Controversial Border/Wall Discussion

I was going through my usual checkups on local toy stores to see if they had anything on sale the other day. Turns out I found three 1/60 borders wrapped in a rubber band for 12 bucks. They came with two end caps as well. Must have been part of a set, likely the one that was on the xmas display.

So I thought about the most hazardous part of the track so far after weighing out two options; support the inside lane or the outside lane. Since I've been racing already on the inside lane, I know I can get away with borders in two places and get full coverage. On the outside it would be helpful in the big switchback in Pike's, but that's about it. There are a lot of other places on the outside lane that need borders. 

So the inside lane it is. 

I'm covering the right-hand of the Dunlop Curve and the big curve at Pike's. Those two places traditionally have had the most offs for the inside lane. I'll still need to do a little magic later so they aren't so disconnected, especially at the ends. I'll be able to scenic stuff to fix that.

My first reaction is that the borders could be about half as deep and just as effective. Perhaps 1:24 cars need the full girth, but so far most of my cars have required no more than about an inch of it. So whether or not I end up using Carrera brand borders everywhere will depend on if I think I'll need that runoff space in the future.

I'm not a drift-king or anything, but I know that if my car is getting that out of shape going through Pike's, I'm a goner in the next corner.

I'm not sure where I'm going to need these just yet. This seems the most logical place. Until I have borders for the Sweeper, it's pretty much a moot point to begin work on the outside lane, especially considering I have so few borders to help it right now. 

The plan is to leave these on for awhile and see how I like the results. I'm going to have to reset the banking, but I think the borders will actually help get better banking than I had before due to more adjustable surface area. I'll play around with it and see what happens. 

A straight border piece would clear that hip right out, although it would be kind of fun to bring the wall in a bit there, put some floor down, and put a TV tower behind it. 

I suppose I'm going to have to let the rubber on the track do the talking regarding how much of the borders are being used. So far it's dictating what the racing line is looking like. I wish I could get better pictures of it. It's just not at that stage yet. But I'll be curious to see just how much of the borders a car uses. The depth of the borders could certainly be the edge location for walls, although I think I would end up doing some kind of scenic treatment to most of the outer parts of the borders. 

If these borders make sense here temporarily, then I will make them permanent. Until then, I'll race with them here until further notice.

Car Notes

I took a few minutes and added a little weight to the Matra. I placed a small square of ballast right up behind the front axle. It's a negligible amount of overall weight for the car, and so far has helped keep the nose down in testing. No other adverse effects.

The #10 feeling right at home on this track after only a weekend.

I haven't run legit races yet, but I think this thing is going to be very hard to beat. 

Matra Notes

Tonight is Friday night and the family is away, which finally leaves me with some much needed racing time. We're headed towards the finish line of having a bathroom completely rebuilt. We're about three more agitating workdays away. But this is the weekend. And it's track time.

I mentioned previously that the Matra came with it's front tires already making contact with the track, but out of habit I removed the two support cups like I always do, and I think I may have put the car out of balance. It's tending to de-slot at high speeds now, especially in the Mulsanne Kink and the Sweeper. I think I'm going to go ahead and reset those cups and see if the contact is satisfactory for me. I'm a firm believer in having four tires on the track, and not two. That friction argument floating around out there is poppycock. Sorry.

The argument goes something like this: since your front tires aren't providing any power to the track, they are instead slowing down the car, so setting the car up with the tires off the track will make it go faster by taking the friction-causing front tires out of the picture. An added by-product proposed is that when going into a turn, the car will eventually lean enough to allow the front tire to engage the track for support.

Last part first: how's about setting the front tire on the track so that there's no lean to begin with?

Tires in the air? Here's a simple enough test:

Take the motor out of one of your cars. Then set up the tires so they're off the track. Put the car on the track, and give it an eager push with your finger. See how far it goes. Next, set up the car's tires so they're on the track. Repeat the putting and the pushing. Notice how much farther the car now travels? Yeah, friction would be the opposite of that. The only friction is the amount of plastic sliding along the track because the wheels are up in the air.

So anyway, off topic a bit there. Even though the Matra was doing fine before I tampered with it, I think my work adversely affected it. Regardless, I ran a 50 lap shakedown to see what it could do. It had already felt like it was right in the running from the get-go. It's even quieter than the GTII, which I didn't think was going to be possible.

Nice to have another car with a different number. The #10 Matra Simca 670 B.

50-lap Shakedown Test

Car         Time      Lap

Matra   4:07.50    4.94


You have to go all the way back to the Frozen Tundra 50 to find a similar race to compare it with. Anything earlier would have different track parameters and couldn't really count.
At the Frozen Tundra 50 the 2nd and 3rd place cars [#8 Ford and Alfa, respectively] were two tenths of a second per lap behind the time the #10 laid down today. I had a feeling it would do well, but I wasn't expecting that. Those two cars have been tweaked to the track, whereas the Matra is still a bit away from being race-ready.

But if it isn't race-ready yet, how fast is it going to be when it finally is ready? And if all Matras run like this, then why isn't it the top of its class in racing? I never hear about it in slot car circles, and it's a perfectly lovely car. I don't get it. Maybe people prefer the other cars from the era more. Or maybe the older models aren't as refined? I don't know.
Anyway, let's do some tweaks and a bit more testing.


Thirty Minutes Later...

Instead of putting those cups back in...I just can't see why you need them...I took the screws I put in out instead, allowing more flexibility. I also redid the wire brushes, which had a not-quite-good connection. All in all I got it into a good running mode and just ran a couple hundred laps with only one off. I'll continue tweaking it, and I'll save the cups in case I just can't get it right, but I think I might be headed in the right direction now.

Two Hours Later...

I added the Porsche and the Alfa to the session and ran them against the #10 to see if it was keeping up the pace, and it certainly was. I'm noticing that due to the short nose on the Matra, most of the weight is on the back end of the car [since it's a sidewinder motor]. Early in the session I noticed the front end hopping at the start of the Mulsanne Straight. I think I might actually have to add a little ballast up front to keep the nose down. If I add it I'll try to add just enough to keep it down without weighing down the car too much. This problem doesn't happen with the Porsche because it's got enough nose to keep it on the track.
But the Matra is a lot like the Alfa up front, except longer everywhere else. The combination of these things and the low body shape, it's really a very "flat" car, meaning that most of the body has a maximum height that is quite low to the ground, unlike the other cars. That gives it a lighter overall weight, which makes it that much more important to make sure weight is properly distributed. You don't want a light car being light in the nose or the tail. The Matra weighs in three grams lighter than the Porsche, so I could add a bit of weight to it. It's now, however, two grams heavier than the GT40, which is surprising.

During the session I was dealing with a lot of dust left by the bathroom installers. It got on everything, including the track. So I've been cleaning, running, sanding and taping. I put the Alfa away and brought out the Mark II, so now I have my three newest cars running. I thought I would give a little care to the tires, since they were sliding all over from the dust.

After about 500 more laps I'm very happy with the car. The nose is down, it's fast and quiet.

I love this car. That was fast.

New Car [and it's a screamer]

Finally. After days of patient waiting as well as a blown weekend opportunity, it's finally here. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you:


Matra Simca Le Mans 1973

I hear groans. Okay, I feel them. Here's the thing, the Ford GT40 is pretty much [to me] the standard when it comes to a balanced slot car. It's got just enough nose and just enough tail to make it handle well without too many surprises. A perfect first car.

The Alfa Romeo 33/3 is quite a bit different. It has a shorter nose and a shorter tail than the GT40. It makes for a much quicker handling race car.

The Porsche 962 has that shorter nose but has a long tail. So it affects the handling as well, turning it into a totally different type of car than the Ford.

Enter the Matra. It's got the shorter nose, and a bit of a tail [nowhere near as long as the Porsche], but it's also got a longer wheelbase than the GT40. This puts it right between the GT40 and the 962 in regards to handling. It'll cruise at high speeds just like the Porsche, but it's much more responsive in the curves and doesn't swing out nearly as much.

I should make up a rating system of the varying elements of the car so it would be easier to explain. I might just do that.

There were things that struck me right off the bat with this car, besides the way it fits perfectly in my collection. One of those things was that this was the first Slot.it car that I have gotten that didn't have the front wheels in the air. Whether that was on purpose on or accident I don't know yet. I'll need to get in and take a closer look. Today was all about taking out the magnet and doing some laps.

First thing I can't help but notice is how low slung the car is, and how deep into the body the wheels go. This bad boy is dropped. I kinda love that about this car. It's got that great 60's/70's low body style that is all curves and style.

I don't remember seeing anybody gushing about a Matra slot car before, although Harry over at HomeRacingWorld.com did in a review. That pretty much pushed me over the edge into getting this one. I was pretty close to getting another Porsche and I'm glad I didn't. This thing is so much fun to drive.
I think this is a pretty looked-over slot car. It's in a class with a lot of beautiful cars and tends to get forgotten about. I've been watching reruns of old Le Mans 24hrs races, and I kind of got a soft spot in my heart for the Matra.

The Matra fills the gap perfectly between the GT40 and the Porsche. This is what I was hoping for, and according to the numbers it should be this way, and I'm glad it is. The Matra could easily match with either the Porsche or the Ford [even the Alfa] without being outrun. In a weird way it almost drives more like the Alfa than any other car, although it doesn't. Either way, this car is more than capable of handling itself.

I've been driving the Porsche a lot since I got it. It's had more track time than any other car. One of the reasons for that was so that I could better learn to drive it. If you go from an Alfa or Ford to the Porsche the difference is night and day. The approach to the entire track changes when you use a car your not used to, or one that is radically different in style to what you're used to. The Porsche is just that. It's extremely fast and has the potential to beat them all, but it also needs a gentler touch, more patience and a different approach. It's not the type of car you want to accelerate in a curve with, but it'll run fast aside from that.

The Matra, being just shorter than the Porsche by a bit in all directions, out handles the Porsche, will outrun the Fords and the Alfa, and might be my fastest car. It's a semi-long car that likes a semi-long track. Nice match.

It never seems like much when you start comparing cars together by size, wheelbase, etc., but I think you can learn a lot about the when's and why's of slot cars.

So now I have something that fills that gap. It'll be curious to see where it ends up in the standings. Speaking of standings, all that will have to be reset for the new car. But that's okay. This will be the last car for awhile.

And it's sexy as hell. I love it.

Upcoming: under the hood.

Car and Track Notes

I did an extensive wipedown of my track a little bit ago due to all the dust the bathroom installers have spread around. I've needed to do it quite a bit to get it not to slip. As I was doing this I noticed that I was starting to get some rubber laid on the track. It's faint, but it's there and started.

It's not very easy to get a picture of, and it's almost more noticeable when it's not looked at directly. Anyhow, it's there and that's pretty cool.

For a long time I was running urethane over rubber by about 2:1. And that's not including casual running, which I almost always ran one of the cars with the Paul Gage urethane tires. So I never got any rubber laid down because most of the time it wasn't rubber that was running on the track.

When I got the Porsche and the Ford GTII, instead of ordering a bunch of different urethane tires, I decided to put away the Paul Gage urethane tires that two of the cars were using and put all of the cars on the factory C1 rubber that they came with. Since then, nothing but rubber has been running on the track.

This one is a bit easier to see. Entrance to Turn 1, coming from left to right. The rubber pattern shows that the cars have a tendency to swing out quite a bit, going as far as over the painted-over stripe in the middle, turning it dark gray. 

This is only after a couple of weeks of running nothing but rubber on the track. Since I'll be sticking with rubber and even buying more eventually when I need replacements [including to the Carreras], I expect this to get significantly darker.

Poor guy has been doing the bulk of the running while I'm cleaning. I'll have to do a thorough cleaning of all the cars once this construction is done.

I took the top off the Porsche to see if it was collecting dust inside and it wasn't. I put it on the track with just the chassis and ran a couple of laps. I ended up with quite a flashback to my youth, when my brother and I would race AFX HO cars. We'd always end up without any bodies, racing just the chassis. I don't have that feeling now, but it's funny to have that memory. Weird how stuff like that happens.

Smooth runner.

The Ford GTII is the most recent production car I own from Slot.it.

The car coming on Monday is even newer. 

I can't wait.

No Racing Weekend

Wow, talk about timing being all off.

So I order this car, says 2-3 days delivery. Well, this is Germany and that's wishful thinking, but whatever. And wouldn't you know it, on the second day, after I've been hanging around the house all day, I step away for 10 minutes for the most cliche thing in the world, a loaf of bread. I come back, there's a note on my door that I missed the delivery guy. So yeah, it was two days. That's pretty good. I'll pick up the box in the morning from the post office, as it says on the note. Wish I would have been here, but oh well.

The next day I get up, take my card down to the post office, and wouldn't you know it, it's closed both Thursday and Friday, no explanation, no other information, hand-written sign in the door.

Now I can't pick it up until Monday, even though it got here on Thursday. That has completely taken me off a nice evening session tonight and tomorrow night. Plus household stress is high due to the lack of functioning bathrooms. There's one working toilet upstairs in a room that has been otherwise completely gutted [including heat - there's no heat], and a working sink downstairs. The oven doesn't work anymore and the replacement waits boxed up in our living room for this work to be done so we can install it. Until then we cook at our neighbor's vacant upstairs apartment. There's also an incredible amount of dust, which is getting everywhere, including upstairs on the track. I spent 30 minutes wiping it down, running, wiping down, running...and it's still slick and powdery. I'm definitely going to have to wait until this all blows over before really getting the track cleaned up. They said they were mostly finished with the loud grindy stuff, and they'll be doing the next, less destructive steps.

Man, sorry that you had to read all that. Wish this could have been a pictorial post about the new addition and maybe even some sweet video. That has been the plan since I got that card from the delivery company. But anyway.

I have no idea what my week's looking like, so I don't know when I'll be able to get this car and get it on the track. It'll drive me crazy if it takes too long.