Slot lubrication

The track has been installed for well over a year now and it's never had a thorough clean.  In recent months, I have been following a long thread on SlotCarIllustrated about an Australian lubricant called Inox.  Racers have been claiming amazing things about this stuff - so much that Inox themselves now have picked up on the slot car market on their own website - and I thought it was about time I gave it a try.  It's not available in the UK but didn't cost much to get it shipped from Australia.

I made a cleaning tool by glueing a couple of old Scalextric guides (without the metal brades) into a piece of wood, so that I could easily guide a cloth sprayed in Inox along the track rails.

You can see from the photo how much oxidation came off the track.  The rails didn't look too dirty (the loft isn't damp so no serious corrosion) but the cloth was black by the time I'd finished both tracks.

In cleaning and protecting the tracks, the Inox has significantly improved the connection between the car braids and the rails.  This leads to noticeably faster driving and quicker lap times.  I estimate this has taken a second off the quickest cars' laps, and more off the slower cars.  Certainly I found I had to be more careful with the trigger than I have in recent months.  A great improvement.

Aston vs Ferrari

In 'Goldfinger', the henchmen drive a Mercedes-Benz 180.  I wanted something more special than that to race against the DB5.  In the early scenes of 'GoldenEye', Bond races the Aston against a Ferrari 355 Spider driven by Xenia Onatopp.

I'm not a big fan of 80s and 90s Ferraris so figured something more classic should race against my DB5.  A car I love from the early sixties with a good racing pedigree is the Ferrari 250 GTO.

This car represents chassis no 4399 as raced by Mike Parkes at the Coppa Inter Europa race at Monza, Italy in September 1963.  The car finished 1st in class and 2nd overall, losing to an Aston Martin appropriately enough, one of the two DP214 prototypes.  I found this newspaper clipping of the Ferrari in the actual race.

I bought this car to cheer me up after being too ill to visit the annual Slotcar swapmeet at Swindon with Andy.

The cars look great together - almost too good to race, but I don't want to become one of those types of collectors.  These are slot cars after all and I've got plenty of superglue!

The name's Bond... James Bond

As a kid, I had a small Matchbox version of the Aston Martin DB5 that Sean Connery used in Goldfinger, with a working ejector seat.  That's long gone now but Scalextric have just released a slot car version and Louise got it me for Christmas.

This is a nicely detailed model; I particularly like the wire wheels and spinners.  But it also has some of the gadgets that Q described to Bond in the film (classic line: "I never joke about my work, 007"). The car has working front and rear lights but the sidelights at the front have machine guns protruding from them (non-functioning!).  Operated by the boot catch is a bullet proof shield that pops up.

And operated by a lever on the side of the car, is the working ejector seat.  The set comes with a bollard that clips to the edge of the Scalextric track so the ejector seat is triggered as the car drives past.  The passenger flies out but I haven't lost him yet!

All this in a smart presentation box.  This is the 1st of three.  The other two are representations of the DB5s in GoldenEye and Casino Royale.  I suspect that those will just have different number plates and no gadgets, so the Goldfinger model is the one to get.

Vee-dubs

Thanks to Andy's 4WD, we made it across town to get together for Rivals Christmas.  And also thanks to Andy, I'm now the proud owner of another couple of slot cars - VW Golf Mk 1s produced by Spirit, who also made the fabulous BMW 2002s Andy tracked down for my birthday.

I kept my coat on to go up in the loft to try them out.  It's minus 8 here at the moment and the track had contracted and come apart in one place, but no permanent damage.  Like the Beemers, these cars are a hoot - they drive very fast and slide all over the place.

Porsche 911

It's been a bit cold up in the loft recently so not a lot has happened on the Scalextric front.  But I have had a successful clear out of cars on eBay - either ones that didn't live up to expectations, or that I'd bought at auction for such a good price, I thought I could turn a profit... to buy more cars I really wanted.

So the first new purchase is a companion for a Porsche 911 that Andy bought me quite a while ago - a 1973 Le Mans version.

I wanted a similar vintage with lots of livery, and found another Fly model, this time the 1982 911SC Rally El Corte Ingles.

This version is suspiciously plain as delivered.  But underneath is a plain package intriguingly labelled "Adults Only".  This contains the transfers for the main sponsor - Rothmans cigarettes.  After soaking in water and sliding the transfers on to the car, it now looks complete...

Tarting up the Marcos LM600

This Marcos Le Mans car is very popular in slot car circles - Fly produce lots of different versions.  Andy bought me this one last Christmas but I've always had trouble with the gears.

It's from a range called Fly Poly Starters and they are aimed at the younger driver who crashes a lot - hence no wing mirrors or aerials, with fewer transfers and a robust wing.  After going through one gear, I've fixed the driveshaft and replaced the gear and pinion, and now it runs very quickly.

But I always thought it a shame that the driver was so plain, so I painted him and the interior.


Looks good fitted back in the car, but perhaps I need to get some more stickers for it now...

(Updated 25 October 2010)  I've now painted the alloy wheels, front grille, exhaust and bonnet catches:

Camera Car

I bought an Action Camera this week - a small camera with various attachments for fixing it to bike handlebars, car windscreens and even for strapping it to your head.  It's the last I thought would be most fun - I'll try it out ski-ing next February.

In an inexplicable oversight by the manufacturers, it didn't come with an attachment to fix it to a slot car.  So I had to make one.

You can see a very short clip of test footage around the track here or embedded below if you're reading this in your browser.