Rebuilding the Gulf

I couldn't face my wife and tell her that her favorite car, the one she picked out for herself and gave to me, was a dud. Well, that's a bit harsh. It's not really a dud, it's just not as angry and flashy as the other two cars. It's a beauty, though:

Looks aren't everything. 

Problem is, it's mired in last place in Class A, and unless something drastic occurs, it'll remain there. So today I took it apart and rebuilt it. There was minimal dirt and fuzz, so I couldn't attribute its problems to that. It's something deeper, and I mean deeper than a simple washer can fix [although I still need one of those].
I'm pretty sure I'm over the idea that if I own two cars of virtually identical design, they'll be the same. It's simply not true. There are too many mechanical parts that can be different enough to matter. And as you can probably tell, I'm a budget racer, so I don't get to experiment with different parts like others do. I'm okay with that, and I get the absolute maximum entertainment value out of my cars.
But when I've got the Shell Ford kicking butt, and the Gulf Ford getting its butt kicked, I can't help wondering why one car is so much better than the other, when they're essentially the same.

The Shell Ford [left] looks identical to the Gulf Ford [right]. Thinner wires, a couple less pod screws, and metal eyelets in the mounting posts are the differences.

I gotta believe that a lot of it has to do with the location of the spur gear in relation to the pinion. The washers will fix this, as will a pinion puller, which I put on my ever-growing shopping list.
Otherwise, there's no visible difference between the two cars aside from the metal eyelets in the mounting posts on the Shell Ford, and that the Shell #8 came with the side pod screws missing. The pods have different numbers, 1 and 2, but look the same.
So maybe the problem is in the chassis. I took it apart and looked at it again, but I'm not sure what I should be looking for at this point. Everything seems to fit where it's supposed to fit, the chassis is straight and true, and it looks almost identical in current setup to the seriously fast Shell Ford. I re-seated everything to make sure it was all running soundly and together.

I noticed, while I had all the cars apart today, that the motor shafts on the Fords were quite a bit closer to the rear tires than they were on the Alfa. I noticed this after the race the other day, although at the time I wasn't completely sure what happened [I mentioned this in Cracking Open The Shell]:

When attempting to run the car with the spur gear in, I noticed the cut part of the tire, which was likely ground down my the motor shaft.

That can't be good. It hasn't showed up on the Gulf Ford yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. What worries me most isn't the pinion side of the shaft, but the other side, which is pretty dang close to the tire:

I should take some video of the tire spinning full-speed. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.

I know for a fact that the tire comes very close to touching that shaft when the wheels are spinning at full-speed, mostly due to the rubber expanding from rotating so fast. Thing is, this wouldn't have anything to do with handling, since the shaft and the tire are fixed, so there's no play when the car is in a turn [even with the pod loose]. Also, you're never going full blast through a turn, so you'd never get the tires spinning fast enough to bump the shaft, which is what I expect has been happening. Regardless, I want to dremel those things off and be done with it.

I should get a chance to try out the car on Sunday night. Hopefully it'll clock some fast laps. Instead of running a race, I might do some road tests with the car and see if I can tweak it further. It came out of the box fast, and there's gotta be something that I'm missing. Funny....if a slot car pro ever sees this site, it'll probably be a cringefest for him. Best of luck, buddy! Leave a comment telling me what an idiot I am!

EDIT: I did a teardown/rebuild, also known as "blueprinting" the car, resetting things to their original value [as far as I remember it] and starting from scratch. I went back through every bit of it, stem to stern. Chassis, parts, tires, wheels, axles, gears, screws....everything dismantled, cleaned, re-assembled and tuned.
I couldn't wait to try it out, so I set up a track this morning while my wife had coffee in her office. I'm going to put 1000 laps or so on the car today, but after about 100 so far I had to stop and write this, as I noticed an improvement. It's handling like the Shell Ford in the corners now, which is a good sign. If there is a definitive improvement [as I expect there to be] and the time allows, I'll run a race today. It's going to get a bit too crazy around here this weekend to guarantee it, however.

But things are looking positive for the Gulf Ford. It still isn't going to win it all, but it certainly can make some sort of comeback, and maybe even get 2nd place out of it.

Back to the track....