July 20, 2008
 PowerSlot VW Polo S.1600 Rally and 'Show Car' Review By Shawn Smith Appearance: Before we get too far in let me again remind everyone that this is a brand new company so some growing pains are to be expected. Even so when I first opened the box and pulled out these Polo's I was pleasantly surprised by the general appearance of both cars. The cases, which are really big for such relatively small cars, are simlar in look to case from numerous other companies having a flat black plastic base and a tall clear plastic top. While these Polo's might look a little dwarfed by the case size Power Slot also makes Dakar style trucks so they have to be large enough to fit their other lines. Inside each case is a thick card-stock background with very basic company information on the back.  Leaning more towards race liveries than street car looks I went for the white BP South Africa Rally Championship car first and quickly opened the case to get a better look at these new cars. At first glance the car looks great with orange accents like both front and rear bumpers, the rear hatch mounted wing and a variety of other colors that stand out well on the mostly white base paint.  The 'Show Car' version, in contrast, is a basic red finish which is difficult to make lacking that 'toy-like' appearance. The overall finish however is nice the glossy although for me it screams to be covered in graphics and have numbers placed on it.  Detail wise both cars share the same accents with front end features like painted grill emblems, painted hood pins, clear headlight pieces and matching grill and hood openings. The windshield wipers are positionable so I moved them down out of the way of the driver's view before sending it out for some laps. As you can see above they would have been a distraction for the driver without adjustment.  Items such as the side view mirrors felt pretty sturdy and held up without breaking during testing. The white rally version has VW logos painted on each and the mirrored sides are painted with silver. It is here on the sides of the white rally version that we see some areas for improvement in the paint process although we'll get to that in a little bit.  Inside the cabin of both cars you'll find shallow tray-style interiors that hold the driver and co-driver from the armi pits up. Both cars are fitted with black roll cages and very little other details although one spot that made me chuckle a little is the way the interior is molded which makes it look like both the driver and co-driver are holding on to steering wheels. Obviously the intention is that the co-driver is reading directions but with both pilots having their arms in the same positions and both having the same 'thing' in their hands I can't be sure if these cars are right hand drive or left hand drive.  In back seprately applied tail light lenses frame in the rear painted emblem and panel fasteners and the high rear wing is mounted through openings in the rear hatch glass to the underside of the car roof.  Rims on the Polo's look very small but measuring them they end up being right at a scale 15 inches. The 5-lug bolt pattern is the same on both cars although the rally version has solid white molded rims that on the show car version are painted silver.  Touching back on the paint I have to give Power Slot good marks for their first efforts in the RTR slot car market. As I mentioned before there are some things that can be improved on...  Here on the doors is where issues stand out most and as you can see in the picture the white is 'dirtied' up a little by very slight smudge marks. You can also see a slight break in the BP logo near the fender flare and on the other side part of the 'b' is missing from 'bp'just behind the door handle.  These types of issues should probably be expected from small start up companies and I'm doubting these 'smudges' would even have been seen if found on a non-white paint job. So for overall appearance I'm still going to say Power Slot did a good job and I'm looking forward to seeing some of their future releases.  Of course we all know that looks only go so far and its how a slot car runs that really defines it. So let's take a look at how Power Slot decided to make their go-fast parts and then see how they run. Performance:  Flipping the Polo over the very first thing I noticed was the angle-winder set up. To get a better look we'll remove the body via the two screws that hold it to the chassis.  The screw in the back is easy enough to find however to get access to the front screw you need to move the guide to the side. The guide doesn't move all that much out of the way so use a smaller screw driver to avoid damaging the guide itself.  Now with the body removed you can get a better look at the shallow tray style interior. Seems that a lot of anglewinder cars with shallow interiors all share a common theme and I'll get to that later... long time slotters familiar with this set up no doubt already know where I'm going with this.  Chassis now becoming the focus the set up looks very familar to me with the motor in the angle-winder position and a small cylindrical button magnet being mounted mid chassis, ala NINCO products.  The motor, here labled as a PS-1 (assuming Power Slot #1), is lable wrapped and solid ended and while I don't have a way to test the motor's RPM's I can tell you Dave from SlotCarNews had listed that the motor should be making about 23,500 RPM's at 14.8 volts. We'll see how it feels on the track.  Before we get there though take a look at the motor screw helping to hold all those RPM's firmly in their carrier. Seems someone at Power Slot is aware that a popular tuning tip for similar motor set-ups is to better secure the motor so the good news is that Power Slot has taken the step to do it for you. Nice going!  Gearing will once again have some angle-winder familiarity. Running a 12-tooth pinion and 32-tooth axle gear the ratio will have it accelerating and braking very similarly to, dare I say it again, NINCO angle-winder cars although remember the RPM numbers are nothing to sneeze at so we should expect a good amount of torque and speed out of the Polo. **Note** - Important for me to say here that I did have an issue with the axle gear on the Show Car spinning under load. It wasn't noticable on the track but when I went to sand the tires the wheels didn't spin because the axle gear was. The fix for this, aside from going to a set-screw gear replacement, is to secure the gear to the axle via glue although I can not promise your results. Just be very careful fixing this with glue in case you find something similar. The closeness of the gear to both the bushing and the rim is painfully snug as is. More on this in a second.  Up front a solid front axle rides in chassis posts that allow for a more than ample up and down movement and if I had one thing to want out of this set up is a Spirit'like adjustment screw that would allow me to limit the amount of travel. The tires, while sitting flat on the track, do not touch the insides of the fenders at all however when allowed to push up higher in their mounts the tires do rub on the on the underside of the wheel openings and that can cause some handling issues. Thankfully my track is nice and flat so users with uneven sections will have to share their thoughts.   From a rear axle perspective another thing I noticed was that the gear side wheel sticks out farther than the other side wheel. Reason for this is simple, and easily fixable, as if you look at the image below is it the length of the wheel post and/or the hub of the axle gear that could stand to be sanded down smaller so that the wheel could be moved farther in. As it is now the axle gear is pressed right up close to the black axle bushings and the rim itself is pressed tight to the gear. If it bothers me enough that wheel post is going to get a small fraction removed.  Grip on the track comes via what I would consider to be pretty hard rubber tires. These tires, along with being on the firm side, have a rather odd mold line running all the way around them that won't sand off no matter how much you try. Reason became evident once I removed the tires to check the rims as you can see in the images below the mold line is clear through the tire to the inside.    Time to talk about magnets and all I can say is thank goodness this is a rally car. I am a stock magnet racer, with the exception being rally cars, and for rally cars I normally yank the magnets after a handfull of stock laps. In the case of the Polo's I didn't even need to remove it as the traction of this car feels very non-magnet even with the magnet in place. Obviously being small and round it doesn't offer hardly any grip once the tail slides out beyond the assitance from the rails and even with the magnet in the chassis the chassis itself is fairly thick keeping the downforce on the lighter side. Add the light downforce to the relatively hard rubber tires and this thing slides the back end out like a champion.   Another possible area of for modification might be the guide itself. As you can see in the picture above the guide has the ability to move up and down however it simply doesn't based on design. There is no spring to push the guide down towards the slot nor is it smooth enough to slide up and down on its own. For the image I had to pull it up to show it in the up position. The Final Verdict:  On the track the performance was good but with some changes it could be better. The motor does make ample power but the car is just too loose to get the most out of the motor. The tires are easily overpowered so it's going to take some control to get the best drive out of the turns. A smaller RPM motor would help for a lot of home track users or finding a better gripping pair of rear tires would help with traction too. Overall I think the outcome is favorable for a newcomer and what they have done so far is a good start. Firing the guns quickly Power Slot already has several products besides these Polo's for us to look forward to including an ATV we'll (HomeRacingWorld.com) be looking at and reviewing also. Pretty cool stuff from the new Spanish company and I'm hoping they soon turn some attention to road racing just to see what it is they can do.  I'd like to say a special thank you to Power Slot for sponsoring this review and please click the link to check out their website. As always if you have any questions you can feel free to email me at my email addresses below. Shawn Smith - SJSlots shawn@homeracingworld.com |