QUOTE (300SLR @ 16 Mar 2012, 09:52)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>Paulo Trigilio is the current world champion in 4 classes, all 4 of his winning cars used thick wire all the way from motor to guide.
So at least one of the many people who still think thicker is better seems to know a thing or two about making slot cars go quickly!
It might be worth mentioning that in a lot of the quicker cars (including Paulo's), the lead wire is used to self centre the guide. When used in this way, a certain amount of spring in the wire is important.
I think it is a little disingenuous to use a world champion as an excuse to confuse the 20000 or so forum members who race Slotit Ninco, Fly, etc... Perhaps we deserve better advice.
I have seen with my own eyes a multiple world champion pushing other drivers off the road in an effort to stop them overtaking. Yet I wouldn't recommend it to anyone on their way to work.
The fact is, current draw is always quoted as the peak current which is only drawn a zero revs (ie just as the car starts)
It bears little relationship to how much current the motor actually draws in race use (where the motor speed never returns to 0).
High performance cars will go round corners with their motors still revving very high (big corners, good handling), minimizing the current draw when power is re-applied.
It would be interesting to continuously record the current draw of various cars actually going round a track, I think it would surprise a few.
The sampling rate of a peak current meter (designed to measure motor start currents) is generally 2 milliseconds, otherwise it would miss the peak current.
Loosing 0.1V or 0.5V for 2Ms at the start of the race is unlikely to make a difference to the result at the end of the race.
On the other hand running too thick/stiff a wire will stop the guide working properly in most modern plastic cars (as used by all of us on this forum)
The neat trick with thin wire is that you can use it with all your cars (regardless of the motor).
If you are worried about the 2Ms loss, you simply
double or
treble the wire (but you can't "thin out" a thick wire).
This is what all the fast guys used to do before it became fashionable to use thick wire.
So if you want a "universal" wire, thin is the clever way to go, thick isn't.
Joel