The Unisia Jecs Slot It Nissan 390 GT1 is the third (and final) black and red livery made by Slot It of this popular slot car. The Nissan's are know to be quite fast and this car, with its new 21.5k motor is no exception.
Years ago I raced with Maurizio Ferrari of Slot It when he visited the club I belonged to then. While we were at the track that night he brought out the prototype of the Nissan body. We all marveled at the detail, especially the engine in the rear window. At that time, this level of detail was a rarity. Now the detail Slot It puts into their cars is the icing on a very, very fast "cake"...er... I mean slot car.
As you would expect the paint and printing on the car is flawless. And the red details over the black paint is well done and opaque.
The finish is very shiney and there are no problems with extra mold flashing on the body to be seen.
Slot It makes a light set that is user installed, with this car more than others I'm kinda feeling the lack of lights. I'd love to see the front lights and those beautifully modeled tail lights lit up as this car whizzed around the track.
Under the car we see the angle winder ready chassis, offset motor pod and orange endbell 21.5k motor.
Here we see inside the body and chassis (notice the intercoolers have been removed because they made contact with the chassis in previous models):
In the photo above you can see the channels for the wires now guide the wires under small brackets that don't allow the wires to foul the front axle, a nice feature.
While we're inside the car here, why is it that Slot It is the only company that's figured out how to make channels for the power wires that actually hold down the wires? Those channels are a great design and firmly hold the wires in place. I know this is nothing new but it struck me recently that Slot It have a great design here that no one has yet to copy.
A little grease here and oil there and it time to race the 76 gram car. The S2's went on the car and the car went on the track... and turned very quick 5.1's on the 61-foot East New York track. The car was very quiet and zipped around the track easily.
We had a set of NSR tires/wheels (#9010- 20x10 Ultra grip tires pre-mounted on wheels) on hand so they went on the car (along with a TSRF axle that fits the wheels a bit better than the Slot It axle...where's that standardization of 3/32 when you need it, eh?). With the NSR's in place the car did 4.9's and after a bit of truing to the tires it then dropped to a speedy 4.861 fastest lap. Nice and fast! The car had a very different feel with the NSR rubber, it seemed maybe a bit less predictable than the S2's. Going into the corners the car slid out a more in the top of the corner (under breaking) than with the S2's which tended to grip more at the top of the corner and then slide out at the apex of the turn.
The Nissan's, with their centered greenhouse, short wheelbase, and wide body just may be the speediest out of the box Slot It I've driven. And since we can't leave things as they are around here at Slot Car News this can will soon undergo a conversion to an angle winder open can 20k...more testing to follow about that soon.
Thanks to Fantasy World Hobbies for the car for review!
Dave Kennedy
Publisher, Slot Car News
