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Stopping deslotting

Squeezing out those last few tenths
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wixwacing
Marshal!!!
Posts: 1871
Joined: Thu Jul 10, 2008 9:22 am

Stopping deslotting

Post by wixwacing »

With more and more pressure on me to get my cars to perform well these days in the face of advancing years. I had to think long and hard about one fault some of my shallow guide models still had, that is, deslotting in corners!! not only deslotting but understeer deslotting!!. That's when the model goes straight on like it has lost its guide. In the past I have concocted all sorts of methods to get the models to behave. Deepening guides by surgery, fitting other make guides into shallow guided models etc. But in a moment of desperation recently I found the ultimate quick fix....and I mean quick!! I was trying to get my favourite SCX Peugeot rally car to go faster but was annoyed to find it rolled on in tight negative cambered corners???>> Sweepers were fine, but just these pesky hairpins you know! After messing with some other models I asked my host if they had a vice in their shed. They did and a fairly good one too. The first attempt was to place the guide in the vice and squeeze all **** out of it. This worked well but didn't get the depth of guide I would have liked, so a few weeks later and another potential giant slaying SCX car....and the same problem? Mmmmmmm? What to do? It came to me that the full guide was just a little too thick for good results, so I squeezed just the leading edge of the guide and presto, the main body of the guide is still the same length, but the leading edge had put on more than a millimetre of depth, and there was room for more!. The good thing is that seventy five percent of the guide is still the thickness, but the business end, the bit which is first to leave the slot was twenty percent deeper... and it works,. Now I can put my cars on the track with confidence knowing that if it is going to deslot, it will be at a higher terminal velocity, and it will be an oversteer deslot, meaning the guide is doing what I pay it for!!


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When I'm not racing slotcars,
I'm out in the back yard, burning food!!

When I win, it's because of my talent, not my car or my controller!
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