New Fly Lola T70 Mk.III

[Modlerbob]

I am the proud owner of several of the original Fly Lola T70 Mk.III with the sidewinder motor pod and after some tuning they all run pretty good. I finally saw one of the new Lolas with the inline chassis at a good price so I made the purchase. As has been reported it is somewhat different in places other than the chassis. The body is still the same but the extra details are much different. It has a shallow tray interior and the rear spare tire is a semi circle molded to the chassis as well as the exhaust pipes. It has a solid front axle and two of the smaller bar magnets to enhance downforce, one up front and the other behind the motor in front of the rear axle. The motor has a black endbell and no openings for cooling. After performing the usual prep and tuning and mounting a pair of PG tires the car exhibited good handling and decent speed on the wood track. With magnets in place and downforce adjusted to be close to that of my sidewinders I moved over to the Scaley track for some time trials The inline motored car ran about one tenth of a second faster laps at 12v. than it's sidewinder siblings which is not significant as I might get the opposite results the next time I compare them. Oh yes, one other thing, the sideplay of the rear axle with the original pinion in place was excessive and under load the pinion slipped almost stripping it's teeth so I installed a Scaley pink 10 tooth pinion which made the mesh almost perfect. All testing was done with the 10t pinion. Here is an image of what is a striking livery.

[Dangermouse]

One of my favourite liveries - I have 4 cars in that livery - the T70, a T222, a T280 and an unfinished McLaren M6

Every time I see the #1 car in that livery it is all I can do not to buy it...

DM

[Czar]

Nice little review and comparison. Glad to see Fly realized the importance of a solid front axle.

[HomeRacingWorld]

[svanaken]

I like the newer chassis. For some reason (probably weight), it is quicker than the sidewinders on my track and sidewinders tend to run quicker in general on my Scalextric Sport track. I am not all that thrilled about how cheap looking the bodies are with their lack of proper headlights, unpainted interior, and lack of details provided on the older versions. But they are about $10 to $15 cheaper so I guess that is the trade-off. After popping out the magnets and putting on some silicones, they are very good handling cars. They also seem to be noisier, but that may be due to the tray interior allowing a rather good sized echo chamber above the motor and gears. I have not run into the gear issue, but perhaps this is due to not running with magnets.

Scott

[Modlerbob]

I noticed the gear issue while truing the tires and it had NOTHING to do with magnets. The retainer on the crown gear allows too much sideplay with the smaller pinion gear that comes with the car. The ten tooth pinion reduced the sideplay while an eleven tooth pinion made the mesh too tight. The loose mesh in stock form may be why you heard so much noise. Mine is now very quiet on my no-mag wood track.

[svanaken]

[HRWJim]

Just picked this up and is on my list to tune. Jim