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Pioneer Legend build for wood track


SlotsNZ

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We have just begun to build these to race at club. 
Note: All the models of Chevvy, Ford, and now Dodge share the same chassis. Under the hood they are identical, it is just the bodies that vary.

legendbuild0.jpg
They are pretty simple in essence, and our first hit-out last night was a hoot; but like all toy shop/entry level brands, they have their quirks.
- Big tolerances in axle bushes, guide
- Nylon gears, with the spur mounted on a spline on the axle in the same way as Scalextric cars, the stock gears are quite noisy.
- Plastic wheels press fitted to the axles
- Treaded tyres that look good standing still, but are quite hard, and have little grip as supplied.
- Dinky little screws holding the body on, loosen them 1 turn to de-stress the chassis and provide body rock, and they will fall out.

After munting my first couple of builds and having to recover the errors, today I cracked open a white kit to start a methodical tune.
So, car stripped, guide, lead wire and DPR box thrown away. Magnet removed.
legendbuild1.jpg

I have cut and fitted some very thin lead in the centre, in the magnet pocket, behind the axle; - and close to the guide to keep the nose in the slot under
acceleration. All up it might way 8-9 grams.
The Spur gears seem to spin on the axle shaft after a while, so we decided we would allow gear replacements to the 11/12/13 tooth pinion and 33 tooth
plastic spur. Standard gearing is 12/33, I have fitted a 12 tooth 6.5mm Slot.it pinion, which needs pressing onto the splined motor shaft carefully to
ensure it goes on straight, and the motor shaft doesn't get bent. The Spur is 32 tooth for a slightly taller ratio, but after truing the tyres down, the final
drive ratio will probably be a little lower.

legendbuild2.jpg

Those tyres are getting a true on the lathe. They are ostensibly 2.38mm hole/axle, so I just press-fitted them to the mono shaft that I would usually true
Slot.it wheels on.

legendbuild3.jpg

New guide fitted, a Slot.it CH07 wood guide, new soft wire, grub screw fixed to the braid. - I always bend the stripped wire at the guide into a "U" , press it
into the guide behind the braid, and thread the grub screw down above it. Less direct pressure against the motor wire, and seems to give a secure result
that doesn't pop out. Once the wire is correctly positioned, a bit of tape to hold the wire how I want it to be.

Tyres trued, wheels re-fitted to car  . . . .  and it is not a happy camper.
legendbuild4.jpg

Onto the tech block, and guess what I find -  warped chassis. Checked everything, yep, quite bent. The pic above is after I tried to bend and get it roughly
straight... not good.

legendbuild5.jpg

So I am giving it a bath on the steel plate, weighted down with old magnets.
If you do this, take careful note of the underside of the chassis, as it is not a flat pancake, Different parts of the chassis are raised between 0.5mm and
1mm from the lowest points. I have carefully packed the raised sections underneath with thin shim magnets and thin sheet lead, to provide a stable
base before placing the magnets above the chassis to hold it down flat ready for a hot water bath.
Look at all those magnets top left. That is the raised area, and even with all those on it, the chassis STILL isn't quite sitting flat, but as it softens in the
hot water, it should settle okay.
That's all for today, bodywork tomorrow.

Footnote:  90 degree bath, 2 hours to cool, chassis now pancake flat. Dried, reassembled, car a much happier camper.
All four feet now touch the ground. Ready to begin prepping and painting the body and the many, many small parts.....

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Recovering Lapsed Slot Addict :ph34r:  *  Custodian of many used screws (mostly loose :rolleyes:)  *  Total kidder  *  Companion of other delusional slot addicts :lol:  

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I unpacked all the small black parts, from several wee ziplock bags, and thought a while about colours.

In the end I went pretty simple,

Silver engine apart from the upper block in red, silver control console on the dash, silver gear stick, mirrors and tail pipe.
White header pipes and roll bar
Red driver overalls, and fire extinguisher 
Yellow driver helmet - bad job by brush, don't look....
The windscreen mesh and grill come as chrome style metal 

legendbuild6.jpg

The rest I have left black as per pics, or had masked out like the drivers gloves.
The body is a gun metal metallic.  Looking at it now, I may yet spray the bull bars white...or silver...or red...

legendbuild8.jpg

 

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Recovering Lapsed Slot Addict :ph34r:  *  Custodian of many used screws (mostly loose :rolleyes:)  *  Total kidder  *  Companion of other delusional slot addicts :lol:  

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And assembled. I may just leave it plain paint, no decals as I like the look....

legendbuild10.jpg

legendbuild11.jpg

legendbuild12.jpg

legendbuild9.jpg

Better still - she goes like stink boys, quicker than the yellow one, just needs a little tyre softening.

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Recovering Lapsed Slot Addict :ph34r:  *  Custodian of many used screws (mostly loose :rolleyes:)  *  Total kidder  *  Companion of other delusional slot addicts :lol:  

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Interesting, thanks Mark. I checked my cars (4) and all the chassis are visually flat and I didn’t have any problems with wheels not touching done.

HOWEVER my work in progress white kit, which thanks to your article, I checked before assembling the chassis, is nowhere near flat and so currently getting the hot water treatment.

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Glad that caught something for you up front Peter. - More glad for you that your existing ones don't need stripping down!!! 
This should be useful as a basic starter guide in tuning these suckers. Smithy just picked his yellow beast up, so he is going to refer to it as he begins tuning.
- I think he mostly came for coffee and catch-up but hey.... he's keen to get rolling. 

Please, anyone with other things to add - do so. 
I did notice that the rear body post in my white kit had a hole big enough to push rat into.
Oiled a decent 10mm long  2.1mm diameter half shaft screw, mostly filled the hole with superglue, and poke the screw into the glue. When dry I unscrewed it - very tight, and trimmed off any protruding superglue.
I now have one nicely firm screw thread inside the post.

Recovering Lapsed Slot Addict :ph34r:  *  Custodian of many used screws (mostly loose :rolleyes:)  *  Total kidder  *  Companion of other delusional slot addicts :lol:  

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we have been running these little rockets as well. So much fun.

A couple of members have had warped chassis as well, gears stripped on axle, wheels fall off during a race, all the issues you have mentioned, A touch of superglue seems to help sort the wheel/gear problem on the stock axles. Have also had a couple of front axles pop out with a high impact crash.

We are using MJK or PG tires on the rear, Slotting Plus guides and take those front tires down a heap, running on a 4 lane Carrera track, have run both mag and non mag with them

About to do a full 4 week series of no mag racing with them

thanks for posting the build tips

 

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Good hearing of other clubs running them. The "fun factor" is enormous, and look at that purple #2 at front of the field shot at top.
Rodsun has done a magnificent job with that.
Yep Pedro and Mac had issues with the stock spur spinning on the very fine splined axle with the cars they had before we made the decision to race them as a club, so decided we should allow gear replacements. - Much quieter too.

Interested to hear about those Slotting Plus guides, the Slot.it wood guide isn't quite the right thing to use, as it has a shortish shaft, and is still a bit loose fit in the guide mount. 
I had to screw them in very carefully using a couple of thin spacers on top to facilitate free movement and try to minimise the "rocking" effect they allow.
I'd also thought about some ScaleAuto ones which have a longer shaft, but didn't have any of those.

We sometimes superglue these "scalextric" type bushes in place, but I have just used hot glue on the tops of mine across onto the chassis - just easier to get them out later if needed. 

We typically grind a flat onto axles where we have to glue a plastic wheel on - to make a sort of key. But because of the very short amount of axle inside which goes inside these legends wheels, I was worried it might make the wheels sit a bit cockeyed, so I have begun cutting the "key" as a notch, leaving the end of the axle a full round diameter.

This one wasn't quite right, I did take a nip off the end by accident, but it gives you the idea

axle1.jpg

axle4.jpg

My "field" for lanes. 
legendbuild14.jpg
The red Christmas chevvy is so illegal it would embarrass Smokey Yanuck.
The shiney feet are courtesy of ScaleAuto -  Monza alloys, fitted with NSR Ultragrips at rear, and ground down stock tyres on front.
But the legal grey build is doing about the same lap times on my track, and the yellow Ford is just 1/10th behind them - yet to sort the blue car out.
I haven't lowered my fronts by a lot of tyre diameter grinding, but I imagine others have, allowing for more guide depth in the slot.
They are so short and so wide, their handling defies expectation

Recovering Lapsed Slot Addict :ph34r:  *  Custodian of many used screws (mostly loose :rolleyes:)  *  Total kidder  *  Companion of other delusional slot addicts :lol:  

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  • 1 month later...

I finally got some decals on the Dodge - Stubbo - look familiar, pulled from the archives of the one of the cars you created for me

dodgedecal1.jpg

dodgedecal2.jpg

And the cars I have been painting the last few days.

greendecal1.jpg

greendecal2.jpg

monsterdecal1.jpg

monsterdecal2.jpg

bluedecal1.jpg

bluedecal2.jpg

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Recovering Lapsed Slot Addict :ph34r:  *  Custodian of many used screws (mostly loose :rolleyes:)  *  Total kidder  *  Companion of other delusional slot addicts :lol:  

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On 7/3/2021 at 6:41 PM, miveson said:

Shame about the warped chassis, I read about that a few months back thanks to some collectors who were complaining that the cars sitting on the shelf were getting warped, surprised that a white kit is also warped, such a shame. 

Twas easy enough to fix.  I just used a few shim magnets underneath to create a flat overall surface for the correct shape, and one dose of boiling water was enough to get it "pancake".
Goes like a rocket now.
So far I've had 3 warped out of 12 units (4 livery cars and 8 white kits), I have a few more livery cars that haven't been de-boxed or examined yet.
Mine and most of the clubbies ones we raced last Thursday

legends82.jpg

My progress with 3 more white kits under way

legends81.jpg

 

Recovering Lapsed Slot Addict :ph34r:  *  Custodian of many used screws (mostly loose :rolleyes:)  *  Total kidder  *  Companion of other delusional slot addicts :lol:  

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  • 2 months later...
On 6/30/2021 at 2:14 PM, SlotsNZ said:

 

monsterdecal1.jpg

 

 

 

Must have gone to the same finishing school .......... 

20210911_180714.thumb.jpg.e789f132ddbf19ba2f7d45ad36f091a2.jpg

Had the same problem with the chassis, twisted to buggery 

Quickly read this post before it is deleted or i turn grey again

Gary

http://www.facebook.com/Rallyproxy2017

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I watched "The Mask" too many times. I have Jim Carrey delusions - in my saner moments.
All dressed and ready for club tomorrow. Everybody gotta hava cula
9ipl7sx9o0r31.jpg

Recovering Lapsed Slot Addict :ph34r:  *  Custodian of many used screws (mostly loose :rolleyes:)  *  Total kidder  *  Companion of other delusional slot addicts :lol:  

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