I hadn't heard about this, quite a story...

Quote:Rally driver Chris Ingram lost all his sponsorship but refused give in, even when he was penniless. Find out what happens when you try and realise your dreams of championship glory without any cash.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/51504323

Following the big unveiling at the Nuremberg Toy Fair (see our SlotRacer coverage here) and the publication of the 2020 catalogue (in the SlotRacer Library here), the first Carrera Evolution models for 2020 are scheduled to arrive in the UK in March...

CA27627 BMW M1 #81 'Denim' Procar 1980

   

This is another lovely BMW M1 from the Procar Championship, this time Hans Heyer's GS Tuning car that he drove to seventh place in the 1980 championship.

   

The detail and liveries on these M1 are stunning and they do make a great one-make racing class - just as they did back in 1979 and 1980. This is the only new 1/32 scale M1 in the catalogue this year and is available as either an analogue Evolution or Digital132 model. The Evolution version does not have lights.

RRP for the Evolution car is £39.99. Both Pendles and MRE have the car available for pre-order now.


CA27628 Ford Capri Zakspeed Turbo #4 'Ford & Sport' DRM 1982

   

I do like a Zakspeed Capri. This one was driven by the Slovenian-born German driver Lili Reisenbichler in the 1982 DRM championship. It was a disappointing start to the season and she was dropped by Zakspeed after just three races.

   

The Carrera Capri is a great model and this is a more unusual livery. Like the M1, it's the only new 1/32 scale Zakspeed Capri in the 2020 catalogue and is available as either an analogue Evolution or Digital132 model. The Evolution model does not have lights. RRP for the Evolution version is £39.99. Both Pendles and MRE have the car listed for pre-order now.

Both these models are due next month (March 2020), although the UK distributor of Carrera did tell me that subsequent 2020 releases could be delayed by the coronavirus outbreak in China. Many thanks to Pete at the Hobby Company Ltd for these release details and pictures.

               I was kindly sent some broken single seater Tyco and Tomy bodies by Dennis from Slot Lodge a few years back. 

This one had a single end plate and no front suspension. I cut off the end plate and used it as a template to make some new plasticard ones. I did make an angled rear wing but in the end settled for a single piece one instead. I put an additional brace under the body to give more surface area to weld the new end plates on. 

The other SG body had one piece of front suspension. This was cut off and used as a template for new plasticard pieces. For a future car it might be better to make a single unit with struts running through the body in newly cut channels. This would be stronger so I will look at doing that.

This car is now awaiting warmer weather to visit the paint booth. Decals are on the way from Patto and it will become one of my signature (livery of choice) AT&T cars to match my Nascar and Modified cars.

Scalextric have released two more liveries of their 1986 stock cars this week...

         

C4079 Chevrolet Monte Carlo  - Green & White #55    /    C4088 Ford Thunderbird - Yellow & Black #46

And here they are on track at the Scalextric launch last month...

         

These two new cars for 2020 brings the total of classic Nascar racers to seven individual  liveries, two set cars and two unpainted cars - eleven in total. For digital racers looking for a colour-coded grid, there are two red cars, two green cars, one blue car, two yellow cars, one white car and one black car.

The liveries are all 'fantasy' schemes put together by the Scalextric design team. Most are based on the colour schemes of cars that ran in 1986 Winston Cup, but with different numbers and sponsors. This means there is no need to pay Nascar any licensing fees - and they are rather fun too. The unpainted cars give the option of reproducing actual liveries. A couple of the cars pay homage to earlier liveries on different cars, which I like.

The latest two liveries are based - I guess - on these cars...

   

This is the Thunderbird the late, great Alan Kulwicki raced during the 1986 Winston Cup season - when he won the Rookie of the Year award. When team owner Bill Terry pulled out mid-season, Kulwicki formed his own team around the #35 Quincy's car. He would remain an owner-driver for the rest of his short career and won the championship in 1992. Scalextric's Allama livery is a very close copy of the Quincy's Steak House car.

   

The #88 Gatorade livery is a classic - although not raced in 1986 on a Chevy Monte Carlo, it did appear on earlier Monte Carlos, as well as Pontiacs and Buicks. The livery was driven by Darrell Waltrip in the Winston Cup between 1976 and 1980, Waltrip just missing out on the championship in 1979. Ricky Rudd's #88 Monte Carlo had the same Gatorade livery in 1981, with Bobby Allison taking over in 1982 and finishing second in the championship. There's a lot about the Scalextric Arrow Head livery that shouts out 'Gatorade' and it is definitely one of my favourites so far.

I fully intend to the review the Scalextric Chevy and Ford on track at some point. There has been talk that the two bodies are too different to race together. The Monte Carlo certainly looks bigger and bulkier - as it did in real life - but these are the 1/32 scale figures for the Scalextric models...

Ford Thunderbird: Length 155mm; Wheelbase 86mm; Guide pivot to rear axle 103mm; Rear track 54mm; Weight 82g
Monte Carlo: Length 164mm; Wheelbase 86mm; Guide pivot to rear axle 112mm; rear track 56mm; weight 89g

My first impressions are that the Monte Carlo is a tank - and brilliant fun to drive. The T-bird is a little more nimble around the twisty stuff. If absolute parity is required, the painted and unpainted cars do allow a fleet of either the Chevy or the Ford. I think they are fun to race together and a number of tests (mag and non-mag) against the clock and in racing conditions suggest it is swings and roundabouts between the two.

The Thunderbird and Monte Carlo are both high-detail cars, but with no working lights (Nascars don't have them). Both cars are Digital Plug Ready (DPR), although the Chevy may need this modification to count laps reliably with ARC Pro. The 1986 stock cars are released in the Super-Resistant cardboard boxes at the Super-Resistant RRP of £34.99. The cars are available for pre-order at Pendles and MRE and are due with retailers over the next few days. They are already available from the Scalextric website.

   

We are back at the Barn next week for our second Digital Wednesday of the year...

We will start the evening with a Club Car Team Race and end with a Trans-Am pairs race. Doors open at 6.30pm for practice, racing starts at 7 and we aim to finish all the action by 9.45. The team race will finish at 8.30, if you can only stay for part of the evening. Entry is £3 (£2 for under-16s). All equipment is provided for the team race and there should be plenty of spare places in the Trans-Am race.

This was a kit bash that I did a while back.
A 1/32nd scale  1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham by Gunze Sangyo




The sensible choice of chassis seemed to be a Revell Stocker chassis, as I intended to run it against
these and other similar kits to be made up. I had some nice whitewall tyres, and set up a Revell
Galaxy chassis with some nice 72 pitch gears, Slot.it bushes and axle, and some BWA 15 x 6mm
wheels I had lying about – Chassis runs sweet, even though it lacks much in the way of guide lead.



The first thing I discovered was that luxurious Caddys came with a wheelbase longer than some
football fields.  Time to get creative – or butcherous.


So I stripped the chassis bare, cut it, fitted a ¾”/ 20mm wide section of plasticard, braced it with
some brass rod, and stuck the whole thing together with JB Weld, while holding it square and flat
on a chassis flattening plate with lots of magnets.





Now I would like to inform you that this looks a bit rough because it has just dried and I haven’t
cleaned it up yet. I would LIKE to tell you that, but mother said I shouldn’t lie.



But when it was done, I had a chassis with the correct wheelbase, which runs very nice, smooth,
and predictable.
The body posts were made up to fit at back, and in the front, I used a small square of velco
under the bonnet and on the top of the plate which holds the front axle assembly. It took a bit
of messing about to get the height correct, but once done it was an easy solution for a car that
isn’t going to be an out and out racer.

Undercoat then some silver then finished with several light coats of gloss black, and I am ready
to cruise Sunset boulevard.









A bit of work to do on inserts and other detail, and I really should fit it with some interior lights
for cruising... one day. Meanwhile its elbows out the window, rolled up jeans and a white T-shirt

What is the most common irritation when working on your cars? For me it is undoing body screws and watching them roll off the workbench onto the floor never to be seen again until you ferret through the dust in the vacuum cleaner.

Here is my solution - magnetic insulation tape attached to your work surface:
       

You could use the magnets removed from your cars but tape covers a larger area so is more likely to catch the errant screws and other metal bits. I found mine in the craft section at Poundland but other stores like The Range and Hobbycraft also do it.

The HO-UK Club Challenge has been running since 2015. It is a fun way to link the various HO clubs in the UK without organising any extra events or requiring club members to travel around the country. There are several events each year that bring HO racers together - the highlight being the HO Le Mans in Derby in November - but the Club Challenge is a month-by-month competition based on each club's regular calendar..

The five clubs currently signed-up for 2020 are:

• Derby HO Racing Club (DHORC) Facebook page here
  
• Four Lane Black Top HO (FLBT-HO) Website here
  
• HO South East (HOSE) Facebook page here
  
• The HO Racing League (THORL) Website here
  
• Worthing HO Racing (WHO) website here
  

HO clubs in the UK have a wide variety of classes, rules and formats. One thing we that we do have in common is a heats and finals format. The HO-UK Club Challenge ranks racers on success in their finals, irrespective of which final they end up in after qualifying heats. Based on performance in their first final of the race, racers get four points for first, three points for second, two for third and one for fourth place.

Because each club has a different number of events counting towards the Club Challenge, Doug (TopDown) has fine-tuned an algorithm that keeps the table as competitive as possible. Over the five previous years, we've had five different winners from five different clubs. Here's the 2020 table after all the January races...

       

HOSE and THORL are still to start their seasons.

The full Club Challenge spreadsheet is available on the HO-UK website: www.ho-uk.org.uk/ho-uk-club-challenge

   

Sunday 16 February: NSCC Milton Keynes Swapmeet
10am-2.30pm at Woughton Leisure Centre, Leadenhall MK6 5EJ
More details: www.nscc.co.uk

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.