by midagekid1 » Thu May 03, 2018 2:13 pm
Race Report for Round #2 by midagekid1
I went over to the location where the Pioneer cars will be racing in the next few days for Round #2 and took a ton of pictures of the cars and the Carrera 65 foot track...these will be posted asap...what was interesting were the number of repairs that were completed on the cars. The host (Idle Time Racing) made a list of all the repairs completed for each car. This racer is an excellent builder in all aspects of the hobby from making brass chassis`to machining his own crown gears and is a Jedi Master in this hobby. I will include the list of repairs when I do my next posting. There were lots of loose tires as well as gluing spoilers, grills etc. back on.. The cars were all gone through one at a time and checked out very well. The wheels were repaired in a very neat way.. each wheel was given a slight twist to see if they were loose. If the wheel was loose when checked, it was taken off and a tiny hole was drilled from the inside hub to the outside, then the wheel hub and axle were cleaned of any contaminants. This was completed by using lighter fluid being dropped into the hub and flowing through the tiny hole on the outside to flush out any gunk. Then the wheel was completely dried off before the next step. Crazy glue was added to the axle and a bit was dropped into the hub. When the wheel was squeezed on, a very tiny bit of glue came through the hole on the outside of the wheel, ensuring that the glue made it all around the hub and axle. We all know if you try to glue a hub back on just by dropping glue into the hub and there is no way for the pressure to be released, glue usually squirts out from the hub and you might get a good bond but usually you don't. Also when the wheel was pressed on, a spacing tool was used to accurately leave enough space between the tire and the plastic spacer that is on each wheel. If two wheels were loose on the same axle, each wheel was repaired separately. Sound like quite a bit of work but it went quickly... It was noticed if there was split in the hub, it was usually at the seam where the two pieces of the plastic hub were joined together and failed at that point. The only answer to that is when the hubs were molded and the pieces were joined together, the seam part probably was not hot enough or was cooling to rapidly to allow for a good bond. As we all know, most of the plastic parts are made in mass production so quality control might be lacking. This is only a hypothesis so I don`t have conclusive proof but that seems to be where the split usually is. The final bit of news is that the cars were qualified and the results will surprise a lot of people involved in the Proxy. These will be posted as soon as I am able to. That`s the race report for today.