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I have the Gulf blue Carrera Porsche 904. Beautiful car, but it needed some fine tuning. In no special order here’s what I’ve done.
The guide flag post is a loose fit in the chassis, which causes the flag to wobble. The design also puts more weight on the front tires than I like. A friend sent me a prototype file for an adapter, which I printed at my library:
I also printed a guide flag that I found on Thingiverse (“Slot car guide” by wayne69x):
I then carefully removed all the Carrera parts and started cutting/filing/sanding the adaptor and flag until they were a good fit. I used some shims to set the front tires .010” off the track, then used self-leveling silicon sealant to hold the adaptor in place. Not as strong as CA or epoxy, but I can revert back to the original Carrera parts pretty easily:
While doing this work I also simplified the wiring:
If you held the chassis in one hand and grabbed the rear tires in the other, you could feel a good deal of play. I could see the bushings moving around in the chassis, as well as the axle moving in the bushing. I decided the first step was to glue the bushing in place. I again used silicon sealant, it holds well enough and is very easy to remove if needed:
Once the bushings were glued I checked the play again, and it wasn’t bad. So for now I’m not going to bother with the "CA fix" to remove axle slop.
Next I spent some time using my fairly new Tire Razor, which I’m pretty happy with:
The last modification was magnets. The car comes with a long bar magnet in the middle, and a somewhat shorter one in the rear. Both have metal shims, a nice touch that gives you more options. However, those two magnets are way too much downforce for me. I like my cars to drift, so I use only light amounts to try to get them close to the same level of performance.
I removed the rear bar and set it aside. I then removed the middle bar, and replaced it with two old “dot” magnets. If you’ve been around for a long time, you may remember them from the Scalextric Kodak NASCAR:
That wasn’t quite enough. Poking around I found a shorter magnet that I pulled from another Carrera:
Because it was so much more than the dots, I first tried it with the metal shim between the magnets and the track:
That was pretty good, but for “performance equalization” I ended-up with the shim on top:
I'm much happier with how the car drives now. I’ll live with it like this for a while, and then decide if it needs any other tuning.
Ron
The guide flag post is a loose fit in the chassis, which causes the flag to wobble. The design also puts more weight on the front tires than I like. A friend sent me a prototype file for an adapter, which I printed at my library:
I also printed a guide flag that I found on Thingiverse (“Slot car guide” by wayne69x):
I then carefully removed all the Carrera parts and started cutting/filing/sanding the adaptor and flag until they were a good fit. I used some shims to set the front tires .010” off the track, then used self-leveling silicon sealant to hold the adaptor in place. Not as strong as CA or epoxy, but I can revert back to the original Carrera parts pretty easily:
While doing this work I also simplified the wiring:
If you held the chassis in one hand and grabbed the rear tires in the other, you could feel a good deal of play. I could see the bushings moving around in the chassis, as well as the axle moving in the bushing. I decided the first step was to glue the bushing in place. I again used silicon sealant, it holds well enough and is very easy to remove if needed:
Once the bushings were glued I checked the play again, and it wasn’t bad. So for now I’m not going to bother with the "CA fix" to remove axle slop.
Next I spent some time using my fairly new Tire Razor, which I’m pretty happy with:
The last modification was magnets. The car comes with a long bar magnet in the middle, and a somewhat shorter one in the rear. Both have metal shims, a nice touch that gives you more options. However, those two magnets are way too much downforce for me. I like my cars to drift, so I use only light amounts to try to get them close to the same level of performance.
I removed the rear bar and set it aside. I then removed the middle bar, and replaced it with two old “dot” magnets. If you’ve been around for a long time, you may remember them from the Scalextric Kodak NASCAR:
That wasn’t quite enough. Poking around I found a shorter magnet that I pulled from another Carrera:
Because it was so much more than the dots, I first tried it with the metal shim between the magnets and the track:
That was pretty good, but for “performance equalization” I ended-up with the shim on top:
Ron
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