Shop Time with the new cars

 Today is all about tuning and testing. I might time some laps for kicks at the end, but I'm going to try and set up all four cars today and get them running respectably. It shouldn't take too much work for a couple of them, but the other two will require a bit more attention. I'll do the easier ones first so I can get a head of steam going. So, each car will be dealt with and noted here. 

NOTE: From here on out, unless there's a reason to be specific, I'll be referring to the cars by their sponsor name and model number, rather than Slot.it, NSR or Revoslot. I mean, there will be times when it's mentioned, but most of the time it'll be a given. I'll update the sidebar so that all the cars are there. 

Here's what the layout looks like:

Pretty standard test track. A little of everything without getting too tricky. 

As a reminder, here's where the cars ran when I did the informal 50-lap time trial yesterday:

Results:

Car                   Time        Lap

Matra             3:29.27     4.18

908                 3:33.00     4.26

917                3:25.14      4.10

333SP            3:13.34      3.86

The Rothmans Porsche 917K

Hello Beautiful.

I did a little pre-tuning last night in a warmer room than where the track is. I did a lube/oil, hitting all the necessary spots. I set everything to start at snug, then rolled the body off by 1/4 turn. The pod already has enough play at snug that it is flexible and independent. The only thing to do upstairs would be sanding and minor adjustments to body float if needed. I like to get the pod at a comfortable place and keep it there, preferring to make adjustments to the body float over both pod and body float. So while the pod is in its snug, medium position I'll try tight, medium and loose body floats to see which one works best. If none are impressive, I'll adjust the pod and then try again. 

Before I sanded the tires it ran a 4.10 average lap time. After tuneup and sanding it ran a 3:14.19, which makes a 3.88 average lap time. That's a little over .22 a lap faster. I'll take it. It was already running fast to begin with. This time almost matches the time the Ferrari ran yesterday.

This is a very nice race car.

The Porsche Playstation

The other car that needs nothing got a lube/oil and will also get a full tire sanding job. Other than that, this is the car to beat.

First test: oops! Did I say it only needed that stuff? Well, I forgot to glue the tires to the wheels. Gotta do that real quick. 

I also went over the gears and wheels and made sure they were securely tightened to the axle. I had noticed one of them was snug but not truly tight. 

Second test: now it's behaving more like a race car. It still needs some work, and I keep going up and down the stairs doing adjustments to it. Why? Because it is 0° Celsius in the attic right now. Like I gotta pretty seriously bundle up at this time of year to race. That'll be nice one I move and can race in my proper living area. But anyway, the car handles very well, shimmying through the S-curves and tipping right through the 160 curves. It's a little noisy, but like the Ferrari I expect it'll settle down. I taped the underside and that seemed to help. I think I still need to make a gear adjustment through the motor mount, though. I thought I heard some grinding. 

That's the thing with the Revoslot cars. They make sounds you've never heard before, or at least at an enhanced volume you've never heard. It's pretty easy to mistake a chassis rattle for a little gear mesh or a little guide blade contact. When I first heard them my eyes got real big and I felt like I had a real monster in my hands. Still kinda do. But I'm starting to get the hang of them. 

Since the GT2 hasn't set an official lap time yet, we have nothing to work it against, so here goes. Lubed/oiled, set to snug, tires sanded:

Time         Lap

3:13.79     3.86

So it's doing as well as the Ferrari did yesterday. Okay. I'm going to double check the gearing and make sure there's no grinding or anything. It could just be the Ferrari is faster. To its credit, it has a few days of warmup laps ahead of the GT2. So that might be as much of a factor as there needs to be. Hard to say. The tuning approach to these cars is pretty different than what I'm used to, so it's going to be a little unfamiliar for awhile. Bear with me while I experiment. 

The Porsche 908

I reset the 908 to its snug position, lubed/oiled and it'll get the tire treatment. I'm going to hold off on adding weight until I think I need it.

Now this is more like it. Yesterday it was running as a slightly rattly, slightly loosy-goosy mutant cousin of the Alfa Romeo, which didn't feel right. After undergoing a tuneup it came to life. Yesterday it ran a 4.26 average lap time, and today it ran 3:14.28 for an almost identical average lap time as the 917K. That's 3.89 average lap time, cutting almost 4 tenths off yesterday's time. Now it's running like an Alfa's bigger, smoother, less twitchy yet still psycho cousin. 

The Ferrari 333

This is the project car out of the bunch. While it should run as well as the Playstation Porsche, it doesn't yet. I'm going to go back to the original position and get it running fast. 

I should note that there was an accident that this car got caught up in, which has compromised its wing a little. And this after all I said about how it looked like this thing was virtually indestructible, and it ends up toast while sitting on the sidelines waiting to race. 

That's right. I wasn't even racing it. It happened as the Matra was running its laps yesterday. I had the other cars sitting in the infield, but had absentmindedly left the Ferrari a little exposed. When the Matra came out of the turn and its tail got loose, it made contact with the Ferrari, sending the wing flying off of its magnetic attachment. Here's a re-enactment:

I swear, I was just coming out of the corner and the back end got loose, sending me into the Ferrari. I know it's the holidays, but I have NOT been drinking.

Since then the Ferrari now has some weird magnetic anomaly where it's suddenly not nearly as magnetic as it was prior to the crash, the wing doesn't like to stay on the car anymore. I don't know what happened. Maybe the wing pushed the magnet into the car or something. Not sure. Either way I'm going to be racing it with the wing off from now on. It'll still work when it's just sitting there looking pretty, but blow on it and it's coming off.

But this car is running much better and has gotten so over running lots of drone laps. Today it ran a 3:11.12 for an average lap time of 3.82, which was only slightly faster than yesterday's 3.86 ALT. I suppose that's okay. It puts the Ferrari and the GT2 right up against each other and in competition with the NSR cars. We could see some good racing out of that.

So there we are. That's a lot of cars to try and tackle at once, and it's obviously too much to really pull off. Each car will still need personal adjustment and work before it's running optimal, and that includes the GT2 and the Ferrari. The GT2 got beat by the 908, which shows that they can all run in a class together and do pretty well. 

__________

So what does this mean to my races, now that I have some cars that are ridiculously faster than the others? 

If you'll allow me to put on my analyst's tweed hat:

Good question. There will probably have to be two classes established: one Sport class, which would include the Slot.it cars, and an Unlimited class, which would include the NSR and Revoslot cars. The NSR cars were running close to the Matra yesterday, but that's not the case anymore. I don't know if any of the Slot.its can shave another 4/10s off their times to be able to catch the Ultd cars. If it's going to happen, I'm going to have to look at weight of the cars as being one of the primary additions, and I don't know if it's going to help. But they'll need much better grip just to get into the area where the Ultds are running. Ultd hopefully isn't confusing. Unlimited.

Scoring would be similar to Le Mans scoring, with the leader of each class winning. I'll also set up the championship points system to be so that the points are distributed based on how each car did in the race against all the classes. For example, I have 4 Ultds at this point. If there was a race where the winner got 15 points, and the Matra won its class but finished behind the rest of the Ultd field, it would get 11 points. If it were to finish ahead of the 908, for example, it would get 12 points. For a 20 race season, the two classes should have a 20-point or so spread between the two classes by the end. So any Ultd doing poorly will stick out, especially if it always comes in 4th or worse. To avoid any ties it'll be an odd-number of races in the season. 

The season won't start until I move, which won't be too far away. Until then I'll keep tuning and running these cars until I get to a place I can dedicate the time to do it. Right now is the wrong time to start because I'm going through a breakup and packing and apartment hunting. So this is more of a much-needed diversion than anything else right now.