What’s the fastest car ? They are all same powered motors right ?

[Pimzy]

What’s the fastest car ? They are all same powered motors right ?

[Andy P.]

97% of the cars use what is known as a Mabuchi, or 13D or 130 motor. They are all roughly the same. As with any mass produced item there will be slight variations.

The width, length and especially triangulation for the guide blade to the rear wheels will make the car handle different.

Weight is of course a factor as well.

There are some cars powered by a "slim can" motor that was used a lot in the motorcycle models and some F1 models. It is longer and thinner about the thickness of 2 cigarettes.

It has less torque but is higher revving. This means it has a higher theoretical top speed but slower acceleration.

Overall top speed is largely irrelevant for home racers. Even most clubs it does not play a huge factor. It is more about handling, smoothness and I would argue acceleration.

Most cars would need over 5 meters of straight track to reach their maximum speed (regardless of motor) and even the best clubs seldom have a straight that long.

For most fun you want performance parity.

Tweak the cars to get them as close as possible. The ARC products are ideal for that as you can adjust the acceleration and power in the APP.

https://uk.scalextric.com/community/advice/app-race-control

[Paul-346202]

Hi Pimzy, to make Scalextric cars handle better you take the magnet out of them. The magnets restrict their performance in acceleration, responsiveness. I wouldn't recommend doing this as a beginner as you need to modify them a fair bit to get them to run. The GT and BTCC line of cars ate some of the faster cars as the guide is lower into the chassis. Andy P is correct in saying you would need a very long straight to get them flat out, tyre compound is more important so to really improve the car you could swap out the rear axle for a slot.it kit but probably not worth spending money doing that unless racing at a club.

[Dr_C]

Andy P. as always has provided a very nice, and accurate, response to the question raised. However there is another opportunity here - particularly if you want to measure the speed of the Scalextric cars in your own collection. For some users the answer could be to build your own track-side speedometer.

Good results can be achieved using a couple of blade detector boards (for example as used in the ARC range of powerbases), an Arduino microcontroller (with some simple code), a small LCD/LED display and a handful of resistors.

The possibilities become seemingly endless when Scalextric systems (either analog or digital) are combined with an interest in electronics IMO.

c