A rainy Sunday means being stuck at home, which means setting up the track and finally getting a chance to run some of these new cars. They're all through the initial lube/oil tuneup and ready for some fine tweaking. That gives me eight cars to work on, all of which have been purchased since April 2022.
- F1 #5
- F1 #6
- Gulf #9
- Gulf #10
- Bosch #2
- Rothmans #95
- L/M #6
- L/M #7
First off, the Bosch 917/10 #2
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| The pic clearly shows the car to be a little light in the nose. |
The Bosch car has this problem that crops up sometimes, which is a light front end. Sometimes it's a matter of a few adjustments, allowing for the wheels to touch the track and maybe a slight loosening of the pod to help relax the chassis.
The car usually holds pretty well through the turns, but when it comes off it goes straight, showing that the guide flag isn't staying in the slot.
I try to set up my cars the same way when I first get them, which is to say that I usually will set screws to finger-tight, which is my reference to when you just start to feel resistance in turning the screw. Not lock-tight, which I rarely set my screws anyway, but less firm. Anyhow, this gives me a good starting point and usually sets the car up to medium by default.
NSR likes to give you lots of room to make adjustments, so there's always plenty of throw on screws. So even when you tighten down, you're never going to really make anything lock-tight. There will still be a little wiggle room. This is kinda nice, as it's forgiving to those who might be prone to set-it-and-forget-it tuning.
So what I did here was to turn each screw on the pod and body 1/4 turn tighter, putting it at my medium-tight setting. I run other NSR cars in this setting; all the 917 Porsches and the Tergal 908. It seems to be either medium-tight or medium-loose for these cars. They like it one way or another.
The Bosch car has been through a complete tuneup, lube/oil/tires and 1000 lap break-in.
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The Rothmans 908 #95
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| Runs great, right out of the box. |
I love it when I get cars like this. There's no weirdness, no awkward silence after that first crash, wondering if maybe you bought a dud. It's all good. Car handles well, is in control, exhibits standard behaviors found in most well-built slot cars, and is overall a very nice machine.
Usually when I get a car in this good of shape right out of the box, I'll still give it the full tuning treatment, but I'm not going to get experimental just yet. I'm going to go with how it is now, and allow it to hit it's peak before I start messing with it. Kinda like the Gulf 908. Both run great, require minimal work, and are quickly gaining a reputation around this garage as fast race cars.
This car has gone through initial tuneup, lube/oil/tires and 1000 lap break-in.
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Gulf Team #9 and #10
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| I still like the #10 better. |
My plan has always been to take any cars that might be on a team and treat them separately. I've always had that attitude, and I don't believe you can do a blanket tuning to a group of cars based on how that tuning might work on one car. Thankfully, these two cars came out of the box differently enough so that they didn't even start on the same footing. The #10 has been a breeze, and the #9 has been a bit finicky in the setup. It seems to like the medium-tight as well, while the #10 prefers a medium so far.
The #9 was definitely dragging around the track at first, but the tightening improved things. It drives more like the #19 now, meaning nice and smooth. It's not as fast as it could be, yet. I think I'm going to have to do more tweaking before it's at that point.
These cars have gone through initial tuneup, lube/oil/tires and 1000 lap break-in.
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The L/M Team #6 and #7
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| Two cars, two garage treatments. |
It doesn't take much to feel the difference between these two cars. The #7 drives great on it's own, and feels already like a contender. #6 is a little on the touchy side, but I suspect it'll come around. They've both gotten a full tuneup and are waiting for their 1000 lap break-in sessions to start.
It's a bit more of the same for the #6. Mostly this type of tweaking can be done once and it should handle 95% of the issues. I suspect that'll be like that here as well.
The #7 is going to be left alone in Medium mode, where he'll be allowed to prove itself as-is. Once the #6 improves and posts better times than the #7, I'll start improvements on that car.
These cars have gone through initial tuneup, lube/oil/tires and 1000 lap break-in.
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The F1 cars
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| For recreational purposes only |
So, there's no way for these cars to go up against the Classics. The F1 cars are way too fast. And since I only have two, and that they pretty much need magnets to run properly, they'll likely be more used as curiosities on my track. They're not going to compete, except against each other, unless I buy more of them. Not sure about that. I pretty much got these because they are Canon cars, and I'm finding myself to be more and more a fan of my Canon stuff every day. That's what all these pictures are shot with. Fanboy stuff, I know.
So as far as tuneups go, they got the usual treatment, except I didn't do tires. Tweaking the pod seems to make the biggest difference in performance, so that's what I'm looking to do with these cars. Otherwise they'll just be for fun and a good set of really fast race cars.
These cars have gone through initial tuneup, lube/oil/tires and 1000 lap break-in.
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