Some New Lap Times

 Got into it a little bit with a few of the cars and wanted to see what the latest lap times were. The idea was to find about 4/10ths of a second from the Slot.it cars, now sporting more weight. I took a few of them, as well as the NSR cars out for some laps. 

Chaparral #66

The Chaparral #66 was the first to go. I added weight, taking it up to 68 grams. 

Car                   Lap Time    

Chaparral #66      3.94

It's definitely running better. Not so twitchy. I don't think that's enough to catch the 917K, but we'll see. 

Leyton House Porsche 962C

The Leyton House Porsche got the similar treatment, with weight on the side runners and behind the front axle, taking it up to 72grams. That'll make it the heaviest plastic car on the lot.

Car                   Lap Time    

Chaparral #66      3.94

Porsche 962C      3.95     

Good job, good to see improvement. Grips better but still tail-heavy. Always will be I guess. 

Escuderia Montjuich Porsche 908/3

The 908/3 has developed an issue and I need to attend to it. It was deslotting from the front end while accelerating through curves. The car came with a longer, deeper guide flag and I'm going to go ahead and replace that. I'll have to wait to run this one. 

Rothmans Porsche 917K

This car is so dialed in! It just doesn't get much better than the way this thing is performing. You know you've got a good car when it just whooshes down the track. No strain, feels great throughout. Just a dream to drive. And I gotta say, the 917K is just about the best looking car out there. It just looks great from every direction. So here we go:

Car                   Lap Time    

Chaparral #66      3.94

Porsche 962C      3.95     

Rothmans 917K  3.80

I think this would probably be considered the benchmark lap time. I think this car could probably go faster, but unless a Slot.it becomes superhuman, this'll probably be the dividing line between the two racing brands.

Gulf Porsche 917K

Man I love this car. Took no time at all to love it. It's just perfect. The Rothmans car has more laps on it than this one does, but they both run very well. This car! Go buy one. It's just the best.

Car                   Lap Time    

Chaparral #66      3.94

Porsche 962C      3.95     

Rothmans 917K  3.80

Gulf 917K           3.82

Neither 917K struggles in any way. They're effortless. The Gulf car sounds like the Rothmans did when I first got it. Now the Rothmans goes whooosh and the Gulf car is on the way to doing that as well. It's very smooth and almost whisper quiet. 

___________

So we're going back into lockdown. It's going to make it a lot more difficult for me to get up here from now on. I'll be packing up soon, and the holidays are almost here. What a crazy time. I'm just so happy I have this hobby to keep me sane. 

I think that I'm going to keep the classifications in. The only place it'll matter is that there will be two winners each race and two podiums. There won't be much time separation between the classes, which will put pressure on a lot of cars to do well and not make mistakes. It should be interesting. 

B.O.P.

 I'm sitting here watching a rerun of 2019's 24hrs of Le Mans, watching all the GT cars fighting it out and it's a traffic jam at 200 mph! Lots of great competitive racing, regardless of what might have to be done to each car to get it to a competitive speed. 

And as I was weighing my NSR cars, and decided to try to add weight to the Matra to see if I could get it up to NSR speed, the success of that got me started modifying other cars. I added anywhere from 5 to 10 grams, depending on what each car needed. 

Baby, you got a big butt.

I added 8 grams to the 962C, bringing it up to 72 grams. It drives much better and is more planted, but it's still tail-heavy. It's kind of the nature of the car, as it's got a really long tail that shifts the weight of the car further towards the back. So it's a beast on the straights but still needs to be handled gently around the curves. I'll take it for now, but I'm not expecting any podiums in its current condition. 

I added 5 grams to the #66 Chaparral. I considered adding it to one of the GT40s, but the Chappy is so much more fun to drive, and I wanted to see if I could get it up to speed. That's the challenge now - getting each Slot.it car to go faster than they've ever gone so they can compete. The #66 drove similarly to the GT40 anyway, so trying it first would give me some answers I need for the other cars. 

I stopped there because I ran out of lead weight. I'm going to order more, but in the meantime post some new lap times of the improved cars, as well as current times of the new cars. There's been lots of noodling with enough cars to where I need new lap time numbers from them. 

But this is giving me a new appreciation for the Slot.it cars. So far they have responded very well and have eased my feelings about them not being able to run with the NSR cars. I suppose I could have done this much earlier, but I didn't have anything to compare them against at the time, so there was no point. If I could get these cars up to a good competitive level without having to add weight to any of them, then why add weight to any of them? Know what I mean? But now that the NSRs are here, and they're doing faster laps on a similar power train but with more weight, then why not add the weight to the Slot.its to see if it'll help give them more speed? The added weight just made them feel more solid, and they had pace to keep up with the NSR cars. At some point [maybe later tonight] I'm going to time some laps and see where we are.

So I didn't get to doing any timed laps tonight. I got a little caught up in doing a little shopping. Got some more lead weight, some Ortmann tires for the 962 and the Carreras, and a car. I wanted to try the Ortmann rubber, since it's pretty widely available here and is used all over. I figured a good candidate was the 962, with it's loose rear end maybe a different set of tires would help out. If not, I go back to the Slot.it tires and no harm done. Better than outfitting the whole lineup before trying one pair first. I know they'll get the Carreras back up and running, so that'll be interesting. I wonder what those cars would be able to do against all these others. I'm going to assume they'll be reliable backmarkers.  The insides of the two cars look reasonably good, although again I'm not expecting much. I'll definitely tune them to be the best they can, but I don't know if it'll be enough. If it isn't, then I've got a couple good crash cars for my daughter to play with.

Off to the attic....

The Challenge Put Before Me

 So it's settled what kind of races I'm going to run. Class division. It's seems kind of obvious what needs to happen next. I need to get faster lap times on the Slot.it cars. 

I'm not saying the Slot.it cars are perfectly tuned, because they aren't. I never swapped parts, and in some cases gave cars pretty questionable setups that may or may not have affected their performance. So there's room there. I decided that I needed a test car, and since I had last run the Matra and had a time for it [4.18 lap time], I would use that.

How much faster can the Matra go? We're about to find out.

I got to thinking about what possibilities I had to get more speed. Weight seems like a good candidate. I've kept my cars purposefully light all this time, only adding a little weight on a couple cars to keep the nose down, one of those including the Matra. 

I could swap motors, but I don't really see the point as they're all similarly rated. One thing about NSR cars that I've found is that they're very well constructed and once dialed in can produce great speeds. But aside from some design features they're essentially the same thing, so they should be able to go about the same speed as each other. At least that's the logic I'm going to use for awhile. Might get proven wrong. We'll have to wait and see.

The out-of-the-box NSRs ran about the same speed as the tuned Slot.its, but once I tuned the NSR cars they shot ahead. So now, in order to catch an NSR car, a Slot.it car is going to have to shave .5 off its lap time. They've got the capability. But do they have the grip to run that fast? 

I'm doing a few things to the Matra. I decided to add weight, bringing it from 62 grams up to 68 grams, which is pretty significant. I can go more if I need to, and I might. I'm using the Rothmans Porsche as a comparison, which sits right now at 70gr. 

I'm using this as my comparison test car. Once tuned it ran a 3.88 lap time compared to the Matra's 4.18. So I need to shave around 4/10ths of a second per lap.

I also got a couple more grub screws and reset the ride height. At the time I got this car I only had 2 grub screws left when I needed 4, and the shop was out of them when I tried to order. So the Matra has been running a little loose in the front end. I did a proper ride height adjustment and now there's no more vertical play and the tires are planted firmly on the track. Proper.

So now I need to take it to the track and run it against it's previous time. If I need to shave half a second off, I'm hoping that what I did gets me at least halfway there. If not, then it's back to the drawing board.

RESULTS

Matra previous lap time:    4.18

Rothmans 917K lap time:  3.88

Matra weighted lap time:   3.90

We that settles it then. If I can tune the Matra to get this close with a rough estimation of weight added, I can find 2/100s of a second. And if I can get the Matra that fast, I can get the Alfa, the Chaparrals and at least one of the GT40s up to that speed. The only ones I'm not sure of are the Porsche 962C and the blue GT40.

What changed: adding the weight gave it a more solid ride and improved bite in the corners. Since the car was going around the corners better, I was able to step up the overall power from 40%, where it was, to 70%, where all the new cars are running. It was more than capable at that speed, and if I pushed it I could get better lap times. I don't need the Matra to hit 3.88 exactly, just be in the ballpark. There are always driver error and other circumstances to consider when it comes to race time.

Side note: dang, I have a lot of Porsches. 908, 911, two 917s and a 962. I guess I'm a Porsche fan and didn't know it.

Notes: I'm going to work on the Slot.its to get them up to speed. I have enough weight for two cars but will order more. I'll probably do all of this upgrading before starting a new series. That's going to happen in the apartment anyway. And if I can get all or most of them competitive, I can do away with the classification structure and run all the cars together. I'll probably still use classifications for scoring, though. I wouldn't want the Alfa to be a perennial best-of-the-rest.

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.