At a recent local event I had the opportunity to meet and team with a fellow slot racer who was quite new to the hobby. We ran his car. It was a Champion T-Flex (the only kind allowed in this class), powered by a sealed Parma 501 with stock springs and brushes. I never did get a chance to check the exact gearing. Anyway… the basic set-up mods that an experienced slot racer would make were absent. The axle bushings were loose. The guide was extremely wobbly. The tires were new and WAY too big. The chassis dragged on the track. The body was a hand-me-down, over-taped, and dragged heavily at the nose. The lead wires were the stock Parma units stuffed through the holes in the guide and held in by the braids,
Needless to say, the car was shaky in the handling department and, though it showed good acceleration, uncompetitive in a straight line. It later came to light that its previous best had been 28 laps in 3 minutes.
I couldn’t do anything about the axle bushings except keep the sideplay in the axle to a minimum and hope the chassis was close to square. I put a set of tires on that made legal clearance, thus lowering the car. I added a guide spacer to stop the chassis dragging and put a bigger nut on the guide (and tightened it up) to get rid of the wobble.
With only these minor adjustments I was able to run 33 laps in 3 minutes and my new team mate was able to achieve a new personal best of 31. We came in second in a full field.
