[BAracer]

#52

"So what did you learn at slot school today?"


Q1: Is running after your postman to collect a slot car package obsessive behaviour? Not when you have been sent a race prepared chassis from someone who prepares very nice race chassis. Martyn Showed and Told us about it, and Chris gave him, and all of us, some tips on front axle grub screw set up.

Q2: Is spending twice the cost of a normal race slot car on a 3DP one obsessive behavior? NIck says "no" when it's a Corvette from TA71 and it ticks all the right boxes in terms of weight, fit and rarity. Gio described a different experience with his TA71 Bentley last week, but ultimately, he was also happy to have a rarity that was not available from anyone else. 

Q3: How good are we at judging our own car building abilities? "Not very" seemed to be the answer when Anthony showed us a little something he had put together form all his spare bits. Everyone else thought it was stunning, but there seemed to be a consensus that we all probably see the bad points or little failings in our own work, whilst everyone else sees the good bits!

Q4: How old is Greg? "Not very" seemed to be the general response when he let it slip out.

Q5: How much time did Mark spend on his homework for this week's assignment? "Lots" was the answer as he gave us a presentation on his slot car history through the medium of a slide show. Although he was marked down for admitting he had only watched up to Chat #32 of Greg's "Slot Car School".

Q6: How annoying is it when you spend loads of time scratch building and decorating a body shell that can't be bought off the shelf, and then a major manufacturer bring out the exact same decorated car and fill the shelves with them? "Very" is the answer if you are Nick, as he mumbled something about Scalextric not getting the colour right, before bursting into tears.

Q7: What is the most important part of a soldering iron? Dennis knew the answer of course, and he told us all what it is and why. And you could hear the collective sound of everyone on the chat typing it into their keyboards and pressing the 'Buy' button. 

Q8: With group slot racing possibly happening again in the UK soon, what is the best way to clean a year's deposit of oxidation off your track? This is one of those questions where there are lots of right answers, and one wrong one. So right answers included Pepper Pig and some sort of unobtainium plastic matrix; the wrong answer was sandpaper.

Q9: What are the main priorities for tuning cars when you are limited by time or budget? Everyone had their hand up to answer this last question. So "maximise grip" was one specific answer, whereas "follow engineering principles" covered a wide range of answers. 

And then it got silly...very silly. Lots of jokes about "your mother-in-laws attic". Greg did an impersonation of Dick van Dyke. Someone suggested you could use bits of model trains to tune your car. And a detailed argument that green cars can be faster than blue cars. And what more appropriate way to finish the Chat than with the immortal line... 

"I need to go now; I can smell my deodorant being sprayed around by my 7 year old"