NSR Audi R18

Review

Hello, welcome to my review of the all new NSR audi R18 from a racers perspective by Lee Green of Molesey slot car club near Hampton Court Palace (West London). We run on a 170 foot Ninco track!

Just to give you an idea of the lap times A standard Slot.it Group C with a few months of fettling with no magnet has got down to a 12.64 lap record, this is a pretty one-off time though as most are hovering around the low 13 second mark for the top boys. Standard NSR Corvettes are currently running low 12 second laps and classics (Porsche 917k and co) mid 12's.

First impressions

First things first put the car on the track... Initial thoughts were that it travelled around very amicably but then you would expect that from a magnet car on a Ninco track little loud. This managed to force a 12.07 but that really was ragging every bit of life out of the car.So I thought it was about time to have a real look at what the car could do, I went about taking the magnet out and adjusting the motor mount and body screws.

Before I could do a whole lap however. The car stopped dead as if my controller had stopped working. With a confused room looking on I thought what the hell was that, took the car off the track and took it appart to find that the shaft of the motor had been rubbing on the slot in the crown where the slot wasn't big enough and the ally off the gear had warmed up and melted onto the shaft therefore stopping the car. A picture showing you this is below and you can see where the alloy has rubbed off onto the stainless shaft.

In 10 years of racing I have never had this happen to me or anyone I know. I think if I had paid the full £72 rrp I would be very annoyed at this. However another member down the club kindly lent me another one of these nsr gears and it still sounded like a bag of nails, but did eventually get down to a fairly respectable time of 12.69, bare in mind that this is literally only using what you get in the box. Its safe to say however I do not rate the NSR crown gears at all, go Slot.it or avant slot for if you want to run this in standard form you can get avant slot very cheap and they are a much better mesh. It handled fairly well just lacking a little grip on the high speed bends.

I would give this car a rating of 6 out of 10 out the box as I feel that the motor is a bit too magnetic in standard form and too good possibly for the rest of the car with a magnet out. Tyres are okay but from a racers point of view I would rather see 16" wheels on the cars than nsr selling out and going for a more 'realistic' scale size as for a racer I feel these wheels just end up cannon fodder in my tool box.

Time for a little tune!

Upgrades were firstly address the lack of grip with some PRS grip 2 tyres or if you are only going to be buying in this country then the NSR Extremes will do you fine. I ran these on MB Slot magnesium hubs 15x10 trued down to 19mm. I installed Sloting Plus ball race bearings which free the back end up with an Avant Slot hollow axle. Then I installed Slot.it gearing in this case 10z pinion and 26z Slot.it blue inline. This created a good mesh with a little Sloting Plus Magic Grease applied. I put this whole motor mount into a yellow ultra light chassis. Must say that they were a bit of a pain in the backside. This chassis was shorter than the outgoing black one so when I put the screws in the car they didnt line up, I had to drill them out to 3 mm to get them to fit, did get some nice movement in on them after though.

I Then installed the medium suspension kit to the side of the motor mount leaving the front motor mount screwed in. Then onto the front axle, I purchased an Avant Slot carbon fibre axle which weighs next to nothing, then put on the delrin 15mm Avant slot plastic wheels with Slot.it Sipt19 low profile tyres. Finally I tightened up the drop arm as I dont think it helps on our track, and replaced the guide with a screw in NSR guide.

The motor, I had ideas about what to do with this and decided I would just leave it in the car as it would now have more grip so would be able to cope with its immense torque. I must say this is one epic motor. It has the acceleration to beat literally any other manufacturers motor also rated at 21k-23k. The brakes of this motor are amazing, it can stop on the eye of a needle and has a top speed equal to what felt to me of a 30k motor. I must say that NSR's motors are by far the best on the market . I know they are not the cheapest by boy are they worth it!.

Completed car!

After 2 nights of testing down the club, the car managed to get down to 11.77 seconds lap, which is 0.3 seconds faster than what it was with a magnet in it. It is rapid and at the moment the fastest type of car down our track, and those of you know us down Molesey were all about going fast! It broke for corners brilliantly, weighed getting on for 7 grams lighter now so out of corners it was a bullet.

So my final rating for a racers perspective once fully tuned would be 8 out of 10, this is one rapid car with 9 out of 10 speed but only held back by some minor irritating design issues. I hope that NSR keep making fast cars and that the Slot.it Audi R18 is a worthy competitor to it.

Lee Green
July 2012