End of an Era - Moving Out [table notes]

 I move in less than two weeks. My stuff is all packed up. I was surprised that it took two moving boxes to fit all my track. The cars are going to travel as-is, since I'm only going across town. I'm taking the car boxes as well, but packed away in a larger box. 

It's been 5 years since I first moved in to the house and started building a track table. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't get any further in development than I did, as it would have been heartbreaking to lose what I had put so much effort into making. Sure, the table required some effort, but it really wasn't all that difficult. I'm not a woodworker or anything, and I was able to do it. 

It's a pretty basic job, really, when you look at it. Two long sides connected to two ends with a piece in the middle. Then slap a piece of plywood on top. Not much to it.

So now that I've done it and experimented for a few years with it, you probably want to know how I feel about it. Well, first I wish I would have had a chance to weather-proof the attic. It made it very difficult to be in most of the year, and left me with really only two short seasons. 

The only other thing would be the limitation the table brings to track design. When you're on the floor, if you need more space you move the couch. You go down the hall. You double back under the entertainment center. But when you're on a table and hit the edge, that's it. No more room. So I'm not going to miss that aspect of it. I have enough track now to do some pretty cool stuff, and I'll be picking up more soon. Now I'll be able to expand on my layout designs. That'll be fun. 

I'll have more room than this by quite a bit. This was a long time ago in an apartment packed with way too much stuff.

I like that the table made everything quieter, especially when I added the green grass. I was able to race late into the night and nobody ever heard. The green grass did shed a little bit, though, even though I would still use it again if given the opportunity. 

As far as the U-shape table goes, I never had a problem with it. You'd think, and I was told, that there would be visibility issues, but there never were when I was racing with friends. It wasn't easy to reach deep into the corners, but I fixed that by designing my layouts with shallower ones.

So I'd say that my experience with a table was a positive one, and I would recommend it to anyone who has the space to do it. 

Shutdown Showdown - Last Heat Race

 I have finally found an apartment and will be moving soon. Since I've had my track set up, the time has finally come to start packing. So this will be the last race on the table at the house. After this I go back to the floor. Nice thing is my new apartment will have a nice big living room for stretching out in. I'm also going to be dismantling part of the table and making a workbench out of it. Nothing special, just something to get me by. I won't have space to do any building, so I might as well do other stuff with the wood.

I've been messing around with a curve lately. It's a small change, but it really makes a difference in how much speed you can carry through the corners:

By replacing one 1/60 curve [brown] with two 2/30 curves, you can make a very nice, very fast turn. It may not look like much of a difference, but it is.

I wanted one of these on each side, and filled in the rest with a few things to make it interesting. I ran it for a bit as an oval and it was fun, but it was an oval. Once I peppered it up it started to take shape. 

I still use way too many 1/60s on my layouts. I need to get more large radius curves.

As you would expect, the cars rip through the section on the right. Cars can take the short front stretch into the elongated curve, decelerating all the way. Then you're back on the throttle before you know it. The left side of the layout has enough tight curves to give the longer cars fits, but it still has that fast turn at the end. The cars love it and don't seem to be bothered too much with the rest of the layout. 

Shutdown Showdown Results:

20 lap heat race

Car              Time                    

908tergal    1:24.43                 

Lola T70     1:24.79                 

Elva            1:24.92                 

917roth       1:24.95                    

M6B           1:25.18                 

917gulf       1:25.45                 

908sunoco  1:25.81                  

917lucky     1:29.32

Matra          1:28.20                 

Alfa             1:29.65                 

Chap66        1:29.68                  

962C            1:30.13                       

Chap65        1:30.50                       

The Top-7 cars are about a second and a half apart over the race. Close enough to be a tossup every time. The Tergal 908 coming in first is a bit of a shock, as I thought it would be the Lola. But, the 908 was planted and ran a hell of a race. Didn't get slippy once. 

Short body race cars are where it's at. Porsche 908

The layout was fast, and it did allow for fast pace, even in the corners. Most of the longer cars struggled with it: 917, Matra, 962C...all spent more time in the technical section than the other, shorter bodied cars. 

Another impressive runner today. Porsche 917K

Well, that's going to about do it. 

I can't believe that it has come to this, but you gotta take what comes. Sometimes things are out of your control. But I have signed the lease and will be moving within the next month. I'm going to assess my situation once I'm there, but I'm expecting that I'll probably need to buy some more track, especially curves. I need more high radius curves. I don't even own any 4/15 curves, and I'm dying to try those. I'll also want to get one of those chicanes.

I think I'm good on cars for the time being, but I have a birthday coming up, so we'll see what happens. There are a few cars I want still. 

I'm also going to be doing more videos. I'll have the time and will be able to do the setups and leave them up, so I can actually do them right. Plans are being made to continue those. 

This blog is about my adventures in slot cars. Sometimes life dictates what happens in other adventures. It doesn't change the desire to do them, and I'm going to keep doing this. And in case you're wondering, do I think my wife understood my hobby and what it meant to me? I think so, yes. I think she underestimated my interest in it, and was pleasantly surprised at how much mileage I got out of it. She didn't understand the need for multiple cars, though. The whole collector aspect of it. She thought the cars were cool, she just didn't see the point in having so many. 

The car she claimed for herself, the Gulf Ford GT40, she didn't recognize a few weeks ago when she came up and my daughter and I were racing. She thought this whole time that it was a Mustang, which I don't have. Right then I gave that car to my daughter and she loves it. She's looking forward to racing at the apartment.

I'm probably going to do a post or two about how these past few years of slot cars have affected me. 

New Car - Thunderslot McLaren M6A

 Once I got my new job I knew I needed to celebrate with a new car. I had packed up my track too early, and once I had it back out I ordered the car. 

Thunderslot McLaren M6A Sunoco Special

I've been so happy with my other Thunderslot cars that I had to get another one. Thunderslot isn't a huge company, and have less than a dozen or so cars available. So I have an Elva, a Lola, and now an M6A. 

I did a standard lube/oil and tire sanding [love the tires], and took it upstairs with the other two cars. I didn't run any official laps as I didn't really have much of a track setup going. But I did run the M6A with the other cars and it was right up there with them. I'm going to dial it in a little more and then run some timed laps and compare the three cars. 

I set the track back up

 I have no will power when it comes to slot cars. The minute I broke my set down and packed it up I wanted to get it back out again. It's been bugging me not having that 15 minutes or so during the day to get a few laps in. But I jumped the gun on packing it. 

See, I just got a job. I've been waiting for that. Now I can actually move out. With exception of the track, I've been packed for months. No more trying things that don't work. I'm employed and that gets me in. So I'm looking. But it takes awhile, and I need to race, so here we are. 

There's another reason I set the track up tonight: I bought another car. I'm not going to say what it is yet, as usual. I absolutely LOVE being able to buy slot cars when I want to. 

Next post will be about the car.

Moving Coming

 There hasn't been much going on here lately, mostly because it's getting near time to move out. Soon I'll be packing up my track and cars, and dismantling my table. I'm not taking the table with me. At least not most of it. I'm going to be building a workbench out of some of it that I'll be taking to my apartment. 

My plan is to race on the floor. It'll be MY apartment, so I'll be able to do what I want with it. So I might end up with a dedicated slot car room instead of a bedroom. Who knows? Anyway, it'll be all mine [and my daughter's when she comes to stay with me]. 

So it might be a little quiet around here for awhile. As it stands not much has been going on on the track, except I have gone back to factory rubbers on the NSR cars, and they're keeping up with the Thunderslot cars. I'm going to keep the Slot.it cars on urethanes for now. We'll see what happens after I move. 

There's a lot up in the air right now, but nothing's going to stop my fun. As long as I have electricity and a place to set it up, I'll be okay. Life is full of changes, some of them life changing. You just have to go with it sometimes and see where it takes you. 

See you on the other side.

Update: I got a job! Now it looks like I'm going to be moving very soon. Track's coming down this weekend. It's moving time!

Back To Rubber - Results

 Today I got the chance to do a few repairs and run a short race with the NSR and Thunderslot cars. I ran the 10-lap quick race scenario after doing a little tuning to the rubber tires. Here's the results;

Laps: 10

Car                           Time               Lap         

Tergal 908               1:01.57             6.1          

Rothmans 917         0:58.40             5.84          

Gulf 917                  0:58.81             5.88       

Lucky Strike 917    1:02.10             6.2

Elva                         0:56.80            5.68 

Sunoco 908             0:58.92             5.89

Lola                         0:56.09            5.61

This is exactly what I was thinking was going to happen. I had a chance to run most of the NSR cars on their factory rubber and was really impressed by it. It's soft, almost too soft, but incredibly grippy and quiet. The Ortmann urethane isn't as soft, isn't as grippy and is considerably louder than the rubber. 

Competitively speaking, this is a much better result if I don't want to have a standout car. And since the rubbers will be staying on, I can start looking at other stuff on each car. There's only a few tenths difference between all these cars, so I'm feeling good about them racing together. I'm thinking of chasing down some rubber for the Slot.it cars. There are quite a few different formula tires that I could look for, and I'm thinking of doing that. Might even go with NSR rubber. We'll have to see. 

Big NSR Decision

 Since picking up the Lola I have been spending a lot of time running cars in pairs. It's easy: I have my cars in stackable locking sandwich boxes, so when I need to go up 3 flights of stairs to race, I can take one of the boxes instead of the entire collection. So I've been doing that a lot, and running NSR cars against Thunderslot cars. And since getting the Lola I've been a little let down by the performance of the NSR cars in general. 

Porsche 917K: Lucky Strike, Gulf, Rothmans.

When I decided to go with urethane tires, I did it all the way across the board, except for two cars; the Thunderslots. The Ortmanns that are suggested for the cars don't fit. They're a little wide. So they're running on their factory rubber. Well, I was mostly concerned about the Slot.its when it came to urethanes, but thought it would be fair for everyone to run them. Well, now I feel like I might be handicapping the NSR cars. I think the factory rubber has better grip than the urethanes do. I should look into the Slot.it rubbers. They have some alternatives that I'll bet would improve things. I not against running rubber. 

So I just spent the last few minutes changing the NSRs back to factory rubber. Three 917Ks and two 908/3s. I'm going to run some laps, get the tires going on each and then do a 10-lap run. I like that format for general timing, especially when it's cold and I need to go through so many cars. Since I'm doing all tuning downstairs and then running up to test results, I end up going a lot slower than I would like. Once I move I'll be able to dedicate more time to it. 

I don't know what this will do to do Slot.its and whether they'll still be competitive. I think they will, and I'm going to leave the urethanes on them. There's lots of change coming up, so why not just stir things up a little bit?