drive, pan car along with 4-minute races would make for a nice transition into carpet racing. Remember, there wasn't a sedan class at the time. Just 12th Mod and 12th Stock. The only sedans back then were Tamiya "play" types with hard rubber tires and plastic chassis. Occasionally, we would race our 235mm RoadKill car, but that was more of an asphalt racecar, and even back then, 6-cell pan cars (12th & 10th) were just getting ridiculously fast. I believe that last time we raced our 235mm car was the R.O.A.R. Carpet Nats down at the Minnreg track. At the time, Mike Blackstock was driving for me, and I think there were only 5 or 6 entries in the mod class. Our biggest problem….melting spur gears! Not stripping, but melting. The amount of traction that a 1/10 shoed straight axle pan car on carpet gives you just can't be compared to asphalt. Fast forward a few years, and SpeedSpec cars had settled on 19-turn, 5-minute racing, generally with a GT (Corvette, Porsche, Viper, etc.) body. For several years, this was a nice balance. You can see several customer SpeedSpecs HERE. Because of the large 1/10th foams, and only 4-cells, they were very quick, but still very easy to drive. On the majority of indoor carpet tracks, a properly set-up SpeedSpec with just 4-cells and a good 19-turn would do comparable lap times to the full blown modified 4WD sedans that were starting to take over carpet racing. Although the performance was great, it was also becoming a problem. With the new batteries, Speed Controls and 19-turn motors, my "beginner" pan car class had turned into a car that was getting too quick for a lot of people. Over the past few seasons, we've started to tone down the SpeedSpec class on the Regional level. It's put a lot of "fun" back into the weekly racing scene. We decided to really slow the cars down by enforcing a Mubuchi/Johnson 540 motor limit. Although that might seem drastic, it's what was really needed to get the cars back down to a speed that a true beginner could learn with and have fun. To go along with the beginner theme, I re-designed my SpeedSpec to be even more geared to the true beginner into pan car racing. The SpeedSpec II was released about 2 seasons ago. I've actually never even sold them on-line just because we can never keep up with our 12th scale sales and racing program. On a regional level though, sales have been great, and more importantly, the design has been an excellent transition car for many racers getting into on-road. The new car is virtually indestructible, super easy to drive, and with all of the various 200mm bodies available, they look cool as hell. The HPI muscle car bodies look awesome with big fat 10th pan car tires on the back. The other nice off shoot of the Mabuchi/Johnson motor is that it really shows off your driving skills, and forces you to drive a smooth fast line to keep up with the other cars on the track. Because the motors don't have a ton of torque, you really have to carry your corner speed to post a quick lap. Pinch a corner and you scrub your speed. It's really just a fun class, and a super way to "learn the line". Great for beginners, and fun as a 2nd class for more experienced drivers. Finally….almost zero maintenance. My SpeedSpec has literally been in the back of my SUV for at least 6-months. The battery has never come out, the motor at best has maybe gotten a shot of motor spray 2 or 3 times, and though the tires look like a rabid dog got at them, it still handles great. I let anyone who feels like it race it on club nights, and they always have fun. Honestly, some of the most enjoyable times I've had, is watching one of my better (i.e. Nat level) drivers wheel a SpeedSpec for a heat, and come of the driver's stand with a big grin on his face. Now that we have our new building, and more workers, we'll be offering the SpeedSpec II. If you're a beginner or know someone that wants to get into the hobby, I sincerely recommend it as fun, low cost, and easy way to get into the hobby. If you're a more experienced racer, it makes a great 2nd class to blow off some steam with your friends. Pictures and pricing of the new SpeedSpec II are available HERE. Okay, enough about the past lets look towards the future. Like I said earlier, Jason from BMI got several of us motivated to try to start a National level 200mm pan car class, and it really looks like the timing couldn't be better. We're going to have some bugs to work out, but overall, it's a "no brainer" to get these things racing on the National circuit. I've decided to keep mine as a 4-cell car. I know some people would like to see these cars be able to run a 6-cell or a 7.4 Lipo, but honestly, unless you're racing on an absolutely huge out-door track, I just don't see any reason to carry the extra weight or need for the extra voltage. These cars are only a little larger than their 12th scale counter parts, but have more traction, and only have to run 5-minutes. Trust me, with a properly set-up 4-cell mod brushless combo, 99.9% of the racing population would not be able to handle the available horsepower made by today's mod motors. Case in point….HERE is a picture of Mike D's Rev.5 after an 8-minute heat at Cleveland last year. To be able to flip an on-road car over backwards after a full heat is just nuts. We've done brushless testing on a 95 long indoor carpet track, and had one of our Rev.5's break 50mph on the back straight, (51 to be exact)….geared for 8-minute racing. If we geared that same car for 5 minutes, I'm guessing we would be over 60mph. If 60mph isn't quick enough for you, you must be really, really good. I actually think if there is any change in the future of 4-cell racing, it will be making our current cars work with a 3.7 Lipo pack. I've already talked to Charlie at Novak and the LRP reps in the US, and both say that their current Brushless ESC's will work fine on 3.7 volts. Really the only problem is making servos work properly with the lower voltage. Yes, I know we could just use a receiver pack, but that's going in the wrong direction. We're trying to make these cars easier and less expensive to run. Plug and Play as it were. I've also talked to SMC as well as a couple of other battery companies about making a 3.7 Lipo that will drop right into a current 4-cell car. I think we'll be seeing product relatively shortly. As far as classes go right now, Stock, 19-turn, and Mod power translates just fine into a Pro-10 class. Obviously, throw in the brushless equivalents. Our other big hurdle for this class will be bodies. We've all pretty much agreed that we would like to get away from "sedans", and more into the current GT class cars. There are several very cool 200mm bodies out there right now, and when the class takes off, there is bound to be more. Our largest problem will be making these bodies comparable to each other with out one certain type becoming "the" body to run. A year from now, we don't want an A-Main filled with 10 Corvette bodies. We need to make at least a few (and hopefully more) bodies handle relatively equal. I've had a few nice talks with Dale Epp (ProtoForm), and he's going to try to get together a set of guidelines that will hopefully keep us away from the 1 body class that sedan racing has become. If anyone can make that happen, Dale can. In the coming months, we'll have to discuss possible price/class limits. Possibly making Stock class run a lower cost Fiberglass chassis and a spec tire. Jack from JACO already said he would be willing to do a tire/rim combo just for a new 200mm pan car class. I think it's quite important that we have some very strict guidelines to start the classes with. In turn, that should keep costs and frustrations down. We obviously have to gear Stock class to a true Stock/beginner racer. Let the mfg's battle it out in 19-turn and mod…..let's try to get some new blood into out sport/hobby. You can find pictures and pricing of our new Formula Pro-10 HERE. We will also be offering a Fiberglass Chassis/Old Skool front end model geared more to the intermediate racer with a much lower street price in the coming month. I hope everyone has a great Spring (just around the corner), and we'll see you at the Nats. Take care.-Bruce |
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| 10/20/2007 |
The new Rev.5 is now available in the on-line store. All replacement parts and the separate Formula Front Ends for SpeedMerchant cars, and the various other manufacturers will be up on-line next week.
Click HERE to go directly to the Rev.5. |
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| 10/07/2007 |
The Vegas IIC Race report is posted with pictures of Steve Boice's winning Rev.5. Click HERE to read the report. |
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| 09/18/2007 |
Well, it's been a very busy summer at camp SpeedMerchant. My wife Krissy, and I received a couple of priority packages on July 2nd...... Enzo and Gianna Carbone entered the world happy & healthy, and ready to use up any and all the free time I thought I had to do things around here. LOL.
Actually it's been great, and we couldn't be happier......or more tired.
The other big news is SpeedMerchant has bought a new building(actually, it's being built for us), and we will be moving most (or all) of the company over there in October. This will allow us to hire a few more worker monkeys to get stuff packaged and out the door in a more timely manner. We'll also be taking on some International distributors, which up to this point, I've shied away from because we have enough trouble just trying to keep up with Domestic orders. Finally, after 6-months of testing, we're very close to releasing our new Rev.5. I would like to thank all the locals at RC Excitement in Fitchbug, MA for their cooperation during our testing. Hardly a whisper of the new car made it on to the Internet, which made my life a lot easier. So thanks guys, and a big thanks goes out to RCE's proprietor, Todd Anderson for letting us use such a nice track. As far as the 5 goes......way cool. Now that we have all of our own machines, we're able to make a lot of things that I could have only wished for in the past. We have a new rear pod design, that takes "easy access" to a new level. You can literally drop in any motor (brushless too) with a big honking pinion attached with ease. The new pod plates are actually machined Delrin, and they save a ton of weight over standard aluminum ones. Due to batteries getting heavier every season, and brushless motor/ESC combos weight and handling differential compared to their brushed counterparts, we decided to go with the Delrin plates to off-set some of the weight in the rear of the car. When we 1st started testing them, I really thought it would just be a "team" option part, but after several weeks of bashing, we found out, that they hold up just fine for weekly racing. The other big news is up at the front of the car. Our new "Formula" front end is just awesome. We've done testing, and testing, and testing, and we're ecstatic with its performance. I really wanted to get away from molds anywhere on the new car, especially in the front end. So we worked on doing a link front end that was sturdy enough to hold up to the speeds and forces generated in today's cars. By supporting the top of the king pin with 2 balls, the upper link arm is very stiff and strong, and doesn't move during a crash. Next, we are machining our own proprietary steering knuckles. Again, we used the super stiff 19,000psi Delrin we're using for our rear pod plates. The king pin rides on a Teflon O-ring that is captured by a 3mm quasi-isotropic carbon fiber suspension plate. Obviously flex or deflection will not be a problem with this lower arm. The king pin movement is ultra free and silky smooth while being slop free. If you're the type of driver that partakes of the boards a little more than you should, no biggy, pop the o-ring out, press in a new one, and you're good to go. Obviously, the front end is ultimately adjustable. Caster, camber, reactive caster, reactive camber, roll center, long, medium of short upper links, and more, are all adjustments you can use to dial your Rev 5 in for your specific track. Adjusting the front end is really easy too. Just pop out the king pin, and drop thru any 1/8th inch rod; personally, I use one of our carbon fiber roll over antennas. Then, just using your standard camber/caster gauge, adjust your turnbuckles to get your desired caster and camber. We put the rear link in line with the king pin, so basically, you adjust caster using the front link, and camber using the rear. There is very little over lap of the two adjustments. Because the Formula front end mounts to the standard Associated bolt pattern, we will have it available as a separate product for all the various 1/12th cars (Asc, CRC, Corally, etc.) The only difference car to car will be the CF bottom plate's 4-screw mounting hole pattern (width). All front suspension geometry will stay the same for the various cars. Note, just because we're releasing a new front end doesn't mean we're "bailing" on the Old Skool. We just won all 3 ROAR 12th scale titles just a few short months ago with the Old Skool front end bolted on to all of our cars. We just feel that with the advent of brushless technology migrating into our 12th scales, that the new front end will let us explore more "brushless" specific set-ups...especially in the modified division. But, for probably 85% of the racing population, the Old Skool is going to be just as quick, less expensive, and easier (less adjustments to screw up), then our new Formula front end. We will offer a Rev 5"Sport" edition with the Old Skool front end at a lower street price once we get this first big batch of Formula 5's out the door. The Rev 5 will be available on-line the 2nd week in October. There are a few "pre-production" kits I was able to send out to customers that just HAD to have them for Vegas. LOL. I think Brood & Ampdraw will have some of those kits for sale at the Vegas race. Well, since my Outlook box is full of "Can I see some pics yet?" e-mails…. go ahead and click on the Rev.5. Take care.-Bruce  |
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| 03/29/2007 |
There's a nice story posted at DonnyLia.Net about his recent win at the R.O.A.R. Nats. You can read it by clicking HERE.
I'm for anything that gets our sport more main stream exposure, so kudos to Donny and his web guys. |
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| 03/26/2007 |
Donny Lia continues his winning ways...... After winning the R.O.A.R. Stock National title just a couple of weeks ago, Donny headed North to race at the R.O.A.R. Region One Carpet On-Road Champs. Donny and his Rev 4.5 TQ'd and won the Stock Title on Saturday, and then Donny & motor-man Sal hopped in his real car and headed back South to New York, to race at South Shore Hobbies end of the season Showdown. Donny went on to TQ and win the A-Main by over a lap. Great job Donny! Congratulations on all of your recent success. |
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| 03/23/2007 |
Hi Guys, We've got another cool product to show you. As you know, we just got back from the ROAR Nats. The race went very well for the team, and about the only complaint to be had all week was the really tight pit area.
The CEFX crew even built a 2nd story inside the shop to accommodate all the entries.
When pitting is that tight, it's very important to be organized, especially if you're trying to help out customers as well as your team. It's always a pain in the but digging in a pit box every couple of minutes to reach something you need, or even worse, having everything you just laid out neatly in front of yourself get knocked over by the guy pitting across from you. It's happened to all of us. So after my super glue, and Tube Spooges got knocked over for the 100th time last week, I told myself I was going to make a cool little stand just to hold the bottles I use all the time during a race day. So, here it is.....Part #5045 is our new Carbon Fiber Spooge Stand. It holds all three of our new Tube Spooges, a Losi Super Glue container, and a bottle of Parma Fashine cleaner/wax. All products you use several times every race day, and all products that are normally lying on their side's leaking on to your pit towel. LOL. Happy Racing!-SpeedMerchant |
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| 03/21/2007 | We've got pictres of Donny Lia's National winning Rev 4.5, and his set-up posted. Click HERE to check it out. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 03/17/2007 |
We've got a few new additions to the on-line shop. Since we've been testing the various brushless motors, we've found one of the hardest things to do is to get your wiring to look neat and tidy.
To help remedy the situation we've got some cool colored wire-wrap for the sensor wires coming out of the brushless motors. Our stuff not only looks cool, and lets you match your paint job or the other wires in your car,
but they also fit much tighter than the stock stuff while still staying very flexible. The part numbers are:
#5087BLK = Black,
#5087BLU = Blue,
#5087CLR = Clear,
#5087GRN = Green,
#5087RED = Red,
and #5087YEL = Yellow. We've actually had a couple of customers use these on their roll over antennas. It protects your antenna as well as matching your paint job. Pretty cool idea. We are also offering a 3mm x 8mm cap head. This is the proper size motor screw to use with brushless motors. We've found that the standard 3mm x 10mm we usually use can actually travel too deep into the can and contact the windings on the new brushless motors. The new part number is #2053. |
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| 03/16/2007 | The 2007 R.O.A.R. Carpet Nationals Race Report is up. Click HERE to read it. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 03/13/2007 |
We're back from the 2007 ROAR On-Road Nats. Just a crazy good week for the SpeedMerchant race team! Donny Lia took the 1/12th Stock National Title, Ray Darroch grabbed the 1/12th 19-Turn title, and Mike Dumas won the Modified title! Three classes entered......three classes won! We'll have a full race report with pictures and set-ups in the coming days, but first we have to catch up on orders. We do have a few new products available in the online store. After extensive testing, our line of "Tube Spooge" lubricants are for sale to the general public. We've been testing these since the Fall, and they were used in all of the team guys cars at the Cleveland Champs, and later at the SnowBirds. Now, "Tube Spooge" equiped cars took home three National Titles. The new part numbers are 5080G-Thin, 5080R-Medium, and 5080B-Thick. Donny Lia's Stock winning Rev 4.5 was running the thick Blue spooge at the Nats, while Ray Darroch and Mike Dumas were both using the medium Red spooge. |
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| 03/04/2007 | The SpeedMerchant crew will be attending the ROAR On-Road Nationals in Detroit, Michigan. We will be out of the shop from March 4th-12th. All orders placed within this time frame will be processed on the 13th, and shipped shortly afterwards. You can follow the race at http://liverc.rccars.com/. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 03/03/2007 | SpeedMerchant would officially like to welcome Ray Darroch, Donny Lia and Johnny Carey on to the race team. Ray actually works at JACO racing products, and is a consistent A-Main finisher in modified sedan racing his XRAY ride.
Ray says he's looking forward to the challenges and intricacies of 12th scale racing.
Donny and Johnny are both really quick stock racers and long time SpeedMerchant supporters. Donny was just an A-Main finalist at the 2007 SnowBirds, and his home hobby shop NYC Hobbies will be carrying the SpeedMerchant line very soon. Look for them at a track near you. |
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| 02/26/2007 | Hi Guys. I put up a small page on installing a Novak GTB system in your 12th scale. Pretty easy install, and maintenance free racing!!! Click HERE to see the install. Take care.-Bruce | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 02/16/2007 | Hi Guys. I get a lot of e-mails asking how we off-set the JACO front rims to give our 4.5's a wider stance for high traction conditions. It's actually pretty easy with the proper tool. We use an American Standard prop reamer.
They are available thru Tower Hobbies, and are under $15.00. Here's a direct link. Prop Reamer Have a great day.-Bruce |
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| 02/15/2007 | Back from the Birds. Another great week of racing and testing. Check out the race report by clicking HERE. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 02/04/2007 | The SpeedMerchant crew will be attending the SnowBird Nationals in Orlando Florida. We will be out of the shop from February 4th-12th. All orders placed within this time frame will be processed on the 13th, and shipped shortly afterwards.
You can follow the race by listening to Racing Radio.
More information can be found HERE. |
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| 12/01/2006 |
We just got back from the US Indoor Champs in Cleveland Ohio. How'd we do??? Not too bad :) Check out the race report by clicking HERE! |
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| 11/17/2006 |
The SpeedMerchant crew will be attending the U.S. Indoor Champs in Cleveland. We will be out of the shop from November 17th-28th for testing followed by the race. All orders placed within this time frame will be processed on the 29th, and shipped shortly afterwards.
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| 10/31/2006 | The website has been updated with a few new part #'s. We've changed the screws that hold the 'Old Skool' front ends on our cars. The new screws are parts #'s 2045 and 2046. Since the Worlds, we've been testing using steel screws on the front ends. The new screws have a lower profile countersink, and the countersink angle is matched exactly to our chassis. By using the steel screws you gain strength in the front suspension as well as lowering the CG of your car slightly. We've also found the little extra weight up front gives the car a tad more steering. All pluses, which is good. We've also added part #5075, which is a 10 pack of O-Rings that are the exact size to fit over 4-40 ball studs. Generally, we use this size o-ring underneath the VCS shock ends, to take out any 'slop' in the ball cups. Most people just use 1/8th silicone o-rings commonly found in sedan shocks, but they are slightly oversized, and the soft silicone deteriorates too quickly. The SpeedMerchant o-rings are sized perfect, and made out of a tougher material which will work and last much longer. |
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| 09/30/2006 | We're back from Las Vegas, and we had a great trip. Scotty Ernst and his guys put on the most professional RC race ever held. Awesome facility, and just a very well run race. Congrats to Scotty, Boomer and the hard working crew. SpeedMerchant had a super week. Mike Dumas piloting his Rev 4.5 Top Qualified and Won the 12th scale Modified A-Main over some of the best drivers in the World. HERE is a link to the full race report with pictures and set-up off of Mike's Rev 4.5. All orders that piled up while we were gone have been picked and processed, and everything will ship by Monday the 2nd. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 09/13/2006 | The SpeedMerchant crew leaves for the 2006 International Indoor Championships in Las Vegas. We will be gone from the 14th-26th, and all orders placed in that time frame will be processed and shipped from the 27th-30th.
You can follow the race by visiting the website at http://www.intchamps.com If you're attending the race please come over and say hi. We'd be happy to help you with set-up or any information we can supply. Have a great week.-Bruce |
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| 09/06/2006 | The website has been updated with some new parts. The #1410 Rev 4.5 full kit is available, as well as the bottom and top plates. There are some new #2087 hollow countersunk washers in the hardware department. We've changed a couple of part numbers also. Suspension balls #1266, high roll center cones #1267, and low roll center cones #1268, are all avalaible separately. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 08/14/2006 | We would like to welcome "The Fabulous One" Barry Baker onto the SpeedMerchant race team! He joins Mike Dumas, Jake Pritchard and Andrew Gray on our modified team. Barry has been in the upper echelon of RC drivers for years, and is looking forward to continuing his wining ways with his new SpeedMerchant ride. Lets hear what Barry has to say - "When I realized I was going to be leaving Team Associated, I started to think what companies I would like to race for. I realized right away, that for 12th scale I wanted to race a SpeedMerchant. Their cars always seem to be ahead of the curve, and for a relatively small race team, they kick a$$. I'm really looking forward to racing the new 4.5 this season". Thanks Barry.....we sure you'll kick some a$$ too! Look for Barry to make his debut at International Indoor Champs in Vegas this September. |
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| 07/04/2006 | We're back from Italy. A big congratulation to Mike Dumas and his Rev 4.5 for taking 6th place at the On-Road World Championships!!! Mike had a great week and ran in the top 10 all thru practice and qualifying. He had one tough (traffic) qualifier that really hurt his qualifying position on Saturday morning, but followed that up with an awesome last qualifier to put himself back in the A Main. Mike ran really well in all three mains and ended up taking 6th overall. Mike consistently had lap times that put his Rev 4.5 in the top 3 for all 3 A-Mains. Great job Mike!!! |
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| 06/12/2006 | The SpeedMerchant crew leaves for the On-Road World Championships in Turin, Italy. We'll be out of the office from Monday June 26th to Wednesday July 12th. All orders placed during that period will be processed on the 13th and go out shortly afterwards. Thank you for being patient. Between the outstanding sales of the Rev 4.5 conversions, and the preparation for the World Championships, we are really struggling to keep up with the shear ammount of orders. All back orders either went out today or will go out immediately upon our return home. Have a great week.-Bruce | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 07/14/2006 | Congratulations to Jeff Brown for Top Qualifying, and taking the win at the 2006 R.O.A.R. Paved On-Road Nationals! Jeff just had a stellar week, he set TQ in all 4 rounds of qualifying, he then went on to win the 1st and 2nd A-Mains to take home the title. Jeff ran a stock Rev.4 with the new style Asc. front end (set for non-reactive caster). He says on asphalt, he likes that front end because it's easier to adjust camber with. HERE's a pic of Jeff and his car, we'll get some better shots, and post a full race set-up for you soon. We'd also like to congratulate Nick & Shawn from Team Kwik. They gave Jeff plenty of horsepower in that blazing California sun to bring home SpeedMerchant's 20th National Title! |
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| 06/07/2006 | The new Rev 4.5 is here! Don't get too excited, it's only a conversion to the new 4-bolt style rear end, but, it's still pretty cool. Pictures and information can be found HERE. The on-line store has already been updated, and conversion kits are available HERE. The new top plates, bottom plates, and a full Rev 4.5 car kit will be released very soon. Thank you for the support. Have a great day.-Bruce | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 05/14/2006 | Hope everyone is enjoying their Spring! We have a few new part #'s to be aware of. Part# 1273 are the new larger tweak brace stand-offs for the Rev.4. We've had the team guys testing them for a while now, and they work great. They have a larger profile that helps support the tweak brace better, and we've also found their tolerances to be a little tighter than the old ones. We also have two new roll over antennas available. Part# 5053 is your standard 8-inch white fiberglass roll over, and part# 5054 is a very trick 8-inch hollow carbon fiber roll over. This is easily the lightest weight roll over available for your 12th scale. It's not as tough as the fiberglass, but it's just insanely lightweight, and awesome for racing applications. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 03/21/2006 | We've just returned from the R.O.A.R. 2006 On-Road Carpet Nationals held at Stockton Raceway in Stockton, CA. This years Nats was one of the best organized and well run races in years. A big thank you goes out to Ruben and the entire Stockton crew for showing everyone how to execute a National level event. Great job guys! On the racing front, SpeedMerchant had a great week. In 1/12th Modified, Mike Dumas and Andrew Gray both had their Rev.4's tearing up the carpet. Andrew ended up in 5th overall, and Mike took 2nd place after some very hard fought battles with Trinity's Mike Blackstock. In 1/12th Stock, SpeedMerchant dominated the class with 7 out of 10 of the A-Main drivers running Rev.4's!!! A Big congratulations goes to Peter Robinson for giving SpeedMerchant it's 19th National Title. Peter is the newest member of our Stock racing team, and picked a great way to start his tenure with SpeedMerchant. We'll have a full race report with pictures and car information up in a couple of days. |
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| 02/22/2006 | *** New Tweak Springs *** In a continuing effort to give you the very best product we can, we've decided to make our own tweak springs. In the past, we've bought our springs from another manufacturer, and although they've been fine over the years, I thought we could make a better product ourselves. So after some serious testing, we've developed a much higher quality tweak spring for your SpeedMerchant ride! The new springs will no longer be colored like in the past (after testing the old springs we found that the thickness of the paint was actually effecting the spring rate). Instead, the new springs will be designated by their wire size, just like front springs. The springs are matched to the old colored ones in feel and lbs. .021 equals Blue, and .023 equals White. We will offer the entire line in the near future. There is a slight price increase do to using a much higher quality spring steel, as well as just using higher quality manufacturing standards on the product. You'll find that the new springs twist on to the tweak carriers perfectly, hang completely straight, and most importantly feel and perform awesome! | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 02/22/2006 | Thank you for being patient. We came home to another huge batch of orders to get out the door. Everything started to ship over the past few days, and if you are waiting for an order, it should be there soon. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 02/21/2006 | Back from the SnowBirds! Another loooong week with no sleep. Congrats to Mike Dumas for his 5th place A-Main performance. We had MAJOR radio problems with Mike's Rev.4 all week long, so we'll take the 5th with a smile and move on to the Nats. Congrats to Andrew "Drew" Ellis and T.J. Bradley for their 12th Stock A-Main runs. Drew was less than one second off of TQ at the event. Nice job guys! | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 01/27/2006 | The SpeedMerchant crew will be traveling to the Snowbird Nationals in Orlando Florida. We will be out of the office from February 5th - 13th. All orders place withn that time will be processed on the 14th, and shipped shortly after. You can check out the race at...... |
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| 01/27/2006 | Good News....Carbon Fiber is on its way. We sincerely apologize for running out of stock. The Carbon Fiber we purchase is of a very high grade, and is just very hard to get in a timely manner. We were on "back order" with the company for well over a month. Rev.4 full kits, conversions, etc. are all available in the on-line store. They will start shipping again on Tuesday February 2nd. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 01/01/2006 | *** Happy New Year *** We would like to thank all of our faithful supporters for another great year. We hope everyone has a great year ahead of them! On the news front: After such a successful reunion of SpeedMerchant and Mike Dumas at the Cleveland Champs this year, we have officially "inked" a deal that will have Mike running SpeedMerchant cars for the next couple of seasons, and hopefully longer. We are happy to have Mike on-board, and he is happy to be here. Together, we look forward to a lot of good times, and great results. I hope to see you "on the road". Take care.-Bruce |
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| 12/07/2005 | The Rides page has been updated with some submissions that have come in over the past couple of weeks. Check them out HERE. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 12/02/2005 | Pictures and set-ups from Mike's and Jake's Cleveland cars are up. Check them out HERE. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 12/01/2005 | We're back from the 26th Annual U.S. Indoor Champs, and we had a great week. Mike Dumas and Jake Pritchard TQ'd and took 1st & 2nd in the Modified A-Main!!! Chuck Lonegran placed 3rd in the A-Main of 1/12th Masters, Drew Ellis picked up 4th in the 1/12th Stock A-Main, and Chris Mockerman took 2nd in the A-Main of 1/12th 19-Turn. Just an awesome weekend for the SpeedMerchant Rev.4! Check out the race report by clicking HERE. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 11/21/2005 | The SpeedMerchant crew will be attending the U.S. Indoor Champs in Cleveland. We will be out of the shop from November 22nd-29th. All orders placed within this time frame will be processed on the 30th, and shipped shortly afterwards. Have a very Happy Thanksgiving! | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 11/14/2005 | SpeedMerchant would like to welcome back Mike Dumas on to the race team. Mike started his racing career with SpeedMerchant, and won several national level events as well as the ROAR On-Road Nats with us. It's great to have you back Mike. We look forward to a super year! | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 09/13/2005 | SpeedMerchant is proud to announce that we are a "Silver" sponsor of the International Indoor Championships in Las Vegas. Visit the website by clicking HERE. This looks like it's going to be the closest thing to an indoor carpet world championships since the early 1990's. It's going to be just an awesome event. Look for live webcasts, radio and TV spots as well as a complete coverage from all of the magazines. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 07/10/2005 | Do you want up to date, straight from the team information about your SpeedMerchant products? Check out R/C Tech.net. They have a great thread about SpeedMerchant cars as well as a million more to choose from! Just an excellent resource for the R/C racer. Check out the thread by clicking HERE. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 04/07/2005 | In case you've been living under a stone for the past few months....Big News: Scotty Ernst is putting on the 1st Annual International Indoor Championships.....In Fabulous Las Vegas!!! This race will draw the very best on-road racers in the world to compete in several classes to determine the 1st International Indoor Champion! The race will be held at the historic Stardust Hotel & Casino from September 21st - 25th 2005. |
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| 03/28/2005 | R/C Excitement is holding their 1st Annual Spring Fling On-Road race on Saturday April 9th 2005. All the information you need can be found by clicking HERE! Hope to see you there, it should be a great race. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 03/27/2005 | REPORT: - * Hurricane Motorsports Stock Challenge * Team driver Drew Ellis just got back from the 2nd Annual Hurricane Stock Challenge after dominating the weekend with his SpeedMerchant Rev.4. Drew TQ'd the 1/12th scale class by over a lap, and then went on to win the A-Main by over a lap. Great job Drew! | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 03/21/2005 | We just got back from the 2005 R.O.A.R. On-Road Carpet Nationals. How'd the weekend go?.....Chalk up National Championship number 18 for Team SpeedMerchant! A huge congratulations goes out to Chuck Lonegran for laying the smack down, and bringing home the win with his ballistic SpeedMerchant Rev.4 racer. Congrats also go out to T.J. Bradley and Mark Strasnick for their A-Main runs, as well as Andrew Gray with his 1/12th Modified A-main performance. Great job guys! |
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| 03/15/2005 | The SpeedMerchant crew will be attending the R.O.A.R. On-Road Carpet Nationals. We will be gone from March 16th-21st. All orders placed within that time frame will be processed on the 22nd, and shipped shortly afterwards. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 03/10/2005 | Updated the 'Drivas' section of the website with a few mug shots of the SpeedMerchant team members. We'll get more pics and some information about these guys up in the coming weeks. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 03/09/2005 | Updated the 'Rides' section with some new submissions. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 03/07/2005 | Gran Turismo 4 kicks but. If you don't have a Playstation.....go buy one, get the force feedback wheel & pedals, and set aside about a month of your life.....you won't be sorry. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 02/16/2005 | We're back from the Snowbirds, and all orders have been processed and shipped. Congratulations to Andrew Ellis for his 4th place A-Main finish in 1/12 Stock. Drew, had some tough traffic in qualifying, and just squeaked into the A-Main in 10th posistion. At the start of the main, it was clear he was one of the fastest cars on the track. Even with the usual first turn mayhem, Drew weaved his Rev.4 thru traffic for 8 minutes, and finished with a strong 4th place finish. |
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| 02/15/2005 | SpeedMerchant would like to welcome Travis Schreven on to the Stock racing team. Travis is another Xray driver that has joined the Rev.4 bandwagon. Lets hear what Travis had to say: "After watching my Xray team mates run their Rev.4's, I just had to try one. My very first battery pack with the car was awesome. Tons of steering, but very predictable. I can't wait to get home and start to practice with it!". | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 02/04/2005 | The SpeedMerchant crew leaves for the Snowbird Nationals tomorrow. We'll be out of the office from Saturday the 5th to Tuesday the 15th. All orders placed during that period will be processed on the 16th and go out shortly afterwards. Have a great week.-Bruce | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 02/03/2005 | The Parts Catalog Page has been updated with all of our current part numbers and descriptions. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 02/01/2005 | Looking fo some low cost, high quality stickers? Check out HighSpeedGrafix.com. We needed Rev.4 stickers to bring to the SnowBirds race next week. We gave these guys all call, told them what we wanted, and the stickers showed up in the mail just a few days later. Quick service, and great looking stickers, give them a try. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 01/31/2005 | Live in MA, CT, NH, area? Like racing? You're in luck. There's a new track going up in Fitchburg, Mass called R/C Excitement, which is truly going to be a world-class facility. In-door Carpet on a pool table flat 75 x 45 foot track, in-door off road, out-door off road, out-door asphalt, plenty of pit room, lounge, cafe', arcade, and a full service hobby shop! They're looking to open by the beginning of February. Check out their website by clicking HERE! | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 01/29/2005 | We're doing a little re-design on the web-page. Look for more updates under the "News" section(which you're reading now). Racer profiles of our sponsered team guys under "Drivas". We're also going to start a SpeedMerchant "Rides" category which will let you...the SpeedMerchant faithful send in a photo of your car, your name, where you race, and we'll post them up on our site to share with the other "Drivas". | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 01/26/2005 | Rev.4's are back in stock!!! The new #1405 full kits come with IRS lowered pod sets. Click HERE for the Rev.4 page, or HERE for the Rev.4 at the on-line store. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 11/27/2004 | The SpeedMerchant Race Team has grown. We would like to welcome Ralph "WG" Burch, and Jarred Scott, to our Modified team, Andrew Ellis, Ron Atomic, and Michael Toast to our Stock team. Look for their racing profiles off of the main page, under "Drivas". | ||||||||||||||||||||
Johnny's almost bone stock RoadKill 10. He has our optional Rear Back Plate Fan Mount that along with the Bottom Plate fan kept his Team Scream Motor at a very cool 125 degrees after a 5-minute run! The new Fan Mount Back Plates will be up in the shop very soon.
The 'French Assasin' Arnaud Lemperiere had a great week! 2nd in the A-Main in Pro-10, and 4th in the A-Main in 17.5 12th scale. Great results while somehow spending at least 80% of the race in the hotel swimming pool with his girlfriend. I'm still not sure how he did it.
