52 replies to this topic

[Cheater]

Link to the live stream of Cloverleaf Racing's eighth annual 24-hour slot car race. A race that shares the traditions of true endurance racing like the Rolex 24 in Daytona or the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

 

Michigan 24 live stream

 

At least two Slotbloggers, Eric Balicki and Buth 'Pappy' Dunaway, will be competing in this year's event, which starts at 9:30 AM this Saturday morning, i.e. today.

 

Here's a teams shot from last year's race, won by the yellow-shirted Slot Car Corner team. If these guys are smiling that much after 24 hours of racing, you know they had a lot of fun.

 

 

Here's the track this event is contested on.

 

[raisin27]

Good luck, Eric and Pappy.

 

Enduros have always been my favorite type of racing. Wish I was competing with you.

[Bill from NH]

The Slot Car Corner team members come from NH, Canada, and I think NY and CT.

[Bob Appelle]

Where is the track located?

[Cheater]

Michigan for sure, Fenton I think.

[Bob Appelle]

I think I saw a post about this track before, it's in a pole barn. Fenton is only about 50 miles from my house. I'll have to see about next year.

[Bob Appelle]

Nope, looked at the photo and it's in a basement.

[Pappy]

Bob,
 
The race is in the basement of Mike Stott's house outside of Fenton, Michigan. Mike is one of the owners of Clover Leaf Racing, they have a web site.
 
We had a good time as always, finished a strong third which is the best finish we've ever had. Our car was pretty good, we didn't have any major problems, and the motor and tires lasted the whole race.
 
Clover Leaf won this year beating out Slot Car Corner, who have won six of the eight races so far; they're really hard to beat. The winning car this year was a ScaleAuto Corvette.
 
As you can see, the track is five lanes, the race is 30 lanes, 48 minutes per lane, five lanes of night driving.

[TG Racing]

Great job, Butch! It looked like you guys had a real good car.

[Ramcatlarry]

Race results? Total laps and miles driven? I could not read the stats shot.

[Pappy]

Larry,
 
I didn't even pay any attention to that but I i'm pretty sure it's over a hundred actual miles. Pretty good for a cheap Chinese motor.

I'll see if I can get that information.

[Larry Labounty]

Great-looking track and sounds like a great time. It would be nice to run a 1/32 car again.

[Justin A. Porter]

Definitely makes me miss 1/32 racing as well.

[Pappy]

Enduros have always been my favorite type of racing. Wish I was competing with you.

Raisin, had we known that you would have been on the team. We were looking for teammates. 
 
I'll keep you in mind for next year.

[911GT3]

Since I was lucky enough to be the one behind the computer screen (and still awake) in the last heat. I managed to take a picture of the results.

 

1.  Clover Leaf Racing            11249 Laps

2.  Slot Car Corner                  11191 Laps

3.  Team Grizzly                       10723 Laps

4.  Great Lakes SCC               10048 Laps

5.  Team CanAm                       9953 Laps

 

I had a great time at this race. Mike Scott is a fantastic host.

 

Great Lake SCC make the trek from Chicago for their very first experience and ended up with a borrowed car that ran very well.

 

Congratulations to Clover Leaf Racing for winning the 8th Annual Michigan 24 Hour Slot Car Racing Enduro.

[MSwiss]

A 58 lap gap is real close in a 24 hour race.

 

Is this the type of car that won?

 

[Pappy]

Mike, 
 
That looks like it except I'm pretty sure they had a sidewinder motor pod with the 130 can motor and not the long 180 can.
 
The NSR 3001 Shark motor rated at 22,400 RPM is a popular motor for this race.

[Ramcatlarry]

Max RPM is less important with these light cars.

 

All of our (no magnet) classes of cars use 20-23K RPM motors. Many 'stock' set cars use 18-20K motors as well.

[C. J. Bupgoo]

 

I watched a few hours, "here-and-there," and enjoyed it immensely!
  

(I was born in Wyandotte, and lived in Allen Park, which had absolutely no effect on my judgement...)   
 

"Hats-off"    to all involved!  

[Pappy]

If you want to see what all goes into making a competitive car for this event, go HERE.
 
About the only stock thing on these cars is the chassis and the body. Kinda like NASCAR racing where the only stock thing on their cars is the manufacture'rs name.
 
You can put a hundred dollars into one of these cars only to find out it won't keep up. I had four Racer/Sideways Daytona Prototype chassis ready for the race and I got one of them running pretty good on Friday. Saturday morning I decided to put a fresh motor in it because I didn't know how much time was on the motor in it. When I went to take the motor out I found out that the chassis was broken. So I was going to put the motor in another one of my Daytona Prototype chassis only to find out that all four of them were broken. I came to the realization that the reason they were all broken is because of the method we use to straighten the chassis where we hold it down on a flat surface and pour boiling hot water on it to make it straighten out and then let the water cool to room temperature. It does straighten the chassis out but obviously on some plastics it makes them brittle. Not going to do that any more.
 
So I pull a Slot.it Porsche GT1 out of my box that a teammate had put together that we didn't even consider running because it was so much slower than my car. But for some reason it ran pretty good and was better than anything else we had. Didn't know how much time was on the motor and really didn't expect it to run the whole race but it did and was as fast at the end of the race as it was at the beginning. We had a third place car from start to finish, almost every heat we had the third fastest lap time and the third most laps.
 
We were extremely happy with our finish, we had good luck this year. Last year we had really bad luck and finished last.

[MSwiss]

Interesting on the broken plastic chassis.

I endured a few YouTube videos on flattening them.

I also noticed, on Facebook, the Chicago area team apologizing for breaking a couple of borrowed chassis.

That was also a problem at a 24-hour enduro at Mid-America about seven-eight years ago.

It seems like guys make a lot of effort to make those work vs. doing something practical, but of course, it is what it is.

[Pappy]

It seems like guys make a lot of effort to make those work, vs. doing something practical, but of course, it is what it is.

 

Do you mean like, taking up a different hobby? 

[Pappy]

That was also a problem at a 24-hour enduro at Mid-America, about seven-eight years ago.

 
Hey Mike,
 
Why don't you organize a 24-hour Retro Race and see if any chassis get broken.

[MSwiss]

I'm just sort of surprised with 21,000 RPM motors and shorter straightaways, they are going fast enough to break.

I'm run various 1/32 cars, and have hosted various 1/32 events, but I'm just not that familiar with how strong the chassis ultimately are on hard wall tracks.

I hosted races on my flat track in conjunction with the iHobby show, (including a leg of a proxy race that a car entered by "Smokieo" was in another stratosphere, performance-wise) and I don't remember any broken chassis.

Just guys grumbling in the 1/24 BRM race, when mirrors that got knocked off, had to be replaced before they could continue racing.

As far as a 1/24 24-hour enduro, I hosted one on the King, for Deathstar-powered flexi-cars in 2005. The winner holds the slot racing world record for distance (363 miles?). No chassis suffered any damage.

As far as a 24-hour Retro enduro, who knows?

At our first Stock Car race, at the last Sano, five-seven cars got ridered full speed into the deadman and (mostly the) 90 wall. None got damaged at all.

I suppose if a Retro cars hit another car on the straightaway, you would see some damage.

[Rob Voska]

Maybe a thread should be started about all the "other options" of cars. Most of us know very little about them.