NSR Tuning Setup and Notes

 The nice thing about getting multiple cars from the same brand the first time is that you can get a much clearer understanding of what needs to be done simply by each car's behavior at the moment. What I mean is, one car runs great, the other doesn't, and it's because of x. It's a lot easier to pinpoint when a car isn't acting right when you have other cars to compare it to that are acting right. 

Since I shopped with the purpose of getting introduced to a couple of brands by buying more than one car, everything I'm learning about both brands comes at an accelerated pace. I'm not saying I'm turning into a know-it-all. Far from it. But I'm catching on faster, and I was worried prior that I might get in over my head.

My two Porsche 917K race cars.

Over the past few days I've been going back and forth among all five new cars, taking turns tuning, running and tweaking them. Now I want to work on the NSR cars and get them up to snuff. 

Due to my excitement I got some of them on the track before they were completely tuned. The Rothmans Porsche did almost 1000 laps before I did anything to the tires. I just lubed and oiled it. The Gulf Porsche, on the other hand, underwent a full setup before it even hit the track, and has now put about a thousand laps or so in itself. So they both got differing sorts of attention in their journey, yet reached the same destination.

Developing a flair for the dramatic. Porsche 908

I also put the 908 in the garage for a full tuneup. It got the same slow, lazy, just wanna play first treatment approach, so it was time to put it on the rack and do it right. 

The 908 chassis before full tuneup.

Here's what I did to each car:

1. Checked all screws and connections, making sure they were secure and nothing was in danger of breaking, failing or falling out.

2. Setup front ride height: NSR cars are dumped on the ground in front, and it looks great, but on my track I need the nose to be a little higher up than that. Each NSR car comes with four small M2 screws you can put into the front so set the position of your axle. I set it just so that the guide flag comes off the track, allowing the brushes a little space. It's a pretty fine dial in procedure, but it just takes patience. If you're doing it, expect to be making lots of small 1/4 screw turns and testing.

3. Check and lube/oil drivetrain: NSR has a pretty great drivetrain, and all it needed was a lube on the gears and some oil where the axle meets the chassis - in this case the bearings. At first the car is so clean you don't want to muck it up, but you have to do the lube/oil. Just be careful and don't use too much or it'll fly everywhere. And if you have to do two smaller applications, that's okay too. Lube and oil will be your primary source of dirt in your race car. And a clean car is a happy car.

4. Set body and pod float: This one's a little tricky, as it's got a different approach to pod float that Slot.it does. There's a lot more room for both pod and body float due to the long screws used. So I went ahead and set the car to snug and decided I would wait until I got on the track before making any other adjustments to it.

5. Sand and clean the tires: This one takes a few minutes for each car but provides a huge benefit. Grip is increases exponentially, and so does performance and speed. I take my piece of sandpaper and set the controller to fast drone. Put the car on the track and let the wheels spin on the sandpaper. I'm looking to get all the factory treads off the tires. Once I've sanded them down, I take a piece of masking tape and run the tires along the sticky side of the tape. This gets all the loose rubber and dust off the tires. Cleaning is something that is sometimes required of every car every session, depending on your environment. If you notice your car suddenly getting very loose in the corners, it likely has dirty tires. Keep that tape around and do a quick cleaning and you're good to go. It's also good to go over your track with a lint-free cloth if you have one. Just a quick wipe down. This is especially important if your track is setup all the time.

The underside of the 908/3. One word of warning: when you're taking the body off and loosening the screws, make sure you loosen the right screws. Those three screws you see? Yeah, those aren''t the ones. They're the pod screws. It's the single heavily-recessed ones fore and aft that you can't see.

The two 917Ks got the same treatment, with the Rothmans Porsche pretty much getting it first as I got it done quickest. Once I got the Gulf Porsche I did the whole thing right away. Neither car was particularly difficult to tune, although the front ride height was a little tricky to get on them. I ran laps on them and went back on both for one more ride height adjustment. They're all three running great now and are ready for some competition.