4-Hour Enduro Race at Dallas Slot Cars-2016

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On June 11 we raced the Tyler Slot Car Club (Chris Taylor, Dave Barry and friends) in the much anticipated and controversial event at Dallas Slot Cars in Garland. Marty and Alejandro/Alex went up as the representative 2-man team from ASCC.  Mark went up to cheer, observe (JIC we do this at home one year), and indulge in his secret passion of drag racing.  I was ready to fill-in as a dance partner for a lonely walk-in competitor, but none showed up and the teams were set and then …….. about 15 minutes before Green ……. management decides we could squeeze someone in as a one-man team (who would race the whole four hours).  I decided not to embarrass ASCC or torture myself and we decided that Marty would enter as a Privateer, while Alex and Mark would team up, swapping driver and marshall roles every 15 minutes, (8 times in each role).

DSC02331Marty and Alex prepp’ing for the day – in front of the Nascar track.  We all brought food in – but some great BBQ and snacks were provided.

Marty originally planned on paddocking his Porsche mule while he and Alex used his fresher Porsche, but that all changed with the new situation.  Alex and Mark tried Mark’s stealth Viper and it practiced ok …. but we tried Marty’s mule and as expected it was visually faster so we decided to use it for team ASCC-2 (Marty was team Austin Slot Car Club).

ASCC-2’s car was ok until about heat 3 (hour 1.5) when weird noises and inconsistent performance dogged us.  It seemed to be a gear mesh issue and Alex discovered it was the rear axle-mount/carrier that was coming loose as the axle-mount screws loosened.  We did not want to ‘booger’ Marty’s chassis with LocTite(tm) so Alex kept tightening the micro Philips screws until they decided to stay put.   Demons were still lurking and around heat 4 we started to get erratic response times and in some cases complete stalls.  Multiple pit stops – under green – tried to fix what looked like a thinning braid problem; however Alex saved the day by determining it was a broken wire issue and he was able to jam the motor lead into the ‘braid foot’ good enough that we had reliable performance in the last two heats.

Meanwhile, Marty was giving the Dallas guys hell as his controller hand swelled to the point where he had to remove his watch, and he developed a blister on his trigger finger!  Marty showed his stamina as he won one of the later heats.  As usual, his deslots were few and far between; however he was the victim on various occasions of getting nerfed or knocked out of slot when a driver in another lane porpoised and crossed lanes to impact other cars.  Thankfully he was forgiving when one of the ‘other’ drivers was (cough cough) on his team :O

In the end, no one can say they worked as hard as Marty!  Four hours standing and he maintained composure and none of us were fined or spanked for our short and  occasional cusses.  In the end Marty finished 5th out of 7, with 2107 laps with a low ET of 6.288sec) best was 6.087 by Chris.  ASCC-2 was at least 6th out of 7 in spite of our mechanicals that easily cost us 10 minutes total time.

I have to be honest, when your team car is FUBARing it is hard to control your emotions and to not want to leave a marshall position (which seems to be my “calling”) as Alex was thrashing alone trying to fix the ghost problems!

TECH NOTES:  (1) The OEM ScaleAuto grey motor wire is brittle and crap; it’s a question of WHEN it will break, not IF – I replaced my SA-Viper wires with silicone #18 wires when I had the exact same problems in Dec 2015 (wire broke inside the insulation!) A few other guys have had the same problem. (2) The SA chassis is notoriouis for vibrating everything loose. Use of LocTite or fingernail polish on the THREADED ends of screws and bolts helps, (dont use LocTite etc on the screw/bolt heads since you will block the ability of a 0-size screwdriver head to get deep enough in the head). (3) If we return next  year we could consider (i) same pinion and spur that Tyler uses, (ii) SA Sprinter motors, (iii) moving guide tongue to bottom of chassis, (iv) 20 or 18awg silicone motor wires, (v) ShoeGoo wings profusely, (Vi) tires and wheels like Tyler uses.

 

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The lineup for the first heat.  Note that Marty added geen tape on his wing so we could tell each other apart.  There were several heats where Marty and ASCC-2 were in neighboring lanes!

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Alex and Marty in the last heat ….

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Final Leader Board

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I stayed and entered the drags at 5pm.  I won 5 heats, the last one at 9:30ish,  I almost qualified for the finals, but was glad to get as far as I did and to be able to head home exhausted at 10pm!  (these are not my cars – just some examples of the 125+ cars entered that night!)

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BarkingSpyder

At 4-years old in Pensacola I repaired my steering linkage on my Ford Pedal-car. Dad later converted this car to a Blue Angel with ailerons and elevators with a working "stick/yoke"; the rudder was controlled by the steering wheel. I like all motorsports - I grew up going to a NASCAR Feeder track with Sportsman and Modified classes, and was lucky to attend drag races in 1970 at Orange County Raceway. My first solder-iron was a Christmas gift at 9yo; I modified T-Jets to be AFX spec before AFX Cars were in local stores. I rebuilt a few tractor & car (SIMCA) engines plus transmissions by 15yo (I still have my ring-compressor and valve spring tool) I am a former mountain and road bike geek & perennial sound engineer. Struggling guitar hobbyist and Amp "tweeker" 

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