May 17, 2015
1/32 Flyslot Brabham
BT44
by David Reinecke
Co-founded by
Australians Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac, the Brabham racing team
spanned the Formula 1 Grand Prix years of 1962-1992. Moderately
successful after winning two Constructor’s Championships in 1966 and
1967, Brabham became known as a manufacturer on the cutting edge of
technology. From being the first Formula One team to use a
wind tunnel, to the 1978 BT46B known as the "Fan car", Brabham could
also boast of producing some of the wildest looking bodies on the
circuit.
One such beast is the BT44 that competed from
1974 through the 1976 seasons. Powered by a Cosworth V-8
engine, Carlos Reutemann managed to win 3 races during the 1974 season
and finished fifth overall in the Constructor's Championship.
Sadly, neither Brabham nor Tauranac was at the helm or even as part of
the company from 1972 onward. Even so, all Brabham racing
cars carried the “BT” for Brabham & Tauranac designation
forward as part of their model names.
I am very excited that Flyslot released this great looking machine as I
have long been a fan of these mid-1970’s cars produced by Flyslot and
Scalextric and enjoy racing them together. I purchased this
car from Powerslotcars.com and received the usual fantastic service and
lightening fast shipping. I paid $56.95 for this car, which
to me was a bargain since no one else has made this model since the
Scalextric release in the 1970’s – and that is a poor replica compared
to this offering from Flyslot.
The
Presentation
The car comes in the familiar Flyslot (Fly from
here on out) plastic display case with a printed identification card as
well as a printed base. I noticed no issues with the car on
the base and it was securely fastened with the normal plastic
screw. There are no extra parts that come with the car in
comparison to other brands that often do in this price range.
Once off the base, the car looks really
good. While there have been early reports of poor finishes,
air boxes installed crookedly, and spots in the paint, my car exhibited
none of those issues. The paint is cleanly applied
with almost no orange peel of any kind. The tampo is also
really nice and crisp. With the Martini livery, there are
obviously a large number of stripes and these are all very good with
only one small spot on the air box where I can tell the pad on the
tampo moved slightly. I have to admit, I was worried after
the early reports but after receiving my car, I’m very satisfied with
the fit and finish.
The tires look appropriately sized to the 1:1 car however here’s where
my first complaint and my first issue appear: The rear tires
have no Goodyear logo on them as the released photos show while the
front tires do. Not a performance issue, but I noticed it
right off the bat. The potential issue I discovered is with the front
tires – they are loose on the front wheels as if they are slightly
larger than they should be. The picture shows me squeezing
the tire to show how much extra play it has.
We will get back to that in a moment.
Looking
into the cockpit I notice that the driver figure is well detailed with
not only Reutemann’s Argentinean flag being represented, but his
driver’s suit is also nicely printed and includes a separate racing
harness belt.
Here is where a few more cosmetic “Nits” appear:
while the outside of the tinted Plexiglas windshield at the front of
the cockpit is painted perfectly, the inside was completely missed and
there are no printed gauges. Additionally, the air box opening is not
painted inside and detracts from the overall effect of that monster
snorkel over Reutemann’s head. Those are both easy fixes, but
it would have been nice if they had done these properly.
Flipping the car over, Fly fans should rejoice as
they have used their very good March 761 chassis under the
BT44. I have a good number of the March cars and they all
drive very well on wood with almost no tuning except for urethane
tires. The chassis is held in place with 4 screws and is
extremely easy to pull apart (unlike the recent Scalextric F1 cars) for
tuners. The chassis features steering front wheels that move
with the guide flag and operate 100% better than the old HRRS McLarens
if anyone remembers those.
The motor is the standard FF slim can rated
around 19,000 RPM. I say "around” because I can’t
find any good data on what they are really using. It puts
power to the track via a plastic gear set with a 9/27 gear ratio. The
motor and exhaust detail is well executed, but as with all Fly March
cars, it does have the large “transaxle” looking doghouse that covers
the rear gear. It is hard to hide such a thing on an
open-motored car, but to my eyes it looks ok and does not detract too
much from the model to me. One cosmetic issue at the rear of
the car is that the struts to the rear wing as well as the radiators
are all painted white – they should be black according to every photo
of the car I have ever seen. A very easy fix, but it should
have been easy for Fly to realize that the car would look better and
more prototypical had they simply done so at the factory.
The Test
After adjusting the braids and checking to ensure
the rear tires were seated properly (they were) and that the front
tires wouldn’t fly off due to being loose (they didn’t!) I put the
box-stock car on my track. Like almost all of my March cars,
the BT44 was pretty quiet. The car exhibited no hop or
chatter in the corners and the tires were slippery on my wood
track. Taking it easy on the corners, it got around pretty
well but it did pop out of the slot twice. A little weight in
the nose as well as some better smoothing of the braid will help with
that.
A quick scuff of the tires on my sanding block made the car very
drivable without any further tuning, however I already had the proper
urethane tires from Paul Gage on hand and changed to those after this
initial test.
Minor
Tuning
After running the BT44 for about a 100 laps, it
was time to make it fly on my track – pun intended. The first
stop was to take it apart and true the rear wheels and tires.
Like most plastic molded wheels, there was some minor flashing to
remove to ensure the wheels were properly round.
Turning to the tires, I slipped on a pair of Paul
Gage’s excellent PGT-22168FF tires and turned them on my tire
truer. I took a ¼ ounce of weight and cut it down to fit the
chassis in what little room there is for it. Lastly, I ran
compound through the gears to break them in.
One note here:
several early reports of this car mentioned severe side-to-side play in
the rear axle. My car had none out of the box. When
I opened the car up it was easy to figure out why. Two metal
spacers had been installed that took all slop out of the rear
end. For a car that was released last month, that is a pretty
fast quality modification that probably saved them from a ton of
returns and angry customers storming the Flyslot offices in Spain with
pitchforks in hand.
Conclusion
A few hundred laps later, I find the car to be a
really smooth car to drive. It looks very good and runs even
better. Having only put a half hour of tuning into it and
touching up the paint areas mentioned before, I think the value of the
car was well worth the price I paid. I have a nice replica of
a car I like that runs very well with my F1 field now.
All of the minor things done here can be handled by any novice
racer. The car is easy to work on and the only extra cost is
the price of the tires, which I do to all of my cars anyway. The
cosmetic fixes are easy as well and took less than 10 minutes – five of
which was me looking for my black spray can.
As I stated in
my review of the Scalextric Legends cars, I am an unapologetic 1970’s
F1 fan, and even though my F1 grid covers cars from 1972-1976, I find
that they all look period correct enough to my eyes when they are all
raced together. I am thrilled that Fly brought us this great
car from a great period of racing in this series.
