Tuning Day for the Latest Batch

 I slept lousy last night, probably because I watched a video on how to do 120fps video with my camera. That got me to thinking, which kept me awake. I woke up at 5, started right in on the video tests, then shifted gears and decided to work on the new group of race cars. I hadn't tuned them all just yet. Some partially, some not at all. So today was focused on the T70 III, the GT40, the P68, the yellow Ferrari and the Hippy Car, which was the most completed of the cars.

Three things from the top of my head:

1. There is absolutely nothing saying Slot.it cars can't keep up with NSR and Thunderslot and others. I used to believe something to this effect, mostly because I hadn't gotten past that first level of tuning, but now I see and understand. So if I've ever disparaged Slot.it, which I don't think I haven't, I want to make it perfectly clear that they are every bit as competitive as any other brand. 

Watch out for this Slot.it car.

2. The T70 is an absolute beast.

Beast.

3. Here's the deal with the P68; because of the narrow front and rear of the car, those factor in to the handling in an immense way. At first I thought it would handle roughly like the GT40, but I was wrong. There's no rear-end weirdness whatsoever. This car is as planted and on the money as the Matra, which is a crazy concept. It's also very light, which plays directly into it's cornering ability. 

DAY TWO:

Now that the previous cars mentioned have all been dealt with, I'm moving on to quick cleanup and checking of some of the others. Nothing too fancy....a tire cleaning and 20 or so laps to make sure nothing weird is happening. Being that this is the first race of my season and has a lot of cars in various states, I thought I would give everyone a quick going over. Plus, my week extended by a day, so I have an extra day to do this. 

Most of the Classics are finished, and I'll be doing some motor adjustments to some of the GT cars to get them up to speed. 

I have the rest of the day to do the last of the cars and possibly even start the racing. I only have one errand to run, then it's all about slot cars. 

I've been thinking about it, and I'm honestly not sure I can predict who will win this. The field is so close that I'm going to run 50 lap races to get some decent scoring. I don't know if it'll be a car that has already won before, or whether it'll be one of the newer contenders. So many of these cars haven't been in a race yet. Ferrari, 917/10k, Lola, P68, the GT cars...so many have yet to compete, and the winner could be from any one of them, along with dozens of others.

I'm going to run a points system, so the last 10 cars won't score any points. I think that'll be 43 points for the winner, working down from there. Winner will also receive 3 bonus points, 2nd 2 bonus points and 3rd 1 bonus point. 

If the GT Class as a group are considerably slower than the Le Mans Class, their scores will be re-evaluated based on the Class as a separate group. That will also effect scoring for the Le Mans Class, so they would both have to be reconfigured. For example: if the entirety of the GT Class is off pace from the Le Mans Class by 3 seconds or so, yet still competitive with its own Class, then two separate scoring structures will happen, with a GT Class winner each race, as well as a similar scoring system to the Le Mans Class. 

I'll be running individual points championship, sponsor points championship and constructor's championship. Any team cars are eligible for the sponsor points championship, however only the two fastest team cars can carry their points over. The constructor's championship will be the slot car manufacturer's cup. Eligible companies at this time are: NSR, Slot.it, Thunderslot, Revoslot, Carrera. All cars are eligible to carry their points over. 

Back to the track...

5 Of My Favorite Cars

 After the last post with all the yellow GT40 pics, it got me to thinking about some of my favorite cars. When I get a new car, I take it out and run it, comparing it to the other cars, and generally just seeing what kind of package it is and how it runs. And when you buy cars from reputable manufacturers, it's pretty rare to have issues. Most of the time they run really well without much help. 

We all have opinions of what we like in a slot car, and which we think is good. I like a car that handles well, runs smoothly and feels light. That doesn't necessarily mean that I get those things in every car, nor does it mean I only settle for those things and reject everything else. 

So here are five cars that have grown to be favorites of mine [in no particular order]:

Thunderslot Elva #2

This was the first car that I bought that felt like it had limitless power. Whenever I gave it gas, it went faster. Between the red #2 and the black #47 [truly an evil car], the Elva has been hovering at the top of the scoresheet for a long time. 

I like the medium nose and short tail. Makes for a snappy race car that can still settle down and get in line for the straightaway. It doesn't waste any energy. It has such a low center and magnificent construction by Thunderslot that you can't put it away. It's the car the points out all the inefficiencies with your other cars. 

Slot.it Ferrari 512M

This one is a little weird the way it turned out. I had bought up a bunch of Slot.it classics, then moved on to NSR, Revoslot and Thunderslot. I originally thought that Slot.it cars wouldn't be able to keep up with the others, but that's not the case. So when the Ferrari came out I kinda freaked out, as did most everyone in the slot car world. Here's Slot.it, which was mostly pretty slow in regards to Classics being released, and then they put out this. 

It's so much fun to race, feels great and competitive, and kinda re-establishes a great car classification. It's great at taking pictures, and I imagine would even look great sitting on a shelf somewhere. Certainly looks and runs like a gem on my track.

Slot.it Matra/Simca 670B

Early on I only had a handful of cars, and they were all very similar in style and capability. I had one that was different, which was an Alfa Romeo 33/3 because of how short it is, but nothing really stood out until I got the Matra. The first thing that stands out is the long wheelbase, but you notice it when you're racing. It's low, long, medium nose and medium tail, and incredibly stable. It runs the way you wish the 917 would run. If I was going to race in a Classics race and could only take one of my cars, I would take this car. 

Revoslot BMW 2002ti Fisher Technik

This car could have been pretty much any of the Revoslot GT cars. This one stands out being the smoothest from the start and looking particularly great. This is such a fun series of cars to race, even if the tuning situation is a little different from the other brands. Still great and I'm glad I tried them. Still not sure if a GT car could win it all, though, but given the right track, perhaps.

Thunderslot Lola T70 #21

My second Thunderslot car, and one of the smoothest performers I have. I know that sounds a bit like all the other cars, especially calling them all "smooth", but it's true. The smoother the race car, the faster it'll go. It shows a well-tuned racer and this car fits the bill completely. Deceptive and low-slung, it'll do both the curves and the straights. I love it.

Photography and Media Post

 This blog is a practice place for some stuff. As an amateur/semi-pro photographer [yes, I have occasionally gotten paid for my work and some has actually been published], I find the world of slot cars a great place to practice taking pictures. Ever since the beginning there has been an emphasis of including pictures associated with the cars I'm talking about. 

Here's something you might not know: each time I get a new car, I do a complete photo session of all the cars and replace each image on the sidebar with a current photo of each car. Why? For practice, for one. I also like to work on particular things when taking pictures, whether it might be something like lighting or a photographic technique. 

Back in the old days with the Canon 500D and an assortment of clip lights to help light things up.

While I had a pretty decent camera in the 500D, it wasn't great. I was able to get serviceable shots in the early years with it, however.

The resulting shot. Not spectacular, but pretty cool for starters.

As time went by, I added and replaced things. First was lenses, which are still my favorite thing to shop for in cameras, and later came things like a few good tripods, a flash lighting kit [which I have since retired...not my thing], and eventually proper professional video lights, suitable for both photography and video. Add to all of it a sound recording system, and I've built up a little empire. 

I now use a Canon 90D, which is their best APS-C camera. For lenses I got the EFS 18-135mm 5.6 zoom, the EFS 10-18mm 5.6 zoom, the EFS 24mm 2.8 pancake prime, and the 70-200mm F/4 USM. 

The GT40 on the Canon 90D with the 70-200mm F/4 in proper color [and lights].

Now that I have over 50 cars, taking pics of each and every one can be time consuming, but I tend to turn it into a bit of a process instead, so most times I'll set up with a neutral car, get the shot and the light I want, and start shooting. The shots are primarily similar, although I work with light settings, f-stop, ISO and other things to see what happens. The reasons I keep the shots similar is for the formatting of this blog. The shots look pretty good on a phone or computer, so I keep them that way. 

Early on I used to shoot in RAW, which is an editable image file and can be very well dialed in when you want it, but I changed to JPEG a few years ago. The reason was that I wanted to be able to take good photos and not rely so much on post-production to balance my shots. Sure, there are drawbacks to that; lossy compression, other stuff like that. But there's also the file size savings, which in my world can fill up very quickly. When I was shooting in RAW, I didn't care so much about my settings at the time, more thinking that I'd work them out in post. But that's a dependency I didn't want to have. I used to have Photoshop, but now I use iPhoto and occasionally Adobe Lightroom 3 when I do shoot in RAW for pro stuff. But since I don't do much color/brightness/etc adjusting, I pretty much go through iPhoto. I like the results I've gotten with practice, and have had only a handful of photos I wish I could have gotten back. The file size and time savings have been huge. 

The Matra is a grizzled veteran on my track. One of my favorite cars hands down.

So, I push to improve my ability to take good photos. Not all are perfect, and sometimes they're downright wrong, but that's the part of learning and discovery that I like. 

VIDEO

One thing I still don't see working is shooting video of a slot car race. Scale speeds are way too fast for most cameras to pick up a clean image of the car, and shots are often so far away from the action that it's hard to tell just what's going on. It's like trying to watch an F1 race from a helicopter a mile away from the track. I've found better results filming parade laps up close rather than full speed laps. With those, most cameras can actually pick up a good enough image to see what's going on. I've had luck on a few of my YouTube videos with parade lap shots. Sure, the car might not be blazing down the track, but it's moving, you can see it, and it looks good. 

I've thought about ways to film my races, and I just think it would be pointless and boring. Plus, I'd want to cover enough of the track with light to make it work right, and that can be tricky. But I just don't see how it can work right filming normal racing at normal speeds. Sure, you can do multiple angles and a lot of editing, but that's a pain. I've done it. It only really works at parade speeds. Racing laps mean blurry cars, loads of short shots with lots of jump cuts. Most all of my videos have it happening at one point or another, except for the more recent ones. But still, and this is including all of the other videos I've seen....they're rarely watchable, as much as I'd like to see detail and know what car is running. I'd rather see the cars coasting through the track at parade lap speeds, and THEN do the multi-cam edits. 

That's probably going to be my next thing to look at. I have theories I'd like to try and see if I can make them work. No hocus pocus...just good lighting and setup. I'm not planning on filming time trials, but I will likely film parade laps. I can use those much more effectively in a larger, more involved situation than just filming a blur going round-and-round. 

YOUTUBE

My YouTube stuff has been sporadic lately, and here's why: I wasn't really all that much of a fan of doing car reviews. I saw things going in that direction for me, and I didn't like it. As great as slot cars are, there's not all that much to talk about between the differences in them right out of the box. So you end up parroting the same information everyone else does, which means you end up competing with them for views. I'd rather not do that. I'd rather know how they're running now that they've had some time and adjustment. So I had to pretty much figure out who I was and what I was going to do. I know what it is now, and I've been mapping it out in my head. I have a few more things to try, then I'll have the necessary things to pull it all off. It basically comes down to the approach and the theme. I have the latter worked out, now I'm working on the approach. 

There are quite a few new YouTubers that have popped up since the Covid lockdowns. You can go pretty deep these days into slot car videos and get all sorts of results. I watch a lot of them, but mostly just to see what they're doing. People are starting to get serious by upgrading their equipment and turning themselves into influencers, which is okay, I guess. Not for me, though. I don't come from that angle. I'm looking to fill a niche that I think is there. We'll see if it works.

New Car: Thunderslot Lola T70 MKIII - Brands Hatch 1969

 Yay! Another Thunderslot car! I've been kinda combing and digging, looking for more Thunderslot cars, as my normal seller seems to be not carrying them so much anymore. I found another place that carries them, which is also where I picked up the GT40, and here it is, the Lola T70 MKIII:

The Lola T70 from Thunderslot is already an awesome car. Very smooth and fast, and feels like it's very planted. This car will fall right in line with all the others. With the Tech - Speed logo over the back of the car, this one....what? Oh, that. Well, from the looks of it, the car hit a can of blue paint on the track somewhere. I'm sure that's not what it is, and there's probably an easy explanation as to why the curious design decision. I'm going to do a deep dive here in a bit, so it's likely I'll replace this whole section with facts once I come across them.

The paint doesn't go completely over the front, and kind of slops over into the rally stripe and number on the front. I will say, I have absolutely NOTHING against this car whatsoever. I think the blue is really cool and makes the car look like it has worked hard. I'm sure the explanation is there somewhere. My guess: At some point during the race they had front end damage and replaced part of the front end bodywork. One of the reasons I think that isn't so much the blue paint as it is the curious black strips that look like they're holding the hood of the car together. I'll try to get a pic of that angle and show it here.

A rare car-facing-the-other-way photo here.

So stoked to have another Thunderslot car. They make such absolutely solid runners. I've found a few more outlets where I can get them, so I'm sure I'll have more again soon. 

Both the Lola and the GT40 will be given race-ready tuneups tomorrow. I still have about a dozen or so cars to check before the field is ready to race. I'll try to finish as many cars as I can tomorrow so we can move onto the track.

New Car: NSR GT40 Scuderia Filipinetti - 24h Le Mans 1966

 One of two cars I got today:

Before this guy showed up, I had three GT40 race cars, all from Slot.it. I remember one time thinking that if I got a GT40 from another brand, things could quickly sour on whoever is the slowest. I don't think that way anymore since I've gotten a couple of them up to contention. I'm going to be doing a comparison feature on them coming up. 

Looks great, sits low, and has a great paint job. 

This car has very rapidly sold out from most retailers. There will likely be more in the series. 

This and the other car I got today will both be getting tuned for the upcoming series. 

Preseason Tuning Day Two

 I want to be able to get all the cars going from the outset. No dud starters. Everybody gets an equal chance, whether they need a lot of work, little or none. Here are some of the cars.

Some cars needed as little as a once-over and they were on their way. The black Elva is one of those cars.

The black Elva is the car to beat, by my estimation. It took the last two races it was in by a good margin and was never really challenged. I didn't need to do anything to the car to prepare it for racing. It's ready to go. 

On the right track, the 908 is going to dominate. And I have a lot of them, each one just as deadly as the last. The Tibidabo is one of the only 908s that aren't part of a team. Perfect spoiler car. This one should cause all kinds of consternation in the pit garages.

Do NOT ignore the Matra. Let me tell you...the Matra is the best pure racing slot car that Slot.it makes. I'll die on that hill. It's the truth. Long wheelbase, short ends, low slung...it has it all. I've got this thing keeping up with the Thunderslot cars, which is saying something. Does it have enough to win? We'll have to wait and see. 

Unlucky Strike

First it was tire rub. A lot of it. Then something electrical started malfunctioning. Not sure what it is. I've traced both leads the whole way and found nothing out of the ordinary. I'm starting to think one of the wires might be in the process of breaking. So there may be a period when this car underperforms. I might go so far as to say that if any car was to DNF, it would likely be this one. 

Wanted to check the beer car and make sure it was up to spec. Pretty much all of the Revoslots are ready to go. I'm not sure what make/model is going to do the best, so we'll have to wait and see. The BMW is already dang fast. and so are the Escorts. The Alfa Guilia will do well on a more forgiving track, but it might struggle against the BMW in the curves. Throw the Datsun in there and there's practically a whole field. 

I have a couple more cars coming in the next day or two. Those will both get immediate work to be eligible for the races. Believe me, it'll be worth waiting for them. 

Preseason Tuning Day One

 Took advantage of a little time off today to work on nine of the most recently purchased cars, as well as a couple of other older ones. I wanted to get them all up to racing spec for the start of the season. I'd like them all to have an even chance, so getting them setup and running right is important. 

One of three Ferrari 512M race cars from Slot.it that I have.

Since I was going to be tuning the other two 512s, I wanted to make sure I did each car justice, so I brought out the #16 and gave it what I gave the others. I'm glad I did it, because it probably would have been a lesser performer than the other two if I hadn't. I ran all the cars I worked on today through the tire truer, including the #16 Ferrari, and got them all in race shape.

On the NSR front I tuned the Hippie Car and the P68, and did a going over of the Lucky Strike 917, as it had been having some intermittent power issues. Still not sure about that one. I might have a faulty wire in there. Connections are good otherwise. 

Overall the NSR cars are ready. The 917/10 cars all have those meaty slicks on the back, so tuning them up was a breeze. They're going to be really fast cars.

The 917/10 might just be the car to beat.

I still think these are going to be really competitive. I used to think the 908 body style was the best, being so blunt on the nose and tail, but the more I run this, the better the car feels. It's like an even more aggressive 908. 

I tuned the Datsun 510 up the other day, so I'm all set on the Revoslot cars now. They're all tuned and ready for racing. Curious to see how the GT cars are going to fare against the Classics. 

Team Sunoco is going to come FLYING off the line.

I considered giving the Sunoco Ferrari a different chassis/body float setup than the #16 Ferrari, kind of like I used to do with the three GT40's back in the old days, but decided against it. I figure that, instead of potentially crippling a car for the sake of experimentation, I'd instead go for what I know and tune it to the best of its abilities. 

It is exciting to have new cars in the competition. There are a lot of cars to choose from now. With all that I had before and the addition of the Ferraris, the Porsche 917/10s and the P68, not to mention all the GT cars and their varieties, it makes for great racing. I can name a dozen cars off the top of my head that would all have potential to win a race. I should put odds on the field. Maybe I'll do that in another post.

Killer shark or bloated whale? We'll find out soon.

The tires on the P68 seem incredibly soft. Abnormally soft. They're even soft compared to other tires on other NSR cars. The trued up like a breeze. 

The Ferraris getting ready for a trim and a truing.

Don't know what I'd do without my tire truer. Once you get enough cars to where you're spending more time messing with your tires than you are racing, you need one of these. I've overhauled all my cars now and it improved lap times all the way across the board. Much smoother rides out of all of them. A tire truer is a must-have.