Avantslot Mirage,What are they like.

[Florida_Slotter]

[reel55]

www.slotcarouthouse.com
He has a review of this car - look on the left sidebar

[Florida_Slotter]

Reel55,

Kind sir, thank you very much for that link.

I have added it to my favorites and will explore the entire site when I can.

It is sounding more like this car might find a spot in my stable. I like a lot of what I see. There are some things that can be made better, but that's what slot car racing is all about.

[Cosmic Bilby]

I was very impressed with mine, great model, a tonne of magnet that may not suit everyone's taste but its easy to get rid of them and you still have a really decent chassis to work with.

Dont under rate Avant, they have a huge parts inventory as well, Nice stuff including lovely 3/32 carbon axles which I was lucky to have in my parts box and will now use in my 1/25 drag slot cars.....

[ElSecundo]

Avant Slot is kind of an odd bird in the US. When Americans want performance, they turn to Slot.It and NSR, but Avant Slot is equivalent in many ways. It may be that Avant Slot is more eurocentric, and that doesn't fly so well here. I mean, very few Americans have even heard of RAID racing, or the Alpine A310s, and if we even look at an LMP car, it probably won't be a Pescarolo.

Couple that with Avant's tendency to make their cars with smaller-than-scale wheels, and the appeal here is pretty limited. But good cars? Yup, they make good cars. :)

[ElSecundo]

[ElSecundo]

I've been wondering what my next review should be. I do have an A310 from Avant Slot, so maybe I can do that.

[SRQSloter]

I have Avant Audi LMP I can't give away. Not crazy bout the chassis. Actually have never messed with it other than a couple test laps. I guess one day it will have a brass chassis. :)

[gascarnut]

I have 5 Avant cars, the three-car Audi/Peugeot/Pescarolo set, a "Racing" Pescarolo and one of the Mirages.

On my track I found that they all took quite a bit more work to tune than a Slot.it or NSTR car does, quite frankly I am not that impressed. The super small tires don't help, especially at the front where on my track the fronts need to work. The independent axles were finicky to set up. The "blade" suspension that the LMP cars use is IMO more a marketing feature than a true performance enhancer, as the steel blades were all twisted and none the same length.

Motors are powerful, cars are fast in a straight line, stock tires close to useless under no-mag conditions. Bodies are pretty and reasonably tough. Gears are noisy, and the hard plastic of the frame and the body seem to amplify that, so the cars sound less smooth and sophisticated than the Slot.it or NSR cars do.

Like Marty, i thnk some of mine may end up with a decent brass frame under those pretty bodies.

[Modlerbob]

I have the Peugeot and with the right tires it is decent on wood. As my friend Fl_Slotter seems interested in the Mirage I looked at the Kremer and have decided to get it. They should be competitive as they share the same chassis. I ordered the STP livery.

[ElSecundo]

[Quickcars]

I had a Gulf Mirage a year or so ago and remember that it was a bit "chattery" and not at all like a slot.it in terms of gear mesh and handling. I recall that I changed the gear and wheels to slot.it units and used PG tires for the rears. The car became wicked fast after that and much smoother.

[Florida_Slotter]

[Modlerbob]

We had our little shoot out between my Kremer Porsche and Marty's Mirage on Sunday and I must say they are very close in competition. I had the advantage of having put quite a few more laps on my Porsche but I know by the time Marty comes back he will have his Mirage fully tuned. I also ran my ScaleAuto Radical SR9 with the Mirage and they are all very close in performance. These new Avant slot chassis are head and shoulders above the previous inline monsters on their LMP cars.

[Florida_Slotter]

ModlerBob,

You are so correct on your analysis of the events of yesterday and the performance of the Avant Slot Mirage against the Avant Slot Kremer. Your car did out perform my car. A lot of that is based on break in and looseness I will assume at this point.

While the Avant Slot Mirage is basically a very good slot car there are some things that this person would insist on being different if he were in charge of production.

To begin with DO NOT USE the same chemicals on this chassis that you do on other chassis. An example is blue Lock-Tite. Normally when I set up one of my Slot.It chassis, I put a drop of blue Lock-Tite on the screws that hold the pod in place to keep the adjustment from changing. I did the same thing on the Avant Slot chassis and I had some very gooey chassis parts. Basically I removed the inside of the lug that the screw threads into. I quickly washed it all in warm soapy water to stop the deterioration. Then I installed a spring suspension kit so the pod would stay in place once again.

Also I had Super Glue'd the plastic bushings in place. Perhaps a drop of the Lock-Tite got on to the bushing, but it was melted. The spacer I had cut for the spur gear was basically melted into the bushing. But I do no have to worry about that any more. Last night I installed some Slot Car Corner bronze bushings. After aligning them there is less friction in the rear axle.

For those that intend to use this car on a plastic track . . . . I would strongly urge you to consider changing the guide flag. It is too deep for most plastic track. However on a routed wood track it is a very good guide flag.

The motor, according to what is published in the marketing material is a good one. Personally I did not think it to be the 27,000 rpm beast that Avant Slot is claiming. So I looked it up on the "Robert Livingston Slot Car Motor List" and found it to be "tested" thusly:



The motor pod is a very nice design. I like it because it is made to fit the style of motor that the Slot.It Flat 6 motor is. The case end is rather securely held in place via 2 screws (yeah for Phillips head screws) and that means the motor will not move in the motor pod. The "Tri-Pod" style of mount is rather nice. It gives you some nice choices in setting this chassis up for optimum handling.

Now the car comes with a 10 tooth pinion gear. I suppose the designer thought about those 27,000 rpms and chose the 10 tooth to allow it to reach the power peak on many tracks. I changed my pinion to an 11 tooth pinion. I think this will give the car a bit more 'zip' down the straights.

I personally like this car. There are some things that I would do differently, but overall it has the kind of appeal to many in the slot car world to like. I would purchase another one of their products, quite possibly will do just that.

Now, the Mirage came with set screw aluminum hubs, the Kremer did not. I understand that the Mirage is a later model, so perhaps the aluminum hubs were one of the improvements.

Once this car is sorted out, I have a feeling it will be one to have ModlerBob working very hard to keep up with the Mirage on our MDF track.