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The IHSR club I race with has a class for pretty-much-stock Carrera 1/32nd analog cars. I've been racing with them for just a few years, and I'm slowly developing a stable of cars that I am trying to get competitive, with some success.
The Carrera class is one where I am struggling. I've had one car for a while now, and the best I can say is it does not always finish last. I bought a second one recently, in the hope it might be better, but it has been a disappointment, even slower than my first car.
So the other day I was working on it -- making permissible mods and testing it on my new routed MDF home track. I was trying to get the body to sit lower, and adding weight to the chassis. That was helping, but the car still was too easy to deslot in the corners.
Sometime in the dim, dark past I had replaced the stock Carrera braid setup on my first car. Rather than the stock paired braids I had substituted a single set of braids. Looking at the two cars side-by-side the penny dropped -- maybe the stock braids were too stiff and tending to make the front of the car want to lift out of the slot. So I took a diagonal cutters to the braids on my new car, removing one set and leaving only one braid on each side of the guide.
And it worked! The car became much more 'planted' and far less likely to deslot. It's lap times finally improved to the point where my two cars were about equal.
Which is not to say I now have competitive cars for the Carrera class. But I have learned something useful.
Ed Bianchi
The Carrera class is one where I am struggling. I've had one car for a while now, and the best I can say is it does not always finish last. I bought a second one recently, in the hope it might be better, but it has been a disappointment, even slower than my first car.
So the other day I was working on it -- making permissible mods and testing it on my new routed MDF home track. I was trying to get the body to sit lower, and adding weight to the chassis. That was helping, but the car still was too easy to deslot in the corners.
Sometime in the dim, dark past I had replaced the stock Carrera braid setup on my first car. Rather than the stock paired braids I had substituted a single set of braids. Looking at the two cars side-by-side the penny dropped -- maybe the stock braids were too stiff and tending to make the front of the car want to lift out of the slot. So I took a diagonal cutters to the braids on my new car, removing one set and leaving only one braid on each side of the guide.
And it worked! The car became much more 'planted' and far less likely to deslot. It's lap times finally improved to the point where my two cars were about equal.
Which is not to say I now have competitive cars for the Carrera class. But I have learned something useful.
Ed Bianchi
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