My intention for the series was to run the cars as stock as possible. The cars are nearly a 4 second car out of the box and I did not really see a reason to change anything. I wanted to minimize cost and have equalized cars in a driver’s series. The natural tendency with a slot car is to do everything you can to make the car quicker. Setup skill and parts selection play heavily into this. I only wanted to allow changes due to erratic behavior or problems with the stock parts. An example of what I did not want were independent front axles. This would probably make the cars faster, but if it was allowed, everyone would need to do it to be competitive.
In hindsight, I should have said that the original, treaded tires and original wheels would be required. Even without truing, the two cars I had ran well. But…..we usually allow hard front tires, and there were slicks available for the rear, so I went along with allowing them. Then, some members had trouble with truing the Thunderslot front tires and Slot.it ZeroGrips would not fit, so I said OK to the Slot.it 15 X 8 aluminum front wheel, figuring this was an easily available and cheap alternative. Now, if we allow the Slot.it plastic wheel, this brings a third wheel and third tire into the mix. Undoubtedly, one of these setups will be quicker than the others, so to get the fastest car, members may need to buy all the options and try them out, which defeats the purpose of a simple, driver’s series.
By the same token, allowing the Scale Auto quide may result in the same situation. In the past we have generally allowed Slot.it wood guides in nearly all series as the guide of choice. This guide is nearly 2mm. deeper than the Thunderslot guide. I don’t have a Scale Auto guide so I don’t know it’s dimensions and performance, but it could be a situation where it is faster. Then everyone may need to switch. As an alternative, I will make all grub screws on the ThunderSlot car open, so you could use a different screw in the Thunderslot guide.
I am sorry that there have been problems; it seems to be typical for a try-to-be stock series.