www.slotcarmag.co.uk
ISSUE 12 • VOLUME 2 •FEBRUARY 2013
FOR RACERS, COLLECTORS AND BUILDERS
LiFE Tales:
The concluding part of Maurizio Ferrari’s journey to form Slot.it
Battlefield Europe:
Brett Jurmann remembers the epic battles between the BMW CSL and Ford Capri
Dutch Trio Rally:
Hub Habets shows his foldaway rally track, inspired by his travels to GB
Proxy Racing:
Build a car, send it across the world and hope to win a race you can’t drive in
PLUS – All Slot Car:
Has Ostorero produced an all-encompassing answer to the lack of suitable modern F1s at club level?
BMW M1 Team Gunston – 1000km Kyalami 1979 Limited Edition
BMW M1 Team Gunston from Flyslot, Driven by Marc Surer & Trevor Van Rooyen. Exclusive Limited Edition of only 380 pieces produced for a company in South Africa. Each one is individually numbered.
ORDER HOTLINE: 01282 612418 EMAIL: info@pendleslotracing.co.uk
Ref: F051301
Mag SLOT CAR
Contents
FOR RACERS, COLLECTORS AND BUILDERS In This Issue:
2
Pit Board:
5
LiFE Tales:
8 9 11
End of Year As we publish the last magazine of year two, we take a look at a club that has seen many a transformation over its existence – Molesey... by Phil Upton and Julian Edwards. Maurizio and Slot.it Maurizio Ferrari explains how his initial foray into slot racing made him realise a world of wonky wheels and bent axles really needed sorting... and Slot.it was born.
Crossword solution: Did ya kill Granny in frustration? Christmas was stressful enough without having to fathom out Ric’s Festive Crossword, but now here at last are the answers...
On Track With HO: Andy Player explains the needs of the HO track Slot cars need track to run and the track that HO cars need is a little different from the 1/32 track we’re used to.
A Little Light Gardening: It’s all in the detail Against all the odds, flowers grow everywhere... even by the roadside. Lynne Haines shows how using the detail kits really makes the kerbside come alive.
SlotCarMAG is an independent magazine for the Slot Car enthusiast. It is produced bi-monthly and available to purchase from either: www.pendleslotracing.co.uk (hard-copy, hi res digital) www.lulu.com/uk (hard-copy, print-to-order hi res digital with laminated cover) www.slotcarmag.co.uk (hi-res pdf download) For further information, please contact the publisher via email. Address opposite.
ISSUE 12 • VOLUME 2 • FEBRUARY 2013 visit: www.slotcarmag.co.uk
15
Proxy Racing:
17
An All-Star Cast:
20 23 24
by Ken Wehnert Why would someone build a unique car, test it until it drives to perfection... and then send it off around the world for an unknown person to race? Welcome to the All Slot Car “Grand Prix” Cars Marc Abbott takes delivery of what seems to be the answer to the modern club racer’s dreams – an easy-toset-up single-seater that actually performs rather well!
Battlefield Europe: BMW v Capri Brett Jurmann reminisces about a past era, when two titans battled across Europe. He is also delighted that it’s now possible to recreate that epic struggle in 1/32.
Dilworth: An X-rated look at a body called Lola Dilworth, late at night, has a mission... to caress the subtle forms of Lola into something ravishing. But his wife sleeps lightly in the next room!
Dutch Trio: A space-saving rally design Milton Keynes 2006 and an idea from Roger Gilham’s 6th edition inspired Hub to create a rally track that is large, but can be hidden away.
PUBLISHING / WEB: Wayne Tooke: info@slotcarmag.co.uk EDITORIAL: Ric Woods: ric-woods@slotcarmag.co.uk ART & DESIGN: Marc Abbott: marc-abbott@slotcarmag.co.uk SlotCarMAG is printed digitally by LDP Ltd
ldpltd@btconnect.com
Disclaimer: Whilst every effort has been made to accurately compile the information contained herein, SlotCarMAG or any of its contributors or advertisers accepts no liability for any errors and omissions or any inadvertent disclosure of any information not meant for publication. SlotCarMAG neither endorses or accepts responsibility for the reproduction of material supplied that is of sub-standard quality, such as photocopies, laser prints, pre-printed photographs, low resolution digital images etc, and reserve the right to refuse the use of such material, products or services of advertisers in this publication. Opinions expressed shall not necessarily be that of the SlotCarMAG. All information should be verified before being acted upon. Copyright: Contents of this magazine or our web site, cannot be reproduced in any way, shape or form without the written permission of the publishers.
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1
Pit Board I can’t believe it, but the next time you read my column it will be in our two-year anniversary issue; my, how time flies! As for this one, I’m pleased to say we have the usual diversity – from plants to proxy, from Maurizio to Molesey and lots more besides. And as for Dilworth… you’d better find that out for yourselves! We are always extremely grateful for the articles we receive, actually from five different countries in this issue. If you would like to contribute, we would be delighted to hear from you. You can contact us at info@slotcarmag.co.uk. Until next time, have fun! Wayne Tooke
Molesey Scalextric Club has an enviable reputation for being one of the strongest and most competitive in the Greater London area. Julian Edwards and Phil Upton take us from a front room carpet to 170 feet of Ninco in one easy lesson… 2
M
olesey Scalextric Club was formed in 1978 by Brian George. The initial venue for the club was in fact Brian’s front room in a traditional ‘on the carpet’ format, dodging table legs and collecting fluff round the axles with a vengeance. The membership at this time consisted mainly of Brian and a few good friends. The club expanded quickly and found larger premises in the form of Molesey scout hut and later Esher Rugby club. At both these venues, the members had to build the track at the beginning of each race night and pack it away again at the end of the evening, leading to the inevitable warping of the Scalextric ‘Classic’ track. What they really needed was a venue where the track could be left assembled permanently... In 1987 the club moved yet again to Elmbridge leisure centre, where it enjoyed its first permanent layout. This was a modest-sized (around 80ft) six-lane Scalextric circuit with electronic Scalextric lap counters. During this period, the club raced two to three classes of car every race night and, due to the somewhat standard nature of models in the mid ’80s, provided some phenomenally close and fun racing.
Above: 1991 - A permanant 6-lane Scalextric track
However, plans were already being drawn for the most ambitious move yet. In 1990 the Club opened in Ray Road, Molesey and found itself in the enviable position of having its own self-contained premises on land rented from the local council. The clubhouse had a new six-lane Scalextric circuit, running to approximately 100ft and fitted with a fully computerised race control system.
The magazine for racers, collectors and builders – Slot Car MAG
Picture insets: Custom-built 6-lane routed track. Main Pic: The current huge Ninco track
In the following years the track underwent several revamps and hosted many exciting events, but in 1997 the committee reached the monumental decision to ditch the now rather tired Scalextric track in favour of something a little more bespoke and so Molesey took delivery of its first custom-built routed wood track: six lanes, 160ft in length with a high-grip gloss finish. The most notable feature of this track was ‘Daytona’, a flat out (for some) 180-degree banked bend that really sorted the long trousers from the short ones. We enjoyed many years of fantastic racing on this circuit, though sadly, by the mid-noughties, the writing was on the wall for the clubhouse. Elmbridge Borough Council had sold the land the club stood on to developers and were keen for us to ‘move on’. This cloud did have a silver lining, however. One of the conditions of the planning consent was that the club should be ‘looked after’. We moved into temporary accommodation (an almost derelict
warehouse) while the new premises were being built as part of a massive new housing project. The biggest tragedy of this situation was the demise of the track, as it was impossible to move. Once everything else had been moved out, a very large piece of machinery turned up and flattened both the club and the track with it. We had somewhere to go, but nothing to race on.
Slot Car MAG – The magazine for racers, collectors and builders
This was swiftly remedied with the purchase of an old four-lane Polistil track from the Burnt Oak club. Although somewhat on the basic side it
3
S E L TA
ri a r r e F izio r u a M by
Part 3:
With his passion for slot car racing and an engineering mind, Maurizio decides that the state of cars on offer really leaves a lot to be desired...
B
ack at my club, stars started aligning to give birth to Slot.it. I came back from a trip to China with motor samples for my customer, one of which was quite good on our club track and lifted me from the last position to the top spot. Hence, when I was promptly asked to stop using such a motor, I found out that the only way forward was to make it commercially accessible to the masses; Slot.it was born and so was the first V12. A major remaining hurdle for racers of the so-called ‘plastic cars’ was to find, or create, round rear wheels and axles to get rid of vibrations. The quality of standard parts in the market was
Slot Car MAG – The magazine for racers, collectors and builders
frankly poor, forcing racers to cherry pick rear assemblies from several cars, spending hours to make them straight and well behaved. On the Italian Polistil tracks, this was the only possible way to have a decent car. As an engineer, this seemed to me quite absurd, and as a racer, I knew I would have never have the time, and possibly the skills, to do what I saw other racers do. So, out of my own necessity, we designed the first Slot.it wheels, axles, spurs, pinions, bushings and, most of all, inline crowns, with a design that coupled the standard ‘Scalextric’ type of assembly with a metal insert that allowed racers to assemble
5
On Track with HO by Andy Player
Slot cars need track to run and the track that HO cars need is a little different from the 1/32 track we're used to...
H
O slot car track is obviously smaller, but it's the arrangement of the electric rails that is the biggest difference – they are vertical rather than flat. Think railways. With 1/32 track, the electric rails run next to the slot. In HO, the ultra-thin rails sit a quarter of an inch either side of the slot. A picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look. There are a number of different HO track systems available. All HO cars are compatible with each system, but the different manufacturers' track pieces do not fit together. It is generally agreed that Tomy AFX track is the best system out there, offering curved pieces in five different radii, running from tight six-inch bends up to sweeping eighteen-inch curves. In addition to the curves, straights come in lengths of three, six, nine and fifteen inches. This three-inch geometry means any track design should join up without any problems.
There are some things that all the track systems share, such as the hard plastic construction and three-inch geometry. However, rail height does differ, with Tomy rail sitting lower than on the Tyco, Life Like and Micro Scalextric systems. Rail height matters. Traction magnets act on the metal rails, so the higher the rails are, the nearer they are to the magnets and the more downforce there is. For serious racers, a difference of a few thousandths of an inch makes a big difference to car set-up. The track we've talked about works well, but it is toy track. To go a step further, we need to go routed. Routed HO tracks are quite different from 1/32 wood tracks. The best 1/32 routed layouts are works of art, but an experienced DIY-er can knock a decent one together with some mdf and copper tape. Not so with HO. Firstly, the track surface needs to be smoother and with perfect joins. Sintra – expanded closed-cell PVC – is the material of choice, but it is trickier to rout than mdf.
Close-up of the Bowman sectional track
Slot Car MAG – The magazine for racers, collectors and builders
9
A little light gardening by Lynne Haines
with laser cut kits
T
his is a slight departure from what I originally intended to cover in this issue, but I was working on another project utilizing these paper plant kits, and thought they might be of interest to some of you. These laser cut paper kits by Kamazukuri (also listed as Wako) are designed for use in military dioramas and the like and so are available in the usual militaria modelling scales of 1:35 and 1:48. At between JPY 700 to 1000 to buy direct from Japan they do not fit easily into my usual ‘cheap and cheerful’ methodology. However, they do make fabulous highlights for vignettes on a track or for display dioramas which are usually viewed from close range. And they need not be used en masse. Due to the military target audience the range of plants available are mainly European or jungle in nature. Available kits include trees, palms, ivy, ferns and flowers. Some kits are better value for money than others. Some of the kits I have purchased: (clockwise from rear left) Fern, Ivy, Daisies and Grapevines. Of these, I have yet to try the Ivy.
Slot Car MAG – The magazine for racers, collectors and builders
Included in each kit is a sheet of paper containing the plant parts. Some also contain paper-covered wire for stems. Some of the kits contain a sheet of instructions. All of these are in Japanese, but some include diagrams or photos that may help in construction.
11
Proxy Racing
It’s global and it’s growing in popularity, but what is proxy racing all about? Ken Wehnert explains how building a car then sending it into the unknown has an excitement and attraction all of its own.
Beautiful, yet rugged, cars similar to this BRM P48 built by David Lawson are used in Proxy racing.
I
was introduced to proxy racing when I read articles on the Dave Jones Half Tonner Invitational Proxy Races. I was just starting to build my own Grand Prix cars from the ’fifties, and I was amazed at the level of detail and the look of the cars that I saw in those articles. There was a proxy race featured on the Slot Car Illustrated website called the Vintage Race Across America. This was for NC1-powered sports cars and I built my first proxy car for that event to see if I could build a competitive car. The format was changed at the end of the series to 1.5 litre Grand Prix cars, so I built some new cars for that race as it was the closest thing to getting into the Dave Jones race. I contacted one of the U.S. entrants of the Dave Jones race and sent him my almost-completed car to test drive. He was impressed with my weird design and its good grip and, as it turned out, I won the first VRAA proxy series championship for the 1.5 litre GP cars. The fellow in charge of the series announced his retirement from the VRAA and I agreed to take on the responsibility for running the
Slot Car MAG – The magazine for racers, collectors and builders
by Ken Wehnert
y involves ng typicall another ci ra y ox it to : Pr Definition car, then mailing tched against other a ma ng be di il to a ll bu ere it wi . Cars are built series of ce location wh a ra a in n in rs e ru similar ca t of rules and ar points allocated specific se est drivers, with on. All points race g positi races by gu l for the to finishin g in rd grand tota companied by a co a ac s rd wa to ac are often where entrants gathered go t oxy races series. Pr Elegance, a contes car. -looking Concours d' r the best compete fo series. I believe the VRAA has become one of the premier proxy racing series for scratch-built 1/32nd scale cars, with over twenty entries from all over the world each year. I have entered many different proxy races over the past five years, including the International Proxy Series for pre-1964 NC1powered sports cars, which is based in Australia and has 32 entrants for a dozen races staged in Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., Greece, the U.S. and Canada. The new Tasman Cup proxy race was held ‘off season’ from the VRAA in New Zealand and Australia for 2.5 litre GP cars that were raced in the early 1960s. I participated in a Nascar proxy race staged in the U.S. and Germany, a Fly Truck proxy race for modified ‘semi’ trucks and a ‘Cheetah’ proxy race in the U.S. that was an event for that one specific body type. I currently have a car running in the Scratch-built Group 5 proxy race series in Australia. There are a lot to choose from and proxy series cater for many different car types, with quite a few of them hosted on the Slot Car Illustrated website.
15
All Star Cast An
by Marc Abbott
The “Formula GP” cars from All Slot Car (Ostorero) are here... and boy do they perform!
I
f you’ve ever watched ‘The Thin Blue Line’ you may remember the quote: “I haven’t been this excited since they introduced the American-style siren.” Well that’s getting towards how I felt about the impending delivery of this car, which might seem a bit OTT, but we haven’t had a new modern-style F1 or single-seater that can perform well at club level for quite a while. It seems crazy to me that an SCX Ferrari F1/87 is still a front-runner. Ok, ok. So maybe you race Scalextric cars with magnets at your club or, like I do, manage to get a modern SCX F1 to perform quite well without. But we’re in an era in which Slot.it and NSR etc. rule and you can hurtle a car into a corner and trust what’s going to happen. So why hasn’t this been done to Formula 1 slot cars in recent years? I’m not even going to try and answer that, because I just want to jump straight to this kit... It arrives in simple packaging and will take very little time to construct (if you don’t paint it). It’s fairly obvious where everything goes, although it would have been easier if some simple instructions had been included; I
mean, how much would a simple black-and-white diagram have cost on a sheet of A5 paper? Still, besides that easy-to-get-over gripe, all parts (except two) fitted together perfectly onto a pre-finished chassis complete with all axles/wheels/gears and motor; there were only a couple of excess plastic flashes to file or cut away. The nose I have left simply press-fitted in as mine is nice and secure. A crash will happen in the future and I want to be sure that it’s easy to remove and repair or replace. The rear wing, though, will need gluing as it falls off just by breathing on it. The “finished” car (see main picture) looks like a modern F1, unless you’re going to get picky about it. If you’re a purist, just think of it as some kind of hibred feeder series into Grand Prix racing. Perhaps the driver lacks some detail; well actually it’s basically a head on top of a piece of shaped black plastic, yet, with some deft detailing, most of us could make a fairly good attempt at painting the driver’s fireproof overalls. Sideways on, you can see the electrical wires, so make sure you place them in the grooves set in the chassis and perhaps change to some black ones for added inconspicuousness. It’s pretty bare at the back, all the gearing and axles can be seen, so maybe a bit of suspension detailing could have been included, but it doesn’t really bother me that much. My main gripe (again only a small one) is that the front wheel inserts don’t fit inside the rims. It took perhaps ten minutes to sand them down
All Slot Car kit kindly supplied by Pendle Slot Racing
Slot Car MAG – The magazine for racers, collectors and builders
17
Battlefield
BMW CSL v Capri RS3100
F
rom time to time in motor racing, car manufacturers go head to head in competition, resulting in a no-expense-spared contest, that is, until the bubble bursts and it can no longer be justified. In the early 1970s, BMW and Ford developed and raced two special touring cars that pushed the budgets and the rules to the very limit. In this first part we will have a look at the 1:1 racers that became instant ‘hero’ cars: the BMW CSL and the Capri RS3100. In the next edition we’ll take a closer look at the slot car versions.
20
The magazine for racers, collectors and builders – Slot Car MAG
T The idea of the Dutch Trio Track
started at the swapmeet in Milton
Keynes in 2006. After driving some laps on the portable Slot Rally GB
track, I noticed that the driving was very smooth compared with my
bumpy Scalextric Classic track. Back
home I did not know where it could be placed, but Roger Gilham showed, in his 6th edition book, how he stored
his track with a tip-up construction
against the garage wall. After some
measurements, I decided to use two pieces of 2.44m x 1.22m MDF that
resulted in a table of 4.88m x 1.22mm.
With a maximum total height of 19 cm, including the trees on the track, it
would be still possible to park the car
in the garage with the track tipped up
against the garage wall.
24
The magazine for racers, collectors and builders – Slot Car MAG