Light or light?

[glued and trued]

so, i had a recent trip to a well stocked slot car shop in fleetwood. and there were a few cars I had my eye on, but they dont have lights, as the 'professional' cars are looking to channel all the power to the motor, and also the lights are excess weight. seems fairly logical, however, i really do like racing cars with lights around in the dark due to my old le mans set from the 80s

so for me, i always buy the cars with lights, which scalextric do a good job of, especially with the new xenon style front lights and brakes. in fact, i never buy them without. does it make that much of a difference, these things are fast enough as they are surely?

[Andy P.]

In most  cases it is purely a matter of choice.

Thanks to LEDs adding lights to any slot car is fairly easy with a bit of research and a bit of practice.

It all makes a difference, of course and I am sure if you measure lap times to within a thousandth or hundredth you can tell but at the end of the day if you are really racing "professionally" by simply enforcing a minimum weight or that all cars must have lights you level the playing field.

Alternatively you can reduce the power on the non-lighted (non-lit?) car by say 1%.

You can of course run experiments yourself and see how things turn out...

[glued and trued]

yes, true enough, no doubt you are right, but I have enough trouble keeping any of the new cars on the track to be honest, especially careful with my new 'limited edition' escort after launching it into the piano. I can't imagine needing it to go any quicker, but then these are not for racing, you'd push a more robust car round a lot quicker and then probably notice the small gains.

[woodcote]

I like to see lights on slot cars. The power used is negligible (a few milliwatts for the LEDs, a few more milliwatts dissipated by the resistors on the circuit board). With surface-mounted LEDs, the weight is pretty minimal too. I think with most slot car manufacturers, the reason for not fitting them as standard is the extra cost. I'm glad Scalextric continue to give us great cars with lights.

[Andy P.]

If your cars are too fast take the magnets out and give it a try. That will force you to slow down...

[gorp]

say what ?

popping out mags on the standard can may slow it down for controlling (and also show the true handling of the design). 

popping out mags on the slim ff can which almost starts full on will lead to more crashes and expensive repairs due to smaller parts used than standard, so running magnet may be only safe option