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David vs. Goliath? A complete mismatch? A non-event?

Time will tell.

The two combatants: in the one corner: the favourite of the fast crowd, the speed king:

The NSR Gunston Porsche 917.

And in the other corner: the pretty old timer, classy but slow, nice but porky:

The Fly Gunston Porsche 917

Is this the biggest mismatch in slot car history? I am not so sure.... On the face of it it would appear that I am a better tuner of Fly cars than NSR's. I have worked on a number of Fly Classics over they years and some of them are surprisingly quick. NSR's are quick and competent out of the box but historically I have struggled to "take them to the next level". But I have recently had some more success, so much so that I now have 3 NSR's in my top 10 best lap times.

And if you really want to pick nits: the Fly car is not a "pure" Fly any more. I have done the following:

* Did the Slot.it oven baking chassis flattening.
* Installed Slot Car Corner adjustable front axle blocks
* Put in a solid front axle
* Used the original plastic front wheels with Slot.it Zero grip tyres. Trued and profiled the tyres
* I glued the pod to the chassis
* Put on 15x11 CB Design Insert wheels on rear
* Put on PGT tyres, glued & trued
* Put in a Slot it 34T 19mm spur gear
* Slot.it axle
* Slot Car Corner Racing bushings at rear
* Scaleauto blue SC20 Ballbearing motor with an 11 tooth Slot.it pinion
* Slot.it universal guide, NSR soft braid, NSR eyelets
* Trimmed the chassis for float
* About 5g of weight behind the front axle
* Smooth shank body screws

So yeah: not really a Fly any more.

But still...

My NSR Gunston 917 has been OK-ish but not what it really should be. So I did a bunch of work on that as well:

* Replaced the chassis with a hard "White" chassis
* Did the Slot.it oven baking chassis flattening on this one as well
* Installed Slot Car Corner adjustable front axle blocks as well: the chassis that I had was an older one without the grub screws on the front axle holders.
* Trued & profiled the front tyres as well
* Did a quick re-true on the rear urethane tyres
* Dialed in some pod float, taped the pod
* Adjusted the front axle height

Conventional wisdom would dictate no contest: the NSR HAS to be quicker. Much quicker.

But

Before I now did this work to the NSR car, I did a best lap of 6.680 seconds on Luf's Targa with this car. This is a good lap time. In fact pretty darn fast. But still not as good as it could/should be. After all: the track lap record is 6.033 seconds. The NSR 917's 6.680 barely breaks the top 20% of my cars.

And as for the Fly: this is a new car for me so it has not turned a wheel. However: a couple of weeks ago I did similar work to a Fly Lucky Strike Porsche 917. And that car did a 6.640 second lap! How's that for close?

So the winner will be determined by two things:

* Will the changes that I made to the NSR car result in appreciable improvements on the track?
* Will the Fly Gunston car respond as well to "enhancements" as the Fly Lucky Strike car did?

We will not have to wait too long to find out: I am going to Luf's track to help with running a proxy tomorrow. So I will take these two cars along and run them after the proxy. I should be able to report back by tomorrow evening.

In the mean time: any bets as to which car will be the winner?

Alwyn

You are right, it's not really a Flyslot anymore. It's a FlySlab!

Go TEAM FLYSLAB! :music-rockout:

I bet a pair of Quik Slicks ( if I lose) on the Fly winning as the gear and sc-020 will squirt out the corner assuming theirs a little weight included in the tuning process.

So who wants to bet the NSR? It's always more fun when there's a little "juice" on the line

Yeah, I'm a Slabbo fan myself.

OK Guy
:text-goodpost: I'll take the Goliath car this time. :o
Don't know much about the older NSR cars :violin:
But the newer versions are great running cars. :D
DO You have any idea how much money you put into the Fly Car :?:
and how much in the NSR Car not that important to
most but I like keeping track of how much it add up to. :?:
FLY cars are great looking units it would be great to see them running side by side. :auto-driving: :auto-driving: :auto-checkeredflag:
Should be a interesting thread. :text-thankyouyellow:

[font=Comic Sa :flags-waveusa: ns MS]bigman [/font]

Where are the pictures?

Well, well, well, who'da thunk it!

But let's start from the beginning.

VTECFour Dan enlisted the help of a few of us to run the first leg of the Sprite proxy at Luf's Targa: this is the reason for my unusual mid-week racing opportunity. I thought this would be a great time to run the two Gunston combatants. And a quick recap:

The NSR Porsche had previously done a quite-brisk-but-not-staggering 6.680 second lap with this car.

The Fly Porsche is a brand new car that had never turned a wheel before today, so no benchmark lap time. But a similarly prepared Lucky Strike Fly 917 had done a VERY fast 6.508 second lap.

So: 6.508 was the time to beat.

First up: the NSR Gunston Porsche 917.

The very first few corners with this car confirmed it: the car is significantly improved from before. It was not just the outright speed but even more the smoothness and "drivability". It really runs very, very nicely now: a true NSR.

And it broke into the 6.4 second bracket! Only barely, but still: best of 6.493. This is very quick indeed and raised some serious doubts as to whether the Fly would be able to compete.

And then: the Fly Gunston Porsche 917

What can I say: this was a tall ask of a rather basic slot car: maybe a bit unrealistic to expect it to deliver. But hooboy, did it DELIVER! Like a 6.390 second lap delivery!

This is just extraordinary. Ridiculous. Stupendous. Absurd. All of that and more!

This turned out to be one of the best slot cars I have ever driven. Ever. It handles like it is on rails. Utterly predictable, blazingly fast in a straight line, gravity-defying handling and just a breeze to drive. This is a car with which you can turn 6.5 or better lap times time after time after time without terrors: it is that good.

I am really hard pressed to adequately describe how quick this is. Unfortunately we have only run one fastish proxy on this track since Luf had changed it: that was the Retro Racer TransAm that was run here late last year. That proxy had a handful of exceptional cars. And the best lap time we got out of the group was a 6.867 second lap with Radarek's excellent Camaro. The Fly Porsche was pretty much a full half second a lap quicker. And need I remind you: a half second per lap on a 6.8 second lap is a HUGE difference.

I have to say again: who'da thunk it...

I for one am not surprised.

Apart from the fact that the Fly classics chassis design was basically sound, a car that is $22 more expensive RTR than an NSR should be able to beat the NSR, especially when part of the $22 is in a blue ScaleAuto motor.

Nice challenge though, and further proof that a podded frame is not always the best way to go, especially on a wood track.