First, a report on the Ortmann tires: while the early report had some cars struggling a little with the new tires, most all of the cars have calmed down and adapted. I've been sanding and running cars all New Years Eve and a good chunk of New Years Day, and I've gotten them to where I like them. They have sanded contact patches and are ready for action.
It's almost easier to say who is still struggling over who is kicking ass right now. The Chaparral #66 is getting too much bite in the corners and is rolling over. I'm going to look into that right away, because wing. The Tergal 908 is a little noisy, but it sounds more like body vibration than anything suspicious. The Lucky Strike 917 has a bit of tire rub on the right rear side. There's something about the way the body is fitting with the chassis that isn't right, so I'm going to look into that. It does this weird thing where it has almost a locked body float position that favors the right side. Probably a burr in the plastic somewhere. I might have to break out the dremel.
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| The Ortmann urethane rear tires [seen above] are a little wider and have more contact patch than the factory rubber tires do for the 917K. This causes the sidewall to rub against the inside of the fender if the body isn't on just right. Turns out if the front of the car's body float is too loose, the rear end comes down. So I went to snug front / loose rear instead. |
Otherwise individual track records for just about everyone are being shattered. The 917s, 908s and GT40s love the new tires. And while the fast cars got faster, everyone else came right up along with them. The Matra, the 962, the Alfa...everyone improved. So we have racing on our hands.
Since I got the other brands of slot cars and weighted the Slot.its to meet them, I've capped the overall track power to 70%. I used to run 40% before, and it worked great when all the cars were pretty well matched and lightweight. But it kinda has to be done now if I want to have any kind of fun racing. The Slot.its averaged around 60 grams of weight per car, while the NSRs came in around 70 grams. So the Slot.its needed to be brought up to weight to match the NSRs first, otherwise the 70% power setting would have been too powerful for the lightweight Slot.it cars and they would have had trouble staying on the track.
While I know that some of the cars have way more capability than what I'm allowing them to display, I'm trying to put it on that line where every car has to perform. So while an NSR can set a blazing lap time, the aluminum Revoslot would be slowed down and, while he might still be blazing, he might not be as blazing as he could be. But that's not meant to make someone sad. It's just meant to make the racing fair. Happens all over the place. Balance of power is a thing. It's not uncommon to see certain makes of cars have to take extra weight or be powered down to be fair to other cars in its class.
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| Excellent race car, tuned and ready to eat the big tracks. To race here, he has to be controlled with 70% power. While he could do more, that's still enough to make things tricky. |
It should be said that every single car I'm running shares a similarity, and that is that they all run on something right around a 21k motor. And since the general idea is the same and the power plant is the same, then it should be a matter of comparing manufacturers as well as cars. There could very well be a fluke car in there that always does well and it can't be explained. I can think of one of the top of my head, and it's yellow. That car could just go on a record smashing spree that stops all other competitors in their tracks. You never know.
It's too cold to race in the evenings right now. The attic is 3° Celsius, which is too cold to race cars. Anything under about 5° is unpleasant. I usually don't race under 10°, but with all these new cars I'm just too excited.
I still don't have a standout favorite yet. There are cars I definitely like a lot; the Gulf 917, the Sunoco 908, the Lucky Strike 917, the Playstation GT2. I've spent time with the Tergal 908 and it's doing very well now. Ready to compete. There are not a lot of duds right now. Even the cars suffering from trouble get fixed rather quickly. So we're all pretty excited around here.
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| So the warping on the chassis of this car occurs in a weird spot: right in front of the right front wheel to the nose. The reason I didn't notice it before it because when I have the body on and snug it pulls the warped part up enough to conceal it. I ran a lot of laps today and it did great, so unless it starts acting weird, I'm going to go with it as it is. |
So I'm doing the Balance Of Power thing. If I were to go down to the big commercial track, things would be different. Each car would be able to get completely aired out. No restrictions. There would be no evenness between brands there. It would be a war between NSR and Revoslot, I think. And I only think that because I think NSR make an overall smoother moving race car than Slot.it does. It can get up to speed incredibly fast, and on the big tracks that means good lap times.
The urethanes are providing much more grip, which allows me to run the cars faster. This opened the door for a better drone racing experience. I set up a car on the inside lane with the drone controller, making the car go as fast as it can without spinning out. Then I race on the outside lane with the DS controller. Before with the rubber tires I never felt confident enough to go fast enough to make it interesting, since the rubber tired cars couldn't handle the speeds needed to beat the drone car. The outside lane didn't have enough surface area. But with the Ortmanns, cars don't need it. There's more grip in the corners. Now I can run the DS controller as it's supposed to be run. None of this tippy tappy stuff. The overall pace is faster, and the cars stay on the track on the outside much better, so it's more fun.
The 35ohm DS controller works great with all the cars. It's got a good powerband and can definitely provide the punch needed for any layout I can make. Sure, there's not all the minute controls of an electronic controller, but that doesn't matter. Your racing approach changes back to a more standard one anyway, so it's familiar and easy to adapt to. Getting a good pace is more important than most anything with a cheap controller. And since you have a better system with a trigger-finger as opposed to a thumb-trigger, you have more control over the race car. Kit thumb controllers don't have enough room for subtle movements on the accelerator, in my opinion. Anything can make a car go fast, but if you can't control it, is it really a "controller"?
I know that I've kind of ventured away from the average slot car kit guy who might like to do a little tinkering on the side. I admit that I'm at that stage where I'm fanatical with everything. But if I find something that is a game changer, I'll speak up. First thing to get when you're ready to do it is a decent controller.
So it's been an insane couple of days, honestly. I've been doing so much sanding and running and running and sanding. And it's cold up there, so I'm trying to do it in bursts with a handful of cars at a time. It's working out but I'd rather have longer stretches of time that's in my control in a slightly warmer environment.
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| I'm still not sure how much weight I'm going to take off this car. Probably not more than a couple grams. Still not sure yet. |
The Alfa DNF'ed the other day due to a loose pickup wire. I repaired it and it's back up and running. I looked more at the Lucky Strike Porsche's tire rub, and discovered that if the front end is too loose in body float the back end tends to sink a little. Tighten the front float, problem solved. Runs great.
So it obvious to me that there is going to be quite a bit of work keeping all these cars running and competing. I think I'm up for the task, although I suspect that races will be more drawn out, as well examinations on cars and that sort of stuff that happens in between races. I think I've got the cars pretty much at a place where I'm ready to start doing serious laps. I just need to think about things like distance and so forth. 25 lap races are great and all for doing things quickly, but by the time the car gets in a groove the race is basically over. So if I'm going to spread the racing out a bit, I'll probably also go in deeper to what's going on with each car, and with longer races means the cars should have more of a spread between them. We'll see about that.
But I do think it would be fun to have some form of championship at some point. I'll have to see as things shake out more. All the cars are going faster, and there will come a point where some cars will hit their limit. Cars are really going fast.
I ran some cars today that I didn't get times for yet. Here are the results and their Grand Meeting time
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