to be continued

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tamar - 1-3-2017 at 02:42

Late night, just back in the hotel after the first Qualification for the DiSCA Oxigen Le Mans 24hrs.
Managed to get both cars decalled in time, still need to do some minor detail work...but I must say....happy with how things have gone so far.
 
more news and images 2 morrow

with kind regards
Tamar

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tamar - 17-8-2018 at 19:41

Man I can't believe its already a week ago since we raced at Henley, still have not recovered completely.

@ Colin: (CMC decals) The medium grey colours might have been a bit off, compared to the original design, but your decals worked very well and are very strong. Check this image of the nose of our Porsche after 24hrs of hard racing.
I was amazed on how well they handled the abuse of full frontal contact...although in all honesty we did not have that many...only 3 warnings and 1 ten second stop and go penalty during the whole 24hrs :angel: 
So the decals on the nose were a bit battered, those on the rear had minor damage...and the roof (yes we did have a bit of turtle time) which was basically one big decal is still untouched. Only the small decals that I applied at the very last minute before Concourse (and did not cover with a coat of clear) came off partially.


I will finish my build report of the DiSCA Proton Porsche in the coming weeks.
So...to be continued
 
with kind regards
Tamar 
 

 

 
 

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tamar - 10-3-2017 at 13:26

I got some questions about the Tech set-up of the Porsche. Normally I like to keep my build write ups in a chronologic order, but that might take a while..so to sooth you waiting pains...
Here's a quick description of the tech specs.
 
DiSCA- PROTON Porsche 991 Chassis TN991#001 & TN991#002
For the LM 24hrs we build 4 Porsches, with our team members scattered over the globe our "design" philosophy was to keep the cars as stock as possible so we could swap parts, but we also wanted to show that you can be competitive using a stock RTR slotcar as a base to build your endurance racer.

Gary (LMP) had already build chassis GS991#001 which we ran in the Suzula 6hrs. For the LM 24hrs this would serve as a back up T-car  Gio (Grunz) had build his GR991#001 to be used during free practice.
Both cars would serve as donor cars should we run out of spare wings, chips etc etc during the 24 hrs.
For the LM race Lennard (Maan) and I prepared two new Cars TN991#001 & TN991#002.

These had a 80% Scaleauto R chassis with a 0,75mm offset Slot.it sidewinder pod. Pods were modified to be able to run a 7,85mmø Sigma 14t pinion with a 17,5mmø spur.
This would give us the gear ratio we wanted for the long Mulsanne straight and take as much advantage of the motor magnet downforce with more than enough ground clearance. (1,85 mm with 20,8mmø wheels)
May sound complicated but its not, I did this by enlarging the holes for the motor and motor screws so we could angle the pinion side of the motor ≠0,6 mm forward (which actually makes the car a -1˚ anglewinder )
Chassis #001 ran with a slot.it PA01-54R reduced center diameter rear axle running in the stock slot.it olites.
For Chassis #002 I also modified the pod to accept 4,75mmø ballbearings (Scaleauto) and used a Scaleauto Titanium rear axle.
Besides the lower weight the titanium axle also has the benefit that it is non magnetic, so it has less "drag" from the motor magnet.
So there you have it nothing too fancy, just basic slotrace optimisation stuff,
 
We did use one bespoke part in the chassis we raced (#002). A 3D printed bracket that mated the Slot.it pod to the Scaleauto side supension mounts on the chassis.
I have not made "clean" pictures of the finished chassis yet, the one below was taken during the build up of chassis #002 with chassis #001 in the background.
Here you see the test set-up for the bracket with the prototypes I cut from 1,5 mm GRP plate with the Scaleauto Supspension kit.
These were used for most of our testing and served as an template for the 3D drawing and prints kindly made for us by Stefan Kieviet (S-Slot) and printed via Shapeways.
Improvements over the prototype were the addition of 3DP retaining nuts (NSR/Olifer3D style) that would allow us to adjust the spring bolts without having to remove the body.

 
 
Chassis #001 also had some bespoke parts left over from my DBR9 chassis (O2 LM24hrs 2015) which used a lasercut GRP chassis.
In the spare box I found an extra set of front axlemounts which I used to make cambered stub axles with one ball bearing p/axle.
They worked well and definately looked good....but as they were glued to the Scaleauto chassis I had my doubts on the durabilty of the assembly in a hard crash.
The plan was to do these as an integrated 3DP part...but then time ran out..but who knows....maybe in the future.

 
 
 
Chassis TN991#002 Race set up:
So for durability and simplicity we chose to run Chassis#002 in the race.  Here we used a very simple straight trough carbon axle running in the stock chassis uprights.
I used Slotingplus Delrin 17,5mmø frontwheels which are about the lightest and most true non metal wheels you can get. The material is hard enough to drill, mill and cut a M2 thread in.
Which I did to be able to lock the wheels on the carbon axle with a M2 grubscrew. (to prevent the wheel spacing becoming too tight when hit from the side)
For the eagle eyed amongst you, it will be obvious why I wrote that it our Porsche(s) had a 80% Scaleauto chassis. During our testing we discovered that the front splitter (that is an integrated part of the R-chassis)
was hitting the high points on the track, and in digital racing on Ninco track that usually means parts of the LC's sticking out above the track surface. At first I raised the nose by fitting a 0,4mm spacer under the guide.
But it was still not enough to keep the nose clear of the track in all areas. When during testing I discoverd a crack in the splitter we decided to dremel the offending part off...and as can be seen in the picture below, removed the whole front section completely for our race set-up.
Those of you that have seen some of my previous build reports wont be surprised to see the nylon/ aluminium lock nut on top of the Guide.
We omitted the connector we used in Chassis#001 in the guide wires and used my preferred Silver Plated MB braids.
We used the 4 grubscrews in the chassis bedpans to mount the body straight and level, the biggest challenge here was to get both bodies sit on the chassis in the same way.
We kept the connector between the chip and the motor..because I'd already prepped and mounted them to all our spare chips....
...might keep them for testing....but won't do that any more for future endurance race set up's.
 

 
Although we build several chassis with the ability to change the set-up of the cars in a quick and easy way... we never came to that point during free practice.
Ok so our base set-up was pretty much fine tuned for Ninco track anyway...but to be honest, there was just not enough time to test and back test to get reliable data on the Le Mans track.
Time flies when you're having fun. The only set up change we made compared to our test runs on the Suzuka track was to use a different spur.
We'd been running with the 14t Sigma pinion all along using 31 - 33  Nylon sidewinder spurs. Our car was fast on the Mulsanne...but you know how it goes...you always try to get that little bit more speed.

So as I was mounting the hand out race motor for Q1, I went trough my spares box for a new 31 spur and noticed that I had one Scaleauto 16,8mmø Nylon 28t Anglewinder spur.
Our Motor had not been running hot with the 31t, nor did we experience any drop outs on the straight (which can be caused by interferrence from a sparking comm under full acceleration)
So I thought...hmmmmmm would it fit? :question:
So I tried and found that I just needed to move the motor 0,25 mm back to its original position to get a good mesh, but a anglewinder gear on a sidewinder motor...would it hold?
Well there was only one way to find out, use it in the two hrs of Qualification and see. And if it would wear out to much during the race..we could always switch back to the 31t sidewinder gear.
The only downside would be that we would need a bit more time to re-adjust the mesh by moving the motor.
We took the gamble and it paid of, we picked up just enough speed to be on par with the majority of the LMP1's on the Mulsanne...and look at the post race picture.
Both pinion and spur look brand new, not a mark on them. :thumb::thumb::thumb:
 
Ok that's it for now, more detailed post are to follow (even though this one became a lot more detailed that I thought...) so..
to be continued...
 

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tamar - 6-6-2021 at 20:53

Note: with me posting pictures of the finished Porsche, the race pictures from the Oxigen Le Mans 24hrs track and answering some tech question on set-up ....

...the chronology of this build report sort of went out the window. Ok that's how it goes...

...So here's me picking up the thread again where I left it before heading of to Henley.

Foglight positioning.
In my last build report (pre Le Mans) I had glued in the white kit clear foglights in the front bumper. Scaleauto had mailed me that their shipment with the new correct 2014 bodies would be delayed till end of March so I picked up one of the homeset prepainted cars at my local supplier. Getting the shape and position of the characteristic foglights had been bugging me ever since I started this build.

So now with the RTR body I finally had a good reference..or did I?.



Added bonus, the whole assembly of the foglights in the 2014 RTR body was much simpler and lighter than the Glasshouse of the 2013 spec white kit bodies.
So I took some masking tape, applied it to the front of the RTR body and traced the shape and position of the foglights. Scanned it in and added that to my decal design, printed the template on sticker paper and applied it to the white body. Now I could drill the holes for the foglights in (nearly) the exact same location on my white kit.

Illuminated numbershield and position lights:

Wheter its day or night, running under DiSCA rules means you must have your front and rear lights on at all times. Although extra lights are optional, most teams will have some extra recognition lights on their car as this really helps to keep track of your own car when running in a pack on the big 1/32nd Circuit de la Sarthe.
But with most teams now running 1-3 position lights we needed something extra to distinguish our car from the pack.
So Gary had put illuminated numbers high on his wishlist


The problem with doing Illuminated numbers is not so much how to get light shining through behind them...one or two smd's will do that perfectly.
As most bodies, even prepainted ones (see image below left) are transparant enough for the leds to shine trough. The challenge here is how to restrict the light to just the numbers.



For our car I came up with a relatively easy and low tech solution. On the Dempsey Proton car, the base color of the doors is black, so all I had to do was mask off the numbers before applying the paint.
Here the decal sticker provedvery usefull again. I applied them to the doors, cut the numbers and at the sme time drilled the holes for the 3 position lights

Roughtly masked off the blue areas…and gave the Porsche a thin shot tamiya black..no primer.
(On a prepainted car you would have to do this on the inside. You could use black paint for dark cars or silver for light coloured cars.)



When the paint had dried I removed the masking tape, peeled of the numbers and put an smd behind…the result looked better than I had hoped for. No bleed through the black what so ever.
On the left image I had used just one smd led to illuminate the numbers…. nice but not really satisfied. So I tried two smd leds , one behind each number, paper sticker diffuser the light even more, much better. Hopefully the decal will have the same effect. Picture right is the whole set-up with the illuminated numbershield and 3 position lights.

To reduce the work load (I took these pictures with just 5 days to go before the race) and a tiny bit of weight, I decided to do only the passenger side of the car.
(as this is the side you see from the drivers rostrum on the Mulsanne straight.)

to be continued...

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tamar - 6-6-2021 at 21:07

To power all the lights on the car (a grand total of 16 smd's were mounted) I used Z'machine's latest light kit.
Phillipe Laudet had kindly send me three sets of prototypes to test of the soon to be released new set that will be fully O2 compatibel and comes with a plug and play connector for the O201b1 chip. As such it will also work for any SSD or Carrera car and system that uses the wireless chip and SCP controller.

As all Z machine sets, they come out of the bag fully assembled with all the smd's pre soldered so you can mount them to your slotcar body directly. (if you dont mind having a bit of excess wiring here and there) For many years they've been amongst the best kits out there in both 1/32nd and 1/24 analogue slotracing...and with their in build "alarm" sequence when a car deslots...
The blinking lights are the best way to attract a marshall's attention in the dark optically (besides attending him verbally ) Which would make them ideal for digital racing....but.


Where in analoge racing, power cut to the light chip (as in a de-slot or while braking) is used to trigger the brake, exhaust flash and alarm functions, digital racing always has power on the track.
So the only way to make the chip work was to feed it from the motor wires...and use the PWM brake signal to the motor to trigger the light functions.
It was a simple work around, but for interferrence/ EM noise reduction to the chip not an ideal solution.


With the new O2 compatible Z-machine chips there's no longer a need for such a work around. They now come with a 3 wire connector that plug's right into the O2 socket on the O201b1 chip using the same extra + feed that triggers the Slot.it light chip. As such you can now also turn the lights on and off via the SCP controller.


To be continued...

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tamar - 6-6-2021 at 21:13

Ok back on track with the build report. Managed to take some more pictures of the Z-machine light kit and how I positioned the extra SMD's for the number and position lights.

As you can see it was a tight spot to work in. Had to cut a bit of the body reinforcements to make room for the chip.

On the left you see the piece of soldring strip to which the three green SMD's were mounted as one unit.

Also visible on the left are the soldering pads for extra lights on the Z machine chip. You've got 2 minus and 3 plus pads to work with.

The black marker line was to guide me to the right position each time I had to mount and dismount the chip during the test/construction phase.



Here I've peeled bakc the chip from the body. I used different thicknes of poster pads (double sided foam tape) to get some space between the smd's and the body.

You can see the faint contours of the masked off numbers trough the body...even in daylight.



Peeled back a bit further and you see the two smd's for the numbers on an other piece off soldering strip. As the backside is isolated there was no danger of creating a short on the chip board.

At the same time I used the chip board to shield the glow of the SMD's into the body interior.




p.s:
Got some questions lately on where I source my stuff and what I'm using so here are a couple of handy links

For the soldering strip I used for the row of 3 position lights: Ledbaron.de

For the Z machine Light kits: your local supplier or http://www.zmachine.be/

For the Wires: Smallest gauge model train wiring from you local supplier, or pre wired led/smd's from Led Baron

To insulate wires, led's etc etc: Besides shrink wrap (conrad, led baron) I also use Maskol from Humbrol.

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tamar - 6-6-2021 at 22:12

Mega Monza, May 2017
So the last race related info I posted was that the Porsche was heading for the Italian Mega Monza event. Maurizio had spend a lot of time and effort to recreate his "dream", the Autodromo di Monza in 1/32 including the massive banked "Sopra Elevata" Corners. DiSCA spec LMP2 and GT's would take on near stock Slot.it LMP1's. Upon arrival in Vicenza the track was certainly Mega, but just so mega were the crashes if your car de-slotted on the banked sections. To make good laptime you had to accelerate @ full throttle after you'd turned in and then you'd be committed to ride that section flat out.

But if your car de-slotted there, it would be catapulted up the banking and take flight for an other 3-4 feet before crash landing hard on the wooden floor. Unfortunately track time to set the car up was limited and we discovered too late that our lightweight set-up that had worked so well at Le Mans did not work on the banked sections. We had multiple crash landings during the race which broke the nose of the body that had survived the LM 24hrs with mere scratches to the decals. But that was not there reason that kept us from a good result, it was simple maintenance negligence on my part.
I had not replaced the lead wires for new ones. With the hard crashes the wires got pulled out of the guide, eventually broke and in the end I had to make a lengthy pitstop to fabricate new ones. Still 5th overall and 2nd GT wasn't that bad...and besides taking part in a really Mega event..I also got to revisit Venice.



The grid for the 6hrs endurance @ Mega Monza, its Le Mans performance had boosted the Scaleauto's popularity. No less than 5 Porsche 911's were entered for the race.

Rockingham Spa 6hrs, November 2017

On the grid @ the Spa Rockingham 6hrs, 4th Qual time and finished 3rd overall.

Some 5 months later the Porsche was back in the UK for the 6hrs race on the Spa Francorchamps inspired 4 lane digital track @ Rockingham. What a track, fast and flowing corners connected by long climbing and descending straights. This time I'd given the Porsche a major once over. We used Chassis #2 with the spare body. The only set up change we made was going for a shorter gear ratio, instead of 14x28 we used 14X32. We even took the lead mid race as the P1 teams hit some trouble. But at the end the natural order was restored, our short can engined Porsche just lacked that bit of extra punch needed to accelerate on equal terms with the P1's down the long straights. But in the corners and under braking we were pretty close. We had but one failure which was a bad soldering joint of one of the motor wires. Lost a few laps there but still did manage to beat all the P2's with 3rd overall.

Suzuka 6hrs, Januari 2018

Tech inspection for the 2018 Suzuka 6hrs, qualified 2nd overall and after a hectic six hour long battle with the Lola and Toyota LMP1's ...took 1st place overall.

Fast forward two months, organisational duties for our home event kept us from finishing the Scaleauto Corvette C7R we had originally planned to run during the 6hrs as a final test in preparation for Le Mans 24hrs. Although the Porsche was our Plan B she most definitely rose to the occasion. With a near full grid of 13 cars and much shorter straights "handling in traffic" was essential. And boy did she handle well, specially with the fingers of local young guns Stefan Kievit and Lennard Maan on the trigger.Its not often that you see a GT passing P1 and P2 cars round the outside. In the dense traffic the LMP's could not use the extra power of their Flat-6's. Their higher weight also meant they were not as "happy" on the prime N18 tires as on the F22 options. As we all had to use both compounds and our nimble Porsche being faster on new N18's than on fresh option F22's, so we played the waiting game and pounced when the P1's switched to the prime. As he hunted down the leading LMP1 Stefan broke the lap record on his fresh N18's with a 11,60 which was 0,17 sec better that the top QT. To be honest having the "home advantage" was the decisive factor here. Suzuka being the only permanent digital track in the series.
Still winning the 6hrs with a GT against tough opposition of good and experienced P1 teams was a bit of a novelty in DiSCA WEC history, that is until the DitSlot guys gave their stunning display of high standard driving winning the LM 24hrs overall with their 3DP Ford GTE, our Corvette coming in as 3rd overall... but that's an other story.


No rest for the wicked
So here's where the racing story of the DiSCA Proton Porsche ends....at least for now. Does that mean she's enjoying a rest in greener pastures... definitely not. She still a working girl, serving as my base GT car which we use to set reference times for each and every new GT. We just barely managed to improve her times with the Corvette C7R we ran at Le Mans (although there the C7R ran faster than we had done with the Porsche) and she's still a good two tenths faster than the M6. No rest for the wicked

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