Digital Kart Racing

Some racing on Andy's Scalextric Digital track using Ninco karts.  The Ninco motors draw more current than the standard Scalextric ones and this makes the chips operate erratically.  Raising the issue on Slot Forum highlighted that the standard chips can't provide the power needed by high rpm motors, but also identified a Slot Forum member who provided a service upgrading some of the parts on the chipboard to resolve these issues.  Pleased to report those upgrades seem to have done the trick.

Pro Karts - finally in the right scale!

Back at the Slot Car Festival in May, I bought a couple of pro kart kits from Steve Ward at Penelope Pitlane.  Go Karts have been available for slot car circuits for fifty years but never in the correct 1/32 scale.  Steve Ward has managed this with a tiny motor driving the rear wheels with a belt rather than usual cogs.  The kit comes complete with everything needed except paint and decals.

It's all fits together well.  I sprayed one in black to go with Lotus decals, and the other in yellow to go with Shell.  I made my own decals and printed them out on clear and white decal paper, depending on the background they were going on to.

Here's how they turned out:

Andy confiscated my 1/14 scale Ninco Go Karts so that I couldn't practice before his Grand Prix in a couple of months.  Consequently, I can't do a comparison photo, but here they are on the track.

UK Slot Car Festival 2014

Last Saturday, Andy and I conducted our annual pilgrimage to the UK Slot Car Festival at the Heritage Motor Centre.  Beautiful weather for the first long journey in my new MGB on some fabulous A-roads.  The show was a little bigger and is now spread over two days.  As well as a large number of traders and manufacturers, there were lots of tracks to try out and appreciate.  Our favourite amongst these was the Targa Floria track and we chatted to the creator about the design and techniques used.

Another highlight was one chap's Italian Job project.  This had started with the minis and a wonderful scratchbuilt coach (which had powered braid inside so the minis could be driven up the ramp!) but grew to encompass all the main vehicles in the film - police cars, jeep, digger, the Lamborghini Miura that gets trashed at the beginning of the film (in both perfect and trashed versions!).  A really great job.

Another new product from Steve Ward of Penelope Pitlane caught my eye - genuine 1:32 scale go-karts.  There have been a couple of models of go-karts produced by Scalextric and Ninco.  The Ninco in particular are great (Andy probably has the largest collection in the country!) but at 1:18 scale, they are over-sized for my layout.  The new ones really are tiny but the scale is perfect.  They come as a kit but here's the couple painted up that were on display at the show.

In my continuing search for unusual pairs of cars to race against each other, I bought a couple manufactured by Carrera modeled on streamlined German cars from 1937 - the Auto Union Typ C Stromlinie and Mercedes-Benz W25 Avus Stromlinie (it says W125 on the packaging but it's definitely the W25).

They are huge cars with removable covers for the large but very skinny wheels.

They run very fast and have magnets fitted in the centre of the chassis and ahead of the rear axle.  I took the rear magnets out to slow them down, help get the rear end out and make them more interesting to drive.