Hi I'm a bit curious about how many people use there cars with or without the magnets in place and whether I should start thinking about how I race these days, so if any one has anything to say feel free
With or without at home...all my vintage slots are mag free. So no probs there, they race without, and any modern cars fitted with magnets keep their magnets insitu. Never race my cars hard on my layouts, so it`s never been an issue for me in that respect.
However, at the club I attend it`s always been mag free racing...which means a lot more skill required-which I haven`t got! Great fun though..
Cheers
Kev
Been no-mag since punting the Scaley Sport junk and going with wood. Pick up some real throttles and a variable power supply, fool with tires and a bit of weight, and I feel like I'm actually driving a car instead of a roller coaster.
Turn down the power and let the kids take over, and everyone is still having fun, no magnets required.
Personally I can't stand magnets. I don't think they add anything positive to our hobby except, maybe, allowing very young children to participate without needing to concentrate. They have definitely contributed to sloppy product engineering, because the massive amount of grip they generate very effectively disguises poor tyres, poor track surfaces, poor chassis design and many other things.
Of course, to each his own, but I do not know one slotter who, once introduced to magnetless driving, has returned exclusively to driving with magnets.
Basically, without magnets you have more control but go more slowly. With magnets you can't hang out the tail round corners or get a drifting effect to line a car up for the straight. Also because the line between being in and being out of control is much finer, you get much bigger offs. When we first got the new strong magnets (unlike the old Scalex bar ones) we immediately got a massive increase in spoiler destruction which a sea of superglue could not hold back. That said, having tried digital, you probably need magnets to manage the x-overs - non-magnet cars would fishtail too much.
I prefer a medium strength magnet myself and shim it to get the downforce effect desired. For a 'real' driving experience a magnet will give you grip, grip, grip, grip....and then oops; kitty litter - just like the real thing.
Also, I'm damned lazy at the slot track and don't want to keep getting off the stool to rescue a magnet-less car that's taken a trip into the weeds. That is really tedious.
Love the topic, guaranteed to run at least 10 days with solid fans and strength of opinion in both camps.
QUOTE (Pioneer @ 13 Oct 2010, 20:04) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I prefer a medium strength magnet myself and shim it to get the downforce effect desired. For a 'real' driving experience a magnet will give you grip, grip, grip, grip....and then oops; kitty litter - just like the real thing.
Also, I'm damned lazy at the slot track and don't want to keep getting off the stool to rescue a magnet-less car that's taken a trip into the weeds. That is really tedious.
Love the topic, guaranteed to run at least 10 days with solid fans and strength of opinion in both camps.
Jules
Thanks. As you may or may not know I've started a few topics in the 4 days that I've been a member of this forum and I think this one it definitely the most interesting so far, the more replies the better, it helps me and a hope it helps others just as much
There's positives for with and without, personally I enjoy both types of racing. With magnet it's more fast and furious and can be great fun, without mags it's slower and in my opinion takes a bit more controlling but is satisfying when you get a great drift around a bend.
Don't just expect to take the magnets out and run because you might find some cars will be awful. You might need to change tyres (or true tyres at least) add weight here or there.....etc..
i race with the kids with mags and on a routed track without i think its much more fun without mags gives you more of a drive.you cant just pin it on the exit on a corner as much or it just spins feathering the throttle in my opinion gives racing a more natural feel
Magnets are great! for holding bits of paper to the fridge.
I race at a club on Friday nights where we run on wood with copper braid, Magnets have no affect so you learn two things, how to drive & how to set up a car. One day I hope to master at least one of these.
There is a club in Great Barr that races on a Saturday, they race on Ninco with magnets. 90% of the racers are children under 12 years of age. Magnets are a perfect learners tool, once they can learn to keep the car in the slot, they move to the Thursday night crowd where they run a mixture of magnet & non-magnet cars.
Looks like more people are non-mag fans than mag fans - personally I always remove magnets as I always felt the magnet was a bit 'artificial' - fast and furious certainly, and probably good fun for a while - but not the real thing - if a little plastic car can be the real thing, but I reckon you know what I mean.
Most (probably all actually) rally clubs in Spain ban magnets in their regulations with a rule something like:
No supplementary magnets allowed!!
Then they look for the motors with the most powerful magnets as these are not considered as 'supplementary'.
Smacks of a contradiction a bit, but there you have it. Of course, however strong a motor's magnet it gets nowhere near the extra magnets on some SCX and Ninco models - they can be so strong that the car would work even if the track was upside down!! And that would just be plain silly, wouldn't it?
!
I prefer to race both. I race slot.t non magnet and enjoy it. I also run NASCAR and GT Scalextric and SCX cars with magnets. All classes are fun. I like the trial and error of setting up my non mag cars as much as I sometimes just want to get a car, add new tires and oil it up, and race. As far as skill, I think the skill is tuning a car. I can race pretty good but suck at setting up cars. I also know a very good magnet racer that beats us almost every time he races us non magnet. My personal opinion is that non mag racing requires less skill because the cars are more forgiving. With magnet racing, there is a very fine line between staying on or falling off. More room for error on timing for non mag. Just my opinion for my racing!
Pretty much all of the clubs ive raced at over the last few years have done away with them. I wish the slot car companies would give an option when purchasing with/without magnet. It would have saved me a few pounds over the years
Now,where did i put that magnet mountain i was building
QUOTE (Philip P @ 13 Oct 2010, 12:33) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I like magnets.....so there!!!
Same here and not stopping no time soon. But at the same I respect those who run without them. But I also want everyone to remember the most important thing here is that we are all here for the same thing, the love of Racing Slot Cars ether mag or no mag Please Never Forgot That!!!!!.
Race SSD digital and only used magnets so far as we have a lot of new people driving and it keeps them on the track and they have more fun plus I like the speed.
However I am now starting to play with trottle curves in the SSDC RMS software and am planning to set up a class of cars to race without magnet with the more regular drivers so we can experience the skill & drift factor so looking forward to that.
I started without magnets 'cause I like to make the racing as skillful as possible to separate the men from the boys.
But sadly, without magnets on a long bumpy plastic track straight, some cars deslot and some don't which put me off the idea of not using magnets.
And then you have the problem with digital track not being able to read a car's ID which causes you to miss a lap or the changeover lane doesn't function.
You put the magnet back in the car and all those problems disappear.
So sadly, for a digital slot car racing club, we MUST use magnets. And frankly, it doesn't spoil the fun/competition/adrenalin.
most of my cars are running with no magnets in. true tyres up and run as they are. never have much trouble with de-slots. cars ranging from gt, lmp, rally, jgtc and road cars. only prob is after so long ther tyres want scrubbing up again on the sandpaper. my f1 cars have the magnets in. they too quick for my liking without magnets in. plus f1 cars dont tend to go fast sideways anyway lol mind u my kiddies would do there nut in if their cars didnt have magnets in em. saying that my daughter thrashes her wrc focus round without magnets in it. just depends whatever suits i suppose!
enjoy ya racing whatever u choose!
mark
Magnets are a no no in the ABBO household. Like Skyway, I have a large silver mountain growing all the time.
The most joyous day ever was when we ran the last magnet event at the clubs in our area - about two and a half years ago. Speeds were getting ridiculous and it got to the stage where with a lot of tweaking you could nearly drive a complete lap at Burnt Oak without lifting. Now that's not racing. It's also dangerous, as one of our past members ended up with a nice "Action Man" type cut to his cheek, when a car de-slotted and flew into his face. Also (at the time) we had about 20 members... and guess what, on a magnet night we only had about 7 or 8 people turn up, most of them muttering and grumbling about the class we were runnig.
Lap times on a properly sorted non mag car are about 2 secs slower than a magnet bullet (on our 100+ foot circuit), but you get a better straight line speed without and of course you have to out brake each other to overtake
I was a six year old kid with my first scalex set and it didn't have magnets. I raced all through the years right up to the present and I still don't use 'em. If a car needs them in order to perform, it's not made properly!
I was rather interested to see Jules' response. But I can see where he's coming from on that call.
Personally... Since upgrading to a variable power supply and decent controllers, even on humble Scaley analogue the cars still containing magnets just don't make it to the track much anymore.
I did take a long time to lose the training wheels though. And it also wasn't until I started tinkering with the cars more that I truly began to understand how much I can affect the performance with just some simple TLC, and start improving the driving. If I can't get a car to run comfortably without magnets then it tends to go back on the shelf waiting for me to learn more.
Magnatraction cars do still get the occasional run on my track, but usually in the hands of kids or novices. Eventually the adults notice the different action in the cars and ask for a go of a non-mag car. Only one, so far, has graduated to exclusively non-mag cars. But, she's almost more of a nutter than me.
I prefer non mag with a car that was designed for non mag. Taking the magnets out of a car designed for magnets means the car will most probably run like a bag of spuds unless it is modified to suit.
If youre going to try non mag get an NSR, Slot.it or similar otherwise you may get a bad taste for non mag.
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