Magnets in Slot Cars - Good or Bad

There's nothing more fun than racing a slot car at full speed, ripping up the track lap after lap, hammer down full blast. Slot cars have always been great for that. Crazy speeds and fantastic wrecks. Cars flying like bullets [or baseballs depending on scale], taking out fancy nicknacks and breaking all kinds of stuff.

Alfa Romeo 33/3 coming for your lunch money.

What if you are starting to get bored sitting there with the hammer down, watching your car dutifully obey the call to maximum power? What if beating your little brother requires nothing more than max throttle? What if there was another way that was more challenging?

The first two slot cars I got, the Audi R18 LMP and the Audi R8 Safety car from Carrera, had two magnets each inside them. They were easy to access, so I took them out. It was a little sloppy at first, and I slid off the track a few times, but I noticed a few things. First was that instead of relying on the car to stay on the track through its magnets, I now found the car to be following a more natural physical thing. Physics was applicable now. Suddenly, if I go too fast in a corner, the back end will come out. It might even spin the car out completely. But I also notice that there are other factors at work.

I come from humble beginnings. Just after my first set of expansion tracks and my first paint job. I'd move furniture and set up on the rug in the main room.

Anybody who plays video games like Gran Turismo or Forza knows that when racing you have to set up the car before the curve, brake at the appropriate time and accelerate out at the appropriate time. None of that applies when you have magnets in your car, but ALL of that applies when you don't.
You have to think about how you get into a curve and what the optimum speed that could be without your backend coming out, all the while working through the curve patiently until accelerating at just the right time to get best speed out with least amount of wheel spin.

Another thing I noticed was that my cars were more competitive with each other with the magnets out. It seemed to put them all on a more level field. Taking the magnets out also made the setup of the slot car much more important. Suddenly the tires mattered, as well as the overall condition of the car. When before you could just slap a car on the track and jam the throttle down, now you notice whether tires need to be treated, or if a car needs to be lubed, or maybe an adjustment to the handling.

And if those things might sound like a hassle to you, like things you'd rather not have to worry about, then that's cool. Run magnets and have a blast.

But if you're the kind of person who wants to know if a Porsche 962C would go faster through a curve than an Alfa Romeo, and what that might be like....well, you can get a pretty good idea trying it with the slot cars.
I think the Alfa would probably go through a curve faster than a 962c, but then lose in the straight.

There's a lot of difference in wheelbase between these cars.

You might have you kids racing with you and think that taking the magnets out would be something they couldn't handle. If that's the case, try it. Kids catch on remarkably quick. My nephews have no problem racing on my track, and there are no magnets. It takes them at most two laps and they catch on.
And if it's YOU, and if you're the reason you think it won't be fun, try it. It's a two minute operation to take the magnet out of a slot car, and doing so might introduce you to something you didn't think you needed in your life. I'm just sayin'.

The Quarantine 50

That's right, sportsfans, it's time to get back to some real racing! No more thinking about it. No more table fixes. No more waiting until the end of the month! 50 laps around the largest layout yet!

A couple of important notes regarding today's race: this is the first official race of 2020, but since only one was run in 2019, I'm going to add this one to that one and start from there. It's also the Matra's 2nd only race, the first of which was an inaugural victory almost a year ago. This is also the first race since both expansions have been completed. The table now sits at a handy 20'x10'x4'.

Let's take a look at the layout:

I used up almost every track piece I had, trying to get as far down either side of the table as I could. Overall, it's a fast track, which favors the longer cars, but there are a few tricky bits thrown in. Not sure why it doesn't line up on the software like it does in real life. Oh well. It's working for me. Software - Softybahnplaner

Note: all cars were put on track with only a cleaning of the tires. None of the cars were given any special treatment beforehand.

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RESULTS:

Car              Time         Crashes         Lap          Points          Total     

Matra         5:24.81          0               6.48             11               22
Porsche       5:36.17          1                6.72              8                10
Alfa             5:37.65          1                6.74              6               12             
Shell            5:43.57          0               6.86               4                8     
Gulf             5:54.37          0               7.08               2                2     
Gold            6.08.96          2                7.36              0                 8   

Note: I give points this way in the hopes of avoiding a tie for 1st place at the end of the season, which was looking very likely last time I had a series. Making first place 11 points will give the winners a bit of an edge. This is also very much an experiment. But since it's my racing association...

We have a winner, racing fans. The Matra has stepped into the ring and slaughtered its opponents. 6.48 lap time.

I have everything good to say about the Matra. I think it's probably the best performing car I have, and would make a terrific race car on practically any track. I think it has just the right wheelbase and structure to make it fast, low and nimble, while still resembling a longer car when it needs to. It's one of the more exciting cars to drive as well. You can really put it on the edge and it'll perform. I was expecting somewhere around a 6.7 time, but I'll certainly take a 6.4. It'll be up to the other cars to answer the call to meet or beat it.

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2nd Place: Well would you look who showed up and brought the anger! With a solid lap time of 6.7, you can count on this guy to be a contender on all the longer tracks.

I was mildly surprised that the 962 showed up and put down such impressive lap times. In the last race, he clumsily posted an unimpressive fifth place finish, and I was starting to worry if he would be able to keep up with all the other cars. He proved me wrong today, that's for sure. I would expect my cars to break a 7 second lap here, and most are doing it without much trouble. A 6.7 is a very good solid lap. The driver should be proud of himself.

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3rd Place: Of course it wouldn't be a party without the Alfa showing up and stealing your girl.

There's something about the Alfa that makes me just know that it's going to put up a fight every time. While it doesn't have the straightaway speed the other cars have, it has so much muscle through the turns that it makes up for it. It crashed once today and was still a contender.

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4th Place: Such a fun, well rounded race car. 

If you look at the results of this race, and only this race, you'd almost think that I needed two separate classes. But that's not the situation here. I think there was a bit of unluck today. Not so with the #8 GT40. It ran as smooth as butter. In fact, I think that's why I ran a slower time with it; it's just too smooth and easy. If it wasn't so mellow I'd probably push it harder. I should just do it anyway. I think it could go a little faster.

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5th Place: Still running. Not winning. Running. 

So I went through this car the other day, cleaned it up, lubed it and oiled it, and it runs okay. It just feels uninspired. Like it needs something. I don't know what. When you're doing 50 laps, you tend to get into a groove, and I felt like we were getting a bit of a groove going, but the lap times weren't as good as I thought they'd be.

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Last Place: The surprise of the day. I wouldn't have expected a 6th place finish out of this car.

This car came in 2nd place in the last race, comfortably ahead of the rest of the field. This race it was all over the place. It crashed in two separate places and never really got going. Maybe because this was the first car I ran today. Who knows. But a lap time of 7.3 can only be attributed to crashes. All the cars should be well under 7 seconds...

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And there it is. Overall a pretty fun race, a bit of a surprise and a display of the force is going to be needed to shake the Matra off of its newly-discovered perch. Will anybody be able to shave the tenths needed to get ahead? We'll have to find out. I'll keep running laps and report on any significant speed breakthroughs.

I have more track coming at the end of the month, so this track will be redesigned, faster and longer. I'm very satisfied with how the extensions are working, and the 7 second lap times are a good lap. Not too long or too short.

Extension 2 Finally Finished

Yes, I have finally finished my table. Seems like it took forever: nothing was lining up schedule-wise, and when it did, it seemed I was always missing a key ingredient to get going. Finally my wife came back with my saw she left at her girlfriend's house and gave me some time today to get the extension done.

BEFORE picture. Mostly storage for my drum bags and a few other odds and ends. Took about 5 minutes to clean up.

It didn't take very long once the pieces were measured and cut. I think the build itself took about an hour [including grass]. I was able to fix the things I didn't like about the other extension while I was at it, so now I'm happy.

AFTER picture. This extension [and the green grass on top of it] really tie the room together.

The extension is a 4'x4' piece of plywood, attached to a frame underneath and supported by 2"x3" legs. It sits at 80cm high. The extension is then attached to the butt end of the wing extension. This gives each table full corner support, and is double strong in the joints.
It's a light table, and could be torn down fairly quickly if I had to for whatever reason. The total dimensions of the table now are 20' across, 10' down the sides, and 4' to 6' deep. That six foot depth is resulting from my small corner additions, which make the reach from there to the far corners of the table quite far away. As a result, most of my track designs tend to cut those corners a little short so I don't have to do magic if a car deslots thereabouts. Otherwise I have total access to the layout very easily.

The bigger the track layout, the better the Porsche likes it. This thing snakes through the long courses.

So now I need enough track to make a large enough layout. I could come pretty close, but it would be using every piece I have. But there's a nice big birthday box from the online place I get my track from sitting in my wife's office. That should be 10x Straight Pieces. That should help me considerably. I'd like to be able to do it without having to have a bunch of 1/60 curves just to make the distance. I'd also like to have something else on the ends besides a 180° u-turn of tight curves. Something more flowing.

On the other hand, having a short wheelbase car doesn't mean last place. They may not have the straightaway speed of the
 longer cars, but they make it up by brutally punishing every curve. Drama!

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Some time later...

Well I did it. I built a layout using every possible track piece I could that would stretch to the extensions. I was left with four 1/60 curves and one 3/30 curve. At maximum stretch I can barely make it into the extension on one side while halfway in on the other. So yeah, I need track pieces. I could have used those last four 1/60s, but I'd rather have a shorter track than one that pointlessly adds 1/60s. Man, I'm really beginning to hate them.
But the layout itself is fun, even though it's basically just trying to make it all the way around at the farthest length it can do it. But it'll do for now.

Now that the new extension is built and I have a temporary course laid down, all the cars are going to get looked at. When we left off so long ago, the #8 GT40 was running very well and quite competitive. I expect more out of it to come.

I ran some laps after setting up the temporary course. I'm going to leave it up until my birthday at the end of the month. Things will change then, so I'm not looking into making anything permanent just yet. Besides, not enough track right now.
But I do have something laid out and am running cars on it.

Another problem I have: the lens on my Canon EOS camera has died on me, So I can't get anything wide angle enough to show off the track. I only have a 50mm prime lens, which is great for a cheesecake photo of a car, but it doesn't have the wide-angle capabilities to pick up the track action. So there might be less of an emphasis on pictures here until I can get some lenses.
I do, however, have my GoPro working again, and I had an idea; one of my first posts on here, which happens to be the most trafficked post on this blog, is about painting track. Since I'll be getting more track, I'll need to do another round of painting. I might just record this one and maybe put it on YouTube. I had thought about doing that before but never did.

Spring/Summer Update

...and it's a doozy....

Something's been bugging me for a few months now. Probably ever since I added the grass to the layout. And that is the question of just exactly how sure I am that I want to do a scenery job to my race track.

As you can see if you've been reading this blog, I'm not one to settle on a layout permanently, although I came close with one. But I still am in search of the perfect race track, or something damn great. I can feel it's there, and it just needs to come out.

But how am I supposed to add permanent scenery to a table if I don't have a permanent layout? I just don't see it. And while it's not on my priority list as far as it goes, it is something that my wife expressed a lot of interest in doing, to the point that I was a little nervous to tell her how I feel about it now. I don't think I'll ever have a satisfying layout, and that's okay, so I told my wife that and prepared for the worst. She told me that it wouldn't be smart to do before we insulated the attic, and she was right.

It's also coming around to birthday time, and it's slot car stuff on the menu this year. I have a rule that I don't make purchases of slot car stuff unless it's needed. Otherwise I upgrade my track and cars through gifts from my wife. She asks me for a list of stuff that I'd like, and then she picks the things out of it she likes. It works out well and helps keep her interested in the stuff going on in the attic.
I need straights [10 or so], and have offered up suggestions in the form of cars, a power supply and a controller. So we'll see what happens. She told me to plan on the straights and that there will be more. That's cool.

Also, this coming Saturday I'll be adding my other extension; the one I had planned on not adding right away due to not enough track. Well, that's going to change. I'll have enough with the 10 straights.
The extension will be a 4'x4' twin of the other one. So that'll make it a U-shaped 20'x10'x4'. It'll take me a couple of hours to do the work. I already have the supplies, and some things are already cut.

So I know I keep pushing back doing a racing season, and the Matra has only run one race so far. And there really isn't a clear favorite yet. But there's a strong chance that I'll be adding a car or two to the lineup. Whatever it might be, it would be in the same general classes I'm running now of Classics and Group C.

UPDATE:

It's now Saturday. My wife left for the day with my daughter so I could have time to work on the extension. I cleared out the space needed to do it, and gathered up the wood to start cutting. It was then I realized that I thought I had enough wood but didn't. I don't have the pieces needed for cross bracing, and I don't want to attempt to build it without any support. I skimped on one side as it is on the other extension, and there's a bit of a warp occurring.
I would go get the wood today, but my wife is gone with the van, so I'm stuck here. The wood shop is across town. Bummer. I really wanted to dive into this today. Oh well. We're still in lockdown, so we'll make arrangements to go to the wood shop and maybe I can tackle this again next weekend.

Tips for Solo Racing During Lockdown

Like most of us, you're probably locked down, wondering how you're going to have fun racing alone. The nice thing about slot cars is that there is still plenty to do, even if there's no one else to do it with.
Here's a list of things you can do or think about during the time you have to yourself. These are in no particular order of preference.

1. Tune your cars into their best, fastest shape. The first one's a no-brainer. Getting each car up to its fastest lap speed will help sort out a lot of things for you. It'll tell you if you need to buy more cars that are competitive, it'll tell you which cars are maybe too fast/slow to be competitive, and it can also tell you which cars need more love than a little oil and grease. If you have enough cars, it can also help you sort those into classes based on run times [and likenesses]. So getting down to the roots of each car, rebuilding from the ground up, making up custom settings for each individual car, and testing/timing those cars can give you multiple sessions of competitive racing, even if you're by yourself.
2. Consider changing your track layout. Nothing is worse than a boring track. And it could be a great design, one that you've worked years on, and be awesome. But it could still get dull and predictable. It's totally possible to get sucked into a zombie-like state when you've gotten too used to running laps on the layout you've had for years. Even if you think you have a limited space and you've used it to its fullest, try changing the design anyway. Consider stripping down some of the bells and whistles. Add difficulty where there wasn't before. And don't worry about losing your current awesome layout. Just take pictures of it before tearing it down and you can always look at the pics to get it back together. Make it a weekend layout. I've changed layouts hundreds of times and found loads of great challenging racing. It's how you discover new possibilities in track design you may not have seen before.
3. Consider your racing surface. You might be rug racing, considering making a table to put the track on. Or you might already have a table, but are looking at doing something a little more scenic and permanent. Think of your options. If you have the space to devote to making a table, you could design something that is up against the wall, or in a corner, or even in the middle of an open space. And you don't have to have a layout design you love to make a table. You could just make a table based on your available space, and then worry about designing a layout afterward. And that may be as far as you ever go. That's where I am right now. I've pretty much given in to the idea that I likely won't ever commit to a permanent layout, so I won't be adding scenery to my table. I've covered it in fake grass and will likely stop there. That gives me lots of options for track design. And if I ever change my mind and decide to go further, all I have to do is take the fake grass off and I have my table ready for scenery. 
4. Hardware satisfaction. Consider things like your power supply, controllers, if you have digital then all the digital stuff, lap timers, etc., and whether you're getting the most out of them. I know I didn't like the standard Carrera controllers, and am very happy with the Slot.it controller I have. Not everyone needs one or wants one, but if you're frustrated by the lack of control you have over your cars, something like a better controller might be the type of upgrade for you. And if you want a better distribution of power than the standard wall wart the track comes with, a decent one will cost about the price of a slot car.
5. Challenge yourself as a driver. It's easy to put your car on the track and try to get it to run a fast lap. If you don't go fast enough you can just go faster the next time around. Easy, right? No real challenge to the driver. Try running a multiple-lap race, the more laps the better. I do it all the time and find it to be a lot more challenging getting a car to maintain a fast consistent speed without going off the track. Making it so you have to do 50 laps makes the driver more important. The car can do 50 laps, no problem. But the driver has to work with the car. And since each car is different, it requires a different understanding of the intricacies of the car. And it may come down to you going "this is a shit car and it slides out in the corners all the time...it'll never be competitive", and that may be just the way you have to drive it to get the most out of it. It might be a totally different driving situation to some of your other cars. And while a car might get around a lap easier than another one, it doesn't mean it's going to be easier to drive all the time. It might be so easy to drive that you don't push it as much out of it's relative smoothness. Weirder things happen. I've had plenty of times when I've thought that a car would do great in a particular race, only to have it clearly not do as well as other cars. But that's what racing's all about, isn't it?

So there you go. Some of those suggestions could probably be expanded upon to be their own posts, but I wanted to get the ideas out there. It's super easy to get into a thing where you're buying cars, running them around the track and not getting the fun out of it. 

Slot cars are fun. Don't be afraid to explore possibilities. 

Quarantine 2020 - 16 Days In

This is a weird timeline.

But it has given me an opportunity to spend time in the attic working on my track. The table had been doing double duty as an indoor training facility for my new Axial SCX10 II Chevy Blazer crawler. But now that the weather is nicer the table is being turned back into slot car racing central.

I wanted to keep it simple, yet long. A few mild switchbacks to keep things interesting, and then it's all-out speed from there.

Nothing like a fresh racetrack to get one going again. While I enjoy the RC truck outdoors, if I were somehow needing to stay indoors for an extended period of time, I think it would be a good time to have a 20' slot car table.
So I got out the vacuum, did the green grass, wiped down each track piece with a lint-free towel, and started building. One of the first things that popped into my head was to make an exaggerated version of the original suggested layout of the original box kit I got. It was the Carrera Le Mans Contest. It presented an over-8 layout, with one loop slightly longer to accomodate the power track.

This was the suggested layout for Le Mans Contest. I ordered more track pieces as quickly as I could.

So once I got the elongated version of the layout up, I still had a whole bunch of unused track pieces, including some really sweet 2/30 and 3/30 curves. So I made a couple of mild switchbacks and inserted them into the layout; one at the end of the long straight and one just before the start of the overpass. I don't usually do layouts with overpasses, but got the itch to do this one.

After building the initial layout, I opted not to change anything about this part of it. All extensions and changes occur at the other end of the layout.

At first I thought a track like this would favor the longer cars, but it looks like each car is doing great so far on it. I haven't done any official timing yet. I still want to give each car a once-over first. But I'll be doing a race on this track for sure.

Looking down the end to Turn 1. Those nice easy curves do very little to keep the car stable before hitting the brakes off the straightaway. 

I'm loving the 2/30 - 3/30 track combination. Even if I only use them in the form of esses, they still do so much to the overall track. The flow improves dramatically, even when they're relegated to a secondary role. They make straights much more interesting, as well as elongating existing ones. And while you can fly through them, they'll still kick you off if you're not careful. You just crash at a faster speed, that's all.

The Porsche is sitting on a 2/30, turned right, connected to a left 3/30, then a left 1/60. So coming off the straight, the car starts to climb right, then left and starts to unweight, then a hard left. It's super easy to throw the backside out on that 1/60. 

I like speed. I like long tracks with fast flow and challenging spots. Making multi-radius curves really pushes the driver to drive the track. You can tell when you let off too early, or didn't handle the turn effectively, or maybe spun out in it. When you have a track of only 1/60 turns, what happens is that you get into a subconscious thing where you know exactly where your thumb needs to be to make it through a 1/60 curve at the best speed. Once you find that, it's just a matter of always hitting that mark for the best time.
But when you have turns made of different radii, suddenly that one turn becomes a multi-faceted monster, capable of either taking the wind out of you or taking your car off the track. That's rad. In that pic above, I've been working on the best way through that section. The curves going in are so smooth that the 1/60 curve comes up very abruptly. Approaching it wrong guarantees a wipe out. Leaving it wrong takes all the power out of the car for the overpass.

So I'm going to run with this track for a bit. I still have extras, and I might use a couple of track pieces still. Not sure about that yet. I think with a few additions/adjustments we could have a good track that doesn't have so many potential drift elements [both 180° endcaps]. I have a couple straights and those little curves I might use. We'll see.

Winter Update

There have been some things:

I got more grass and finished off the extension. I really like it, although I think I need to strengthen the extension a little with cross bracing.

It's a bit dark as I haven't put any lights up yet over the extension. I also need to add that sliver of grass on the corner.

I had big plans to buy straights and some more large radius curve pieces so I could get a good track going, but those plans fell through when our money ran out. So I'll have to wait. Meanwhile, I took out a bunch of unused 1/60 tracks and reintroduced them into the layout. It turned out making a good technical section out of the extension. I also added some lighting.

i ended up using all but three track pieces, with 26 curve pieces used in this layout. I tried mixing things up so there was variety through the 1/60 curves. I think I got there.

I still want to do the other extension, but it would be pointless right now as I have no more track. I have the wood and grass, cut and ready to go. I'm turning laps in the high 7's right now, which is a pretty good lap time.

By this time next year I will have everything I need to get this done. I know this. I guarantee it. I'll also have some new cars. I know this. I guarantee it.

The other half of the track. It's mostly for speed, with some 2/30 and 3/30's adding some twisty bits at the beginning of the backstretch.

Meanwhile this track has turned out to be pretty impressive. There are some things I'd change: a larger right side to break up the 180° turn, build a faster technical section using less 1/60's and more large radius curves. I just love them. So much more variety can be had with the addition of a handful of 2/30 and 3/30 curves.

I still like the grass. I had a friend over the other day and we had a pretty good time with it in its current state. The grass helped make for clean racing and was a nice landing area for offs.

I figure I'm a long ways away from deciding on a permanent layout. Since changing out my last long--term layout, I've changed now dozens of times. I'm still going for fast sections, technical sections, big sweepers, that sort of thing. Just having a 20'x10' space to fill is a little daunting. Never thought I'd have to say I had too much space.

Be that as it may, i probably won't be satisfied until I've done the other extension and have made a complete circuit with the track pieces of my choice.

Rebuilding this section into a more technical one was surprisingly easy and fits great as an alternative to another two straightaways. 

I think it's pretty easy to make a track that's all straightaways, with turns that are more for utility's sake than for any kind of racing challenge. If I made a giant L-shaped track with two 180°s and two 90°s, that would get boring pretty fast. I like speed as much as the next racer, but there's gotta be a challenge to stay on the track in there as well.

My nephew was over for the holidays, and when he was asking me how he should approach going through this section, I told him to find a comfortable speed without sliding, and then try to hit that speed through the whole section as a start. Once he gets comfortable with that, start with little punches in the small straights, setting up a rhythm. He figured it out and improved his lap time.

Current Layout

Sadly, like every year, it's too cold to spend any length of time in the attic racing, so I have to wait until it warms up a bit. We're at freezing temps now, so I would rather not stand in a refrigerator. But this track is up and ready to race. I might make a tweak or two to it, but I plan on it being the next race in my season.

The cars are lubed, tuned and ready to go. I'm going to throw in a curve to make the next race interesting. Not going to say what that is yet.