November 2003

Greetings Fans, November is here!

The industry has had a tough summer! Unfortunately we were not spared, as sales have been down as much as 30%!  September came out strong, however, and we had our second biggest September in our history!

So things are looking up!

With that, we have many news to talk about!

First is our new web site, and the introduction of SHOPATRON! If you click on our On Line Store button above, you will enter Shopatron. This system allows you to buy any Slick 7 product on-line, and it will be shipped directly to you by the nearest raceway that fills the order. No more complaints about availability!

Second is that we are hosting the Nor-Cal USRA web site on the Slick 7 site. I offered to be president of the group, after the organization was about to fold up and stop operations. With that I suggested that we change things a bit, and the few members left gave me a free hand.

Changes are quite radical, as we introduced two new classes and have eliminated glue in over 1/2 the races. So far the results are encouraging, as we actually ran a no glue wing car race (not even spray glue) and had twice the number of entries. The catch is the race was at a club track, not even a full fledged commercial raceway!

I can't wait until the season start next year to see the attendance!

We are also running round robin, without qualifying. That saves gobs of time, as we started the races at 1:30PM and finished at 6:30PM. Say goodbye to those long nights at the track!

Take a look at the USRA link on the Slick 7 web site and check out what we are up to!

In Racing news! We made quite a splash at the USRA Nats this year. After dominating high end racing all year long, and people using our chassis to set world time and distance records, we managed to have a 1-2 in qualifying and a 1-2-3-4-5 finish in the Pro Main! This surpasses our 1993 performance when we had a world record, TQ and 1-3 finish at the USRA Nats.

In New Products we list have the new chassis releases for 2004, new ball bearings that we found at a great price and new lead wire! see below!

Racing News:

2003 Nats!

This year's USRA Nats was our best Nats so far!  Almost 1/2 the main event participants in the aluminum chassis classes were using our chassis. If look at the 8 Nats championships, out of 64 main even contestants, 31 were using Slick 7 chassis built by ZAP.

Not only that many of them won!

Slick 7 chassis were used in the Gr-7 Pro Main to finish:

1-2 in Qualifying  - Paul Ciccarello and Vladimir Horky

1st and 2003 USRA National Champion -Mikael Sillen

2nd - Josef Korec

3rd - Mario Schone

4rth-  Paul Ciccarello

5th - Vladimir Horky

Jeff Mack Wins Gr-7 Semi-Pro main with Slick 7 chassis and Slick 7 - 8mag in his set-ups!

Gr-7 warm-up was won also by Mikael Sillen (Did not count in the tally abobe)

Kent Nigro used a Slick 7 aluminum chassis to win both Am-15 and Am-27 events!

Trigenelly finished 2nd in Am-27

31 out of 64 Aluminum Chassis Class main event finishers ran Slick 7/Zap chassis, that is almost 50% of the field and more than any other make!

Nor-Cal USRA

The first race of the new racing format was held at Stockton, and Slick 7's Rudy Garriga won the C-12 race by a large margin. Better yet, it was a Slick 7 1-2-3 finish, as Rudy got 1st, Al Chuck finished 2nd and Mike Peakes finished 3rd!

We also ran the ASP Xtreme in it's maiden race, and ran extremely fast, against a field of ASP III's. See the race report in the USRA site linked on the Slick 7 home page.

Western States Championship

Got an e-mail from our friend Bill Taylor in the So-Cal area with the news:

Slick 7 Chassis were used by the top finishers in the GT-12 race!

Expert GT-12 -

1st Duran Trujillo - Slick 7 ASP III

2nd Roy Hood - Slick 7 K-1

Amature GT-12

1st - Brian Johnson - Slick 7 K-1 and Slick 7 Gears!

2nd - TJ Albu - Slick 7 ASP III and Slick 7 Gears!

3rd - Tim Hould - Slick 7 ASP III

New Products

The new Gr-12 and GT-12 chassis are here!

New for 2004 are all new Gr-12 chassis, improved with lighter rear ends, lower motor angle and 2 new short designs!

Here are the new Xpress IV, a new VampireIII, a new Short Vampire and a new short "STING" Tripod for the ultimate speed on super speedways!

Xpress IV - S7-243D           -                          S7-473C -- Vampire III

S7-541 - Vampire "S" Short wheelbase!     ---    S7- 543  --- Sting Short Tripod

New GT-12 ASP 4 is also released, as well as a new ASP Xtreme! - This one will surely revolutionize GT-12 racing!

 S7-548 - ASP "Xtreme"

Also new are:

New ball bearings at low cost.

These are still the 7 ball design bearings, but they are the standard industrial grade, not the custom bearings that are made for us. Due to using a standard grade, these are made in the millions, so the price is much lower than our custom bearings, and are fine for most racing classes. After all, only a few people run Gr-7 and Eurosport cars where the ultra-high precision is required.

S7-549 - 5mm flangeless and un-shielded motor ball bearing - $5.95

S7-550 - 5mm flanged and shileded motor Ball Bearing - $5.95

S7-551 - 6mm Flanged and shielded motor ball bearing - $5.95

S7-552 - 3/32 axle ball bearings, shielded - $9.95Pr

Also

We have new lead wire, our original lead wire, has been changed to slightly smaller gage, as is now popular in Gr-7 and Eurosport to save weight, with no change in performace!

BUT we are also introducing a smaller gage wire!

S7-546 - in 3 ft length and S7-553 in 10ft length

This wire saves 3 grams over conventional wire, and is as light or lighter than using the magnet wire/lead wire combination which is popular today!