[moped rider]

Scalextric have now placed a service sheet for the Tuscan on the website. Excellent details shown of the new guide. It looks like a neat bit of design with no bare copper wires. The rest of the car looks very Corvette underneath:-

TVR Tuscan service sheet

Cheers
Moped

 

[minimental]

that guide isa bit odd

 

[Intergrali]

bare copper is my favorite.. zzzzzt!

yes, I'm a bit dubious about that guide too!

Inte.

 

[SJSlots]

Well.... I have one and here are my impressions.

No more centering spring= A+
Increased guide rotation= A+
Ability to change the braids easily without removing the guide blade= A
Still not using copper= C

It does seem to work well though!

 

[Tropi]

QUOTE Still not using copper= C
Apparently the official Scalextric view on their stiff braid (actually tin plated copper I think) is that it is a good deal more durable and needs much less attention than traditional copper and is therefore more suitable for kids and casual users. They are probably correct in that respect, though I still don't like it myself.

 

[Intergrali]

Trop, that sounds about right!

Less maintainance, I am still running my MG lola on the first set of braids! same with my GT3's which are incidentally now 10 months old!!!

Inte.

 

[moped rider]

Scalextric are right. Fly braids wear out very quickly. If you wish to have copper braids though then surely you can simply swap them over. Why put a black mark against something that is an option and personal choice?

Moped

 

[Intergrali]

yeah, we pay £30? for a sport car, ready to race supposed to eb the best right? right.

So then we upgrade it so it's not the best! why dont scalex supply us with copper braids as we then have 3 sets of braids we dont actually want!

and why cant they go back to the original hard wired guide like every other single munuf. bar SCX as theirs works well anyway.

even Proteus changed and hard wired their guide instead of brass strips!

Inte

 

[Tropi]

QUOTE Why put a black mark against something that is an option and personal choice?
Perhaps because the preferred choice isn't an option as supplied
You must take what you get and then source, pay for and fit, your preferred option.
No, it seems absolutely fair, reasonable, right and proper to review exactly what is actually supplied, rather than something else, altogether different.

To make it more vivid, let's say someone was reviewing a car and it was supplied with poor quality gears. Would it be right to not black mark that fact on the basis that you can always buy an aftermarket Slot.it or equivalent replacement?

Let's take it a stage further - the entire car under review is a heap of crap, but we shouldn't point this out because we had the option of replacing the whole thing?

No, we must report what we find.
You see it is a matter of principle, not of cost.

 

[SJSlots]

And keep in mind that I didn't give the braids an "F"

A grade of "C", over here in the states anyway, tends to imply an average grade. I don't think the tinned braids are poor... just feel copper makes for a better braid.

Even with the Scaley braids the car runs very well. I love it and the braids won't stop that either way.

 

[moped rider]

Whats with this hard wired thing?

The way the new guide is set up you get the benefits of hard wiring and the benefits of a guide that can have braids replaced without having to mess about with stripped wires.

A very clever design if you look closely.

Moped

 

[Intergrali]

hard wiring more simple therefore cost less.

and I think Scalex are infinging on TSRF patent (maybe why the T400's havent been released as single items?)

Inte.

 

[mtucker666]

T400Rs are available in the Argos set in the UK and it seems in the sport ed livery in most of the rest of the worlf. if there was a patent conflit they guide system would not have got this far.

For general use the Scaly braids are good and most people in our club use them with no problems and some even prefer them. For racing I swap them for either Slot-it of Pink Kar soft braids
Matt

 

[Hwise]

Well I am sure to get dragged over the coals...but my impression of the guide isn't all that wonderful...its not that I think its bad...it just leaves me cold.

My main complaint is that it is still as shallow as the older guides.

Yes, the arc travel is improved...I do like that. And the screw that holds the guide mount helps reduce some of the free-play...but I just think we need to forget about how well it will work on Classic Track and get a deeper guide.

I showed this new model to quite a few folks this past weekend. I guess we just don't see how this guide is any easier to change out than the prior releases. The old style popped out out easily enough...during racing...pop it out ...put in new one...and worry about replacing the actual braids later.

It does work...and thats the bottom line...but I don't think it sets any milestones in performance either.

The car is nice though...lot better than I thought. Without the mags on routed wood this baby was pretty smooth indeed. I'll be grabbing more.

Ok back to my hole...

Harry

 

[Tropi]

QUOTE My main complaint is that it is still as shallow as the older guides.
Harry, there will be no dragging you over the coals here!
I for one, really encourage straightforward comments like that - people NEED to know what the score is without glossing over basic failings. I haven't seen one of these guides yet but have seen some photos that clearly illustrated that it is no deeper than existing. This seems like a wasted opportunity, but we can hope that Scalextric will issue a deeper one very soon. I can't quite remember how long since the Sport Track was introduced but it must be about a year or so and we must hope that a suitable depth guide is not far off.
It would be good to hear a few words direct from Scalextric though.

 

[Inside_Info]

QUOTE (Hwise @ 20 Oct 2003, 09:22 PM)My main complaint is that it is still as shallow as the older guides.

...but I just think we need to forget about how well it will work on Classic Track and get a deeper guide.

The old style popped out out easily enough...

Scalextric are trying very hard not ot make the classic track obsolete, so they probably don't want to produce longer guide blades...

Having said that my latest aquisition is a Scalextric Dallara IRL car (for £14.50 it goes as well as most of the other cars in my collection). As usual it had two spare guides with it... silly suggestion but why not supply an alternative longer guide moulded in say red plastic and a standard short blue guide and a few spare braids... Is this too logical or too expensive?

On the subject of removing the guide from said car, i had a problem and had to reach for the screwdriver to prise it out as the chassis was flexing alarmingly when I pulled on the guide. However, my son, not quite 4, came up to me later with the car in one hand and the guide in the other!!! He's doing all my maintenance from now on...lol!

 

[moped rider]

MRRC bring out a fine car that runs nice (Toyota). Great!

It has a guide that is not a deep as the current scaley guide!

It is not always about guide depth is it?

The original Scaley guide was a marvel and Scaley have improved even on that!

Well done Scaley.

Moped

 

[Rich T UK]

a marvel?

did he say marvel?

it's just a guide.
anyway, leaving john-cleese style ranting to one side, I agree with Inside_info- having two depths would be wlecomel- a feature that would have been easier to implement, funnily enough, with the old guide. I presonally don't have a problem with the depth of the existing guide, but the limited range of movement is what gets up my nose. in this case, the new guide is exactly what I want.

and I think it must be getting on for 2 years for sport track now- wasn't it launched at the beginning of 2002? we're getting toward the end of 2003 now... I bought my sport set (circuit 4- caddies) a year ago (today, in fact. seems like less...), and it was second-hand then.

It's a tricky situation for margate- while there are still classic sets on shop shelves all over the country, It would be a brave decision to start making cars that don't run on the old track. speaking from sort-of experience, I wouldn't want to be the shop assistant who has to explain to an irate parental customer on boxing day why his child's "scalextric" cars won't run on "scalextric" track.

Scaley's brand-standard status (to the point that for most consumers, they are still the generic name for the slot-racing product) in the UK is both their blessing and their curse... I think it'll be a long time until the cars are built primarily for the new track.

 

[Hwise]

After a few phone calls today...it would NOT surpise me if Scalextric makes a deeper guide for this system that we can attach that would utilize the existing braid plate.

Harry

 

[Mr.M]

I know what you're saying re the shop assistant bit, Rich, but they have managed something similar before when they finally dumped those awful banked bends. Car boxes had "not suitable for use with C187 banked bends" printed on the end labels. This was following a long period of nearly every set having said bends.

I remember it gave us another laugh at Hornby's marketing department's expense.

Announcing the demise of the banked bend the same year as the first Nascar sets became available

Mr.M