Thoughts at the Current Time

 In case you haven't noticed, I've been having a tremendous time with these cars, and not only racing the new ones, but bringing the ones I already own up to snuff. I wondered quite a bit what it would be like with different brands of cars on the same track, and I'm going to work on these to get them all running competitively. I'll probably approach it a lot like I did before - taking long looks at the slower cars to get them up to speed. So some of the faster cars will just have to be content to be fast and be a little patient for upgrades. 

I decided this morning that I am going to run all my cars on Ortmann tires. I've been wanting a good urethane tire that isn't expensive, and at 3.50 a pair they're a good price. And in the interest of fairness, they'll all run the urethanes. Nice thing about that is that besides providing more grip and lasting practically forever, they don't take nearly as much care and cleaning as rubber tires do. So that'll allow me to run races at a faster pace without so much prep for each car. The 962C is running really well right now, much better than with the stock rubber tires on. I based my decision on that alone, first buying only a few pair; a pair for the 962C Leyton House and new sets for the Carreras. Once I did a few laps in the Porsche I knew it was a good idea.

This thing has a BIG TAIL. It tends to get really sideways through the turns but is a rocket down the straight. Adding weight and urethane tires ought to help straighten it out.

__________

I'm making so many adjustments to so many cars that I'm going to have to go back and detail what the heck I did to each one. It's gotten to the point where I'll work on one for a half hour or so and then move on to the next one. Some need more help, some less. One cool thing; the new cars have not made the old cars less fun in any way. I'm having even more fun with the Slot.it cars because they're all now being challenged to go even faster than they've gone before. Like, a lot faster. It's going to take quite a bit of work for some of the cars, but I'm hoping that most respond well without much trouble. I'll be getting the tires next week and will be adding weight to some of them. 

So if you're curious and on the fence on whether mixing brands works, I'd say yes it does, but with some provisions. The brands should share similar design features, motor power should be similar, that sort of thing. I wouldn't expect a cheaper no-name brand of car, or even some major brands to perform as well as these cars do. I wouldn't expect either of my Carrera cars to consistently outperform any of the Slot.it cars. They'd have a good race against Scalextric cars. But against Slot.it, NSR and Revoslot, Carrera will forever be a back marker. 

Sometimes you can successfully mix brands. I have a feeling these guys are going to have some spirited races against each other.

__________

In a few short months I've doubled my collection. I had six working cars just before getting the Chaparral two-pack, but if you really want to see when the boom happened, it was very recently. I've got one more car coming, then I'm going to stop for awhile and work on what I have. At the time of this writing, I have 16 cars, all running. including four NSR race cars. I think 16 cars is a good amount for a race series, but I don't know if I'd want to do many more than that. There are some other smaller races I want to do, as well as one-on-one challenges. But ultimately I want to see just how close I can make these cars run against each other. I'm not going to slow any down, but try to get them all up to speed. Fun thing is, I have no idea how some of them are going to do. 

Tires

 If you read back into the past on this blog, you'll see I've put a lot of emphasis on factory stock tires, whether good or bad. I wanted to touch on tires for a little bit. 

When you're running without magnets, cars tend to do some pretty special things, especially when they haven't been fully tuned. And tires play a huge part in that. Almost without exception, tires on a new slot car need some attention before they're truly running effectively. And not all companies share the same idea of what a good tire is. Carrera tires are absolutely bad and should be replaced as quickly as possible. Their hardening power is next to none. Slot.it stock C1 tires are actually really good, and can be made to be very competitive. NSR tires are even better, stickier, gummier. Revoslot tires feel like they're from another world. 

When I first got the Carrera cars, I thought they were durable, but they slipped around a lot. The R18 had hardening issues pretty early on, which made it impossible to run without magnets, and I didn't have a chance to replace them at the time. But that's when I was under a strict financial restriction, which I didn't need to have and am glad is over. But anyway, I digress. The Carrera cars got to be so uncontrollable that I benched them not long after I got my first three Slot.it cars. By that time a year had gone by and the Carreras were just too far gone to compete. By the time I took the Carreras down off the shelf to go for a spin they had turned into rocks. They sat unused for a good couple of years. 

The Slot.it tires are fantastic. I've never had a problem or issue with one, and they always run nicely. I think I've gotten the stock tires tuned up about as well as I could hope for, and they compete very well against each other. 

And that's where my problem is. The other day I got a pair of Ortmann tires, which are urethane, and tried them on the Porsche 962C, which had been giving me control fits ever since I got it. The Ortmann tires worked great and solved the loose butt syndrome that the car had. This will undoubtedly improve lap times and put them very near the NSR cars. So my problem is that I need to upgrade from the factory stock Slot.it tires to the Ortmann tires all the way around. I just ordered them, and they should be here in a week.

The NSR rubber compound tires have been so far very good, although each tire has a small nub in the tread. It doesn't seem to affect performance, so I'm not worried about it. I like the tires so far, but if the Slot.it cars improve too much with the urethane Ortmanns, I might have to switch the NSR cars too. 

I've run urethane tires before. I bought some Paul Gage tires for my Alfa and one of the GT40s, and they ran really well on them. Problem was I didn't have urethane tires for everyone, and it wasn't fair to only run two of the three cars with them. So I didn't use them. I'd put them on occasionally and tell myself I have to get urethanes again someday. The Paul Gage tires turned out to be pretty expensive, as they came from Canada and I paid duty and international shipping fees. 

So I made the decision and just ended up outfitting seven Slot.it cars for the same price as two pairs of Paul Gage tires cost me. No offense to Paul Gage, it's just that Ortmann tires cost 3.50 a pair. That price just can't compare, even if his tires are better. If I was commercial racing, I'd probably care more about that, but then I'd probably grab one of the two pairs of PG tires I already own and run those. But since I'm only doing this here on my track, it would be kind of nice to have one brand of track tire. It would feel more fair and evenly balanced, as each car would have similar grip. I'll admit that it's kind of fun having different acting rubbers on some of these cars, so I'll miss that a little bit. Urethane tires have always felt easier to deal with. 

So I would say if you're racing one brand of car, if you're happy with the factory rubber tires, keep at it and stick with them. If you want to change to urethane or silicone, do all the cars at the same time. It's pointless to do it piece by piece. You'll either use them and blow away your other cars, or find out it's boring to blow away your other cars and not use them. Either way, new tires is an extremely inexpensive improvement to make to a slot car. 

Various Shop Stuff

 I've gotten to the point where I pick up a car, do the things I want to to it, go upstairs and run it, and if it's satisfactory, move on to another car. I've been keeping notes of what I want to do to each one. Here's a list of what I've been doing: 

• I wanted to dial in the Sunoco 908/3 so that it and the Montjuich 908/3 run roughly equal. They don't have to be too close, since no car is exactly like another, but I want to get them running in a way that I can know what's working and what's not. Having two models helps speed that process up, and you get two faster cars out of it. So I worked on ride height, which pretty much needs to be right on the money for the 908/3. I put a little weight in the Montjuich, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it in. It occasionally deslots from the front around corners, so I added a little weight behind the front axle. I might change that as the Sunoco car doesn't seem to need the weight and is handling corners wonderfully. 

• I added some weight to the Alfa, and it improved its tendency to get squirrely through some tricky parts at speed. I think it can be a challenger. Weighted Slot.it cars are responding very well to the increase in track power, too. They're very happily running at 70%. 
• I got a set of Ortmann tires from Overdrive Slot Service for the 962C, as it just wouldn't settle down around the corners and had consistently ended up in the middle of the pack. I blamed it a lot on the body shape, but I think in this case it was more a situation of it being the tires. I wanted to test a set of Ortmann tires, since eventually I'd need some, and it would be nice to be able to get a good, inexpensive pair when I need them. But I had to try them first. They had to be at least as good as the factory rubbers for whichever car I was putting them on. And since I was having trouble with the 962C's control, I thought I would give the Ortmanns a chance. I put them on, went upstairs and it was an instant improvement. I not only now expect the car to be competitive, but I'm probably going to end up taking out some of the weight, now that I probably don't need it so much. More on the Ortmanns later.
• I noodled around a bit with the 911GT2, but it was mostly as an excuse to take it upstairs and run it for awhile. It doesn't really need much of anything, and it's running very well. One thing I wish Revoslot did was give you a chance to adjust ride height. Otherwise it's a very fun car to drive.
• Oh, I just put in an order for Ortmann tires on all my Slot.it cars. 

I am enjoying myself very much.

One More New Car - 908/3 Sunoco

 It's probably not a surprise I bought this car. I go on and on about short cars being great and everything, and when I got the NSR 908/3 Escuderia Montjuich and ran it, I immediately knew it was going to need a partner. I thought a 917K could do it, but they're too different. And this car hadn't been released yet, and I didn't bother with pre-ordering or anything. Then when it came time to buying one it was there and in stock. 

Since this was my second 908/3 in a very short time, I pretty much followed in the other car's tiresteps regarding the initial tuneup. I wasted no time installing the grub screws and setting the ride height. Did a full lube/oil, checked and set all screws, flared out the braids and sanded the tires. I can't say enough about how good NSR slot cars are. They're very well put together, don't really have any weaknesses, and are pretty forgiving in regards to tune-ability. They don't really need much in the way of tuning to run well as they run great right out of the box. 

All of the NSR cars have a break-in period, which seemed to last around 1000 laps or so on my current track. You can feel the newness when you first get them running. 

There's definitely going to come a time for a huge showdown between all the short track cars. Between the two 908s, the Alfa and the Chaparrals [yeah, I'd put them in there], it should be a good race.

Something else came in the box, and that's some replacement tires. I didn't want to do a wholesale tire swap, as I thing the Slot.it tires are just fine, but I wanted to try it. I picked up a pair of rear tires from Ortmann, which is a well known company that makes tires you either like or you don't. Since I wasn't sure I needed them or that they would improve things. I did pick up a couple of pairs for a specific purpose:

After years of sitting off to the side, neglected, I finally bit the bullet and bought new tires for the old Carreras. Neither of them is particularly old, mind you. It just seems that way. Anyhow, with all this talk about adding brands to the collection, well, Carrera's a brand, and they should have some representation. And I know is this R18 isn't the greatest car they have, and Carrera doesn't have the tune-ability that the other brands do, but it should be fast enough to make it a spoiler if a Slot.it car crashes. I don't expect it to be anything but a backmarker, and a lowly one at that.

And last, but well, last....the Audi Safety Car. Both this and the R18 above got a fresh set of Ortmann tires, which gets them back on the track and respectable again. The Ortmann compound seems kind of hard compared to the stock Slot.it rubber, but we'll see how things iron out. 

I'm going to do a thorough retune of both of these cars to get them in optimal shape, and they'll run in the Sport Class with the Slot.it cars. I think the R18 could be a troublemaker, and can catch a car that's out of shape. 

__________

Having 16 working cars is going to be a challenge when it comes to racing. Races will take longer to complete, and cars may or may not get their best treatment before setting a lap time. I hope that doesn't occur, but it's happened before with much less of a field. So it may happen that a race takes multiple days to complete. Either way I now have a goal to compare brands as well as potential performance. 

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.