Top Down's Forum Info
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11th-Apr-19
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Additional Info About Top Down
Favourite Track Type:
Tomy AFX
Favourite Motor Sport:
BTCC & Historic meetings
Favourite Race Track:
Donington
Gender:
Male
| Top Down's Most Liked Post | |||||
| Post Subject | Numbers of Likes | ||||
| Taming the Beast? | 5 | ||||
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| Post Message | |||||
| Some time ago I bought this: https://slotracer.online/community/showt...p?tid=1010 on a bit of a whim. I loved the look of it - and the challenge Brian threw down to tame the beast. On arrival the car looked great but on track the performance was disappointing. Very noisy and slow. Hardly The Beast I'd been expecting.
Initially I wasn't sure why. However, after a good few laps it was clear the car’s wooden routed track set-up didn’t suit the plastic Sport Track at all, with constant wheel spin everywhere, which explained both the noise and lack of speed.
The rear wheels were swapped out for a set of NSR alloys with glued and trued tyres and things started to improve. It was a bit quicker, a bit quieter and less tail happy too.
I don’t know if it made any difference but the next step was to swap the unknown rear axle for the NSR item. At the same time the crown and pinion gears were reversed, so both had the boss facing into the centre of the car. Again, I don’t know if it makes any difference, it was just personal preference. A little side play was also introduced so the set-up wasn't quite so tight. That seemed to quieten things down a bit further and unleash quite a bit more power. With things becoming much quicker and smoother on track, the Big Bentley proving to be a very stable platform.
From here, attention turned to the front end, which also got the NSR treatment but with free choice of tyre. This took a lot of experimenting to get the right diameter, as I didn't want to change the deep guide. However, the car was still noisier than I liked, so all four body screws were backed off a bit at a time, running between each change until I got to the point I liked.
Things were starting to look good. The car was very chuckable and could be thrown into corners at much higher speeds, producing a lovely drift on the standard Sport Track curves and taking the larger radius corners on rails. (Forgot, the first thing I'd done on receipt was to remove the traction magnet by the way!)
Next up was shimming all the wheels to maximise the track.
Job done.
Well, not quite. Something I'd not tried with any 1/32 cars so far was to change the gear ratio. Having counted the crown and pinion teeth the Bentley was running 13:34 (1:2.6). I was a bit out of my depth here but remembered reading somewhere that with sidewinders it was important to keep the same number of teeth when changing the gears, so I went for 11:36 (1:3.27). No science in the choice. It was because the crown gear was the ‘next size up’ that still had sufficient ground clearance.
This gave a much more progressive drive but reintroduced noise. Every now and then the gears sounded like they were going out of mesh. Not a warped gear though. It seemed that with the body loosened off, the new ratio was causing the motor to ride up in its mount. A bit of glue solved that.
Finally, all bearings were oiled and thanks to Brian I had a whisper quiet Bentley that's a joy to drive!
On a big track I may have to go back to the original gearing but for now it’s great fun on the home test track (which is just a modest oval on the lounge carpet.)
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