Scalextric TVR Tuscan 400R

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if my very first slot car had not been this front-engined machine.

The track width was narrow, the ride height wasn’t especially low, the full interior gave it a high center of gravity, and on top of that, it was front-motored.

To be honest, it was not an easy car to drive.

Before long, the mirrors broke off. Then the rear wing broke too. Being a beginner, I was obsessed with repairing everything “properly” and “strongly,” so I repeatedly repaired the parts using acrylic powder and methyl methacrylate ― sold commercially as a Plastic Repair Kit.

Controlling the amount of liquid hardener dropped onto the powder was difficult, and the repaired bases of the mirrors and wing gradually became ugly swollen lumps. The solvent would unexpectedly flow into surrounding areas as well, dissolving parts of the livery and slowly turning the body sticky and messy.

As the paint dissolved, the windows became cloudy and dirty too. Meanwhile, the tires accumulated the peculiar glue residue typical of commercial wood tracks, and eventually even using a lint roller to clean the tire surface no longer restored any grip at all.

Back then, I had no idea that simply cleaning the tire surface with a strong solvent such as automotive Brake & Parts Cleaner could easily restore the grip of the rubber.

At that point, the car became impossible to drive without crashing, and before long it had effectively become junk.

Because the car carried so many memories for me, I bought fresh examples of it two or three different times over the years, and each time I carefully prepared them into properly race-ready “hot” cars using whatever skills I had at that stage of my life. And yet, somehow, I never managed to achieve a result that truly satisfied me.

To call them “junk” may actually sound worse than they really were. The only serious problem was that the rear axle crown gears had missing teeth, so I replaced them with Slot.it crowns and axle shafts. Since the Tuscan also has a rather narrow track width, I fitted hubless CB Design wheels as well.

Using my usual approach for preparing a non-magnet car, I replaced the guide with a Ninco guide, removed the traction magnet, shaved the underside of the full interior tray to create additional space, and added ballast weight.

The front stub axles were fixed at an appropriate negative camber angle, the edges of the front tires were rounded off, and the rear tires were replaced with N22s and trued.

And when we finally drove them, my wife and I were actually able to race the two cars against each other normally.

Certainly, my ability to prepare slot cars has improved over the years ― but naturally, after countless official races and friendly matches against many different racers, both of us had also become significantly better drivers.

And honestly, that alone made me completely satisfied.