Slot.it Porsche Challenge

With the Slot.it Shootout Summer Series Proxy Race coming in June, I figured it was time to have a Slot.it Challenge using my favorite race cars, the Porsche 956 and 962. The Slot.it Porsche Challenge is a 20 lap sprint in all three lanes of the targa for fastest overall time. The cars used for this race were a Kenwood 956, Rothmans 956, Blaupunkt 962 and a green 962. All of the cars are very close in set-up with the Kenwood 956 and the Green Machine 962 having the most modifications of the four.
Car Specifications:
Kenwood 956
21.5k in-line
9/28 (3.11)
77 grams
19x10 S1's
Rothmans 956
Early 25k in-line
9/28 (3.11)
79 grams
19x10 S2's
Blaupunkt 962
Early 25k in-line
9/28 (3.11)
82 grams
20x12 S1's
Green machine #7 962
Early 25k in-line
8/28 (3.50)
82 grams
20x12 S1's Trakmate timing software was used to time the race. Track voltage is set at 10 volts. A Professor Motor 2048 controller was used to run the cars. Track preparations consisited of wiping the track with a micro-fibre cloth then running five silicone tire cars for 10 laps each in all three lanes. Needless to say, the track was very clean for this race.
Results

Red Lane-1. Rothmans 956 3:49.259

2. Kenwood 956 +4.963

3. Blaupunkt 962 +5.605

4. Grenn Machine 962 +7.612

Yellow Lane-1. Blaupunkt 962 3:49.101

2. Kenwood 956 +1.832

3. Rothmans 956 +5.559

4. Green machine 962 +7.234

Green Lane-1. Blaupunkt 962 3:38.729

2. Kenwood 956 +6.473

3. Green Machine 962 +8.565

4. Rothmans 956 +13.643

Scoring

Points are awarded as follows.

1st place /4 points

2nd place / 3 points

3rd place / 2 points

4th place / 1 point

The finishing order- 1st place-Blaupunkt 962 (10 points), 2nd place-Kenwood 956(9 points), 3rd place-Rothmans 956(7 points), 4th place-Green machine 962(3 points).

The Blaupunkt 962 was a solid feeling car right from the start. This car builds confidence with each lap and is very predictable. The Kenwood 956 had 19x10 S1's which became slippery causing odd handling woes in the green lane. 20x10 S1's would have made this car a run away winner. The Rothmans 956 was the only car with S2's and did surprising well finishing 1st in the red lane and then fading badly to the back of the pack. During the post race inspection, the rear motor pod holes were found to be stripped out and both screws missing. The Green machine 962 never really had a chance against the other three cars due to being geared 8/28 (3.50). The cars was either full throttle of full brakes which made it difficult to complete consistent laps w/o deslotting. 2006 RAA LMP entrant and crowd favorite, "Green Machine" 962 had a poor showing during the Slot.it Porsche Challenge and is looking forward to a rematch.

Slot.it McLaren F1 GTR Lexan Cockpit

McLaren F1 GTR owners rejoice! The lexan cockpit for the McLaren is a nice add-on to reduce weight and provide additional underbody clearance. Is this light weight interior any indication of how serious a race car the McLaren will be? Is this a start of a trend from Slot.it to produce lexan interiors for past and current Slot.it models? We'll have to wait and see.
photo courtesy of Fantasy World Hobbies.

Blue lexus in autoshow

IMG_0299.JPG, originally uploaded by TotallyAverage.

virtual tuned Mercedes CLS 63 AMG

virtual tuned Mercedes CLS 63 AMG, originally uploaded by kalebros.

Fun Car Double - fake HDR

Fun Car Double - fake HDR, originally uploaded by gill4kleuren.

Spirit Silhouette Peugeot-review

Do you like big fat fenders? How about a slot car with a motor that's got torque enough for 4 normal slot cars? Well then the first Spirit Silhouette Peugeot may just be a car you should check out.

The Motul Peugeot is the first in what promises to be many more Peugeot 406 Silhouette's to come. The finish on the body, while a bit on the busy side livery-wise, is well done...but does not appear to have any clear coat on it.

The body's molded very thinly and fits perfectly over the chassis. I've checked every inch of this body and there's nothing ill fitting, nothing squeezed, nothing bent, nothing warped, it all fits. There is no snap fit here. Spirit are continuing to make bodies with hard core racers in mind...nice and thin!

The interior also is quite thin. And also it's a half-pan, which clears the motor/gears nicely. I'm very glad that Spirit have chosen NOT to go the super-detailed route with their cars with regard to the interiors. Also model of the car's motor (in the back window) is part of the back deck of the interior, and is not a separate piece.

The front axle mounts feature the set screw adjustment that has been seen before on Spirit releases. But when the car is on the track there is no upward play left to adjust out even with the set screws only threaded in place and not actually touching the axle.


The hugely powerful SX3 motor, without a wrapper again in this latest Peugeot, is mounted yet again as an angle winder. In front of it is a small bar magnet which, coupled with the open can motor, provide surprisingly little magnetic down force on my Carrera test track. With the stock tires in place you can EASILY spin the tires the entire way down the straight whenever you'd like to and the car doesn't pick up that much speed as a result of the extra throttle. The tires, as you might expect from that comment, don't stick terribly well on my plastic track.

The story was a bit different on the East New York Raceway test session for this 90 gram car recently. The stock tires stuck surprisingly well...odd I know. But when the stock tires were replaced with Ortmann's (which fit well enough even though there weren't designed to fit specifically for the Spirit car) made this car come alive. Times on this car dropped from around a 6 second lap to a 5.20 second lap on the 61 foot long track. This was with nothing done other than some lube and a few turns out of the screws on the motor pod.

There are no holes in the motor pod to screw down the long can motor. This motor seems to be the way most companies are going for their "serious racer" motor. On the recently released Spirit BMW 1600 there are holes to screw down the motor to make sure the tremendously powerful motor is held down securely in the pod. In this car, however there are no holes in the pod to screw down the motor. There is a great deal of flex in the pod and, personally, I'd like to see it braced a bit more. Having said that, there was no "high torque hop".

As it is this car is quite fast. We managed to get it going very fast without much (or really any) work. On this car everything is working the way it should right out of the box, the wheels are worth noting as being just as round as you could hope they'd be from...yes I'll say it...Scalextric. Ok, ok, before you say I'm falling off my chair with giddy excitement here by saying it's really race-ready (issues of magnetic down force aside for a minute)...well it is ready to race. Just like the quality you've come to expect from Scalextric and Slot It. Recently Spirit had some quality control issues with the BMW, they're not present on this copy of the car I have, I'm hoping that your experience with the Spirit Motul Peugeot is the same.

Dave Kennedy
Publisher, Slot Car News

Carrera gives you wings.

The Red Bull BMW looks like it will be out soon. Carrera posted this photo on their website and it sure looks like a slot car to me and not an artist's interpretation of a design.

The real BMW for comparison, photo used with permission from Red Bull Photofiles.com. No reuse of this photo without their permission.

DaveK