[BAracer]

#85

Rolling in the Dirt

Garth started the ball rolling with a S+T of his 'heavy metal' Ferrari 512. Lots of ballast added to keep the F1 tyres on the rear stick down to the track. Who needs magnets when you can get gravity to do a good impression! Unfortunately Mike has seen where this downforce equation can lead to...He had been running some heavy Revoslots with magnets. Absolute joy and grip when they have all four wheels touching the track, but carnage when they lose grip and fly off at a rapid rate across the room. Lots of tip of how to manage this risk, mostly based around turning the voltage down (analogue), or fiddling with settings in the software (digital). 

Jeremy, or as I now call him, "Mr Christmas Lights" has had a busy start to the festive slot season...not content with his horizontal light bridge, he has now gone vertical with a light tower. Once again, I didn't quite catch ALL the things the lights do, but there is a option to give a visual indication of the amount of time left in the race, and another feature picked out of his bottomless Race Coordinator feature sack is to allow cars to continue round to the start line at the end of a race so you don't have to walk round to the other side of the track to pick them up. Only someone who spends half the WSCCoZ whizzing round his workshop on his office chair could come up with that effort saving idea.

Wayne's been having Deep Thoughts about balancing his wheels. When he checked on his magnetic wheel balancer, he was finding his wheels ending up 'grub screw down', indicating that a tapped hole with a grub screw in it was heavier than the material the wheel was made of. Lots of discussion on the risk and rewards of trying to balance them...opposing grub screw gives you perfect balance, but risks working loose and both falling out and possibly loosening the hub on the axle, reduce the mass of the grub screw, add a counterbalance weight, tyre on/tyre off balance etc etc, it's all there in the Chat. Garth is going one step further and designing his own wheels...no excuses now for designing in any imbalance.

Neil has got himself a chassis jig with two dummy wheels, but he needs four. What is the best way round it? Lots of discussion on alternative solutions, along with the web address of where he can get further OEM items. Garth described how he runs his home events by tuning dedicated pairs of cars to give matching performance, so no-one in his club can claim to suffer with a slower car. It also gives him a chance to do a bit of decoration to the cars to differentiate between two identical originals. 

Jeremy was back with a Tip of the Week...if you are using an arduino board for 'stuff', buy yourself a riser strip at the same time as this will save you time and effort with connecting wires. You need to see his example to understand this one. Frank called in to say he had followed last week's TOTW, and it had worked. You can't beat a good tip to save time or simply make something better than it was. 

Dennis came on looking for a different tip of the week...how to solve stuttering cars on a Frankenslot wireless set up on Carrera. He didn't need to have worried, lots of tips to solve this type of problem that many on the Chat had experienced. He returned the favour when a query came up about how to save a car if the guide holder snaps off...he had one right in front of him and even gave out the part number they needed. Sorted!

Greg has also been having Grumpy Thoughts about why his perfectly oiled tyres lose they grip halfway through an evening and he has to watch as cars with un-oiled tyres carefully overtake his mobile drift monster. He had to eventually acknowledge that people might sort of have a point when the hundredth person independently gave him the same answer. 

And finally, Wayne reported on the recent DiSCA 8hr Tres Petit Le Mans event at Rockingham. Whilst he delved into the tech involved with lots of photos of the cars and with 1st placed John chipping in with other details, everyone else just wanted to know how he managed to stay standing on the drivers rostrum for a whole hour at a time!