Slot.it Tuning Discoveries

I had a day with no track time and decided to tune the cars. I started with truing the rear tires and removing the magnets. I'm going to try leaving them out and tuning to a no-magnet setup.

My first worry came after taking the magnets out and looking at the way the cars sat on the track. Each one had the front wheels slightly off the ground. Not sure I like that. The construction of the front axle suspension out of the box makes it difficult, if not impossible to lower the front wheels to the ground unless you replace the two plastic blocks supporting the axle with small grub screws.

The Slot.it EVO6 front end. The two grub screws on either side of the car will control the front-end height somewhat, but the two plastic blocks that support the axle limit the amount of control. Too much tightening of the screws and the axle binds, stopping the wheel rotation. It possible to replace the blocks with grub screws as well, which come up from underneath the chassis. Until then I've filed small guide grooves into the plastic blocks to help against binding and lower the wheels slightly.

I also loosened the pods, adding pod float to each car. This is different than body float, which was also added by loosening the two body screws. From how I understand it, body float will help the car through the corners by allowing for a little shift in weight, while pod float will give the motor and rear-end some independence from the chassis. It doesn't take much to make the car feel pretty loose while holding it in my hand, so I can imagine it's a bit more fragile on the track, but I might be wrong about that. We'll find out tomorrow.
The idea with racing without magnets is that the speeds are slower, the cars tend to act more realistically in the curves as they're relying primarily on tire traction, and if there's a crash, it's mostly a low-trajectory spinout and not so much a flying bullet disaster. When magnet cars go around the track, they can go at a faster speed, but have a breaking point: once you no longer have magnetic traction [if you're too fast through a curve, for example], the magnet will eventually lose contact with the rails, and the car's momentum can cause violent, damaging crashes.
So, in theory, taking the magnets out of the car might just make it last longer.

Ultimately I want to run all my cars without magnets, so I'll be trying to do that. I couldn't do it with the Carreras and keep them competitive with each other, but I don't think I'll have that problem here. I'll be experimenting with ballast to see how that changes things. The Fords feel a little light in the nose. The Alfa seems to be very well balanced already. I don't think it needs any weight added.