Tables and Cars

First: The Table

I've been going over my track elevations, tweaking little bits here and there, mostly trying to keep integrity of banking in the corners. I'm starting to take the Carrera track to places where it begins to protest, as it really doesn't like to be manipulated very much. I've been working on Turn 3 [center] the past day or two and have gotten it to a much better angle. This allows a nice fishtail going into Turn 4, correcting halfway through and giving you a nice early acceleration point.

Carrera track is "formable" to an extent. While not as flexible as Scalextric track, it will still flex enough so that you can get a slight degree of banking out of it if you need it. And with cars with no magnets, even a little banking goes a long way. Add a half-inch or so of elevation to the outside of a turn and the weight of the track will do the rest.

As you go around the Turn 4 left-hander and up the hill toward the entry to the back stretch, it's not as easy to get out of shape as you would think back there. The way up the hill is still a bit of a climb, a lot due to the speed lost in Turns 3 &4, so by the time you get to the top you're in a good position to setup for the straight.

While a bit hard to see, each curve has a support under the outside edge of the curve. This allows a slight degree of banking, and gives enough support at this stage that the track doesn't sag under weight. Once the outside of the turn is raised, the main support is moved under it so that the track sits on it in its banked position.

Since I don't use borders, although I plan to for parts of the track later, I try to bank curve sections in a bit. It doesn't take much to make the difference between cars always going off and cars not going off. Plus you can go faster through sections set up that way.

Level shot of the beginning of the hillclimb in the foreground and the back stretch behind. I begin the banking coming out of the S-turn so that Turn 3 is more progressively banked. The back straight is level side-to-side, and drops about an inch before the real 1' drop happens.

I do a couple hundred laps, stopping occasionally if the cars get wiggly through a particular section. Once I work on that section to get it more race-worthy, I run more laps. Thing is, little things you do in one section have an effect on other sections.
When I put in the Sweeper, it wasn't that part of the track that was most interesting...it was what was going in and coming out of it. Softening that short left turn at the end of the back straight turned out to be a huge thing. The 3/30 turn can be hit with a lot of speed with comparatively very little problem, which meant that the back straight was essentially extended to include that curve and the two straights following it. While yeah, you could still launch your cars off it, you'd have to be going at maximum speed in order to do so. Now it can be used as the start of the braking zone and there's virtually no movement from any of the cars. I say virtually because while each car handles it differently, the trick now is going to be how fast each can go through it and still be in shape for the Sweeper. You can hit that thing at pretty insane speeds, and as long as you're not trying to speed up through it, you can run through it very fast.

It is, however, currently quite flat. It will eventually need to be about 3-5" off the ground all the way to the Kink, where it will drop dramatically for the front stretch. The left side of the table will be a rolling, grassy hillside, with the track carving through the top of it. The soft left off the back stretch [I need a name for that turn] will cut through a bit of hillside that will allow it to protect from cars flying too far away. This will be the same for the Sweeper, which will be about 50/50 over/under ground level. In the end I'm going to try no not bank the Sweeper too much, and rely more on tilting it a bit to get the effect. That and about a 4º angle on the curve out to keep them in the slot.

This is where I make the pancakes.

When I look at pics, the difference between the left and right sides of the track is pretty dramatic. But when racing it, the technical section becomes way more obvious due to the incredible speed of over 2/3rds of the rest of the track. Wish I could do sector lap times. That would be sick.

So it's entirely possible [and probable] that I'll keep the left side of the track reasonably level, just raised a bit. I'll mix it up with the scenery so that the hills undulate around and through the track. That way I can focus more on the track being fast for racing, and let the scenery grow around it, as opposed to trying to conform track to a particular scenery choice. Raising the left side of the track will have an effect on the back straight, as it won't be as radical of a drop. I am already considering raising the corner and the start of the back straight to compensate, but I'm running out of vertical space, so I need to be careful.

I am starting to think that somewhere in the left half of the table there needs to be a sweet midway with rides and booths and other stuff. And it would be fun if that stuff lit up and moved. I'll have to talk to my wife about that.

The Porsche gets up the hill faster than the Ford. Deal wid it.

So there we have it. This is the current status of the track, and is likely how it's going to stay for awhile. Next step will be track elevation support.

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Second: The Cars

Since I embiggened the track and got the new cars, things have changed a bit around here. One change is something I wasn't expecting; urethane tires not having the advantage. Maybe, since I've been running the two new cars for so long lately that I've laid down some rubber, the urethane doesn't get as much grip. Could be. So I'm going to experiment. I love that about this hobby. You can do it if you'd like and nobody's going to stop you.

So I replaced the urethanes with the stock factory C1 tires they came with.

Alfa Romeo 33/3 Targa Florio #2

The Alfa has been outperformed since the new large layout has been built. The urethanes didn't seem to provide much of an advantage over the rubbers, as far as I could tell.

I'm going to re-run the 100-lap race for the two cars and compare times with the other day. I don't know if it's the tires, to be honest. But if either car does significantly better, it will confirm my suspicions.

The Alfa started to chitter again, which it has done since the beginning on some of the turns with more banking. So I got the dremel out and shaved back the exhaust pipes of the car, which are hanging low due to the chassis being warped. I also shaved a little off the right rear quarter panel that was hanging low. This stopped the chitter.

Hard angle to really tell, but those tailpipes are right down on the track.

Ford GT40 #8

This tire change is pretty much a cry for help from the Shell team. They are running very lazy laps for having what are supposed to be superior tires.

Everything about the Shell car has been pretty much sucking lately. It can't beat the new #5 car, and that thing's still got the factory rubbers on it. The #5 crashed once and still beat it. It's best lap is a 5.12, which is hardly a threatening number. Average lap speed seems to be around 5.07. While it doesn't seem like much when looked at as a by-the-lap kind of time, it's well off the pace. At 100 laps, that's a 9 second difference. That shouldn't be happening, but it is. So I replaced the urethanes with the original C1 rubber tires.

I've been running both of these cars for some time now on urethanes, and I have expectations for both of them which neither are meeting. I'm not mad, just wtf. I don't accept that both cars suddenly just got shitty. So I have to think; what it is about these two cars that sets them apart from the others and may be contributing to their poor lap times?

Tires Tires Tires

There is one primary difference between these two cars and all the others. Each and every car came from the same manufacturer with essentially the same compound of rubber tires on them. I have replaced those with urethane tires on the two cars [the Alfa and #8 cars] and used to almost exclusively run them for two years. Only occasionally would I run the third car, the #11 Ford, which still had the factory rubber tires on it and couldn't keep up with the other two.
Then things changed. The track went up on a table. More track was added. A LOT more. 10 more straights. 17 more curves of varying radius. And more cars. But not more urethane tires. They became outnumbered. There is more rubber on the track now than there's been in well over two years. Great for the cars with rubber tires, but I don't think so great for the urethanes. They don't grab and guide you smoothly for the corners anymore. They chop and stagger as though they're looking for places to take hold.

I'm not going to bag on the tire manufacturer, because it's not his fault...not all tires work best in all conditions, but I will say the tires ended up also being really expensive [28 bucks for two pair] once international shipping and customs and all that came into play. That's on me, though. It was my choice to buy them, and they're not available over here. They are, however, great tires. Thing is, I don't think they work so great when combined with rubber tires taking up 3/5's of the lap time on my track now. The other cars are laying down rubber, and I don't think the urethanes like it very much. I think you have to kind of go all-in if you're going to go urethane, even though the general consensus seems to be that rubber and urethane tires cooperate on the same tracks. Yeah I'm not sure about that.

This is kind of important, because I've been bracing myself for a tire purchase to cover all the cars, as well as a few parts I need as well. I've found Ortmanns over here that don't cost nearly as much if I decide to go all urethane. If these rubbers end up working out and I don't need to stock all my cars with urethanes, then I'm saving 35 bucks right there. This would also allow me to look into other brands tires, or maybe even other compounds by Slot.it itself when it comes time for replacements. Truthfully, I'd rather have it be rubber tires than urethanes, but that opinion wasn't the same a few months ago.

In the meantime these kinds of savings help me along. That's probably about as much as wood is going to cost to do my elevation supports, give or take a couple bucks.

One thing I'm learning about this hobby is that you buy a part to make an improvement on a car, and it may work for awhile, but if it doesn't, don't let it get you down. Some things work and some things don't. I'm curious to see how the change back to rubber is going to do for these two cars. We'll see coming up.