NSR Tuning Setup and Notes

 The nice thing about getting multiple cars from the same brand the first time is that you can get a much clearer understanding of what needs to be done simply by each car's behavior at the moment. What I mean is, one car runs great, the other doesn't, and it's because of x. It's a lot easier to pinpoint when a car isn't acting right when you have other cars to compare it to that are acting right. 

Since I shopped with the purpose of getting introduced to a couple of brands by buying more than one car, everything I'm learning about both brands comes at an accelerated pace. I'm not saying I'm turning into a know-it-all. Far from it. But I'm catching on faster, and I was worried prior that I might get in over my head.

My two Porsche 917K race cars.

Over the past few days I've been going back and forth among all five new cars, taking turns tuning, running and tweaking them. Now I want to work on the NSR cars and get them up to snuff. 

Due to my excitement I got some of them on the track before they were completely tuned. The Rothmans Porsche did almost 1000 laps before I did anything to the tires. I just lubed and oiled it. The Gulf Porsche, on the other hand, underwent a full setup before it even hit the track, and has now put about a thousand laps or so in itself. So they both got differing sorts of attention in their journey, yet reached the same destination.

Developing a flair for the dramatic. Porsche 908

I also put the 908 in the garage for a full tuneup. It got the same slow, lazy, just wanna play first treatment approach, so it was time to put it on the rack and do it right. 

The 908 chassis before full tuneup.

Here's what I did to each car:

1. Checked all screws and connections, making sure they were secure and nothing was in danger of breaking, failing or falling out.

2. Setup front ride height: NSR cars are dumped on the ground in front, and it looks great, but on my track I need the nose to be a little higher up than that. Each NSR car comes with four small M2 screws you can put into the front so set the position of your axle. I set it just so that the guide flag comes off the track, allowing the brushes a little space. It's a pretty fine dial in procedure, but it just takes patience. If you're doing it, expect to be making lots of small 1/4 screw turns and testing.

3. Check and lube/oil drivetrain: NSR has a pretty great drivetrain, and all it needed was a lube on the gears and some oil where the axle meets the chassis - in this case the bearings. At first the car is so clean you don't want to muck it up, but you have to do the lube/oil. Just be careful and don't use too much or it'll fly everywhere. And if you have to do two smaller applications, that's okay too. Lube and oil will be your primary source of dirt in your race car. And a clean car is a happy car.

4. Set body and pod float: This one's a little tricky, as it's got a different approach to pod float that Slot.it does. There's a lot more room for both pod and body float due to the long screws used. So I went ahead and set the car to snug and decided I would wait until I got on the track before making any other adjustments to it.

5. Sand and clean the tires: This one takes a few minutes for each car but provides a huge benefit. Grip is increases exponentially, and so does performance and speed. I take my piece of sandpaper and set the controller to fast drone. Put the car on the track and let the wheels spin on the sandpaper. I'm looking to get all the factory treads off the tires. Once I've sanded them down, I take a piece of masking tape and run the tires along the sticky side of the tape. This gets all the loose rubber and dust off the tires. Cleaning is something that is sometimes required of every car every session, depending on your environment. If you notice your car suddenly getting very loose in the corners, it likely has dirty tires. Keep that tape around and do a quick cleaning and you're good to go. It's also good to go over your track with a lint-free cloth if you have one. Just a quick wipe down. This is especially important if your track is setup all the time.

The underside of the 908/3. One word of warning: when you're taking the body off and loosening the screws, make sure you loosen the right screws. Those three screws you see? Yeah, those aren''t the ones. They're the pod screws. It's the single heavily-recessed ones fore and aft that you can't see.

The two 917Ks got the same treatment, with the Rothmans Porsche pretty much getting it first as I got it done quickest. Once I got the Gulf Porsche I did the whole thing right away. Neither car was particularly difficult to tune, although the front ride height was a little tricky to get on them. I ran laps on them and went back on both for one more ride height adjustment. They're all three running great now and are ready for some competition.

Last New Car for 2020

 This has been a very successful haul of new cars. Not a dud in the bunch. Each one has its own special needs, but I expected that. As I was shopping, just as I had finished, I came across a car that I hadn't seen prior. It was one I wanted but thought was long gone:

NSR Gulf Porsche 917K Le Mans 1971

I got a chance to try the other two NSR cars and fell in love with them. The Rothmans 917K was so completely perfect and fun to drive. It was a slam dunk to get this car. There are a lot of NSR cars that I want now because of how great they are. 

I have to explain something, especially for anyone who might be wondering how I could have switched my opinion on cars so quickly. It's not like Slot.it make bad cars, because they don't. They make fantastic cars. And once you get them tuned up they run like hot snot. But because slot cars are slot cars, manufacturers are always trying to make a better car. Doesn't mean the current one is shit. Just that there are better ones. 

It's obvious when you think about what kind of cars clubs race. I always look to see if a club is racing Slot.it Classics, and some sometimes are. And that's cool. But other times it's faster, more competitive, more finely constructed and tuned cars that clubs prefer to race. NSR is one of those brands. And it's totally understandable, as they are great race cars and need practically nothing to go fast. 

So here we are. The car comes with the Shark 21.5 motor, which puts it right in line with my other cars. It's identical to the Rothmans Porsche, with the Gulf having fins on the back. 

Gotta go back upstairs and run this bad boy!

How To Race A Dozen Cars At Once

 First off, this is not a post about making 12 slot cars run on a digital track. If you googled that and got this far, turn back. 

Since before I bought this new batch of slot cars, which I'm going to call the 'Narcose Bunch' [will explain later], I've been trying to figure out a fair way to race all of them together. It's obvious that some cars are faster than others, and it pretty much breaks down by brand; Revoslot and NSR are fastest, followed by Slot.it, then Carrera. So what if I wanted to race all four brands in a Championship Series? 

There would have to be rules. First one would be part of the structure of the races. 

CLASSIFICATION.

If I were to race all these cars right now, the finish would break down something like this:

1. NSR

2. Revoslot

3. Revoslot

4. NSR

5. Slot.it

6. Slot.it

7. Slot.it

8. Slot.it

9. Slot.it

10. Slot.it

11. Slot.it

12. Slot.it

13. Carrera

14. Carrera

Now this would be every race. So the best finish on paper a Slot.it could hope for would be 5th. Now I gotta say, I think I've tuned those cars up pretty well to get them running on my track. All the Slot.its run no more than about a half-second gap from each other. The NSR and Revoslot cars seem to be averaging at minimum about 4/10ths a lap faster than the fastest Slot.it car. There are still things I can do to get their speed up, and I might do some of them; weight, improved parts, tires, etc. I have a few pairs of urethane tires that I might put on their respective cars to see how they fare against the competition. 

So what this all boils down to is that I'm going to have to set up a Classification structure. It would look something like this:

Unlimited Class - Revoslot and NSR

Sport Class - Slot.it and Carrera

This way the Slot.it becomes more competitive with each other, and it'll help focusing on improving each car to try and close the gap between the classes. Since there would be two classes, there would be two podiums. That will help each class be competitive within the class. Unlimiteds have a 75% chance of landing on the podium, but they could do much much worse. So a Sport Class goal would be to end up on the Ultd podium. 

Points will be awarded from 13-0, based on overall race finish, and not class finish. So if an Ultd really biffed a race and ended up in 7th or so, they'd get 7 points instead of 10 if they were issued based on class. This makes a challenge to the Ultds to not run a crappy race, and gives hope to the Sport Class.

You probably noticed that I included Carrera in the mix. Well, I decided to revive my two Carrera cars. I'll be getting tires for them and doing a few other tuning things, but mostly leaving them stock. I hope to do that order soon, but like the Championship season, it isn't going to start until well into January. Until then I have a last few weeks to tune them and run on the table for the last time. Since they're all so new I'm just mostly enjoying them, tinkering and focusing on just racing around. 

Since it's going to be on the rug, the season will be a series of shorter tracks. I don't know what the layout of the apartment will look like, since I'm waiting to hear from a few I applied to now. I should be able to get interesting layouts built in just about whatever I end up with. 

Already the NSR cars are super comfortable, nimble and fast. For a Slot.it to catch one, it's likely going to have to dress like one. It'll be a fun challenge to try to get there. I could see the Matra, or one of the Chaparrals doing it.

Oh right, the Narcose Bunch. Well, I live in Germany. I recently had oral surgery to remove some teeth and had to pay for the anesthesia. In Germany that's called Narcose. Well, I paid for it and it turned out it was covered on my insurance, so I got that money back and decided to buy slot cars with it. Hence the name Narcose Bunch.

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. 

 

Informal New Cars Time Trial

 I thought I would put together a basic time trial between the new cars to see where each other them would roughly run in competition here. Each car has had varying degrees of NO SETUP. Only lube/oil and a little tire sanding. Not even a complete tuneup or adjustment. There were a few little things that I'll list with each car. 

I made a simple test track, consisting of a few straights, some mild esses made out of R2 and R3 curves, and two 180° 1/60 curves. I wanted a fast track so I could get through the cars in time and keep on my daily schedule. 50 lap main event.

Of course, to figure out where they stand, they have to run against a proven track competitor. I gathered myself together and decided on a candidate to post the benchmark time:

Slot.it Matra Simca 670 B

If I'm going to pick one car from Slot.it to race, this is the one.

Results:

Car                   Time        Lap

Matra             3:29.27     4:18

A respectable time. You can be guaranteed the Matra is going to deliver the hot laps. A tuned Slot.it car is a very good car. No complaints with this run, although a strange event happened. While running laps, it got a little wiggly through the esses and came out a little loose. Parked nearby was the Ferrari. The Matra clipped the back of the Ferrari, sending its magnetically-attached wing flying. Cars and wing were unhurt. 

Good driving, Matra. 

Up next is the NSR Porsche 908

What I like about this car is it's always telling me what direction to drive.

Usually on my track layouts the Slot.it cars run at about 40% power. It sounds slow, but it isn't, especially for light cars. But for this car and the other two new ones I upped the power to 70%, only because they could handle it much like the Slot.its handle 40%. It's more of an adjustment to meet the car's potential than it is a limiter. If I ran the new cars at 40%, they'd run slower than the Slot.it cars. 

Results:

Car                   Time        Lap

Matra             3:29.27     4:18

908                 3:33.00     4.26

Hey! Check that out. I don't know whether to be excited that they're running in the same general time zone as each other or to be depressed because the 908 didn't blow the Matra away. I think I'll go with the former. To the 908's defense, it hasn't had any tuning yet. I'm still just running them and seeing what they're capable of. I'm sure once I get this car tuned it's going to lower its lap times. It, like all the new cars, will go by the standard that I'll get it tuned as well as I can with what it's got right now, no fancy replacement parts. Moving on....

Porsche 917K

Sorry. I'll take more pictures soon. I promise.

Lets see what the slightly more planted NSR car does through this layout.

Results:

Car                   Time        Lap

Matra             3:29.27     4:18

908                 3:33.00     4.26

917                3:25.14      4.10

So if I left the NSR cars in their current state and don't do any more tuning, I could drop them right in the with Slot.its and have some good competition. The Alfa and the Chaparral will both run those times, so there's good cause to try. Of course there are things I have to do to the NSRs and it'll likely mean increased lap times. The challenge then will be tuning the Slot.its to match the NSRs. 

Next up:

Revoslot Ferrari F333SP

Hi big sexy.

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

Since I reset this car to it's default setting and did a slight motor adjustment to pull the gears off each other a little, I taped the bottom of the car to prevent vibration and away we went. I'm not too surprised by the lap time, but I think I can tune the NSR cars to get there. It's a pretty fast lap time. I don't think the Slot.its can catch it. 

So there we go. Looks like I could have a plastic chassis class without too much trouble. The aluminum chassis class, however, will need to grow a bit to have some form of representation. Otherwise it's going to be an anomaly on the track. A freakin fast anomaly. 

More New Cars - 2020

 Alrighty, the second wave of cars has arrived, so let's get on to it. 

From world renown slot car manufacturer NSR come two wicked hot rods:

Porsche 908/3 Escuderia Montjuich Champion Montana 1973

Look at that thing. Will you just look at it?

Of all the cars I picked up this year [we're not done yet], this was the first pick and the inspiration for my decision to branch out among other slot car brands. I have wanted a few cars in particular ever since I can remember, one of them being a Porsche 908. There's something about that short, snappy design that makes me nuts. The Alfa Romeo 33/3 shares a similar design, which makes for a very nimble, extremely quick slot car.

Before going any further, let me explain my line of thinking before buying any of these cars. I was planning on expanding further my Slot.it Classics line, as well as getting a few more Group C cars. Problem was, of the 5 or 6 online companies I frequent, there was very little stock to choose from. Originally I was looking at the McLaren M8D, but just couldn't convince myself to pull the trigger on it. I really wanted a 908, and started looking at other brands. NSR was naturally first as I had read so much about them. I couldn't resist. They had a couple of versions and I picked this one. 

This car is a superb challenger to the Alfa Romeo 3/33. They're very similar. The difference is in the straights, which the 908 belies its size and acts more like the Matra. I definitely want to race them together. I might do this after this post.

I've run the car now about 1000 or so laps, and it's getting nicely settled in. This car loves the Carrera track. 

NOTE: I would recommend an adjustable controller or power supply when running higher performance cars. They respond much differently to a standard analog controller. To truly get the best out of them, consider getting something that lets you adjust power. And it's not like I needed to turn the power down on this thing. On the contrary. I turned the power UP because it could handle so much more juice before going grazing in the fields.

This car, as well as the other cars I have coming, will be covered in more depth as we go. 

Of course, I'm a believer that one is the loneliest number that will ever be, so this beauty needs a running partner. Enter trouble:

Porsche 917K Rothmans Limited Edition

Dude...

The other car that I needed in my collection was the 917K. In my opinion the most iconic race car in all of racing. I've had dreams of a 917K since I was a kid. It seemed like a no-brainer to pick this car up. It just looks so good!

If you read about NSR slot cars, you'll see some opinions of people that their cars aren't to realistic scale specifications. Okay. So what? Does it look weirdly mutated? No. Do I measure everything using a micrometer? No. So do I care? No. Besides, if someone were to point out what wasn't right about this car, I probably wouldn't remember and wouldn't really care.  These are toys, and if you're going to hand me a slot car, I'm not going to be particularly interested in whether the gas cap was chrome or not. And that goes with all slot cars. Unless a huge transgression was made, I think companies should be cut a little slack. That's my opinion about that. 

This car drives like I wish the 962C did. It's just got great balance and absolutely flies down the track. It doesn't suffer from wobbly butt syndrome, and can handle itself with aplomb through the twisty parts. When I was shopping for a 917K, I saw this one in a bunch of about 4 of them. It was the most interesting, so I picked it. To be honest, I wasn't all that stoked about having any kind of white car, although it had enough going on that I could get over myself. Once it came and I got it out of the box I was blown away by how much better it looked in real life compared to the pictures. Holy crap it looks good. So between that and the driving experience, I'll say this one's looking best right out of the gate. I haven't had to do anything other than lube/oil. I haven't even done a complete tire sanding yet. The tires STILL HAVE TREADS! 

The early word on these two cars is yes yes yes. I recommend them to anyone with a home track that has an adjustable power supply or adjustable controller. They are insanely good cars and totally worth the money. For the record, I paid 72euros a piece for them.

New Car 2020

 At first I was thinking I would hold back until I've gotten all the cars I ordered, but they're trickling in, and I'm impatient. So we're just going to post about them as we get them. 

First, this car was my fourth pick. Yes, I know I said I bought three cars, but I ended up adding one more. Doesn't mean I didn't like this one or didn't want this one, I just knew about the other three already and one needed a partner. So without further ado:

REVOSLOT Ferrari F333SP Challenge World Finals, Daytona 2016

I was so excited to get this thing on the track that I barely gave myself time to take a few pictures.

I know I said that I wanted to stick with Le Mans Classics, but as I was racing one day not long ago, I thought that maybe I put a bit too much of a restriction on myself. I've got a lot of change going on in my life right now, so why not a little change in my attitudes towards this? How about I treat myself right for a change? Makes sense to me. I see loads of cool cars and too often dismiss them for not being in the class I run or costing ten bucks more than the car I end up settling with, but why? I should just get what I want! Doesn't matter where it ran, what place it came in or even if it was ever a real car. I'm going to buy what I like. 

Revoslot is a company that I guess worked with 1/24 manufacturer BRM and made a scaled down version of their slot car design. I'm not sure if BRM owns it, but they supply parts. Revoslot haven't been around all that long, a few years, but they've already started showing up at club races and in more popular online shops. 

The Ferrari F333SP has a 21k anglewinder motor [my first anglewinder!], has an anodized aluminum two-piece chassis [my first non-plastic car!], aluminum wheels and brass nuts. It's got 3mm axles, ball bearings, an extra guide flag, among other things.

The body is stunning! Gorgeous paint job that really shines. Nice strong body with not very many breakable details, yet detailed nonetheless. You could tell this car is meant for hard racing. The stickers all look very nice and don't look sloppily laid on. They even give a small bunch of Ferrari stickers you can add to it. They probably do that because of licensing. 

My first thought when looking at the car was that the wing would last about 30 laps and end up in a parts box. What sold me was that this wing is attached via a magnet, so it'll pop off the moment of impact. The plastic is strong and thick, so I'm not worried about breaking it. Revoslot is pretty confident as well, since they don't add an optional soft wing for racing. That's cool. I don't think it's going to break. 

In fact, I don't think anything on this car is going to break. There's hardly any plastic on the chassis. 

So I took it up to the attic to do a little test driving. I oiled and lubed the car in the usual places, did a quick tire sanding and put it on the track. First impression: dang this car is fast and locked down. Holy crap it's got good grip. One thing: it's kind of noisy. I mean, an aluminum car is going to have a little clicking and clacking, and that can be worked out, but this sounds more like gear mesh. I've heard of a nylon pinion for a replacement, but there also seems to be a motor adjustment I can make. I'll have to dig up that info again. 

I love the clean simplicity of this car. Very straightforward.

One thing I'm not particularly keen on is that there's no way to adjust the front axle height, as far as I can tell. The car comes default with the tires not making contact with the track, although something tells me that it would sit perfectly on a wood track. In fact, this car is meant for a wood track. I think it would perform best there. With the weight and construction, it's easy to see where this car would shine. Get it on a smooth, big track and it's going to be a screamer.

I've run it a bit more and it seems to be settling down. I'm going to get under the hood and see if I can't make an adjustment to the spur gear, or the motor holder. Either way, once that issue is past, there's just a bit of other setup to do. 

The pod system is pretty nice, with brass fittings holding it all down. It's a strong system, but I don't think there's much in the way of flexibility like you have on a Slot.it car, for example. There's like the "right way" to set this car up, and loads of wrong ways. I can tell that already. But that's okay. I wasn't expecting a different brand to be the same as what I'm used to with Slot.it. And that's cool. It's not that it's different-bad, just that it's different.

So I guess the question is, what's a car like this going to do against the other cars? Will it compete? I've read varying responses ranging from it's not as fast as a Slot.it or NSR car to that it'll blow them away. I guess it depends on where you're racing and who you are. It feels to me, at this stage of setup, to already be as fast as my other cars, but I can't be completely sure about that until I've got this thing satisfactorily setup and have my stopwatch out. That'll happen soon. 

Solid yet simple design.

It's got a 21k motor, which is right along with the power of the other cars, but it is pulling considerably more weight. So I'm going to have to deal with this car differently. Once I've got it dialed in I have a feeling I'll be doing a lot of tuning from my controller with this car. 

So there it is, and I can't even tell you how excited I am about it! Not only a new car, but this thing is really high quality. You can feel it when you drive. It handles better and runs smoother than my Slot.it cars do, and it might likely outrun them. We're going to find that out, by the way. And as I said this was my fourth pick and a running mate, that means another car of this caliber is coming. 

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THE MORNING AFTER

I ran the car this morning for about 1000 drone laps or so after doing another full lube/oil. I also dealt with the gear mesh by pulling the motor back a bit via its motor mount screws. It got smoother and smoother as it ran, and is much quieter now. I also put a piece of tape on the underside to control the vibrations between the pod and chassis. Seems to have helped. 

I also spent some time up the controller and dialing it in with the racecar. I think this car needs something like that if you're going to run it on a home track. There's only so much tuning you can do to this car before you need to control things about its behavior externally.

So I'm doubly pleased with this car. So far my branching out experiment is working.