SRC Porsche 914

SRC carries the lingering scent of the old FLY days… or more precisely, of Spirit, the company that spun off from FLY.

What I mean is that the engineering always feels slightly half-finished, strangely impersonal and lacking in passion, and somehow there is always some small detail that leaves you just a little disappointed.

With the Alfa Romeo 33T12, for example, the dimensions between the cockpit floor and upper chassis were miscalculated, leaving no clearance whatsoever for the motor lead wires. I ultimately had no choice but to raise the ride height simply to create enough space for them.

And now, with this 914, the relationship between the motor mount and the rear axle bushing carrier is incorrect.

The motor itself is supposed to brace the rear axle bushings in position, yet the motor is not securely fixed within the mount to begin with.

The car does not produce enough power to rotate the motor violently inside the chassis or anything dramatic like that, so in practice I simply shrug and think, “Well… I suppose this is just how it is.”

Still, these little signs of careless engineering inevitably leave me disappointed.

To make matters worse, the locking tabs securing the motor mount also lack rigidity. On the orange car, one of the tabs had already broken.

Neither SRC themselves nor dealers anywhere in the world seem to stock spare narrow-body 914 chassis anymore, so there is no real repair path available. Complaining about it accomplishes nothing.

Again, the only realistic solution is simply to glue the chassis and motor together and move on with life.

What irritates me more is that SRC themselves seem eager to forget the narrow-body 914 ever existed.

The wide-body 914/6, meanwhile, continues receiving competition-oriented “Chrono” updates, revised versions, and even replacement chassis support.

That sort of corporate attitude ― abandoning the products and customers who supported the company in its earlier years ― is disappointing in its own way as well.

I had absolutely no interest in the wide-body 914/6, so I specifically searched for the narrow-body version instead.

Initially I chose the blue car because I intended to give it a Gitanes-style livery. But then I remembered the Michelin livery from the Mercedes C9, and decided instead to transfer that visual theme onto the 914 for my wife’s car.

As for lighting, the body was clearly never designed with bulbs or LEDs in mind, so I eventually abandoned the idea altogether.

Had I expected to live longer, I probably would have scratchbuilt raised headlamps and fabricated new taillight lenses from clear plastic sheet.

But realistically, I simply do not have enough remaining time to become deeply involved with this particular car.

Carrera BMW 320 Turbo Flachbau

Just like the CSLs, these two cars genuinely surprised me.
I honestly had not expected modern Carrera cars to perform this well.

In fact, I even caught myself thinking:
“Do people really need Sideways cars at all anymore?”

Of course, these things ultimately come down to personal taste. But I belong to an older generation of slot car enthusiasts, and I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the modern tendency for beginners to assume that highly competition-oriented cars will somehow allow them to drive fast without first developing proper driving skills.

On commercial tracks, “beginner” has nothing to do with age.
Naturally their car control skills are underdeveloped, but very often their manners and social awareness are equally immature. Traditionally, a certain degree of hesitation or modesty acted as a psychological brake that helped newcomers integrate smoothly with the people around them.

But nowadays, thanks to the growing popularity of what I can only describe as idiot-proof cars, completely inexperienced drivers with neither manners nor restraint charge around the circuit shoving veteran racers aside with an attitude of “Outta my way! Move it!” while constantly deslotting and causing chaos for everyone nearby.

People like that would honestly be better off buying home race sets and staying inside their own houses.
But ironically, those same people are usually the ones most desperate for attention:
“Look at me! Look at me! Aren’t I amazing?”
“Everybody tell me how awesome I am!”

From a veteran’s perspective, however, there is not even a millimeter of anything impressive happening.

Most of us are not even paying attention to them at all.
We simply stay alert because collisions with people like that are dangerous.

In Japan, commercial slot car tracks are now slowly approaching extinction.
It increasingly feels as though the newer generation is simply pushing the older generation aside in exactly the same manner described above.

The growing disconnect between generations has become severe across every aspect of society, and perhaps this is simply a broader historical current that nobody can really stop.

Even among long-time regulars, the prevailing attitude tends to be:
“It is not my circuit. If the owner is not complaining, it is not really my place to say anything.”

Almost nobody goes out of their way to teach newcomers anymore.
Society itself increasingly feels that way.

In communities built on the assumption that people will remain together for many years, there is meaning in investing time and energy into helping others improve.

But now we live in a prolonged era of economic decline.
The person offering advice today may disappear from the hobby tomorrow.

People no longer feel they can afford to spend their energy taking care of others.
The world just keeps getting colder.

Carrera BMW 3.0 / 3.5 CSL

Carrera digital cars present certain complications when used on analog tracks.

Sometimes the lights work properly, sometimes they do not. Sometimes the brakes become excessively strong, sometimes almost nonexistent. Sometimes the car can reverse direction, sometimes not.

There is supposedly an official “ritual” for running digital Carrera cars on analog tracks ― things like pulling the trigger a certain number of times immediately after power-up ― but in reality the results depend heavily on the particular combination of car, controller, and track. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not, which makes the whole thing difficult to trust.

In fact, when I tried a procedure that had previously worked successfully at another circuit on my friend’s Ninco track, the headlights illuminated correctly, but the brakes defaulted to full braking with no modulation whatsoever. That was obviously no way to enjoy racing.

I carefully repeated the “ritual” several more times, but the result never changed.

After a great deal of research, the following forum topic should be extremely helpful for resolving this issue:
SlotForum discussion thread

I eventually concluded that the only real solution was to fabricate my own Y-cable and bypass the digital circuitry directly.

Once I did that, everything finally behaved properly: the lights worked normally, the brakes became smooth and natural, and it became clear that this was both the simplest and the only truly reliable solution.

Afterward, I installed a Ninco guide, removed the chassis magnets and added ballast weight, replaced the rear tires with Paul Gage XPG urethanes and trued them, and slightly raised the ride height to prevent the motor top from interfering with the cockpit floor once body float was introduced.

Finally, I added Patto's tire decals, completing the race preparation.

I had always assumed Carrera cars would feel sluggish under acceleration and weak under braking, but I was surprised by how powerful these cars felt even with the stock motors, and the handling turned out to be remarkably good as well.

I am certain my wife will enjoy these.

On a slot car track, she is far more of a speed addict than I am.

SCX Ferrari 550 GTS with MiniRacingStudios 3DP-Chassis

When it comes to the defining GT1 cars of the early 2000s, this 550GTS surely deserves a place near the very top. It was beautiful, it was fast, and above all, it was strong.

And by “strong,” I do not mean merely capable of producing a single spectacular result. True strength means continuing to win consistently, conquering an entire series, and carrying both the beauty and authority worthy of a true champion. That is exactly what people seek in a GT racing car.

Ferrari’s later official factory project, the 575GTC, had already been modeled by Carrera long before SCX touched the subject. But this is not about that car.

This is about the 550 Maranello that Prodrive developed independently before Ferrari itself became involved ― the one that was genuinely successful.

Considering its outstanding racing record, it always struck me as strange that no slot car manufacturer modeled the 550GTS for such a long time.

SCX finally did, but the result completely missed the car’s defining visual character: the massively widened fenders that made the real machine look unmistakably muscular even at a glance were barely represented at all.

And yet, paradoxically, areas that should have remained razor-low and tightly drawn ― especially the nose ― were instead given unnecessary bulk and thickness.

To make matters worse, the rear wing was fitted with a strangely shaped that did nothing to sharpen or discipline the overall silhouette as a racing car, leaving the whole body looking oddly loose and unfocused.

To use one of my usual expressions, it feels like “something that could never be mistaken for anything other than a 550 GTS, yet somehow looks nothing like a real 550 GTS at the same time.”

Still, SCX paintwork remains undeniably beautiful and extremely durable, so I wanted to avoid any major body modifications involving stripping the paint, reshaping the fenders with putty, sanding everything back down, or completely redoing the livery.

This time, I was casually doing a bit of web scouting to see if any new 3DP chassis had been released, and I happened to come across MiniRacingStudios. Looking through their product lineup, I found a rather unusual anglewinder chassis for the SCX Maranello, and that’s what gave me the idea for this project.

So, from here, the goal should be to build a car capable of running competitively alongside the Scalextric Aston Martin DBR9 I had previously completed using a Slotrax 3D-printed chassis.

For the Aston DBR9, I used an NSR King 25k motor ― rated at 25,000 rpm and 270 g·cm at 12 volts.

Among the spare motors I currently had available was a Ninco NC12. Its official specifications are 23,500 rpm and 270 g·cm at 14.8 volts, which roughly translates to about 19,000 rpm and 219 g·cm at 12 volts.

Still, with more than 200 g·cm of torque available, I figured the final driving characteristics could probably be sorted out through gearing.

The MiniRacingStudios 3D-printed chassis itself is produced from quite a soft material. For racing on my friend’s Ninco track, that should be perfectly acceptable. On a commercial wood track, however, it would almost certainly become excessively flexible and unsettled.

Anticipating that behavior, I chose a 1.0 mm offset anglewinder motor mount in order to lower the center of gravity as much as possible.

To allow proper body float, I trimmed the chassis and glued the front and side aerodynamic parts directly onto the body itself.

At the same time, I also corrected the awkward body proportions ― particularly the overly thick, upward-tilted nose ― by carefully trimming and narrowing the lower edges from the front splitter back toward the side sills, creating a more natural wedge shape from front to rear.

For the wheels, I discarded the clumsy-looking stock SCX spoke wheels entirely.

Instead, I ordered a spare chassis and axle set from the Scalextric Bentley Continental GT3 and adapted its similarly styled wheels for use here. The front shaft was shortened slightly and reused directly as the front axle assembly, while the rear plastic wheels were machined down into inserts to fit Mitoos R9 19×10.5 alloy wheels.

In fact, this was already my second attempt at modifying a 550.

The first time was roughly fifteen years ago, when I wanted something capable of racing alongside Ninco JGTC／Super-GT cars. Back then, I shortened and adapted an anglewinder Supra chassis to make it work.

This time, however, although the car still uses an anglewinder layout, it is built around a Slot.it motor mount system, meaning future maintenance and servicing will remain possible. That gives me some peace of mind.

Of course, the reality is that I will probably be gone from this world before long, so I personally will never perform that maintenance anyway.

And yet, almost automatically, I still build things while thinking ahead toward future modifications and long-term serviceability.

Perhaps it is simply my personality ― or perhaps a habit permanently ingrained by my profession ― but every time I notice myself designing something with future revisions already in mind, I suddenly snap back to reality.

I remember that these little hand-built projects existed only to fill an unexpected extra half-year of time I was never supposed to have.

And when I realize that even these records themselves are part of that, the entire thing begins to feel overwhelmingly lonely and empty.

Scalextric Late ’80s Legendary Group A Touring Cars

＜#10  TWR-JRA Jaguar XJS / 1985 Bathurst 1000 Winner＞
＜#  6  Eggenberger-Texaco Ford Sierra RS500 / 1987 Season＞

As for these two Scalextric Group A cars themselves, I made no major performance modifications.

Both still use the stock motors and stock axles. The only functional upgrade was replacing the tires with appropriately sized Paul Gage urethane tires and truing them.

As usual, I trimmed the outer edges of the chassis slightly to allow more body float.

For the Ford, I added the characteristic color shading to the Eggenberger-Texaco car’s headlight lenses, repainted the BBS wheels by applying gold only to the mesh centers instead of leaving them entirely chrome, and lightly shaded the driver’s face using heavily thinned paint. 

I also added a thin-wall brass pipe for the right-side exhaust. Recently, adding Patto’s tire decals at the very end has become a favorite little ritual of mine ― a sign that the project is truly complete.

For the Jaguar, it required more work because the light boards ― especially the rear one ― are unusually wide. I cut away the lower portions beneath the front and rear bumpers from the chassis and glued them to the body instead. This narrowed the openings and made body removal slightly more inconvenient, although it allowed better body float. I carefully adjusted everything by sanding the edges of the light boards and slightly enlarging parts of the body opening.

The chassis trimming and body-fit adjustment consumed the most time. After running tests, I also set the ride height considerably higher than stock.

Beyond that, I only added a thin-wall brass pipe to the left-side exhaust and applied some matte black shading around the wheel center-lock nuts. And finally, just like the Ford, I finished it off with Patto’s tire decals.

Carrera Mercedes-Benz 300SEL-6.3 AMG

As for the 300SEL-6.3 AMG “Red Pig,” it had long been famous among ETC racing car enthusiasts as one of the defining machines from AMG’s earliest days.

Yet for many years, the only models available were a handful of expensive, small-production resin kits made by individual craftsmen, and I had bought several of them myself over the years.

But whenever those solid lumps of resin finally arrived ― however deeply I could admire the passion and dedication of each sculptor behind them ― my own motivation to actually build them would quietly fade away instead.

Around the same period ― whether slightly before or after the Carrera release, I no longer clearly remember ― TA71 also released one of their characteristically ultra-high-detail 3D-printed models.

But by that point, my enthusiasm for scratchbuilding had already completely burned out.

It is surprisingly common for a car that no manufacturer showed any interest in for years to suddenly appear as a finished RTR model shortly after someone goes through all the trouble of building a resin version by hand.

For me, the pleasure of obtaining a car that no mainstream manufacturer had released yet ― even if only a few years ahead of everyone else around me ― was never just simple joy, nor merely the relief of finally no longer having to search endlessly for it.

There was also, I think, a certain childish element mixed into it: a sense of pride, of showing off, of quietly enjoying the feeling of having something before others did.

But now, perhaps because age has worn me down, even the act of “showing off” outwardly feels tiresome to me.

More and more, my interests and satisfaction have turned inward instead.

Anyway, back to Carrera’s Red Pig.

As usual with Carrera, the car feels solid and durable in the best possible way. The body is sturdy and highly crash-resistant, and the graphics are still done with beautiful tampo printing rather than the cheap waterslide decals used by Scalextric.

Seeing this inevitably makes me drift off into complaints about Scalextric instead of talking about Carrera, unfortunately.

To be honest, I’ve become thoroughly tired of Scalextric’s low-quality waterslide decals over the last decade or so. Crooked or distorted graphics have become almost routine. Since the decals often fail to conform properly to the body molding, the inner corners of the body usually end up looking like little triangular tents made only from thin decal film. Sooner or later, some small accident causes them to tear open and take part of the graphics with them.

I also suspect the clear coat itself is fairly poor quality. Whenever I open a brand-new Scalextric car, the surface always has an unpleasant greasy, sticky feel to it.

Then comes the tedious process of completely disassembling the car ― removing the windows and cockpit tray ― washing everything with soap, warm water, and a brush, drying it all carefully, and reassembling it afterward. Honestly, it’s a nuisance every single time.

Returning to the Carrera Mercedes, the front axle uses an independent left-right setup. I suppose this was unavoidable because the guide had to be mounted deep underneath the nose to make it less visible from the front, which naturally placed it between the two axle halves. From a handling standpoint, though, it may still be preferable to Carrera’s F1 layout, where the guide sits behind the front axle entirely.

To run alongside the Red Pig, I also bought the yellow #31 Hannen Alt Bier car for my wife. But compared to the flashy and famous Red Pig, it really looks like a machine from AMG’s very early days ― back when they still lacked major sponsors. As a livery, it simply looks rather plain by comparison. I worried that my wife might lose interest in racing it.

So I came up with a solution.

Using leftover self-made Alps decals originally created years ago for a fantasy-liveried FLY Atego truck, I added AMG logos along with an assortment of sponsor decals that felt appropriate for the era and character of the car, giving it a slightly more cheerful appearance that could stand beside the Red Pig without looking completely overshadowed.

Since I wanted to avoid spectacular rollovers whenever the car deslotted, I intentionally built it fairly heavy, and as a result the handling became rather sluggish.

From here, I plan to gradually reduce the weight and rethink the motor and pinion gearing in search of performance more appropriate for a 1970s ETC touring car.

Scalextric Volvo 850 Estate BTCC

Ever since I first got into slot cars in 2005, I had been waiting for someone to finally produce them. During those years, I tried all sorts of things — modifying an SCX Volvo 850 sedan racer, buying Betta vac-formed bodies, trying Pendle resin bodies, even attempting to turn an SCX Volvo S60 ETCC into a V70 by cutting away the entire rear section. Every attempt ended in failure, but I kept struggling with this obsession for nearly twenty years.

And now, at last, before leaving this world, that long frustration has finally been resolved. I could not be happier about it.

My plan was to shave the fender lips thin, fit longer axles, and push the wheels and tires out to the absolute limit to widen the track width.

But for some reason Scalextric seems to have changed things so that the wheels simply won’t come off the axles, no matter what you do.

I kept trying to twist them off, but the wheel centers just sheared apart before the wheels would budge.

As a result, I ended up buying three Police Cars as chassis donors.

For me, the 850 Estate BTCC absolutely had to wear the OZ five-spoke wheels, not the ATS ten-spokes.

I had been waiting twenty years to see this shape.
There are still a few points I’m not completely satisfied with.

But rather than worrying about that, I want to savor the simple happiness that something which never existed before is finally here.

Even with the extension, the time left is short.

Well then—on to the next car.