Impressive lighting on both the Stingray and the Interceptor, well done.
thank you, rastanz, and to you , Shawn. I am a day ahead on you as I had worked into the night getting the flashing lights rigged. I was this close and had to see it done.
I could have went fiber optic or lit from underneath to the spire protruding down, like the fog lights, but I wanted more intensity and thought that since the nano lights are so small, I could bore out the inside of the dome and install them directly. The hollowing was done with a pin vice or two. The nano chips were mounted to face each other inside the dome verses facing out. I got nervous about their brightness and turned them towards each other to try to tone it down some. “It’s like going from one extreme to another”
I had a thought abought using some gloss coat inside the dome to try to tone down the inner abrasions that lighten the domes color from where I bored it out but skipped it as I hurried on. Maybe on the next one.
The domes dash mount with holes for the wires drilled in place accepted the dome back with a touch of superglue to hold it fast. I cut a piece of larger diameter shrink tube and glued it into place around the wires and under the plate to clean up the look and possibly capture and hide light escaping from underneath
Same deal, the blue nanos have resistors all the way on the other end so I coiled up the wires and stripped/soldered/shrinktubed my last of 16 connections on this project, not including any jumpers.
I lubed up the entire chassis with slot car greases including the front and rear axles to help with any wire rubbing and stuffed it all back together with the occasional tuck or prod on a wire or two as the body fitted tight. This one is special enough I doubt I’ll run it much and that little of a clearance issue should be fine. The back gearing is clear and should be the real concern as the other stuff will clear enough.
The sequence of the flash for the two lights is a rapid left and right flash followed by no flash from either and repeat. It happens so fast that you ca hardly discerne one flash from another. On a light bar on a police cruiser it would have more of a left right strobe effect. This type of dome light would more accurately lit with a gyralight effect commonly found on the list of effects available to most digital train decoder chips.
I wish these slot car chips would do half the stuff those dcc decoders do but, that’s part of what makes this hobby less complicated than that one and that is a good thing.
The chip allows these light functions while being drove with a controller. Brake lights always work but the twilights come on with the headlights. Click once to turn on the lights. Click again to start the flashing light. Click again to turn off the lights but leave the flashing light on. And finally, one more click to turn it off.
For the pace car function: I place the car into pace car programming mode and drive to the desired speed and click to set it. The car them drives at that speed until it finds the pit area and pulls in and parks with its lights on but the flashing light off. At the push of the pace car button, the cars headlights start flashing back and forth”top to bottom on this model” while it moves to exit the pit lane. Upon exiting, the lights continue to flash and the flashing light then comes on as the car drives around the track at the speed I had set until I push the pace car button again where the flashing light extinguishes but the headlights flash as it drives to the pit lane and pulls in to park with solid headlights.
Pretty cool, huh? I can run 6 pace cars if I want. They usually pile up in the pit as they go to park.
I like how the flashing light turned out. The brightness is just right and the camera doesn’t do it justice for a pic or a video. May have to figure out how to upload one of those.
I ended up shoving a spacer or two in between the chip and chassis to gain some more ground clearance. I need to see if the dpr cover can be modified to fit back into place to cover the rest of the chip. I’ve seen some wild wrecks on my slot car track. I’ve noticed on these 1/32 scale cars that the physics seem right as far as what the car does as it leaves the track when you try a 60 degree corner at a scale speed of 180mph.
Every different design of car behaves in a different way in how they handle just like real cars do. You can see it when they drive and when hey wreck. It’s refreshing
