Christmas cars

At last May's Slot Car Festival, Andy bought a couple of Metros from Model Sport Competicion (MSC), a Spanish company that make highly detailed models with lightweight chassis and top quality components.  They ran so well, I put a couple straight on my Christmas list from Louise.

The first is an MG Metro 6R4 from the 1985 RAC Rally:

And the second is a Ford RS 200 from the 1986 Rally Principe de Asturias:

The ban on tobacco advertising appears to extend to cars, so the RS 200 comes with the Marlboro transfers in a little packet labelled "Only for +18 years".

The real car:

Testing Andy's digital layout

Andy has a plan for a big digital Scalextric layout.  Using digital signals means you can run up to six cars at the same time, using the same lanes and changing across those lanes.  You can also do other clever things like set some of the cars as pacers.  Andy set up a small table-top track to test out the hardware - a simple oval with a lane changer and a short pit lane.  He'd already converted 5 Metros to digital (this requires soldering in a chip between the braids and the motor) and I took along the recently built Jaguar Mk 2 that I have also converted to digital.

In the grid above, there are four pacer Metros with Andy controlling the white Metro at the back alongside my Jaguar.  Six cars on about 12 feet of track is a bit of a squeeze (as you'll see at the start of the video below) but being able to change lanes to overtake, and call a yellow flag to pause the other cars when you crash adds a new dimension to Scalextric.  I'll be sticking with analogue but I'm pleased that Andy is going down that route as our layouts will each offer something different, and double the fun.

Mighty Metro

As I blogged a few years back, Andy has made it his mission to collect the old Scalextric MG Metros wherever he finds them, in preparation for a Mighty Metro competition one day.  Here's just a few that he has so far:

I thought I would create the ultimate Metro ready to race with Andy.  This was created in three steps:

The left hand side is a original Metro chassis that I bought from eBay (it originally came with the black and red Navico bodyshell like the one in the top row, third from left of Andy's collection).  The car had been extensively modified. It has a MRRC 20,000 rpm FF motor fitted low down in the chassis.  The motor has a brass pinion and the gear is an upgraded alloy type.  The chassis has been fitted with a larger guide with new braids with uprated wiring. It also has lead and extra magnets fitted which I had to reduce and move around to decrease the excessive downforce.  It also has different wheels and tyres.

In the middle is an interior which I sprayed up grey and then painted the driver and seats.

The right-hand side is the replacement bodyshell, again from eBay, which had been resprayed in silver and blue with lots of racing stickers added.  Put it together and you get an a unique, fast Metro with great handling.  Bring it on, Andy!