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Great news. I am happy to hear this. My recent Lotus 78 arrived too, and much better finish than the first. I am happy too :)

Look forward in seeing and hearing your tuning tips and race report.

Looking forward to this one, SS! I always appreciated the fact that Fly(slot) made the effort to redesign the crown gear to fit under the F1 bodywork. If Slot.It made replacement gears for these, people would probably be much more inclined to try them, and these cars are beautiful.

How are the braids on this car? The first braids on these cars were so stiff, it seemed like Fly made them from wheels used for paint-stripping.

But I suppose that is easy to say before getting the car to the track!

I took it apart and found that the tight rear axle was caused by two issues: the axle bushings and the idler gear assembly. These ended up being relatively easy fixes:

The axle bushings freed up (as I hoped!) during trueing the tyres. I did the tyres on my Razor (this again reinforced what an awesome piece of equipment the Razor is!) and, because of the fact that the Fly F1 tyres are heavily “crowned”, it typically takes a fair bit of work (and time) to get them nice and true and flat. By the time this was done, the bushings had freed up sufficiently to be OK.

The idler assembly took a bit of specific work: removed it from the chassis and took it apart. I had not realized before that the idler shaft is actually metal: for some reason I thought it was plastic. The shaft (and the rear axle area that holds the gear) is not knurled in the normal sense: it has grooves forced into it that partly “upsets” the metal to get a non-slip grip: it is sort of splined rather than knurled. I much prefer this to the heavy knurling that is sometimes found on axles: it allows relatively easy removal while preventing slipping: a win-win to my mind.

Once disassembled I found that the holes in the two-part assembly was just a touch “off”, leading to some binding of the shaft. Then the good news: the idler shaft is just a hair over 3/32 so my reamer that I use to open up wheels and gears for use on 2.48mm Ninco axles was an absolute perfect fit: running the reamer through loosened up the shaft just enough without making it sloppy!

Put everything together again, lubricated as required and it feels pretty good now.

Kurt, the braids are not soft-soft but not as bad as some that I have seen. I have kept the originals. I frequently replace ludicrously stiff braids with soft NSR braid: this one I thought should be OK as-is.

So the car is now in my box to take to Luf’s on Friday: I am very curious to see how it goes!

So this evening I found the answer to my original question. i.e. "what have I brought on myself?"

It turns out that what I brought on myself was a boatload of fun and one great little slot car. I took a number of cars (including the WiIliams) to our regular Friday evening races. A quick few selected lap times of some of the generally known cars I took for perspective (all cars are unaltered other than body float and urethane tyres):

Pioneer Mustang: 8.916 seconds
Scaley 1970 Camaro: 8.663 seconds
Ninco Porsche 997: 8.829 seconds (bit disappointing: will have to do something here)
MB Slot Pagani Zonda: 7.949 seconds
NSR Ford GT Mk IV: 7.745 seconds.

And to again give some perspective: anything that does a lap under 8.5 seconds is a pretty quick car. Under 8 seconds is very, very quick: there are probably only like 3 of us in the our regular racing group that get under that.

So where did the WIlliams fit in tonight's spectrum? Well, how about 7.943 seconds!

Guys, this is one seriously fast slot car. In a straight line you can feel the power losses the drive train causes compared to the Lotus 78 for instance. But my Wiliams handles ever so slightly better than the Lotus. Best lap time for my Andretti Lotus is 7.997 seconds, so in spite of the "transmission losses", the Williams is marginally quicker than the Lotus because the handling makes up just a hair more than that.

And on that topic: the handling of this little car has to be seen to be believed. The guys were totally blown away by the performance of the Williams.

And yes: it is a bit noisier than its Fly running mates (March and Lotus 78). But it is not a bad sound, nor is it particularly loud.

So the verdict?

A great little car: I am a VERY happy camper!

Well those lap times tell me I should pick one up. Great report.