Quieting down the Revoslot Cars

 Now that I have the Tire Truer [and I'll likely be talking about the benefits of it for awhile], I'm starting to think of a few things that I'm looking to do. I know what I said about keeping these cars as close to box stock as I can while making few modifications, but with the tire "issue" out of the way, now I can see what might need to be done, or at least tried. 

And while I still have the Slot.it cars to put on the Tire Truer, my main concern right now is to quiet down the seven Revoslot cars that I have. They all make basically the same sound: a loud grind. 

This beauty is a lot of fun to drive, but man is it loud.

Harry at HomeRacingWorld has been doing a great series on his YouTube channel tuning his Revoslot cars, which I have been watching because we got the same cars at almost the same time. He talked about the issue causing so much noise, and it's that the cars come stock with a 12-tooth pinion. He suggested replacing that with a 9 tooth, did the thing, then showed off the cars running. It was certainly impressive and sounded much better. Then I was on Dave Kennedy's Sunday Chat and asked him about it, and he confirmed it. 

Since I didn't have access to the particular pinions Harry was talking about, I bought what my local dealer has in those measurements. I only got a couple to start, and if they work, I'll order more. I suspect they will. I also bought a Pinion Puller by Slot.it to make the job easier. And since I have 7 cars to change, tools like that save a lot of headache. 

UPDATE:

I got a chance to do it, so I started with the Escorts. Both of them came with 12-tooth pinions, and I planned to swap them out for 9-tooth pinions. That should cause less gear mesh issues. 

Using the pinion puller was pretty intuitive. I was able to swap out each pinion in a couple of minutes. The puller stayed nice and straight and didi an admirable job. 

After changing the pinions, I tested the cars. They were not only quieter, but they ran a lot smoother. No more of that grind, more like the sound of an aluminum chassis slot car. The sound is more like a small note than a loud noise. There is still a vibration issue in some of the cars, but I have some stuff to fix that. 

Since I had the pinion puller out, I thought I would mess around with one of the Alfa GTAs and see if I could get them quieter. They came with 9-tooth pinions, but I noticed on both Alfas that the pinion was sitting pretty far off the motor and was making contact with the spur gear on the back half. I pressed the pinion in so it was just off what looked like the obvious place it should be. This gave me more flexibility with the motor position, which have me more control over gear mesh. So that's a win!

My opinion is that the Revoslot Ford Escorts should come with 9-tooth pinions and not 12-tooth. Dave Kennedy was right in saying this was a mistake that needs to be fixed.