Good Vibrations

So, what does a guy do with a vibrator?

Wait, don’t answer that…instead, take a look at these 2 beauties mined from Aladdin’s Cave and note that they are mint condition early Aurora “Vibrators”, the first ones I have ever acquired. I actually got four of them in that first haul, and while two of those-the white Mercedes-Benz 300SL and the red Ford Country Squire wagon-were instantly converted to T-jets, these two I left alone because they are almost perfect-in fact, I’m quite sure the yellow T-Bird has never even been used.

And its likely to stay that way, since I have no means of running these cars. I know very little about them, so I’m hoping this post might inspire a response from other slotheads who do. My understanding is that these were designed to run on a track with AC power rather than DC like all modern tracks have used since the early 1960’s, and they can’t be run effectively on a DC track. That would explain why, when I try to run them, I am met with a spastic motion and a frantic buzzing noise that sounds a lot like an old style doorbell. And that’s probably because that, in essence, is exactly what these are! The coil energizes when powered, causing movement of the arm above it which, when it contacts, triggers an opening of the circuit which cuts the power, and so on, creating up and down (“vibrating”) motion of that top piece, which essentially functions as an armature. This “armature” has a very thin metal extension at the back that rubs against the knurled rubber drum on the back axle, thus creating forward motion, and that “buzzing sound” we’ve all heard in old movies when someone hits the button at the front door of an apartment building asking to be “buzzed in.”

This process explains why one of these little chassis didn’t work when I got it: when I hit the throttle on the controller it just clicked-the top arm moved down once-and didn’t release. It took me a little while to figure out why: the core of the coil has a hollow space for a small non-metallic dowl rod that stands just barely proud of the top of the coil, so when that arm comes down it pushes the little rod just enough to disconnect the contact under the car, thus breaking the connection. On one of the 4 examples I bought, that little dowl rod was missing, so I fabricated a new one from a tiny piece of Tyco flag pole plastic and, presto, she was vibrating back on down the road!

Both of these cars would have required modification to the bodies to be converted to a T-Jet chassis; I was willing to do that to the white Benz because it wasn’t as pristine as this red one, but the red version with the red hardtop (as opposed to the more commonly found black top) is quite rare and very desirable; likewise the ’59 T-Bird would have required material to be ground out of the body here and there to accept the T-Jet chassis and I just couldn’t do it.

To be honest, I’m surprised they work at all; the motion caused by the little armature piece at the top rubbing up and down on the rubber drum of the rear axle seems like it would be unlikely to produce any reliable motion, but work they do, and here’s proof:

https://www.youtube.com/user/mafyind/videos

I don’t often plug other people’s Vlogs on my own Blog, but this guy’s YouTube channel is spectacular: he has an incredible diorama-puts what I’m doing to shame-and an amazing collection of pristine original vibrators. So here’s all the video evidence we need of how these little old things are supposed to work and sound.

This, dear readers, is an avenue of slotdom I’m not going to pursue; it’s interesting for its historical aspects and I’m glad to own these two awesome cars, but they shall remain display pieces; I’m not going to get into collecting vibrators and buying a dedicated track to run them. I mean, I gotta draw the line, somewhere…right?

They are pretty cool, though… You know, maybe if I cleared a spot in the laundry room I could build another track…