A Weekend in the life of a Slot Car Racer  

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@@davebest5624 It's an interesting question. The truth is, nowhere. It wouldn't even run because the rails are at full voltage, always. Put one on the track and it t would shoot off at full speed to crash at the first corner. Let's say you fix that by installing an Oxigen digital chip, what then? Next, the car would be outside of the build regulations. The lights (presuming it has them out of the box) would extinguish as soon as the car deslots making it impossible for a marshal to find in the dark. The lights would also be the wrong colour, LMP must be white headlights and GT cars yellow. So let's say you install a light kit and proceed. You would of course have to fit the handout motor, slot it MX16 as none of the Scalextric cars are designed to carry a flat6. Then a pair of the handout rear tyres, no problem with that. The traction magnet would have to be removed. There are likely other regulations that the car would need to be compliance with but let's say you take care of all that, which I'm certain would be possible. On to the technical... The Scalextric car would be vastly under geared and incredibly slow, these circuits are large and the cars quite fast in reality. Next the car would likely roll over when it arrives at the faster turns. The Scalextric cars have a relatively heavy body which causes the C of G to be too high. There is a lot (and I mean a lot) of work involved in scraping and scratching the inside of a Scalextric body without breaking through it to get down to the regulation weight limit for the body to prevent those rollovers. I have however raced a Scalextric bodied Ford GT in a similar 24hr race, Le Mans in 2019. The Scalextric chassis has no height offset between the motor and the rear axle, this causes the motor to ride quite high, then there is the issue that Scalextric chassis have their motor on top of the chassis, so while ever the chassis isn't touching the track the motor will always be 1mm+ above the rails. Most of the cars you see have 1mm offset (sometimes more) between the axle and the motor shaft, they also have the motor hanging just below the bottom of the chassis (this is normal in such as a slot it pod for example.) The resulting gap between the motor and the rails in in the region of 0.3 to 0.5mm. That changes as the tyres wear of course so the best magnet downforce given by the motor is just before the tyres become too small to transmit that force to the tyres contact patches. Tyres last quite well, it's track dependant but 8hrs+ is achievable, it depends on how much the driver slides around the back of the car! To wrap it up, my best guess is that as close as out of the box a Scalextric car could legally race it would be 2-5 seconds per lap off the pace. DISCA does have an entry level category for oob slotcars. It's called GT4 and I race them in smaller venues, look for my videos from Denbigh or North Wales Slot car club and you will see them in action. The regulations are available at officialDISCA.com They're great and can produce extremely close racing. BTW the best brand for that would seem to be Scalextric although Carrera and SCX are all legal (no motor pods allowed, sort of.) There is also a best choice car(s) from Scalextric, I could tell you, but then I'd have to k*ll you as they say. Just go watch the video with your eyes open 👀 😆

@@Carfunmostly thanks for the info. I have just reacquainted myself with scalextric, in addition to a formula E set, I have purchased 3 cars, one is a 4x4 Puma WRC, a BMW cop car and arrived today a Honda BTCC, the cars that came with the formula E seem to light and kept flying off the track, many years ago the same happened with the formula one set I had and so I bought several rally cars at that time as well. Best wishes. DB.

@@davebest5624 My best advice for you would be to purchase a variable voltage power supply and run your set on 9 to 11v. the wall wart Scalex supply is 16v iirc which far too fast for all but the best drivers. I assure you that slower cars will be much more fun. When you can handle that, then remove the traction magnet and try a car from Slot It a far better quality proposition and value for money.

The track is Ninco