Thread Rating:
  • 1 Vote(s) - 5 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Worldwide slot car chat on Zoom!

#84

"Old farts talking about little cars"

Even newbies can show us all something new...Anthony has a rally track in his playroom, and stored under it, on it's own wheeled table, is a race circuit track. He also had a question about how often cars should be oiled. You can take your pick on the answers; from a) as often as you want as long as you clean off all the old dirty stuff first, to 2) regularly on February 29th. 

"Awesome!" and "Super cool" were just two of the praises heaped on Jeremy's light bridge. This is no ordinary timing light bridge, this is a bridge of lights that does anything and everything Race Coordinator tells it to do. I'll need to wait for the 80 page user guide when it comes out, but I think I heard him say that flashes your lane colour when your car crosses the line; it flashes white when you have parked underneath for a pit stop; it changes from red through amber to green when as you refuel; and there were probably other things I missed. all via a couple of wires and an arduino. You saw it first here, and once seen, never forgotten.

There was a bit of tension in the air when three competitors in a forthcoming Slot.it Group C enduro race chatted about each of their car preparation...or did they! Jim had a picture of all the performance parts he was going to use, and then admitted he would be using some of them and the replacements were secret. Frank had gone to all the effort of painting his proposed spur gear white so no-one could recognise the tooth count from the Slot.it gear chart. Dennis was playing it cool and advising his fellow competitors not to have too much grip on their rear tyres. All in all, the most unhelpful set of technical advice on tuning a car you could ever hear.

Far more useful were all the different examples of holders for controllers that people have on their tracks. Jeremy laser cuts his and then bends them in a vice with a heat gun. Greg 3D prints his with personalised messages on each. Gazza colour codes his to match his lane colours. 

Our Alan has never liked the ergonomics of the SCP controller, particularly the need to use your other hand to press the lane change button...now he doesn't have to. He has installed a remote lane change button that plugs into a new socket on his handle, et voila, now he can change lanes without having to take his other hand out of his pocket. Don has just got himself an SCP and needs to get it to talk to his Arc powerbase..."Who you gonna call? Greg-buster!" BOOM, straight on the Slot.it website, straight to the right page, straight to the right sub menu, straight to the file needing to be downloaded. He's like one of those really annoying people in supermarkets who go round at twice the speed of everyone else because they know exactly what they need and which shelf they will find it on.

Greg's main Tip of the Week was one that anyone could join in with this week...braid set up for Scalextric Classic/Sport type slot track. Basically it was braid origami that positions the braid where you need it to maintain the best electrical contact with the rails. Frank was following at home and showed us how he had got on with his own car. 

Club Corner went off in a number of directions this week. Mike has a Can-Am class at his club, or as it is now called, Thunderslot class. The ensuing chat regarding that make of cars established that whilst all Thunderslots are equally fast, some are equally faster than others. Watch the chat to find out where to put your money...Lola or McLaren, hard or soft top? Frank went to a race meeting where each of you had to run three cars in a sort of relay to find the winner. So it started with 5 minutes of a Scalextric type car, 5 minutes of another class of car, and then 10 minutes of a 25k open GT car. The winner being the one with the most laps. Gazza was saying farewell to the old faithful home track. A new house means time for a new track, but he has found a home for the old one that's not a skip this time. Big Den showed some pictures of the tracks that he races in various parts of Tasmania. All routed wood and all very smooth and shiny.

Dennis showed of an interesting new slot car, the MR Slotcar Jaguar XJ220. Not an obvious choice for a racer, but Dennis reckons it might just be a winner. He has done a first pass of tuning to it, and will be running it soon to see how it goes. And if you want to know why it has a wood track guide fitted, watch the Chat! 

There were a couple of topics on the theme of levelling the playing field for races. Jeremy wondered if activating the fuel variable in Race Coordinator made racing more fun or too complicated. Lots of fuel stories were shared, but the general gist seemed to be that it added a new level of enjoyment to races, along with a heightened need to concentrate in 3D. Which led to a observation that it had led to some races being won by the tortoises rather than the hares. And it touched on something Anthony queried regarding how to address the imbalance between different types of cars to make racing more competitive and varied and avoid him having to buy two examples of each car in order to create parity on the track. Of course, it was highlighted that there was another variable in the equation, and that is the skill level of the drivers, and that is not something easily balanced. 

An alternative Tip of the Weeks came up late in the chat, and that was that a variable power supply is one of the most useful things you never realised you needed. Anthony was asking about gear options for cars on his twisty rally track and cars on his race circuit, what would be best for each? Lots of chat about best gear ratios, and Frank raised the issue of gear diameters and compatibility with pinions and pods [Golden Rule: Optimum tooth count = (diameter x 2) - 2]. It was suggested that Anthony should get a variable power supply and possibly just turn down the voltage for the rally track compared to the circuit to allow cars to be at their best on each. And it was suggested that Frank needed to ignore any gearing advice given by Jim or Dennis and he will be just fine.

I love puttering with gears
[+] 2 members Like BARacer's post
Quote

(Deleted old links to avoid accidental clicking.)
[+] 2 members Like MrFlippant's post
Quote

[+] 3 members Like MrFlippant's post
Quote

(Deleted old links to avoid accidental clicking.)
[+] 3 members Like MrFlippant's post
Quote

#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!

I love puttering with gears
[+] 1 member Likes BARacer's post
Quote

[+] 2 members Like MrFlippant's post
Quote

#86

Tip after Tip after Tip after Tip...

New Face Steve gave us a brief into to his slot car history. He comes from a model making background/career, and the tour of his house gave us glimpses of a number of Hollywood special effects creatures and spacecrafts!!! But he reckons slot car modelling is more fun than Hollywood. And it looked like Martin has had loads of fun creating the buildings, and more particularly, the interiors to those buildings, at his 'Willowbrook' track. So there is a classic car museum, cafes and press rooms galore, together with many littles stories being told outdoors trackside. Phil showed off a video of the Red Barns Raceway where he races. Again, lots of scenery ideas to get you thinking.

BigDen's got some new cars, including an NSR F white kit, and regardless of all the suggestions given on the Chat, he's going to have another crack at a psychedelic Damon Hill livery he attempted many years ago. Frank showed off his GG tyre truer recipticator. Was that a little tear in Greg's eyes as he saw yet another of his little babies out there in the big wide world doing the job it was designed for? Lots of discussion about the various options to deal with all the subtly different variations to the sliding tray type of truer available. 

Steve came back with the story of his scratch built Lotus 51 which got John excited about the molds, and Dewann cheering about the Revell track he was running them on. In another effort to confuse the opposition at the forthcoming Enduro event at Electric Dreams, he showed us 'body off' pictures of two cars he alleges he will be bringing to the event...or is he. I don't think Frank or Dennis fell for his 'smoke and mirrors' this time round...

Club Corner brought up the topic of Greg's Pioneer tyre performance dropping off over the duration of a race meet. His investigations has discovered that some of his opponents had been pushing the boundaries with regards to the level of tyre treatment undertaken, but Greg had followed his previous treatment methodology, but this time in the interests of evidence gathering. And the cleaning of the tyres at the end of the evening seems to have finally established the reason behind the grip loss. 

Mike had been wanting to race with re-fuelling at a recent race meet, but struggled to get any fuel out of the rig and into the cars at pit stops. Greg thinks he knows why, and his forensic analysis of the situation had Mike not so sure of what he had done to the extent that he invited Greg round for Christmas lunch and a session on the track after to sort it all out. This will be recipticating a recent visit by Mike to Greg's track, where Mike got so close to Greg's in the races that Greg even resorted to offering to treat Mike's tyres as a favour...

BigDen has been racing as usual and has been loitering around the bottom podium step. Perhaps he should adopt the local vernacular and put brass chassis under his cars as the winner does. A bit of chat ensued regarding the pros and cons of this. Martin was wondering about the pros and cons of the Proser 'tyre rubber'. Lots of really useful views on the product, and lots of tips on how to maximise the benefit it can offer. But the love-in for the Proser was bought to an abrupt end by possibly the most controversial statements on tyre truing from JohnU that the tyre truing accessory industry will not want spread any further...but it could save you plenty of dosh! 

Greg finished off with his Christmas Tip of the Week...3DP holders for your controller. He showed us what he had done for a client on his wonderful track, and the holders really added a neat, personalised, final touch to the race hardware. And with Christmas just round the corner, Phil gave a little shout out to TV/movie cars, and how they can bring people into the hobby who might not get so excited (to start with at least) about pure race cars.

I love puttering with gears
[+] 1 member Likes BARacer's post
Quote

(Deleted old links to avoid accidental clicking.)
[+] 2 members Like MrFlippant's post
Quote

[+] 4 members Like MrFlippant's post
Quote

(Deleted old links to avoid accidental clicking.)
[+] 3 members Like MrFlippant's post
Quote


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 2 Guest(s)