Car and Track Notes

I did an extensive wipedown of my track a little bit ago due to all the dust the bathroom installers have spread around. I've needed to do it quite a bit to get it not to slip. As I was doing this I noticed that I was starting to get some rubber laid on the track. It's faint, but it's there and started.

It's not very easy to get a picture of, and it's almost more noticeable when it's not looked at directly. Anyhow, it's there and that's pretty cool.

For a long time I was running urethane over rubber by about 2:1. And that's not including casual running, which I almost always ran one of the cars with the Paul Gage urethane tires. So I never got any rubber laid down because most of the time it wasn't rubber that was running on the track.

When I got the Porsche and the Ford GTII, instead of ordering a bunch of different urethane tires, I decided to put away the Paul Gage urethane tires that two of the cars were using and put all of the cars on the factory C1 rubber that they came with. Since then, nothing but rubber has been running on the track.

This one is a bit easier to see. Entrance to Turn 1, coming from left to right. The rubber pattern shows that the cars have a tendency to swing out quite a bit, going as far as over the painted-over stripe in the middle, turning it dark gray. 

This is only after a couple of weeks of running nothing but rubber on the track. Since I'll be sticking with rubber and even buying more eventually when I need replacements [including to the Carreras], I expect this to get significantly darker.

Poor guy has been doing the bulk of the running while I'm cleaning. I'll have to do a thorough cleaning of all the cars once this construction is done.

I took the top off the Porsche to see if it was collecting dust inside and it wasn't. I put it on the track with just the chassis and ran a couple of laps. I ended up with quite a flashback to my youth, when my brother and I would race AFX HO cars. We'd always end up without any bodies, racing just the chassis. I don't have that feeling now, but it's funny to have that memory. Weird how stuff like that happens.

Smooth runner.

The Ford GTII is the most recent production car I own from Slot.it.

The car coming on Monday is even newer. 

I can't wait.

No Racing Weekend

Wow, talk about timing being all off.

So I order this car, says 2-3 days delivery. Well, this is Germany and that's wishful thinking, but whatever. And wouldn't you know it, on the second day, after I've been hanging around the house all day, I step away for 10 minutes for the most cliche thing in the world, a loaf of bread. I come back, there's a note on my door that I missed the delivery guy. So yeah, it was two days. That's pretty good. I'll pick up the box in the morning from the post office, as it says on the note. Wish I would have been here, but oh well.

The next day I get up, take my card down to the post office, and wouldn't you know it, it's closed both Thursday and Friday, no explanation, no other information, hand-written sign in the door.

Now I can't pick it up until Monday, even though it got here on Thursday. That has completely taken me off a nice evening session tonight and tomorrow night. Plus household stress is high due to the lack of functioning bathrooms. There's one working toilet upstairs in a room that has been otherwise completely gutted [including heat - there's no heat], and a working sink downstairs. The oven doesn't work anymore and the replacement waits boxed up in our living room for this work to be done so we can install it. Until then we cook at our neighbor's vacant upstairs apartment. There's also an incredible amount of dust, which is getting everywhere, including upstairs on the track. I spent 30 minutes wiping it down, running, wiping down, running...and it's still slick and powdery. I'm definitely going to have to wait until this all blows over before really getting the track cleaned up. They said they were mostly finished with the loud grindy stuff, and they'll be doing the next, less destructive steps.

Man, sorry that you had to read all that. Wish this could have been a pictorial post about the new addition and maybe even some sweet video. That has been the plan since I got that card from the delivery company. But anyway.

I have no idea what my week's looking like, so I don't know when I'll be able to get this car and get it on the track. It'll drive me crazy if it takes too long.

New Car Coming - No Surprise This Time

So that tax return special car that I mentioned...well, my wife forgot to order it, so we did it together yesterday. This will be the first time since I've raced 1:32 cars that I'll actually be picking the car I want. Not that I didn't want all the other cars, I certainly did and do, but those were on a list of cars, and my wife ultimately chose which cars I'd have. It's a fun game, makes things interesting, keeps her interested, and tests our tastes in cars with each other.

I'm not going to mention what car I picked just yet, just know that it has consistently been on my list in one form or another since this all started, it was just for whatever reason glossed over every time. Other cars came and went on that list, but this one has always been there. I think there will be some surprised by my pick. I can tell you what car didn't get picked and why. The Porsche 956 Jägermeister car was an absolute no go, because my wife doesn't like the stuff. She says it tastes like something you would drink if you were sick. Good enough for me, even though I like the way the car looks.

The car comes in the next couple of days, hopefully by Friday, and I'm aiming to give it a full tuneup and good strong workout. Will the fact that I picked this car say anything special about me? Hard to say. Maybe I'm making too much out of it, but I'm feeling good about my pick. I think it should round out my collection nicely.
I'll report once the car is here.


2/30 and 3/30 Curves Appreciation Society

I haven't mentioned how much I enjoy these new turns in awhile. There's such a contrast from a tight 1/60 to a flowing 3/30. Going through the Mulsanne Kink and the Sweeper really allows you to take the cars up another notch. Suddenly you're dealing with something you're not used to; high-speed control issues.
While a 3/30 turn, or even a 2/30 turn has a much wider radius than a 1/60 turn, it's still a turn. You still have to go through it, and when you're racing you have to do it at pretty much your best speed through the curve. If not, the guy in the other lane will smoke you. And your best speed isn't going to be your fastest speed. A 3/30 curve will still throw a car going into it at full speed. While a slight release of the throttle heading toward a curve is always a good thing, too much letup and you'll lose all momentum going into the curve. And trying to make it up in the curve with acceleration will only produce sliding and spinning out. On the Porsche I have this problem if I don't let up a little; the tail comes out. This is especially noticeable in this car, and was the first thing I had to learn about driving it. On the flip side, a cruiser like this coasts wonderfully through turns at some pretty high speeds.

Since I added the turns [six 2/30 and three 3/30 curves], I haven't felt the urge to change a thing to the layout. It immediately filled a hole I needed; that of a fast track. I had the technical, but now it came with the fast. If I had more track pieces I'd likely use them somehow, but I really like the way Pike's came out being this challenging uphill climb. I wouldn't change a thing. It's going to be awesome when it's finished and a showcase, I think. It's also going to keep racers honest.

Not quite a racing post

More along the lines of keeping the cars in a good clean spot. I've been dragging them around in the pit box for the longest time, which actually works great, but there's something about having them out to see that I like. I showed some pics of my room a few months ago to my brother and he suggested the idea, or something like it.

We're redoing our bathrooms, so things are suddenly getting moved around and left for scrap [yay me]. My wife asked me if I wanted a couple of shelves and I told her that I'd take them. One in particular is working quite nicely as a display rack:

I don't know what particular model of Ikea furniture it is, so I'll ask my wife.

I was able to wedge the Slot.it display cases in there perfectly and connected everything down so it's nice and sturdy. Nice thing is I still have room for at least 4 more cars, and I still have a second shelf I haven't used yet.

If you look at the pics of the track you'd notice that most of the stuff in the room is older, REAL furniture. I'm going to do something to this thing to un-Ikea it a little bit now that I know it works as a display rack. I wonder if they make a glass door for it....

Very short sessions

I haven't had much of a chance to do any racing lately. We're prepping the house to have the plumbing redone, and it's going to take a couple weeks before things are back to normal. Probably three if the week after is included of cleaning and organizing whatever we end up with.

So there will be workers here for the next couple of weeks. I've got a car due in the mail, which will likely come early next week. I'll get chances in the evening to try it out. It's a tax refund gift, and instead of picking it out myself I sent my wife a couple links and had her pick. So it's likely to be either a competitive match for the Leyton House Porsche or will continue in the 60's Le Mans line and be a Matra. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I think the elevation of the Sweeper is starting to get out of hand.

I never intended it to be that high up. If you can imagine in the photo above, a rolling hill getting progressively higher as it goes toward the back corner of the table. By the end those hills will be as high up as those light spots on that roof support in the center. So the run up to the Sweeper will cut through the hill, while the rest of the curve will run over the top.

I'm going to have to try to get a bit better banking going, which I won't be able to do until I have measured and cut my track support beds. It's 8" at its peak right now, which is about three inches too high. Every bit of the track, with the exception of the bottom of the Mulsanne hill and the front stretch are suspended off the table. I guess that's normal. Right.

So I'll have to work on that when I buy the wood. In the meantime, I'll continue racing with it as it is. It's actually at a point right now where the outside lane is workable. There are a few cars already threatening 5 sec laps on it and it isn't even finished yet.

Ever since I repaired that broken pickup wire on the Alfa, it has been screaming around the track. I don't know if maybe it was so precariously in there that maybe I was having intermittent power issues without realizing it or something, but it's doing great now. No issues at all.

I think there's a pretty strong chance that the next car coming will be another Porsche, likely a short tail of some sort. I think it would be great to have a match for this car, as it would really help determine what's a faster car on my track. Plus having another inliner setup is good as well. That'll give me an opportunity to compare gear ratios when it comes time to start doing those kinds of experiments. That's going to be quite awhile, however.

I'm thinking that once I have the track all setup and in a happy place, I'm going to get a decent power supply for it. I'm going to need something to run all the accessories anyway, so it'll be good to have some balanced track power. Then I can run all the other crap on a smaller secondary transformer. Just thinking.

Incoming

Looks like the tax man is being nice to me this year. I've got an unscheduled car coming in the next few days.

I won't say anything about it just now, other than that it's a Slot.it car, as I'm not done collecting them yet.

Stay tuned.

Guest visiting - always interesting

Interesting night tonight. We have a friend visiting who has been getting into some racing with me over the past few hours. During the session I noticed something while driving the Alfa: it started cutting out intermittently. At first I thought it might have been a power supply issue, as it kind of felt like it, but then the more I drove it the worse it got. Then it didn't go at all.

I took it downstairs and opened it up, and the first thing I noticed was a detached pickup wire.

Sorry about the blurry phone pic, but that red wire is clearly not connected.

There's a tiny grub screw inside of the whole mess of wire that sort of keeps it all in there by basically taking up space. Works well, won't argue. I got the wire together, undid the grub screw, put the wire in, and screwed the grub screw right into it.

I thought I had it here.

The fix seemed simple enough. All I had to do was gather the wire up, twist it a bit to get it into threadable shape, and insert it. So I did that, and it looked good, and I took it upstairs to test it.

It ran about 2 laps and then cut out completely. I didn't make a firm connection. So I took it back downstairs, went through all the steps again, but this time I trimmed some more wire bare and wound it before putting it back in. It was much more firm now. Thankfully there was plenty of wire to pull up from the back end of the car. Thanks Slot.it.

The car is now running as good as ever. It should be noted that this is the first breakdown I've had in any of my cars since owning them, and I've owned this one well over two years and raced it often. Parts give up, and I'm okay with that, but it's good to be able to fix it with little or no extra parts. That's always been a good thing about slot cars. You can pretty much repair them with a few tools and a little knuckle grease.

Our friend will be here the whole weekend, so we'll get more chances to race. This is allowing me more time on the not-much-used outside lane. I'm also using the stock Carrera controller and giving my friend the SCP-1, so I'm struggling mightily. I think I should get another decent controller, even if it would be used only occasionally.



TRACK UPDATE

More work on the Mulsanne Straight, particularly the apex of it.

The apex of the hill used to be just ahead of the yellow GT40. Now it's back by the blue GT40. I'm going to move it where the Porsche is by raising it at that point by about two inches. I expect that to have a huge effect on the rest of the track. It'll also add a slight uphill to the straight before going downhill, which could potentially unweight the car at high speeds. The angle of the hill [where the Alfa is] will be steeper.

I took that light brown support plank and moved it about six inches toward the top of the hill and it had the desired effect. The cars definitely unweight if they are going full speed down the straight, but quickly gain it back well before the Kink, so it's not going to be an issue as far as throwing the cars off the track or anything. What I want it to do is to be another element to deal with in what would ordinarily be a pretty basic straight section.

It's pretty crazy how much of a fine balance it all is. It's not like I can just put up a couple of supports and it'll work perfectly. You can definitely tell when driving it what works and what doesn't. I've taken that approach for the entire track. Pike's is about to gain elevation, and that's not going to be easy. I suspect there's more work on the Sweeper as well, as I came off plenty on the outside lane tonight, and I wasn't even going very fast through it when it happened.



FRIEND UPDATE

Overall racing has been good, but mostly casual running. We haven't had any lap races or anything like that, instead focusing on getting together and doing a little rolling drag racing. We've had a few offs tonight in some very hard to reach places. Many offs after the Mulsanne Kink, which is just at the edge of my reach, and one that went off the far end of the Peak. I had to climb on the table to get the car, which is the first time I've tried that. I hoped it could hold me, and it can. It didn't even creak.

That says nothing about the fact that I'll need to make sure to scenic those areas properly to stop cars from flying into impossible to reach places. The curves on the back half of the track will all be cut into hillsides, which will act as a barrier to stop the cars if they come off. That'll work great on the Peak and the Mulsanne Kink, but I'm not sure I'll be able to do it with the sweeper. It's not looking very practical to make a huge hillside in that area, so I will probably make a combination of hillside and border with catch fence.

I couldn't give an estimate of how close I am to being finished with the elevation aspect of the planning stages, although I'm closer to being finished than I am to being started. It feels a bit like when you lay a blanket on the bed...you flip it out and after a few tries it lays nice and smooth with no weird folds or kinks. So I think if I work at this a little more, it'll all come together nicely. It's already much better than when I started, and still very fast when it needs to be.