[dazee]

I don't know what it is exactly, but for some reason, this little car is one of my favourites.  Just something about it.... just a shame it is such a dog on the track!

So I have made it my goal to improve this little car to make it more fun to drive.  I know being a front-engined car it will never be "competitive", but can at least be improved upon.  No intentions to swap the chassis for a different one, just trying to polish what is there.

The starting point has been a lap time of 18.5 seconds on my track.
First thing I have done is just to lower how the body sits on the car by shaving the body mounting posts to try and lower the center of gravity a little, no weights added yet.  This saw some slight improvements down to a best of 18.3 seconds, but could not be consistent.  It loves to deslot, and the backend is so tail-happy.  And this is all with the magnet in.

The tires did not seem bad to me, but I think this just shows my relative inexperience with the slot cars.  On the weekend I made up a couple of sets of molds for the wheels and cast some new silicone replacement tires for it.  one set is the same size as the originals, the other slightly bigger to fill the arches more - this set in the photo.

Huge difference!  Straight out of the molds, no gluing or truing, and already lap time is down to 15.0 and running consistent times.  With the larger tires it is not quite as responsive and lost a bit of top end speed - I am assuming that is requiring more power for the weight increase in the tires but not got anything to measure yet how much this increase is.  Will try the smaller tires matching the original size to see if similar performance is noticed.  The size difference is 1mm on the diameter.

Anyone have any other pointers for this car on improving the performance?

[DPJ]

I'm certainly no expert or pro, but here's where I would look - the axles, front and back. I'd make sure there's no slop, they spin freely and are lubed in bushings. What's the chassis look like?

[dazee]

I would say it looks dirty :)  And I am not sure how I have managed to take a photo like this, but I promise that rear tyre is on there straight!

[BAracer]

Check out this thread on front engined car tuning from Alexis...

From the Tips & Tuning Forum

[CMOTD]

I don't think there is much you can do without major chassis/motor/gearing changes to improve it. I have the Jagermeister version which is box stock apart from replacement rear urethane tyres. It handles perfectly OK but it is a heavy front motored car so is never going to be super quick without replacing everything bar the bodyshell. It is one of my favourite cars as well, it looks cute but its lap times are comparable with Carrera cars (i.e. not very quick) due to the weight and somewhat sluggish motor. Horse for courses really, race it against similar cars and all is well.

[dazee]

I think for now this one has reached a level that is good enough for my skills.  Time permitting I would like to revisit it later and see if I can apply some of the techniques from that thread to it.

After a bit of time truing up the tires, I have got the lap time down to 14.55s.  Which now on my track with the cars used so far is the second fastest, only beaten by the low slung Porsche 917k.  I think it can go faster yet, but is held back by the driver :)