B.O.P.

 I'm sitting here watching a rerun of 2019's 24hrs of Le Mans, watching all the GT cars fighting it out and it's a traffic jam at 200 mph! Lots of great competitive racing, regardless of what might have to be done to each car to get it to a competitive speed. 

And as I was weighing my NSR cars, and decided to try to add weight to the Matra to see if I could get it up to NSR speed, the success of that got me started modifying other cars. I added anywhere from 5 to 10 grams, depending on what each car needed. 

Baby, you got a big butt.

I added 8 grams to the 962C, bringing it up to 72 grams. It drives much better and is more planted, but it's still tail-heavy. It's kind of the nature of the car, as it's got a really long tail that shifts the weight of the car further towards the back. So it's a beast on the straights but still needs to be handled gently around the curves. I'll take it for now, but I'm not expecting any podiums in its current condition. 

I added 5 grams to the #66 Chaparral. I considered adding it to one of the GT40s, but the Chappy is so much more fun to drive, and I wanted to see if I could get it up to speed. That's the challenge now - getting each Slot.it car to go faster than they've ever gone so they can compete. The #66 drove similarly to the GT40 anyway, so trying it first would give me some answers I need for the other cars. 

I stopped there because I ran out of lead weight. I'm going to order more, but in the meantime post some new lap times of the improved cars, as well as current times of the new cars. There's been lots of noodling with enough cars to where I need new lap time numbers from them. 

But this is giving me a new appreciation for the Slot.it cars. So far they have responded very well and have eased my feelings about them not being able to run with the NSR cars. I suppose I could have done this much earlier, but I didn't have anything to compare them against at the time, so there was no point. If I could get these cars up to a good competitive level without having to add weight to any of them, then why add weight to any of them? Know what I mean? But now that the NSRs are here, and they're doing faster laps on a similar power train but with more weight, then why not add the weight to the Slot.its to see if it'll help give them more speed? The added weight just made them feel more solid, and they had pace to keep up with the NSR cars. At some point [maybe later tonight] I'm going to time some laps and see where we are.

So I didn't get to doing any timed laps tonight. I got a little caught up in doing a little shopping. Got some more lead weight, some Ortmann tires for the 962 and the Carreras, and a car. I wanted to try the Ortmann rubber, since it's pretty widely available here and is used all over. I figured a good candidate was the 962, with it's loose rear end maybe a different set of tires would help out. If not, I go back to the Slot.it tires and no harm done. Better than outfitting the whole lineup before trying one pair first. I know they'll get the Carreras back up and running, so that'll be interesting. I wonder what those cars would be able to do against all these others. I'm going to assume they'll be reliable backmarkers.  The insides of the two cars look reasonably good, although again I'm not expecting much. I'll definitely tune them to be the best they can, but I don't know if it'll be enough. If it isn't, then I've got a couple good crash cars for my daughter to play with.

Off to the attic....