Micro Hand Controllers - Power Limiter

[Bjd]

I have just bought a Micro Hyper car set fot my 7 and 5 year old grandsons for Christmas and Ihave been ensuring that it works OK - as you do!!

 

The controllers seem to come with the setting in the reduced speed position with the dots on the screw head and controller body aligned.  I would like to know how I set to full power - do I turn the slotted screw head clockwise or antii clockwise and how far.  I don't want to experiment as it would be sad if i broke it before Christmas Day.  You see I can play now but on christmas day I wont get a look in!  Incidentally Ihave a lot more space than they have at home so should I buy a full size set to 'practice on so that they don't beat me when i visit them!!!!?

 

Hope to hear from someone pleae

Bernard

[Andy P.]

Hi Bernard,

I had the same problem when I got an ARC ONE set:

https://slotcarp.wordpress.com/#Setup

The "dot to dot" setting is the lowest i.e. slowest setting and moving the screw counterclockwise i.e. away from the dot increases the speed.

Make sure you use a flathead screwdrivers or dull knife that fits the slit well otherwise the plastic will get scratched and not looks as nice.

Alternatively, you can use a wall mounted (sometimes called socket mounted) dimmer and plug the power adapter into that. I personally find it less fiddely this way. You leave the controllers at full throttle and gently increase speed using the dimmer dial until the car fly off. Back it off a notch and you are good to go.

Personally I think if you have the space you should go for a SPORT set up. Micro is limited to the smaller "H0" care but you can race everything on SPORT (except big 1/24 cars). There are no wall crawling curves or loop-the-loops but there is a flying leap and cross over sections.

I only see Micro an advantage if you don't have the space and/or you love the motif of the prodcuts (Cars, Toy Story, Star Wars etc). You can theoretically race Micro cars on Sport ;-)

Good luck!

 

[richard_tilwick]

coming to you from across the pond. Using the dimmer is a great idea Andy. Will that shorten the life of motoers and controllers? Would it work on digital sets? As an aside, does Scalextric make a plug that will allow the digital converter units to be transferred to different cars? I have over fifty cars and it could get expensive to have to buy a digital module for each car.

thank you..

[Andy P.]

Howdy from Europe ...

The dimmer can possibly cause the power packs to warm up but I used it for over 4 hours non-stop without a problem. Do test it and keep an eye on it though.

I doubt it will work with digital, as it is more sensitive to current. I don't drive digital so I don't know.

Many of the Hornby Scalextric cars ard DPR=Digital Plug Ready which means you can swap the chip across cars no problem.

If the car is not Hornby Scalextric or Slot.IT you have to use a chip that is soldered and therefore not tranferrable.

[DougieD]

Just got one of the newer 9v cars (Wile E Coyote), and tried it out on my "old" 19v track. It seems to work great, but I am concerned about putting the higher voltage through it. What is the voltage of the controller when it's in the dots-aligned position? (From the Hypercars set.) I'm thinking maybe I could just run the 9v cars on my old-style track with the limiter on. I didn't know the voltage setting was a continuum from high to low; I thought it was a switch - high or low, with nothing in-between. What would be the best setting to use, then?

Thanks for any advice. 

[woodcote]

Hi DougieD - the new cars will run (pretty quickly!) at 19v. At the full 19 volts, the motors may start to fail after a while, so your idea of using the speed limiting switch on the controller is a good one. The switch limits how far the wiper will travel up the resistor on the controller and will probably give you 9-10 volts maximum on the lower setting of the two-position controllers. The newer four-position controllers offer 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% - so 50% would be the ideal setting for those.

 

I hope that answers you questions.

[DougieD]

Hi DougieD - the new cars will run (pretty quickly!) at 19v. At the full 19 volts, the motors may start to fail after a while, so your idea of using the speed limiting switch on the controller is a good one. The switch limits how far the wiper will travel up the resistor on the controller and will probably give you 9-10 volts maximum on the lower setting of the two-position controllers. The newer four-position controllers offer 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% - so 50% would be the ideal setting for those.

 

I hope that answers you questions.

 

It does. Thanks!