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Carlson Mite (later model)
Designed and built by John Carlson, Chicago, IL
The car shown in the photos is an example of a later .19-size mite car designed and built by John Carlson of Chicago, IL. The car was built for one of Carlson's friends, Donald Lockwood, also of Chicago.
While Carlson's first-design .19-size pans had a flat bottom, straight sides, and bolt-on bridle brackets, this later design has a rounded bottom, curved sides, and a cast-in pan handle mount. The design of the gearbox is essentially unchanged from the earlier design.
As the design of wheels and tires evolved, Carlson fitted C-R wheels and tires on this car replacing the Hornet Mite wheels and tires which were used on to his earlier car.
While Carlson powered his personal .19-size mite cars with Hornet .199 engines, his "customer cars" were powered by McCoy 19 model aircraft engines. A modified model aircraft fuel tank was used, and since Lockwood raced the car only on 1/80th mile mite car tracks sanctioned by NMRCA, no fuel shut-off was required.
The body was hand-carved from balsa wood.
Interestingly, Carlson used essentially the same wood pattern to produce the aluminum pan castings for both his .19-size tether cars as well as for his .19-size rail cars. For the tether car pans, Carlson glued a wood pan handle mount to the left side of the pattern, while for the rail car pans, he would glue a pair of wood rail guides to the left side of the pan instead of the pan handle mount.
