New Spec 1/24 Production Cars

Well Friday night was supposed to be the start of new spec 1/24 Production class. This however did not materialise due to the fact that only six people bothered to pitch up. Of those only two had completely built their cars ready to race, another was 90% complete and the others were, besides having new bodies, still old spec with 16D motors.

Anyway I used the opportunity to help complete some of those cars and did a conversion on Phil Rix's car from scratch in 15mins flat and helped Costa complete his Porsche body. We finally managed to get some running in a little later in the evening with four new spec cars and one old spec car driven by Ashwin. Not surprisingly, all the cars were pretty evenly matched with Costa, Mike and Phil all posting times in the 5,1-5,2s range, on a track that was severely lacking in rubber. My car was slightly quicker at about 4,8s, but I had the added advantage of running slightly stickier rubber. Having said that though there was no noticeable difference in straight line speed between the cars, which was pretty much the whole idea behind the class. I am looking forward to next months event, where perhaps we will actually be able to get some racing in!

DVR GT12 CHASSIS NOW AVAILABLE

Dawie Van Rooyen has produced a rather nice looking GT12 chassis for anyone who is interested. According to him it handles excellently, and if his previous specials chassis are anything to go by, these chassis should be at the top of the pile come the end of this years SAMCA calendar.

Part 2a - Erlo's Useful Economy trigger bearing mod

Here is something to do with those old Slot It crown gears.

I cut off the piece of the brass end piece with the grub screw from the spur gear and used three of them to mount the trigger for the controller as Dave described using PCB.

The brass (brass is important for soldering) crown gear under the trigger is soldered to the PCB and once the top and bottom crown gears are tightened the trigger is rock solid with no wobble. The spur gear under the trigger is not fitted with the grub screw.

Regards

Erlo

Parma Economy transistor part 2 - modding the nylon trigger

The Parma nylon trigger is shown from the rear side and the blue area removed with a dremel, which leaves useful space for a couple of washers and antiwobble nut. I use one of the case bolts, bolted through the pc board and trimmed afterwards (not with the nyloc on cause it melts the plastic, as I found – use another normal slave nut when cutting ;-). I ferreted around until I found some scrap thick walled tube and cut it just a shade longer than the thickness of the narrowed down plastic trigger at that point. I measured the OD of the tube and drilled the hole 0.5mm smaller than the tube OD in the existing trigger hole and the tube is then a neat fit, sticking out a tiny bit top and bottom. The nyloc only winds down far enough to just stop the trigger floating up and down and does not bind it from turning – there is a sweet spot.

The nyloc idea from Professor/Slotworks trigger set up and one could use their upgraded tube kit (their stock tube is the ideal length by the way) and put in a longer bolt with anti wobble nut, if the home brew tube part is tedious:
http://www.professormotor.com/images/pmtr2031.jpg

This is why I am excited about getting imperial stuff from Pinetown nut and bolt, metric does not work too well with K&S imperial tubing. ;-)

The trigger must only just clear the PC board or the whole caboodle will battle to fit in the case. This took longer to type out than do!

NB - If working ahead and creating you own cradle board from other similar boards, please note that the Parma Economy trigger is more rear set than other triggers like the turbo (about 2.5mm) so jig the set up for the trigger's own unique spot or the front of the trigger will bind on the case.

Transistor conversion of Economy controller - part 1

Inspired by Erlo (along with disappointed enquires from Jacques and Gordon ;-) and the success both Erlo and I have had with the inexpensive Euro True Scale controller circuit last year, I revisited the previously unsuccessful Parma economy controller conversion for Phil, on Saturday afternoon, with the emphasis on quick build. The offending metal frame was thrown out, the trigger opened up slightly to fit a bigger tube (was even quicker to do than explain ;-) and the result bolted to a single PC board (any thin board would do, with an after-market wiper board added) with the significant advantage of an intermediate anti wobble nut clasping the board solid, which extending the useful bottom cut out in the Parma economy Nylon trigger easily facilitates.

The result was the same knife through melted butter feel I enjoyed on mine with the brush wiper last year and a layout that has little or no chopping up of the controller case (something I hate), with the spring post, brake stop and full throttle stop 3 bolts simply bolting right through the case to hold the board in rock solid. Version two will have the 12 band board mated to it for a total in the case wiper board fit and then to try charm uncle Craig to knock me off some new spec 12 band boards or maybe even one single all encompassing board. This could then mean one could offer a really simple and compact (even if not very pretty) self build option for all those folk who wave Parma economy controllers at us, hoping for a miracle. The transistor R35, brake pot R26, and sensitivity pot R15 make for a simple single board conversion that club members could do for themselves on existing units with a nylon trigger upgrade, or for all up cost under R500 including a new Parma nylon trigger economy controller........

There will also be old defunct 16D motor brush box units lying around with us changing to Falcons, so one can easily switch from normal wiper button to magic wiper brush ;-)

Ideal for all the classes we now will run at Ecurie although fine with 16D as well. Sceptics should note mine with the same less heatsinked transistor located in the handle coped fine with my whole team of newbies for the whole of the 1.5 hour social enduro.

Once the electrics are in and things sorted, I will load on the blog a version 2 board scan for tracing and local SA component links for easy reference, including the Hella (from Akals) R30 relay option I have enjoyed with 100% reliability for a year. The only extra tools I needed were a Dremel and electric screw driver for careful drilling, along with a Saturday afternoon.

Yup, a Turbo, Slotwiz or Slotworks it is not, but just as competitive for club racing. Part 2 will have the component sources plus base board outline.

The circuit used is from these interesting sites, which are well worth a surf and the drawing is tweaked appreciatively from the first site, which features the popular German circuit:

http://home.arcor.de/slotracingtechnik/homepage/transistorregler.htm

http://home.arcor.de/slotracingtechnik/homepage/bilderdatenbank/transistorregler/stromlaufplan-03gross.jpg

http://www.slotracinglemans.com/newforum/viewthread.php?tid=744

Phil's pics from the social 1.5 hour Enduro

Nice view of race track action. If one looks carefully at the red blur at the donut on the full size pic, it is none other than flashman marshaller Pete Camp of ex Raceworld who kindly donated all the HRS cars and a host of equipment to Ecurie on closing up Raceworld.

Some of the visiting folk - Kerry from winning team on right.

The lane colour co-ordinated HRS chassised cars were bullet proof.

Banter tween Craig the marshall and Annetjie on Blue lane.

Costa junior ponders all the tall opposition....

Dave dazzled by Phil's flash and an indifferent black car being passed by Costa on green, with regular monotony.

These youngers were earnest in their marshalling - the lad on the right missed the start but marshalled all night - at the tender age of 4.75.

Gordon charming the lasses.

Erlo and Craig on race control and paling at the progress of the advancing team Dave ;-)

Chairman Mike Wilkie with Ashwin on race control - Ashwin predicting the race outcome very early.

What an awesome event! Thanks to everyone who gave up time and put in effort to get the show on the road. The 15 minutes per lane with 5 minute driving slots worked well. Drivers rotated quickly and all got a decent number of turns throughout the evening. Thanks to Erlo for sorting out the cars which performed well - Costa for controlling the event - Alwyn, Jeanette and family in the canteen and all the other members who contributed in some way or another.

The Fox

Mounting True Scale bodies

Hi All

I posted an article on mounting true scale hard bodies to the chassis on Big Al's blog. this method was used at the Worlds and improves handling quite a bit.

Cheers