[moped rider]

So you all saw the spectactular failure of my "tuned" (

) Mustang and Camaro.

What went wrong?

Adrian Norman of Scalextric knows, but do you?

I will know better next time but given that I did what I did why did it all end in tears when in theory it should have been glory?

Can any of you "out Adrian" Adrian?

Moped

 

[Intergrali]

I have a good feeling that something was binding, you had too much downforce and were grounding out.

no doubt adrians response was, we put the biggest magnets in that the motor can pull so that the car stay on better.

 

[moped rider]

Just to give folk more info I had one standard Trans Am bar magnet in each car, Slot.It wheels, gears and axles (one car having a Scalextric pinion but that did not fail), Slot.It 25k and 29k motors, pro-Slot rear tyres glued on, Ninco guides and braides, and the front tyres had been sanded down using an electric drill to the extent that the cars effectively were running as tri-pods.

They worked fine on my SPORT track where the tuning took place.

Why did they come last or fail to finish at Phoenix?

Moped

 

[Intergrali]

the gear mesh was wrong

 

[mtucker666]

My guess (s)
mix and match scaly pinion and slot-it crownwheel might not give best mesh.

Crownwheel grounded on track

Raised Ninco rails combined with low ground clearance bought magnet too close and gave too much pull.

Not very true tyres

 

[Intergrali]

I've got it now....

Moped didnt set the car up well enough!

 

[moped rider]

The cars are running OK at home. I was thinking that a 50% power increase to 21 volts would give them more grunt at Phoenix and they seemed to lack grunt or anything in fact! The answer is not poor running gear or gear meshing. Why don't I bring the pair of cars up to Wrexham where you can look at them more closely?

So you pair haven't "out Adrian" yet with your answers. It is a factor I failed to take into account but Adrian spotted it straight away!

Moped

 

[Doug]

What actually happened to the car? How did it end up?

21 volts seems quite high... seeing as most cars are meant to run from 13 to 16...

 

[moped rider]

You can have pictures of the chassis on the 2 cars tonight to give this thread some clarity. Jon said that Phoenix would be running 21 volts on the day in the senior magnet event so I anticipated that sort of power boost. What I should have done is popped over on the Saturday to practice and set the cars up for the circuit conditions but notwithstanding that there are 2 things that Adrian spotted during that day and pointed out that I simply did not anticipate.

There is one significant difference between the chassis of the Trans Am cars and the chassis of the MG Lola and the efforts and adjustments that Scaley make in pre-production to get cars running as they want them to run straight out of the box astounds me. The significant difference refered to above combined with the other issue that Adrian spotted doomed my 2 cars basically!

Moped

 

[Russell Sheldon]

21 volts!

They don't even crank up the power to 21 volts for Group 7 "wing" cars....

At that voltage plus the magnetic downforce, I'm very surprised that the motors didn't self-destruct after only one or two laps....

Hoo-boy!

Kind regards

Russell

 

[astro]

I have only run on a pair of scalex transformers (1 per track before) and was also anticipating massive power, expecting i might for once find a use for a 60 ohm controller! but no, it seemed to make no difference at all, the club 25 ohm parma being best. After making up an adapter for my red fox controllers, I found they performed as they did at home, the 25 ohm red fox being too sensitive, the 40 ohm just right. I know its amps that drives the cars not volts, but I am still perplexed at the lack of difference.

Mybe everyone elses cars were hungy and ate all the othe volts, leaving me with the usual 12 volts

 

[bobothebear80]

Well when I saw you running your Mustang in practice you could hear something was severely rubbing. I think it may have been the Spur Gear grounding onto the track and your rear tyres were too thin to produce any clearance due to magnet pull. But thats only a guess.

As for you Camaro I think it was driver error that stopped you winning as it looked quite nippy. I saw you spank it into the back of someone and a wing or something flew off your car which I put to one side but forgot to give it back to you.

 

[Mooster]

Were the tyres not trued, or were they binding on something (perhaps the body?) I only saw the Camaro run, but it did seem to be bobbling about a fair bit on its way down to the 'Bus Stop'.

Although the voltage was 21, I'm not sure how many amps there were - my motors weren't getting nearly as hot as I had expected them to, and not as hot as they get on my home setup of 16v/3 amps. I was using a 15 ohm controller for most of the cars I tried. Certainly the 21 volts made the cars pretty spritely on the straights!

Mooster

 

[Coopdevil]

Two thoughts, one serious, one not so...

Firstly if you remember I put both your cars on my tech-block and there was very little gear clearance. If the tyres were distorting under load I imagine the gear was rubbing.

Secondly, i'm not sure that transporting them in the pockets of a hooded sweat-top was that good for them, think of all that fluff!

Coop

 

[Wankel Ickx]

QUOTE Secondly, i'm not sure that transporting them in the pockets of a hooded sweat-top was that good for them, think of all that fluff!

Wierd image!

Mope, if the car you ran with looked like the one on that tuning thread over at SCI (Milliedog - that was you, wasn't it Jonny?

) you were preparing then I would say you over egged the pudding somewhat.

 

[Intergrali]

was probably lack of rotation of the guide when it was compressed into the body

 

[McLaren]

I think Adrian told him to keep all of the standard Scaley stuff!

Seriously though, if you wanted it to go better, I'd have taken the body off and replaced it with a Toyota GT1 body. Then, bfore you screw it back up again, swap the chassis for a Toyota GT1 chassis. Then enter the no mags race. All should be sorted.

Lotus

PS. What did Adrian say? Anything about the rails being higher on Ninco so more magnetic effect?

 

[andreg]

I am very curious on what went wrong with your cars, Moped. After seeing the pictures of your Camaro on SCI I ordered some Slot-It parts to put into one myself.

Hopefully I can avoid the problems you encountered since I only run on Scalextric Sport track...

 

[moped rider]

I have taken a few chassis pictures to post but I have put some Phoenix pictures on tonight instead. There is probably enough photographic material to entertain us for the next week or two.

Adrian did not actually suggest to strip out the Slot.It gear and put back the Scaley gear so anybody who has that idea would not be right!

What he did say though was that there is a genious at his Viking Club who can make any Scaley car perform as well as a Slot.It car with standard Scaley bits.

There was a reference to the track. It can be difficult to set up a magnet car on SPORT track and then blindly go racing on a Ninco circuit. Adrian with his experiance hinted at why.

There was another reference to the magnet position in the Trans Am relative to that in the MG Lola. That is inevitably going to make the MG Lola the better performer on Ninco track if you tune your cars for optimum performance on SPORT track. Scaley apparently do some pretty amazing things to their cars to get the magnet positions just right for optimum performance on all track types. Adrian implied that one of my big mistakes was to lower the chassis on the Trans Am if I was running the car on Ninco track.

Hornby spend lots of dosh to get it perfect and then folk start messing it all up. Like me!

It must make the boys and girls at Scalextric weep!

Anyway, I have not been too specific with my clues but there are two very clear factors that I did not consider that no one has touched apon yet.

I will spill the beans eventually.

Moped

 

[McLaren]

So what Adrian basically said was, you should have left it standard.

Why bother mucking around with stuff like lowering and cutting. To make it faster, upgrade the motor. And to make it handle upgrade axel and wheels. Of course lowering doens't always make cars better, for one thing, it screws the mesh up and things will start grinding.

So in conclusion, to build a fast RTR based magnet car:

Find a magnet car that is fast already. Must be low, wide, of medium length and with no over hangs.

Put in the fastest motor that a) fits,

works on the track you are racing and c) that you can handle.

Put lightweight slot it parts on anything that transmits power to the ground.

And you are finished.

Lotus