What happened?

aerofan999 Thursday, 3/31/2011

Hello Forum,
Sorry, this is going to be a long entry! My name is Donald and I’ve been lurking here for the last couple of weeks looking for info on how to make Hot Wheels cars as fast as possible, in preparation for a tournament my local church was having. I must say your suggestions were a great help, but I was left very puzzled by the final results as I will outline below.

I found some info that said a 2006 Hot Tub w/FTE’s was known to be really fast, so I bought one off eBay really cheap. I also hit the local Sam Walton retailer and found a Ferrari 458, Ford Mustang and 86 Delorian all w/FTE’s. I also grabbed a van w/regular wheels and a random car w/FTE’s to scavenge and use on the van. With about 5 days until the competition, I bought a Dremel and withdrew to my secret underground lair for an hour or two each night.

First mod was the Delorian since it was the lightest and I figured slowest of the FTE cars so if I ruined it, no big deal. This car started out at about .8 oz and after adding clay, I got it to 1.3 oz. I tinted the windows (spray painted) to conceal my secrets from other competitors. Froze the axles, reassembled, and dry graphite lubed the wheels.

Next up was the Ferrari, did all same mods except I included some small steel bolts toward the back end of the car. This car started at 1.4 oz and after mods it was 2.3 oz! Also tinted windows and graphited (is that a word?) the wheels.

Next was the Hot Tub. I must say, this car is heavy stock and there isn’t much room to add weight. It is all metal chassis and body except for the hot tub portion. I took it apart and used my Dremel to “hollow out” the tub just enough to fit a stack of 6 nickels down inside. Glued the “water” colored blue plastic back over the top and reassembled. Initial weight of the car was 1.9 oz and after mods was 2.6 oz. Applied graphite, but I did notice that the car pulled a little to the right when I rolled it. Knew this wasn’t a good sign.

Last up and without as much time to work on it as I’d have liked was the van. It had a metal chassis and a plastic body, but it had tons of interior space for adding weight. I switched out the stock wheels for FTE’s, added clay, bolts and pennies until the stock weight of 1.6 oz reached 3.3 oz!

Ran out of time to try and mod the mustang and never thought to just test it stock. I had no exact specs to go on for the track, only that it was tall and sloped down consistently to the bottom and was around 20’ long. Fortunately, I was able to bring all the cars to the track and test run them against each other prior to the event starting. It was a wooden track, with 6 lanes, 5’ tall and an electronic timing system.

After 3 test runs, the Ferrari was smoking the other 3, it was a real dive bomber! The truck was next, followed by the Hot Tub which as I predicted, kept bumping the wall. And last was the Delorian which was just too light and got really squirrely as it crossed over the connecting sections of the track.

After my initial tests, the track operator offered to turn on the timing system so I could see just how fast the Ferrari’s speeds were. The first run was 3.704 seconds, to which he replied, “Whoa”! I ran it again and after a flawless run, the clock showed 3.620. The operator said, “I’ve been doing this all over this region and I’ve NEVER seen a car go that fast on this track”! I was stoked!

Now the heat races begin and my car……..er I mean my daughter’s car is in the first race. The Ferrari posted a 3.81 and beat the next fastest car by 3 car lengths. The time difference didn’t really bother me since it was the class of that heat and bumped the wall out of the starting gate. 50 or so more 1st and 2nd graders watched their cars compete with none of them getting below 4 seconds.

The next round is up and the Ferrari now in a different lane wins its heat again, this time posting a 3.92. It still won by a car length and was competing against faster cars due to re-seeding, but I was getting concerned about the time difference.
Soon it was time for the finals. The Ferrari drew the same “slower” lane again and somehow finished 4th posting a 4.191! My 7 year old daughter shrugged her shoulders and ran to play with some friends and I was standing there devastated! How in the world could that car run over a half second slower in only 7-8 trips down the track? My first thought was that some of the clay, etc. from the mods was rubbing the wheels and caused the slow-down, but when I got the car back, it seemed fine. Only one other car the entire night ran a sub-4 sec. run (3.997) and that run wasn’t even in the finals. The real dagger in the heart was the winner was another FTE Ferrari 458 that the kid’s dad picked up on the way to the race! It was completely stock and won with a 4.09 finals.

Any of you experience decreasing speeds over the course of a tournament like this? I must say this was a blast to do, both my daughter and I enjoyed it, but I can’t seem to get over the loss as fast as she did! I would appreciate any thoughts you may have and I plan to post pics of the mods shortly.

Frictionally Challenged,
Donald


Discussion

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Jobe 3/31/11

Donald,

That's really interesting, not sure what would be happening. I can't see that few trips down the track doing any harm to the car. One question, did you fix the axles or keep them loose where the mount to the chassis? I always fix mine in the center with some epoxy so the axle doesn't turn and the car doesn't wobble or the wheels rub.

The Ferrari is going to be the car to beat this season...it already won one of my races and I expect some of them to show up at my next race for sure.

Bryan

You might find some interesting stats I have with the Ferrari 458 Italia in a Science Fair project that I did with my sons. I hope to push it to Brian soon!

Here is a sneak peak, but it was fast and slowed down and then got super fast after multiple runs. Maybe the same thing here???

One final test was to see if a claim on the Redline Derby message board proved to be true. One user claimed that the Faster Than Ever (FTE) cars slowed down as the nickle plating of the axles wears down, even after just a couple of runs because of slight grooves that start showing up. We opened this car up and ran it down the track twenty times.
At first, it seemed like this was possibly happening as it started out with a very impressive distance of 32 feet and 3.5 inches. By the time it got to the 14th run, it had only made it over 32 feet one other time and had even dropped into the 30 feet and 4 inches area.

However, it just took off and had five straight runs where its distance went farther each time. It eventually topped out at 33 feet and 2 inches.

It seems like this myth has been debunked, at least with this car. As a side note, we took this car up to our formal racing league and it never lost a race and beat all other FTE cars that had been entered for the month of March.

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aerofan999 3/31/11

Donald,

That's really interesting, not sure what would be happening. I can't see that few trips down the track doing any harm to the car. One question, did you fix the axles or keep them loose where the mount to the chassis? I always fix mine in the center with some epoxy so the axle doesn't turn and the car doesn't wobble or the wheels rub.

The Ferrari is going to be the car to beat this season...it already won one of my races and I expect some of them to show up at my next race for sure.

Bryan

I REALLY took the advice of you more experienced racers and I fixed all the axles. It was a blazing fast car. I am leaning towards the lane being slow for some reason, but even that doesn't explain a a low 3.9 to a nearly 4.2 in the same lane on back to back heats in my opinion. It was just for a small plastic trophy, but my pride tells me otherwise!

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markkaz 4/1/11

Interesting comments with the FTE pickle plated axles. I will check that out some day.

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redlinederby 4/1/11
Site manager

I would definitely agree that fixing your axles will help. The less moving parts and friction on a car the better.
http://www.redlinederby.com/2009/09/fix ... ter-speed/

As far as the cars changing so rapidly, don't forget that it doesn't take much to effect a Hot Wheels car. They're small, they're light. Even something like a speck of dirt on the car or track can make a difference. And car isn't going to run down the track the same every time. It will wobble differently, bump into the sides differently, all that stuff. And if you're on a wooden track, then it's not as smooth as plastic so it'll generate more friction by default.

It sounds like you're modding your cars wonderfully so you know what you're doing when it comes to where/how to mod your cars. It's really all about the track. You run that car on a short track or long track or plastic track and it could be a bad ass or it could be slow.

Thanks for sharing your experience...be a lurker no more

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Jobe 4/1/11

Plastic track is nicer but still has issues just liek Brian said...the car moving side to side, rubbing etc. I have a real issue with dirt and gravel because where I set mine up at the bar it's in a granite gravel area, i'm constantly having to clean it of debris that messes up cars/races.

and now matter how hard I try, unless I"m set up in my house, one lane is always slightly better than the other...that's racing!

The hubs wear out fairly quickly too. It usually takes a bit more weight, but they wear down and the wheels will just flop around where ever they want. It's actually kinda funny looking. I had to retire my 300C instead of rebuilding it. It weighed in right around eight ounces, but was dropped to 6 oz when balanced.

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