December 15, 2008
 Power Slot Nissan 350Z Review By Eric Cropper That was then and this is now. The newest addition to the PS lineup is the Nissan 350Z. If you remember the VW Polo review that Shawn did there were some issues with it. So, did Power Slot make any adjustments on the 350Z and correct the issues of the VW Polo? I think you’re going to be surprised at what PS did with this model. APPEARANCE  Power Slot’s version of the Nissan 350Z is simple compared to Scalextric’s version. PS gives it just enough detailing to keep most folks happy with its appearance. The details that are present are hearty in design and will hold up to abuse more than a Scaley version. While scale purist will be upset with some items and end up calling them toy like in appearance. I remind you again as Shawn did his VW Polo review…Power Slot is new to the game of slots and later you will see they are listening and making the necessary improvements to their cars.  Up front quad spotlights highlight the front end of the Nissan. My only wish is that they actually worked, but they still look great. I’m sure some folks out there will make them work. As great as they look, turn your attention to the actual headlights of the 350Z. See something missing? They are simply chromed areas behind the clear plastic lenses. Its odd with no actual light details to be seen, but it’s not a deal breaker. There are logos and sponsors all over this car. I checked out the www.mayoragua.com site. It’s a place to buy some high end swimming pool covers and enclosures. Want you outdoor pool to have air conditioning? They can make it happen. The coolest logo is the Burn Intense Energy logo on the hood. It’s an energy drink out of Sweden. The logo on the actual drink glows in the dark. (turning out the lights…lol) Nope. That would be taking things too far in the tampo printing department. Oh yeah, I used one of the Burn wallpapers from their site for the background of my title shot. Here’s their web address if you’re curious www.burnenergy.se and that will hopefully keep them off my back for using the background. One detail that falls short is the Nissan badge. It’s a separate plastic piece that is fixed to the hood and rear hatch. I like that they tried something other than just printing it on the car. However, it isn’t cleanly done and you can tell it was broken off and applied. The rear looks better, but the front one hangs over the front lip of the hood. I still appreciate the attempt and with a little refinement it would look good.  The rear is simple, yet captures the curves of the real deal. A nice sturdy rear wing tops the back end. There’s a license plate and a silver painted muffler with dual exhaust tips peeking out from the bottom the Nissan. I will go on record declaring this the strongest rear wing I’ve ever come across on any brand of slot car. If you break this one off you’ve accomplished something.  Looking down upon the Z you see that the fenders are flared out nicely and looking in the front windshield you get a little peek of a couple of instrument pods on the dash. I couldn’t get a good shot of the interior. It is about the same level as the VW Polo and is all black except for the white and red painted driver and navigator. The mirrors are pretty sturdy and should hold up like the rear wing. Well, they’ll probably come off before the wing.  Below in a closer shot of the side of the Nissan and the main area of the tampo printed logos and sponsors of the car. If you remember the VW Polo BP Racing version had issues with thin and smudged logos. I’m glad to say that the 350Z doesn’t suffer from those issues. The tampo is much improved and solid. The white logos are still thin in spots, but no smudges were present as on the Polo. The silver door handle is a separately applied piece just as the Nissan badges and appears that it won’t come dislodged in a tumble or two.   The above picture shows some cosmetic issues. They’re nothing major, but I wanted to touch on them either way. First, the side mirrors are recessed. Thought PS painted them silver, they both still look like someone broke or ripped the mirror surface out of them. Second, I already talked about the headlights not having any real detail to them. Third, is a shot of a tire where the logo printing partially ends up on the bottom of the tire. Again, these are all cosmetic and they don’t really bother me too much. I simply pointed them out because I know some readers will see them as flaws.  Another small detail that I like is the defroster lines in the rear window. If you look at the right edge of the rear window you see the rear wiper. This is a detail I think some might call “toyish” because of its large size. The front wipers are oversized too. If you look in the top middle of the window you see the hint of the red and silver painted fire extinguisher mounted on the rear deck of the interior.  Lastly, we’ll check out the tires in the appearance section of this review. Power Slot did a good job with the white rims. The recessed center lugs are painted silver and behind the rim resides a brake rotor and caliper. Going back again to the VW Polo review the tires were hard and the molding process left a seam down the middle of the tires. Plus, this seam was present all the way through to the inside of the tire. Power Slot has made improvements in the tire department. The Nissan’s tires are absent the seam from the two-piece molding process. The tire material is very soft and smooth. They proved decent grip during testing and only required a gentle sanding to remove a slightly raised outside edge. Note: The rear tires appear to have been glued onto the rims. I tried to remove them and in two spots the rubber appeared to be melted to the center rib of the rim. So, keep that in mind when trying to remove them to avoid damaging them beyond use. Yes, PS has taken steps to improve their tires. However, I have to mention the quality of their tires still needs improvement. I’ll point out what I’m talking about in a later picture. PERFORMANCE  Flipping the Nissan onto its side we get our first glimpse of the BIGGEST improvements that Power Slot has made since the release of the VW Polo. Something looks very familiar to me! How about you? Is that a Slot It inspired motor pod? The red arrows are the 2 screws to the motor pod and the 2 yellow arrows are the body screw locations.  Below we see that PS put a long can motor with a big vent on top and bottom for cooling. The motor is rated at 25K RPM. It has 9 tooth brass pinion that transfers the power to a 27 tooth Slot It styled adjustable crown gear. The rear axle also sports some brash bushings. This is a BIG setup from the Polo’s rear end. The 2 yellow arrows point out not 1, but 2 screws that lock down the motor to the pod. No need for hot glue here folks.  So, is it a functional and adjustable motor pod? Yes and no. I tried loosening the 2 screws to see if I could get some play out of the pod like a Slot It and it didn’t budge. Adjustability? NO. Function? YES. I believe the motor pod is more about having a rock solid platform for the motor and to avoid lost RPMs and torque from a sloppy motor. This has been a complaint about Ninco and Spirit chassis that flex from the power of the motor. So, if that was Power Slot’s intentions they succeeded. No flex to be found here under power. However, if they actually were trying to make an adjustable pod like Slot It…sadly, they failed.  Redirecting our eyes up to the front part of the chassis we see a magnet located in front of the motor. Since it’s located in the middle of the car its purpose seems to be more about keeping the guide in the groove than keeping the rear end planted in place. I like how PS created opens in the chassis to route the wires neatly to the guide without interference to the front axle. The front axle has a lot of up and down movement. The was a lot of side to side slop too. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem to affect the car when I ran it. Keep in mind that my track is flat. Those of you with banked curves might have to make the necessary fixes if you notice the tires rubbing on the wheel wells. You can either shim or cut off the excess of the front axle. The yellow arrows point to the posts on top of the axle channels. They almost look as if they have holes in them for a set screw to control the vertical axle play and that's exactly what they are. There are set screw axle adjusters not only on the top but on the bottom of the chassis to raise the axle as well. Also, the guide is spring loaded to help keep it in the slot.  Power Slot was smart to make the axles without any type of spines on their ends. So, with some effort the wheels can be removed from the axles. In the above picture you see that one of my rear hubs was cracked. This is an easy fix and has been done to countless Fly releases. So, I’m not going to make too big a fuss about it. Even with the hub being cracked the wheel fit very snug on the axle and caused no visible problem when running the car. The yellow arrow points out a much bigger problem with Power Slots’ tires. As I mention earlier, I would be pointing out a centering issue in the molding process of the tires. This is it! As you can clearly see in this picture there was more tire material on one side than the other. Sanding would not solve this problem. The opening that accepts the rim was off center. This was evident on 2 of the 4 tires with the pictured rear tire being the worst of the two. Luckily, Power Slot included 2 spares tires under the base.  Not only were there 2 extra tires there was a key for the crown gear and a card telling you which # your car was out of the edition of 1500. Yes, that 489 is handwritten. How would you like that job? Hand cramp!!! TRACK TIME Just as the recent C4 review the Nissan was run on my Sport setup in the basement with stock everything. I ran it in lane #2 for the tight turns. Placing the Z on the track and pulling the trigger I was presented with some very good acceleration. The power band was surprisingly smooth with the stock controller and I imagine it to be even better with an aftermarket controller and power. Going down the back straight the Z had good top speed and when it came to slowing down it was just right. There wasn’t an abrupt halt and it didn’t just roll either. It was in a middle ground between the two extremes and made it a very easy driving slot car. As you’ll see in the video the magnet doesn’t keep the rear end of this rally car from sliding out in the curves. You could take it out and add a little weight to be totally non-mag, but I think I’ll leave mine as is. The magnet seems to just aid in keeping the guide planted as I suggested earlier. Based off the video I’m putting the lap times in the 7 second range. That’s not that bad considering I was more concerned with getting a lap in for the camera. (I still wrecked at the end of it…lol) Personally, I think when I was running it without the pressures of the camera it was probably turning high 6’s for lap times. Again, this is just by feel. Click here to watch PowerSlot 350Z Movie JUDGEMENT DAY In a short time Power Slot has released some original slot cars and look to keep doing so in the future. They’ve already made steady improvements in their production, quality, and car components from the earlier released VW Polo. So, they are listening and striving to improve their product in the world of big name manufacturers. They still need to work on their tires to get them perfected and continue to improve the overall appearance of their cars. I think as a brand they are heading in the right direction and hope to see even bigger and better releases from Power Slot in the future. I still want to get my hands on their Hummers to see what others are already talking about. They sound like some REAL climbers. I would like to thank Michael of Euro Model Imports for the speedy delivery of the Nissan 350Z for this review. He’s already told me that Power Slot is releasing an Opel GT coming January and that he’ll be sending one my way to put through its paces. As always any questions or comments are welcome and should be directed to the email address below. Eric Cropper AKA legionofone AKA HRW Minion ecropper@hotmail.com
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