Anyone remember MG Motors?
 

I have posted these up in amongst some other stuff in the 'Old School Collections' thread, but I thought I would start an MG-specific thread seeing as quite a few people seem to have fond memories of these from bitd, the MG Brown Dot in particular.

I am really pleased to have managed to hang on to my MG motors from the late 80's and early 90's, as I was sponsored by them throughout that period when racing in the Radio Race Car Series.

One of my most prized RC possessions is my mint '88 MG Brown Dot, which is the later version with the gold cooling fins on the endbell. I only have one of these, but obviously would like to find another example of the earlier pre-'88 ones without the '88 dating and also without the gold cooling fins. I have seen early Brown Dot and Red Dot examples in this format.

From there Mick Goddard at MG used to send me numerous motors for each series, so i have several of each type as they typically changed in design/appearance for each year, depending mainly on which can and endbell supplier they used.

I know for the '89 season they used the orange-endbell Race Prep-sourced 'MG Orange Dot' complete with '89 dating. I would love to get hold of one of those for my collection so if anybody has one or knows of one please do drop me a PM. I don't know how i missed that version really.

For the '90 season I used white label Red Dots, complete with the very fancy looking red AYK Racing red endbells with silver fins. I have 3 of these currently.

I then went on to the silver canned blue label Red Dots, of which I also have 3. Endbells were black with EPIC lettering, and the cans changed with ROAR JAPAN stamped into them. These three were particularly competitive during the RRC Series, being as quick as anything else available at the time.

Probably the most striking ones I have are the pink versions of the Red Dot from '92-'93, again with EPIC endbells. I FTD'd at the Donisthorpe round in May '93 using one of these.

Somehow almost all of these are virtually mint, with only the red versions requiring a bit of a clean up since being recently discovered in the loft. I can only assume that these ones were last used hanging out of the back of my RC10 rather than being coccooned away inside my Yokomo. I would imagine having been regularly replaced with a new motor, they have each done very few races.

All of these were supposedly 'hand-picked' team motors in order to enable me to do well in the Series. Once i was getting into the A Final listings in the mags I got sent a pretty regular supply of motors. I am noticing that almost all of them have a dab of what looks like nail varnish(!) on them, so perhaps this represents some sort of identifier? We had a Shinwa Motor dresser back in the day and these MG motors were the highest revving standard motors we ever came across.

I also got sent a purple MG Exterminator (14Quad) at one point - no idea what i used that for but it looks virtually brand new still.

I would love to add to this collection, mainly out of nostalgia really. If anybody out there has an old MG motor kicking about please drop me a note as i'd be very interested. I am particularly after an Orange Dot to complete my set (and to sit in my Pro Radiant), as well as the pre'88 undated and unfinned Brown and Red Dots.

If anybody else has any examples please post them up as I'd love to see them :thumbsup:

RRC mag advert from Nov '91.

That's going back a bit.

I ran both brown then orange dot motors at Verulam Model Car Club in my Boomerang then Optima Mid back in the mid to late 80's.

Unfortunately I didn't know at the time that they would end up being rare as rocking horse crap. Mine got ditched some time in the 90's.

Great to see that some still exist though....

yeah we had em, long gone tho

They say you learn something every day... I didn't think I would strike gold so early in the day! Thanks for sharing! :thumbsup:

So I suppose, going by the names of (or rather, on) the endbells, MG didn't actually build motors, but had batches of motors built by the likes of Yokomo?

Mick got the can from the relevant places and also had a machine to wind the armatures when required. He obviously did also hand wind 'some' Standard motors.

I went through 4 or 5 trays full of the Blue label Red dot Standard motors on one occasion when I visited him in Weymouth looking to find one or two good ones from the batch.

I also had the first of the Hex wind modified (18x6) which was a rocket in my 12th scale.

Was it the orange dot that was a 35T ?
And then the brown was 27T but had a Stack which could be twisted and therefore advanced ?
The Red dot then had a fixed stack to stop this I think ?

My Dad kinda knew Mick from slot car racing days, I always hoped it would wing me a sponsorship when I was a kid, was never good enoughh though ! LOL. Still, they were pretty good motors.

MG had dropped out of the standard motor market by the time I got going properly in it ('93) but I remember doing a local inter-club between Swindon and Basingtoke in '89 and you could see that the further up the grid you went the smaller the pinions were...
The fast guy from Swindon (Andy Langdon) was an MG driver and from the pinion he had on and the speed of the car I'd be pretty certain that was one of Mick's 'special' motors :p

Thanks for the comments so far guys - Pete, it was your comment about the Brown Dot on the recent Mardave Meteor thread which prompted me to put this post together. I have been looking out for other examples for my collection for a while now, without much luck. All i have mustered so far is an additional white label Red Dot to go with the two I already had. The Orange Dot is the one I have firmly in my sights at the minute. I know of a couple (one unfortunately stripped), but not managed to grab one yet.

I never actually went to see Mick personally - i just started sending him some photocopies of the RRC Series articles with me in the A Final tables and writing him letters asking for sponsorship as I was using his motors anyway. Eventually after sending a few I got a reply with a motor included telling me to 'try that' and boy was it fast! Then I just periodically got more sent through, sometimes in pairs, which are the motors pictured above. I never really considered who was making them or the different names on the end bells/cans back then, I just raced them, but looking at them in detail now I can see how much they varied from year to year.

I do know MG also managed to bag some examples of the Race Prep ceramic armatures and built up a few MG Magnums using these. I have seen one example of such a motor, and I also have a ceramic shaft armature myself.

So does anybody else have any examples to post up?

We always religiously stuck to 32tooth 64dp pinions for ours on a 'normal' off-road track, and dropped down to 31 for indoors or shorter, tighter tracks. One of the blue label motors pictured above still has the pinion on it from bitd, and i just tried to count the teeth from the pictures i have here... looks like a 31 to me. Note the ROAR JAPAN can also.

The pink versions are from '93 so they were still going in the standard class at that time. Here's an article featured in August '93 RRC showing the start of the standard A Final in the top picture. That must have been one of my last races as my car is still virtually unchanged from that picture.

@keith - I think id just stopped racing 1/12 in 92 to go and have fun at University. I passed on all my RC stuff so didn't keep anything.

I recall going down to Weymouth to see Mick 2 or 3 times in total, usually around the time of the Plymouth National so that it was sort of on the way !!.
I definitely had a few of the ceramic shaft motors. I'm pretty sure one was a 12x4 which was a missile in a buggy and was simply stupid in a 1/12 scale.. The greatest challenge was trying to last 8 minutes with some 1700 SCEs, and for the motor to not cook itself and de-solder the motor wires.

One of my close friends actually snapped the shaft on one of the ceramic motors which was quite funny yet also very annoying as it was one of the faster ones i had use of..

I will see if I can get some pictures as i think that maybe Kev Appleby might still have a couple of boxes with some old MG motors in them...

Well if he has an Orange Dot he'd be willing to sell be sure to let me know please!!!! Or an early Brown or Red Dot without the gold fins :drool:

I uses to use his services to re zap my motors but really used to love my MG Pink dot double 15 motor which I always used to use in my Schumacher CAT XLS.

Yes, they mention the motor overhaul service in the advert i posted above although i never used it personally. I have been sent a picture of a motor recently which had been serviced by MG (it was a Revolution from memory) which had a gold 'Serviced by MG' sticker on it as well as some company info. I can't find the picture now, or recall who offered it to me. I kind of wish I had taken them up on it now. I shall try to dig it out.

An MG Orange dot was my first non-silver can 540 motor! The Orange (Wet Magnet) & Brown dots really were THE stock motor to have back then, & was perfect for 'pepping' up the performance of my Mardave Meteor for indoor racing. That motor served me well & later ended up being fitted into the rear of my (then) new TopCat.... so it is fitting that the New-build TopCat in my collection is also fitted with a nice minty orange dot :thumbsup:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...psfffd6bd2.jpg

Anymore pics of the Topcat Dan ?

Here you go ;)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...psb681d304.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...pscb2b7521.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ps7f6d698f.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ps6joy8jit.jpg

got an MG Masterblaster somewhere................

Bet Robin was chuffed to see that, especially as he could see himself in the chassis. Car is staggeringly stunning.

Thank you Welshy.... the paint scheme is based on a photo I'd seen of a TopCat raced by Phil Davies... except his shell had (in very typical 80s style) a cartoon picture of Garfield across the front!

I think Robin was more nostalgic about my Schumacher XL carpet car (Schumacher's first R/C car kit) that I showed him later on in the day... I should have got a photo of him holding that also.