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Confession time.... and I suspect I am likely not unique in this!
Do any of you have a car that, when you look at it critically, you think "Man, but I have set up this car SO badly!" But on the track.... it flies! My it-has-no-right-to-be-this-fast car is an Avant Slot Porsche Spyder. On Luf's last Targa track it was in the fastest 5.5% of my cars.
The reason for today's head scratching for me is that tomorrow evening is our annual Big Christmas Race at our club member Perry's track. This is probably more a social event than a serious race, but still: we all have some pride and want our cars to be good for the race. Historically my Avant Porsche seems to love a faster track, and up until our recently completed club track, Perry's "Rocket" used to be the fastest track around. So every Christmas race I tend to bring out my Avant Porsche. And it is a blast to drive.
This afternoon I started preparing the cars I intend taking to the track tomorrow. So along with a couple of NSR Moslers etc, out came the Porsche. And when I took it apart to clean and lubricate the car, it struck me how poorly the car is set up. I look at it and I absolutely cannot understand WHY it runs so well! Consider:
And yet...
And yet the car flies! So the critical me says "This is AWFUL! I HAVE to fix all these things!" And my practical self says "You want to mess with a car that you know goes really, really well on Perry's track just before the Christmas race? Seriously? And risk messing the whole thing up irrecoverably?"
So I have resigned myself to taking it to the track as-is for now. But I really need to tidy things up come the new year: my OCD self cannot live with it the way it is. And I fear the outcome might be a bad hit in the performance stakes.
Damned if I do, damned if I don't?
Alwyn
Do any of you have a car that, when you look at it critically, you think "Man, but I have set up this car SO badly!" But on the track.... it flies! My it-has-no-right-to-be-this-fast car is an Avant Slot Porsche Spyder. On Luf's last Targa track it was in the fastest 5.5% of my cars.
The reason for today's head scratching for me is that tomorrow evening is our annual Big Christmas Race at our club member Perry's track. This is probably more a social event than a serious race, but still: we all have some pride and want our cars to be good for the race. Historically my Avant Porsche seems to love a faster track, and up until our recently completed club track, Perry's "Rocket" used to be the fastest track around. So every Christmas race I tend to bring out my Avant Porsche. And it is a blast to drive.
This afternoon I started preparing the cars I intend taking to the track tomorrow. So along with a couple of NSR Moslers etc, out came the Porsche. And when I took it apart to clean and lubricate the car, it struck me how poorly the car is set up. I look at it and I absolutely cannot understand WHY it runs so well! Consider:
- I left the car essentially stock other than better (wider) wheels at the back with urethanes. I also did not like the Avant crown gear so I replaced it with a Slot.it crown. And here's the kicker: I also replaced the rear bushings with Sloting Plus RRSS Victors self aligning bushings. These are the rather bad nylon ones (part # SP053003). When I started out in the hobby again >10 years ago these appealed to me as it seemed like a good idea to have bushings that make up for bad alignment due to poor bushing holders in poor chassis (think Fly....). Only as I got more experienced in the ways of slot car performance did I realise that these bushings typically deform immediately you clip them in, leaving an awful amount of slop that just gets worse over time. So my Avant Porsche has a somewhat sloppy rear axle. I have stopped using these bushings even in low performance cars some time ago FWIW.
- The implementation of the pod suspension on the car is questionable and the way I set it up is even worse... It has a leaf spring arrangement (one leaf spring running fore-aft on either side of the pod with all kinds of different screws to adjust height, spring rates etc). Highly tunable... too much so unfortunately. And a bear to get the two sides close to the same. So the play, spring rates and heights on the two sides of the pod are different.
- The car has height adjustment on the front axle: the first car I got like 8 years ago with this feature. So, needless to say... it is badly set up! Up - down slop on the one side, overall height suspect etc etc.
- I have some weight in a somewhat questionable position: probably a total of at least 10g on the sides of the motor. Now this might be OK, it might not. But I am looking at this with some suspicion. I believe experimentation could deliver some improvement here. And the weight actually touches the body as well.
- The rear of the car is too high: about 2mm of ground clearance. If I were to set up the car now I would never have left it this high.
And yet...
And yet the car flies! So the critical me says "This is AWFUL! I HAVE to fix all these things!" And my practical self says "You want to mess with a car that you know goes really, really well on Perry's track just before the Christmas race? Seriously? And risk messing the whole thing up irrecoverably?"
So I have resigned myself to taking it to the track as-is for now. But I really need to tidy things up come the new year: my OCD self cannot live with it the way it is. And I fear the outcome might be a bad hit in the performance stakes.
Damned if I do, damned if I don't?
Alwyn
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