BDSharp's Show-Me Showdown project

[bdsharp]

So far, so good. Everything checks square and the axle spins nicely.

[HomeRacingWorld]

Yes sir, looking very good. Well done.

[bdsharp]

Thanks. I'm a torch guy too. I may have to get one of those honeycomb boards if this gets to be a thing. Kinda tricky holding everything together at the same time without it.

[strangebrew]

Great start Mr. Sharp...excellent craftmanship.

I built one like "waaytoomuchintothis" talks about a couple years ago for a commercial banked oval.
I didn't notice any difference. (except for the guys who thought what a screwed up build it was)
Couldn't convince 'em it was intentional.
The guide pretty much determines where the car goes. My guess would be the right side front was in
a little bit more contact with the track surface
Now that I think about it, I bet if you cranked the REAR a bit
it would crab down the track & maybe influence the turn.............HMMMM :think:

[dreinecke]

That is a very clean build so far!

[bdsharp]

It's a roller.

[HomeRacingWorld]

[HomeRacingWorld]

Sheesh...tough crowd.

:)

[bdsharp]

Sorry, nice touch.

Body landed in my mailbox today. Now I have to decide on paint; probably the hardest part of the whole project.

[HomeRacingWorld]

For me it is :) Chassis and such is easy, making it look good? No to much.

[slothead]

Very nice craftsmanship on that chassis. What are those hex things attached to the motor bracket, and how did you align them? I just got a Razor-Jon jig for laying out the lower rails, but need help figuring out how you set up the rear end stuff.

As for the 'can of worms', this is what I love most about slots, thinking about the possibilities. Yes, there is value in 'keeping it simple', but don't give up on creativity either. I would have thought that by now having free spinning front wheels that turned with the guide flag would be common place. This way the front wheels would help a car track through the corners rather than scrubbing off speed due to being misaligned as a car drifts and the inside vs outside speed mismatch. At some point marrying a brass chassis to 3D printed suspension parts will make this happen.

As for creating rear end stagger for an oval, this is something the late Tom Bryner and I talked about for over an hour one night. He was an advocate for carefully matching different sized rear tires so a car arc'd through a corner. This is almost a science with 1:1 sprint cars and can be fun to play around with on a slot car oval too. I use silicone-over-foam rear tires on my dirt modified cars on my very slick oval, but in some cases the grip they have was too much and cars would chatter or hop when powering through a corner. The solution I employ on some of my fastest cars is to mount an ever so slightly smaller silicone tire on the left side to go with the silicone-over-foam right rear tire. The inside tire slips just enough to let the outside tire provide full traction without any chatter, and the cars can power drift through a turn beautifully.

Now if we ever get to the point of suspensions and adjusting the camber of the right front tire for cornering stability it will be very much like setting up a real race car. Yes, I'll go take my meds now.

Slothead

[bdsharp]

Those are brass hex spacers 3/16" across the flats and 1/2" long, tapped for a #2 machine screw. I rounded off the flats for 1/8" from one end to fit the holes in the motor bracket, and drilled with a #40 bit for the axle. Soldered in with an axle in place for alignment. It kept me from having to telescope three tubing sizes, but I'm making this up as I go, so follow my lead at your own peril. My next challenge is setting the front end height over the guide.

All that tire stagger and alignment stuff is interesting, but this is my first 1/32 car, so I don't have a bin of assorted parts to draw from. Heck, I don't even have a track to test it on, so I'm gonna stick with straight and square for now and see how it turns out.

[slothead]

Thanks for the info BDsharp. I want to avoid the telescoping tubes too and my try something like you did. I'll take a 3/32" axle with me to the hardware store and see what they have in hex spacers.

As for the 'can of worms' stuff, I wasn't suggesting they be part of this build. I like to wonder about all sorts of possibilities but am keeping things in check for this fun run build. The class of 1:1 cars we're modeling weren't R&D marvels, just basic American iron to go racing with.

Slothead

[bdsharp]

Getting ready for assembly.

[HomeRacingWorld]

Looks to me like we have one fantastic looking slot car here.