Dogbone Super-Micro-Sprint [Postponed]

It's been a bit since the last race, and I just painted all those track pieces I got over the holidays. It seems like it took forever, but I had also started a new job, so my hours have changed. I don't have as much opportunity to race these days, but I take it where I can get it. I'll have afternoons free this week, so I spent the day setting up the track and tuning cars. 

Here's the track layout:

Got the idea to make the dogbone oval by putting together a giant multi-radius curve section. It takes up quite a bit of the living room floor.

I got inspired to do a big oval since I had painted all those 4/15 track pieces [and 3/30], so I wanted a large, fast corner. This track is extremely fast. There's very little reason to slow down in the corners, maybe just a little bit. Otherwise the car pitches out slightly and then corrects. You can go really really fast on this track. 

So it turns out that I didn't have time to do any of this race, and I needed to pick up the track and do some things. Probably better, though, since I wanted to spend time with each car I put on the track. I think once I get a good length of free time I'll set this layout back up and do some of that. 

As I was running cars, I felt like I wanted to tune each one of them specially for this layout. There would be a lot of emphasis on the tires, although other things would also be important. But no particular type of car stood out in practice laps. One 908 would be good, the other not so good, and so on. There isn't a reason to any of it either, so it's been mostly just running lucky. But I think if I sat down and tuned each car for this track, I'd get some interesting results. That big of a track allows you to really let the cars go at speed. So the question becomes, which car can make it around the curves without breaking out?

I thought about adding something into the layout to break it up a little, but the whole point is to make it nice a big and flowing. I'll do a more precise track after this one. 

It is going to be awhile before that's going to happen, though, so this layout may have to go on the back burner for awhile. 

I also need to get a wider angle lens. 

Slot Car Of The Year 2021

 I know this is a little late, but it's something I wanted to do earlier but didn't, so I thought I would do it now. A couple things....

I only count cars that I buy, so it would have to be a car that's new in 2021, and I have to own it. I can't claim knowledge of any car I don't own. Since I've bought a lot of cars that are older than a year, many that I own won't qualify. With that, I want to present to you....

SLOT CAR OF THE YEAR 2021

NSR Gulf Porsche 908/3

There are a lot of great slot cars out there, but I own this one. So I'm calling this the Slot Car Of The Year for 2021. Everything about it is either gorgeous or spectacular, from the fantastic finish on the body to the incredible handling ability. There is absolutely nothing negative I can say about this car. 

There are a lot of people who love the Gulf livery, and a lot who are tired of it. I happen to be one of the former, and find the Gulf livery to be one of the most eye-catching of the color combinations. Nevermind the historical background of the real life cars, which I often ignore in the slot car world. Gulf is a racing pedigree, so it kinda goes without saying that's it's iconic. 

If the classic racing film "Le Mans", Steve McQueen plays Michael Delaney, a driver of the Gulf Team Porsche 917. Definitely an interesting movie for a racing enthusiast, the film footage is spectacular. It was that movie that made me a fan of the Gulf livery and Porsche in general. I think I was 10 when I saw it.

But it really isn't just about the looks of this car. If that was the case, I might give the award to the Thunderslot Sunoco M6A. The Gulf 908 is an extraordinarily good slot car in general. 

I'm already a big fan of the 908 platform. I think the shortened body and wheelbase make for a particularly good race car. It feels like the kind of car that, if you didn't own one, you'd get beaten by the person who did. Very planted, goes fast through tricky sections, and handles the straights better than some of the other cars with a similar platform: Alfa, M6A, other 908s. 

In my slot car collection, as an NSR car it sits near the top performance-wise. Definitely a podium threat, even at this early stage of the game. I haven't even really started tampering with it yet. 

The Thunderslot Pod

 I got a comment from JimG, who ordered a Thunderslot Elva, and was wondering about the pod. So I thought I'd post about it. 

Many modern slot cars, especially race cars, have a pod system. A pod is basically the back part of the chassis, complete with motor and rear end, and separate from the front part of the chassis. 

Thunderslot cars use a pod with a 5 screw mount. Most other companies make a more rectangular pod on a 4 screw mount. 

The idea is to allow for the rear end to have a little flexibility as well as to help dissipate vibration and other unwanted things to the rest of the race car. 

Float

Float is the term used to describe how much play is in the pod [or body] when connected to the chassis. A well-tightened pod won't have any, or very little, float. That will cause the chassis to be rigid, which will affect the handling of the race car. A "loose float" setting would be the other way, with the pod very loosely attached to provide the most movement possible. I tend to use something in between, a "medium float" as a general guideline. 

And while pod float is important, body float is equally, if not more important. There is a lot of shifting weight on a slot car, and to adjust the body float to allow for the weight to shift without throwing the car off is, I believe, the key to a winner. A car going around a corner has a better chance of maintaining grip if the body's weight is allowed to shift a bit to compensate. No body weight shift turns the whole car into one big tight potential crasher.

The front pod mount. The screw is attached to a loose mount, which is held secure by the design. This allows for the dissipation of vibration by keeping the screw mounts off the front chassis.

The front pod mount is the one you'll probably feel has the least effect on the car. Basically, it's front-center placement acts as a sort of weight shifting guide, allowing the rest of the pod to rattle and roll more independently while keeping the mechanism fully attached. I usually set mine up so that there's no pod tension between the front mount and the side mounts, once I get to them. 

The side pod mounts.

The side pod mounts are probably the most important ones, and the ones that respond best to the adjustment. This is where you set up the flexibility and independence of the pod in relation to the chassis. Generally, you want the rest of the chassis running as smoothly as possible, which means trying to get rid of as much of the vibration and motor/rear end twist as I can. 

The relationship between the front mount and the side mounts works best for me with the front mount a medium tight, middle mounts medium, and rear mounts medium.

Terms:

Tight = screws firmly tightened.

Medium Tight = screws at the point of first resistance

Medium = screw attached, but not firm. 

Medium Loose = screw attached, but pulled out enough to have minimal effect

Loose = screw attached, but having no effect.

The rear pod mounts [one on each side of the centered body mount]

The rear pod mounts are built with a crossbar that goes between them. Medium on the rear mount isn't as heavy as medium on the middle mount, but that's okay because it doesn't need to be. It's very effective with just a bit of light-medium adjustment.

Once the pod has been adjusted [and it may take some time and experimentation], the body float needs the same treatment. Personally, I think a body that is attached yet freely wiggles on top of the chassis is the best setup for body float. I would consider that medium. So even if the weight shifts the body in a curve, and even if the chassis shifts a little bit because of the body's weight shift, it'll be less of a shift because of the weight dissipation. And that doesn't even include the pod, which is running independently of that weight shift, keeping the tires on the road and vibrations to a minimum.

Thankfully, there's a lot of subjectivity to the various adjustments that are possible in pod/body float. I encourage you to try some different combinations and see what it gets you. What might work for me might not work for you, and vice-versa.

And although Thunderslot cars share an almost identical setup throughout the entire line, the cars still handle differently. So an Elva, an extremely well-balanced race car, will handle a corner with a little more purpose than a Lola T70 would, considering the Lola's slightly heavier body. I have two Elvas and they both handle differently.

So there you have it. Wish you all the best with you new car. It'll probably need a racing partner after not too long.

Tip: if you're going to sand the tires, make sure to do it slowly. A fast rotation will cause the tires to bead up, and they'll send huge chunks flying. They're great tires, otherwise.

Curve Radius [Part 1]

 

Now that I have some of each of the varying radii of curve pieces, I thought I would mention how important I think they are. 

Normally when you buy a slot car set, you get one radius of curves, and they're the smallest radius available. This is what happened to me when I bought my first set. It was a basic extended figure-8 layout with 1/60 curves. And when I expanded, I didn't really thinking about anything else except price, so I bought even more 1/60 curves. They were incredibly cheap, costing me around 2.50 apiece opposed to the 8-10 bucks any of the larger radius pieces would cost. 

Why do I need larger radius track pieces?

As I expanded my track, I started noticing something about my layouts; it didn't matter what layout I designed and ran. All I had to do was master getting around a 1/60 curve and I could go as fast as I wanted anywhere else. Every car will have a maximum speed that can be reached to go through a curve without breaking out and crashing. If every curve in your track is the same, then all you have to do is find that maximum speed and consistently hit it while racing. That has the effect of making every layout pretty quickly boring. So what can you do to make more interesting race tracks?

Four chicanes made up of the various Carrera curves. [top-bottom] 1/60, 2/30, 3/30, 4/15.

Let's say you wanted to break up a straight somewhere and you installed a chicane. In the pic above, you can see how the different radius curve pieces can make very different chicanes, with the 1/60 at the top being the tightest and slowest. This approach can be used with a wide variety of track pieces, adding endless combinations of more challenging layouts. 

Basic Understanding of Carrera Track Pieces

Here's the breakdown:

1/60 = Curve #1 @ 60°. The tightest Carrera curve, one piece turns 60°, so it would take three pieces to make a 180° turn [3 x 60 = 180]. A Carrera 1/60 is roughly equivalent to a Scalextric R2 curve in its turn radius. This is what gives Carrera its larger layout footprint. Scalextric has R1 curves that are even tighter than the 1/60, and can therefore make tighter layouts. 

Carrera curve track pieces are designed to nest within themselves for multi-lane layout possibilities.

2/30 and 3/30 are both 30° track pieces, needing six each to make a 180° [6 x 30 = 180]. The 4/15 turns only 15°, which isn't really much. It takes a whopping twelve track pieces to make a 180° turn [12 x 15 = 180]. I seldom use them in such a uniform way, though. I prefer to mix them up as best as I can. 

Varying Radius Curves

I've been going on about these for awhile now. There's a lot more of a challenge with a varying radius curve than with your generic curve made up of matching curve pieces. 

[left] your standard 180° made up of 1/60 curve pieces. On the right, a 180° made up of varying radius curve pieces. This is a much faster turn. The larger radius turns used this way [3/30, 2/30, 1/60, 2/30, 3/30] provide longer braking opportunities, since you can carry more speed into the turn, and a great acceleration area after the peak with a gradual straightening coming out. The turn on the left offers none of those opportunities.  

It's easy to see how my transition from standard layouts made with 1/60 curves to more elaborate layouts has progressed. I've been experimenting, and I've found that the larger radius curves make great enhancers to otherwise dull straight sections as well as being great for making complex curve sections. 

The 180° curve made of 1/60 pieces drove me crazy. There are only a few real life race tracks that have anything like that. Bruxelles at Spa, Grand Hotel Hairpin at Monaco, some others. Most real life tracks have curves that can be taken at really high speeds and be much more challenging than just going straight. 

A straight going into a nicely shaped corner can carry a lot of speed.

But what if you wanted more challenge? This would be almost as fast but a lot more fun to negotiate.

For some people, the most fun thing about slot cars is hammering the throttle down a long straightaway. I like that too, but I find that having more than one of those is a bit redundant for me, much like 1/60 curves are. In reality, race tracks are vast and sweeping and rarely ever razor straight or perfectly 180°. This is what I like to think of when making a layout. 

A "straight" section doesn't necessarily have to be straight to be fast and fun. Alfa halfway down the backstretch.

If I were to break down how much maximum throttle I would use on something, it might go something like this: on a straightaway, 100% ; through a 4/15, 90% throttle ; through a 3/30, 70% ; through a 2/30, 50% ; through a 1/60, 30%. So a lot more throttle possibilities occur when you use larger radius curve pieces. 

I'm going to do a post on designing layouts on the floor without the use of software. I have a pretty easy method that works great, and can be done with whatever track pieces you have lying around. It's a sectional approach to track design. 

The original track layout from my set. It took about two minutes to completely master and run at max speed without crashing.

The racing is dry and generic on the layout that you start with. No question about it. No matter what you do with what you have, you won't be able to get away from the tight turns. 

For kicks I set this layout back up and added straights to make the length of the room, giving me a 9-piece straightaway. That's pretty long, and the best aspect of this layout. 

I raced a few laps on the layout, constantly thinking of rebuilding it with much more interesting parts. I'm going to do that next. This layout is pretty dull. The only challenging corner is the 1/60 curve coming off the overpass. Other than that it's cookie cutter stuff.

Next part will explore some alternatives to straightaways.