Car grip Gulf/Sport

[JamesR85]

Hi - apologies if this is in the wrong sub-forum, or been covered in detail before..... The question i have is, is there something with my setup wrong, or am i just expecting too much from these cars in terms of grip?

Some background - apologies for the length of detail. After unboxing a 90's kit that i hadn't touched for 20 years over Christmas whilst buying some new cars, it was clear it was time to play catch up with technology. So, i purchased a Gulf racing set in my haste (like this one - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scalextric-C1384-Racing-Black-1899-12-31T01/dp/B078YV8J58), along with ordering various straight & corner extension packs, plus some second hand track.

Oddly, the gulf track would not stay together, so it's being returned. The second hand track came with a Sport power base, which i'm using and have run both the singular and dual power modes. When comparing the two power bases, the Gulf is considerably quicker, but the Sport seems to have better grip (seems to produce stronger magnetraction, if possible!?)

However, my issue is that the Gulf cars (you'll see them in the link above), race with such grip and speed, but the other cars i've bought are nowhere near on the grip and then lack on the speed also. Perhaps i'm just expecting too much, and am not appreciating the challenge with what seem to be the better quality cars (i.e. non-Gulf). Are the Gulf cars designed more for beginners and therefore have much better grip? i have tried swapping the magnets and there's no difference. The other cars also have varying degrees of wheel-base length and tyre size/width. 

The issue with the grip are the cars both swinging out/off into the corners and getting limited purchase when accelerating down the straights - you can hear the wheels spinning. The non-Gulf set cars are; Scalextric C4021 2018 Williams Formula 1 Car, Scalextric C3958 Stallion F1 Car, Red, Scalextric C3960 Wings F1 Car, Blue, Scalextric C3969 McLaren F1 GTR LeMans Car Gulf Edition (1995), Scalextric C3736 MG BTCC MG6-Jack Goff, Brands Hatch 2015" Car and calextric C3723 Caterham Superlight-R300-S Championship 2015" Car. I got a bit carried away and always preferred racing the F1 cars when younger, albeit these seem a step up!

I've ordered an Arc One power base and controllers which will land this week, if that's relevant. Thanks for your advice, and apologies for the length again!

[Andy P.]

All new cars have pretty much the same magnets, wheel and tires. Having said that, there are differences in the tires in particular.

Where teh cars differ mostly is the weight and how that weight is distributed.

Cars without an interior are of course ighter, for example.

Go through the car maintenance section: https://www.scalextric.com/uk-en/support/car-maintenance and check out Gary Skipp's tuning tips on the official YouTube channel and you will get all the cars running nicely.

[JamesR85]

All new cars have pretty much the same magnets, wheel and tires. Having said that, there are differences in the tires in particular.

Where teh cars differ mostly is the weight and how that weight is distributed.

Cars without an interior are of course ighter, for example.

Go through the car maintenance section: https://www.scalextric.com/uk-en/support/car-maintenance and check out Gary Skipp's tuning tips on the official YouTube channel and you will get all the cars running nicely.

Thank you very much Andy - i'll check this out, and will hopefully get the cars performing much better!

[Andy P.]

Good luck!

[LesD]

I too have returned to Scalextric and have also experienced quite varied ranges of grip between cars, even cars in the same category.

but isn’t it the case that you don’t want the cars to have “perfect” grip otherwise there is no skill in driving them?

my difficulty is in the variations in grip but then again it adds to the challenge?

I also don’t need my cars to be fantastically fast because my reaction times aren’t up to it. (It’s an age thing! lol)

[Bazzer1707822406]

I would like to make a few points about car grip, the grip levels offered by Scalextric cars has gone up massively in the 50 years that I have raced.

The change to the Sport track and combined with the magnatraction cars has made Scalextric a superb home slot car system.

For a few years I raced on 1/32 scale permanent hard tracks, I learned the importance of preparation during that racing.

All slot cars are sensitive to grip and what seems like a nice clean track can be quite dusty, the car then picks up the dust on the rear tyres which has a very detrimental effect upon grip.

I clean the track with a painters tack rag or car body panel wipe on a lint free cloth, I then clean the tyres, either by revving up on some 180 grit paper or doing a solvent wipe on the tyres.

Pay attention to the braids, I like to tease the end of the braids out with a pin to start with (a little lube like GT 85 helps the braid tease out) and then us a very small wire brush to really get the little bits of wire in the braid all heading in the same lay pattern, I then put a couple of tiny drops of oil on the braid.

Paying attention to the above can easily turn a 3 second lap time driven really well into a 2.25 second lap.

The differences in performance from one style of car to another could be down to many things but on the 1/32 cars on the hard track we would spend a lot of time fiddling around with small weights to assist car balance. Some Scalextric cars are going to be better in this respect than others and will carry a more advantageous weight distribution.

Slot cars are sensitive !!