New Spirit Peugeot 406 and BMW 2002 Slot Cars... [Archive]

PD2

07-30-2007, 10:59 PM

Review of Spirit Peugeot 406 Silhouette Elis Ref. 0501103

(http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148910)http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148910

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148911 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148911)

Aside from this being my first review of a slot car, this is also my first Spirit that I have owned. As you can see, it came in the standard 1/32 slot car case like most RTR cars from other manufacturers.

Upon initial inspection, the car’s paint looks very smooth with a few imperfections here and there. But not enough to detract from the racing tampo styling of the car. Personally, I liked the Elis color scheme and tampo setup better than the other models that were available. Here are some angles of the car:

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148912 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148912)

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148913 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148913)

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148914 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148914)

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148915 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148915)

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148916 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148916)

I next took the livery off to have a look inside. Here is the underside of the livery – notice the half filled out cockpit and interior detail, unlike some RTR’s that fill the car up from front to back with interior plastic:

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148917 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148917)

And here is the chassis layout from the top looking down – notice the very clean layout with very little plastic molding or extra plastic that may not be necessary:

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148918 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148918)

When looking over the chassis, one of the first things you notice is the front axles have some grub screw adjustments that allow you to adjust the ride height upward on the front axles. If you look back at the previous pics of the chassis from below, you will notice that the front axles do not have any grub screw adjustments the allow for upward height adjustment play as well. This is because the axle post have a pair of stubs that stick up from the chassis to place the axle in a static upward location. Though this is a nice feature, it allows for only partial adjustment of the front axles travel. Not a huge negative, but considering the new slot cars that are coming out with this feature, having an up and down travel adjustment is a “nice to have” in my book.

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148919 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148919)

The next noticeable item is the rear motor pod and rear configuration of the car. As you can clear see, this car is setup with an angle winder motor pod. I’ve tried to capture it in some of the pics here, but the pod is configured on a “tri-pod” kind of setup. There are three screws that hold the motor pod into place on the chassis – one in the center front of the pod and two in the rear. The two rear screws rest on springs that are compressed against the chassis/pod. It appears as though the pod “floats” on the front center screw, so to speak. This configuration reminds me a lot of the 1/12th scale on-road R/C car pods I have raced before.

The motor is a WFK-180W-23102B and as you can see, is very open at the windings. I like this personally and after remove the wrappers from my NINCO motors so that I can have the air freely move over the car for proper ventilation. Many people have asked me if I ever get debris or things that jam up my motor and so far, I have not experienced this. Since this is the way they motor came straight out of the box, it appears that Spirit believes that this is a rarity and sees no need to cover this whole in the can.

In addition, you will see that the motor is a equipped with a bronze pinion that engages a large plastic spur gear. The axles rest on bronze bearings and the car comes installed with a thin bar magnet that resides just in front of the angled motor.

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148922 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148922)

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148923 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148923)

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148924 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148924)

One of the first things that I do before I start racing a car is to begin looking for areas that may need adjusting, trimming, truing, etc. So I placed this car on the setup block. As you can see from the pictures, the one that that I thought I needed to do was to lower the front a bit so that the braids would touch better. When the car came straight out of the box the braids where laid flat against the guide and chassis and not even touching the setup block or what would become the slot rails. So I figured to increase the contact of the braids with the rails I’d not only lay out the braids a bit, but also drop the front end so it’s a bit closer to the rails. I did this by backing out the upward travel grub screws on the front axles all the way till the axles was hitting the top support. This definitely brought the front end lower and the braids a lot closer to the rails.

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148925 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148925)

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148926 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148926)

The next thing I do is to check the trueness of the tires straight out of the box. Placing the chassis on the block and rolling it a few time across the block brought a nice surprise to my eyes – trued tires! I have never seen tires this true! Grant it, it could use some light sanding, but I was shocked that the pits and valleys on the tires and much less the roundness of the wheels was this great straight out of the box! I decided not to touch them at all and see what happens.

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148927 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148927)

So before I get into the testing of the car on my track, let me give you some other stats on the car:

* Out of the Box Weight – 3.0oz or 85.05 grams total weight

* Body Weight (by itself) – 0.8oz or 22.68 grams (BTW – The body has two screws that secure it allowing for easy removal and access to the chassis)

* Chassis Weight (by itself) – 2.2oz or 62.37 grams (this includes the motor, tires, wheels, guide, pod, etc. – everything except the livery)

On to the test………..

I own a Scalextric Sport T2 plastic track. Setup, its 25 feet 2 inches in total length. Its powered by a Hornby 120V 18W Input and 19V AC 13VA power transformer supply pack. I used a Parma Plus 45 Ohm Controller (#218-D) that was using a Slot Car Corner Alligator clips to mini plug (Scalextric Sport mini plug) converter. Here is the way the track was setup:

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148928 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148928)

I left the magnet in and began making several passes with the car. The car felt very good and under control, but then again, I was not pushing the car yet. I ran the inside lane or other wise known as lane 1 of the track and as I continued to make laps I kept bringing my speed up. The very first thing that was noticeable was the rear sliding in the “C” curves that created a near 90* turn on my track. The car was very quick with plenty of power left in the motor considering my short track. I had several (not a bunch) of deslots where the rear whipped me out, but most of that was getting caught going to fast in the “C” curves again. I ran the car of approximately 10 minutes like this and was hitting any where from 3.5 to 4.0 second lap times (these are rough and were calculated using a stop watch at random times during the 10 minutes or so I ran the car.

I pulled the car off the track and decided to pull the magnet out of the car to see what it would do without a magnet installed. The first thing I noticed was that the rear end slide off a lot less and did not seem to have the tendency to slide off as easy. My lap times were down to about 3.0 to 3.5 seconds on average, but the car was still lacking something. After running the car for about 10 minutes, I pulled it off to have a look.

One of the first things that I noticed was that the front tires had lines on the outside edge that had been worn on both front tires:

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148929 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148929)

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148930 (http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6148930)

As I did a bit more inspection what I noticed had happened was as a result of me trying to bring the braids down closer to the rails I had not taken into account the front side to side slop the axle had. What was happening was when the car would take the corners and lean the axles and chassis would shift together and the chassis would lean into the front tires, thus cutting a line into them. I took the livery off and began adjusting my upward travel so that the tires would no longer touch the livery wheel well. I finally for the fronts done and started looking around again on the car.

The next thing I found was that the rear tires had something different about them too. When I’d place my thumb on the one tire that had the crown or spur gear and try to rotate it, the axle was hard to rotate and seemed to be binding. If I did the same thing to the side that did not have the crown/spur gear, the axles rolled freely. As I began to exam this what I noticed is that the nice little feature that Spirit created with the “tri-pod” setup was creating binding on my rear wheels and the rear wheel well on the crown/spur gear side. So I began making adjustments on the rear two screws that were “floating” on the springs. I eventually had to adjust the screws all the way down such that the springs were completely compressed before the rear wheel on the crown/spur gear side no longer touched the wheel well.

I replaced the livery and screwed it back down to the chassis and got it back on the track. At first, the car was still seeming to not have enough get up and go. So I took the car off the track and began looking it over again. If you look back over some of the pervious pictures I posted you will see the braiding. One of the things that I think was happening was not enough contact with the rails. At first I thought all I had to do was pull the braid out further and further to make contact with the rails, but that was still not doing the trick. Finally I pulled the braids toward the center of the guide flag and began trying to shape the braids so that they laid down closer to the guide flag and then slightly bent them out to make contact with the rails. Finally, success! The car came alive and began speeding around the track freer, better, and with more ability than ever before! I raced the car for nearly 10 minutes again and this time got consistently 3.0 second laps with little to no rear fish tailing or deslotting!

Still not satisfied, I decided to pull the car off one more time and try the old trick of backing off the livery/body screws about a ¼ turn each. I placed the car back on the track and the car came alive again with hardly any fish tailing, no deslotting and definitely faster lap times – some less than 3.0 seconds, but still always very close to the 3.0 seconds mark.

After nearly an hour of driving the car I decided I had the car setup fairly close to where I needed to be to go race it at the local wood track, HSARC. I decided to give it a quick inspection and threw it into my setup block. Looking again at the tires I surprised to find that the tires that I was shocked to find true, still looked the same with little to no wear or additional volleying! I’m not sure of the compound or make of tires that Spirit runs, but I’ve been very impressed with their stickiness as well as their ability to wear very evenly and nicely.

My bottom line is that the Spirit Peugeot 406 is a VERY nice racer! Anyone looking for a great car that takes little to no setup straight out of the box ought to give it a look. Personally, for it being my first Spirit, I’m definitely impressed with the quality, workmanship, as well as the cars features. Definitely worth its money! Give it a try and find out for yourself today!

PD2:thumbsup: