Monday January 08, 2008
 NINCO Porsche 997 'Vallejo' Review By Shawn Smith Appearance:  From the MRC website information on this car: The new N-GT Category allows us to see really astonishing cars such as this Porshe 997 in rally competition. The Galician Diego Vallejo participates in the Spanish Championship with a 997 and has already achieved a victory. 4x2 motion, NC-5 angle winder motor. Cockpit includes driver and navigator. Doing a quick search on-line I was able to find a pretty good images; Vallejo Racing on Google of the car and this also helped clear up a couple of things about NINCO making two near identical cars. Seems the Nupel Porsche team appears to have been made up but both Sergio and Diego Vallejo and the cars they drive have been entered in races wearing different numbers, graphics and wheels. Our test car, NINCO item number 50464 sports the silver wheels, the #4 on the door and a few other graphic difference between the sister car the #3 (NINCO item number 50478). No matter what number or what color wheels it’s wearing the new NINCO 997 is a great looking car. Being a fan of the car I love the way NINCO got it to sit so low to the track and the wide stance with the bulging fenders make it look quick sitting still.  Detail wise the car is fairly minimal letting the paint job do all of the work although up front I do like the mesh grille-work in the bumper cover openings. I also think the headlight buckets are dying to be drilled out to have a light kit installed but that’s a project for another time.  Riding inside of the car our driver and navigator wear matching racing suits stuffed inside all of the roll caging and of course no navigator would be worth his weight in salt without a clip board of driving instructions. Front and back at that with little arrows pointing straight and showing turns in varying degrees of sharpness!  In the back of the 997 ‘Vallejo’ the exhaust pipe location stands out, actually a molded feature of the chassis design, and the large rear wing sits high and wide drawing most of the attention.   And did I mention that this thing looks wide? No real fear of touching tires with a pair of these bad boys. Both front and rear wheels are tucked in nicely behind the fender openings and in the back especially the fender opening sits low over the rubber giving it that cool ‘slammed’ look.   Looking down from the top the car looks to be all-white with a good mix of small sponsorship logos but I really do like the look of the bright lime green and gold accents running around the sides of the car. Everything finish-wise looks great about this 997 and the finish is glossy and well applied. Performance:  As is typical with NINCO cars only 2 screws need to be removed to free the body from the chassis. The rear most screw is certainly easy to find and the front screw can be located in the hole directly behind the guide.  Now with the body off here again we find ourselves in familiar territory as the NINCO 997 comes fitted with an NC-5 motor, that makes 20,000 RPM’s at 14.8 volts, in an angle-winder chassis configuration.  Traction is aided by NINCO’s infamous button-style magnet mounted in a pocket placed just in front of the motor location. Of course many have asked NINCO if they have any plans to one day switch to the wider, and often stronger, bar style magnet and the response has always been ‘no’. The guys at NINCO like their cars to be ‘driven’ and don’t want to make magnet-missles that take minimal effort to drive.  The angle-winder gearing is smooth and delivers good power although can be a little noisy at times. Nothing to worry about if your 997 has a bit of a ‘growl’. That’s just the nature of the beast.  Up front the solid front axle just snaps in its mounts and it seems NINCO has been doing a good job lately of removing the common side-to-side free play that older models often displayed. Also notice how the guide wires get routed through small tabs in the chassis under the front axle and this helps position the wires to work as a sort of self-centering feature.  And of course the guide itself is spring loaded to help push the guide down in to the slot. Braids will need to be fattened and widened at the ends, plus it helps to turn them down a little, especially when running it on a track with wider rail distances.  It will also benefit you to take off the tires of your cars and check the rims for areas of flashing that might stop a tire from sitting on the wheel properly. When I do this I almost always spin the axles by hand and watch the behavior of the wheels to make certain they are on straight. Unfortunately in the case of this 997 one of the front wheels was a bit out of round. As you can see with the two vertical lines the green follows the straightness of the chassis and the red shows where the hub edges should be if the wheel was straight. This one had a good amount of wheel that rotated well within the red line when spun and the result was a wobble that caused some vibration at higher speeds. Test times with the wobbly wheel were still good yet I wanted to make sure I got the best time with the car as smooth as it could be.  So… for the sake of testing off came the questionable wheel and on went a NINCO Pro-Race set screw replacement and to the track I went.  Out of round front wheel and all the box stock time for the car clicked off at a fast lap of 6.461. Not very good by NINCO GT-style car standards with cars like the Supra, NSX, Ascari and Mosler turning times in the mid to high 5-second range. Off came the front wheel and with the metal replacement the fastest lap did drop down to an 'almost there' 5.993 lap. Taking the car to the tire sanding station improved things even more and the fastest lap of the test proved to be a very pleasing 5.588. Success!! The Final Verdict:  Testing completed and the NINCO 997 N-GT ‘Vallejo’ is another good addition to the NINCO line. I love the way the car looks on the track and test times have it comfortably within a class of cars it should feel right at home racing with. Minor wheel issue aside the car was everything I have come to expect from a ready-to-run NINCO car and that suits me fine. NC-5 power, some tail sliding wheel spin out of the turn when pushed too hard and good brakes when its time to stop. Looks good, runs good… I’m sold! Thanks to Model Rectifier (MRC) for providing the NINCO Porsche 997 N-GT 'Vallejo' for review. Please stop by the HRW/SCG Message Board to talk about this and all other models of slot cars. Happy Slotting! Shawn Smith - SJSlots sjslots@hotmail.com Thanks Go To MRC For Sponsoring This Review!
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